Here's the problem: I'm working in the educational division of a health care service and our IT is heavily restricted. I wanted to create virtual spaces for our licensed professionals to connect, share, discuss and grow, using blogs for each group, but the IT department balked. Their solution is Sharepoint. During the session I would present the problem, share (hahaha) how we've tried to work with what we've got, and then I would love to open it up to everyone as a problem to solve and generate ideas.

Building on what came up during the Enterprise Social session, further lots of great stuff came up during this session:

• need to start with the content, and build out from that
• people need to have a reason to go to the collaborative site
• start with small groups of people
• start with a defined task so that people get used to using the space in a usual way
• discussion about anonymity: how much vs. how little and the degree that participant should/can control
• Having an "off topic" section is great to see who is having trouble with aspects not within scope
• when selling the idea of collaborative space, series of f2f with stakeholders really helpful
• have regular meetings with stakeholders
• Adobe connect really good for video conferencing
• When interacting with IT: make it clear that they are responsible for IT and that one or two within non-IT user group with be the designated gardeners
• Learn from marketing/communication: "Word of mouth" - virtual spaces, while may contain bad news and negative commentary, also way to know what issues are, way of getting issues out into the open, so that you can then figure out a way to deal with them
• Sharepoint itself (....did not want this to become a bitch session about the tool, but hey.....): Think about how to structure the information; already used within government with anonymous logins; some sad stories about using Sharepoint
• Should be grateful that have an IT dept. willing to administer the tool