Remember when email first hit the scene and was feared as an unruly and lawless tool to propagate information chaos and over-disclosure? Well I discovered those same fears are conjured by today’s social tools and crowdsourcing among major enterprises while at an IBM conference on data governance in New Platz, NY.

First, a big thank you to IBM & Steven Adler for the invitation to participate and contribute.  The conference was at Mohonk – an amazing location for such a thoughtful retreat, and I spent the entire time surrounded by IBM customers and partners.

There were two tracks to the conference ‘Data Assets & Risks’ and ‘Governance & Compliance.’ I joined Mark Oestreicher of Harper Collins, Bobby John of Brainpark, Gerry Katz of Citigroup, Megan Murray of Booz Allen Hamilton on a panel to discuss Enterprise 2.0 and Self Governance, which was moderated by Traci Fenton of WorldBlu.  Each panelist presented our thoughts on data governance and how it relates to Enterprise 2.0 and this whole concept of self governance. Followed by tough questions from the corporate crowd!  I introduced the concept of crowdsourcing for enterprises to discuss how freely data (including profile data) is submitted in crowdsourcing communities today where members are contributing ideas, research breakthroughs, and other answers to needs that businesses broadcast for solution.

The pervasive audience response to my pitch on the upside of data openness was, “No thanks, at least not yet.” I discovered that among major enterprises in attendance, there is still much work to be done to get social tools well understood and adopted. There seems to be an inherent need to heavily manage user behavior inside these companies via locked down systems and strict data governance. Corporations do not yet have confidence in the tools for fear of compromising confidential and proprietary data.  We had these same discussions when email was introduced to the corporations years ago… humans will be humans, and if someone wants to expose private information, they will regardless of the systems in place.

While enterprise cautiousness is real, so is their curiosity, and I welcomed many great conversations one-on-one with the crowd. More discussions to come! And I look forward to heading back to the next IBM conference with case studies under my arm.