This is the first of my posts from the Enter­prise 2.0 Con­fer­ence in Boston. I plan to do small, sum­mary style posts with my opin­ion. I will also pro­vide links that point back to the core con­tent on the con­fer­ence website.

There’s a backchan­nel that every­one can par­tic­i­pate in, whether or not they are at the con­fer­ence. Just choose the ses­sion you’re inter­ested in and join the chat.

The first ses­sion today was a joint pre­sen­ta­tion from IBM and Microsoft to show­case their respec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms. Let’s get this straight from the get go — both plat­forms, deployed and tuned well, will make col­lab­o­ra­tion eas­ier in your organ­i­sa­tion. Cul­tural issues notwith­stand­ing (and they are by far the most crit­i­cal issue).

IBM led off and showed off their Lotus Con­nec­tions plat­form first. Com­pelling pre­sen­ter. Nice organ­i­sa­tion. Sweet look­ing tools — espe­cially the func­tional social graph.

Microsoft fol­lowed after the break with Share­Point. First three slides… text. Pre­sen­ters… tech­ni­cal and not com­pelling. The whole pre­sen­ta­tion was very email-​​centric and heavy lift­ing. No won­der peo­ple com­plain about SharePoint.

Microsoft lost audi­ence dur­ing their pre­sen­ta­tion, which is a shame. Share­Point is pow­er­ful, but like a lot of other prod­ucts from the com­pany, it’s heavy-​​lifting and will be hard for reg­u­lar, non-​​technical users to adopt with­out mas­sive cus­tomi­sa­tion by skilled tech­ni­cal imple­menters. I have no doubt that Con­nec­tions is no dif­fer­ent, but it didn’t feel that way.

The backchan­nel for this ses­sion is here.