Cafeterias used to be a real problem for me.  I grew up in an age which knew little of eating disorders, and I can still hear my mother admonishing me before the line at the S&W “your eyes are always bigger than your stomach.”  Getting a handle on how 350,000 people in a company are using social media around the world may have been something of a tall order as well.  But I had heard so much from members of the Social Media Collective, and leading bloggers here like Luis Suarez and Jack Mason, about IBM's innovative use of social media that I was determined to try to pile my platter.

Thanks to the patient support of several IBMers, including the above-mentioned bloggers as well as George Faulkner and several other in the communications staff, as well as non- and former IBMers like Dave Terrar, Susan Scrupski, and Nathan Gilliatt, I've put together something of a smorgasbord (okay, no more food metaphors) and something of a point of view.

Not surprisingly, it's a report that still needs work; in fact it's probably true that this case study will never be completed, since social media at IBM is an ever-evolving and growing exercise.  Jerry Bowles and I decided to open the discussion up for a few days to get some additional input, and to welcome correction and comment, so we're posting the case study here as a wiki for a week or two to get some more detail and then we'll wrap it up in a nice pdf for you to spread around. 

And to chew on.

Please go to "wiki" underneath the logo on the home page (or click here), and you'll get right there.