This conversation with Chris Brogan is the third in a series of interview posts leading up to next week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference, being held at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel.

(Here are the previous interviews, with Alicia Staley and Keri Pearlson/Susan Scrupski.)

Chris is a blogger extraordinaire at ChrisBrogan.com, co-founder of the PodCamp unconference series, and the VP of strategy and technology at CrossTech Media. I caught up with him over e-mail to get his thoughts on the E2 conference.

Bryan Person: You’ll be moderating the “Social Media and the Enterprise” session and speaking on the “Microblogging and Emergent Platforms” panel at next week’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference. Can you give us a sneak peak about what you’ll be talking about in each?

Chris: In “Social Media and the Enterprise,” I have a strong panel of talented professionals, including Maggie Fox, KD Paine, and Rob Howard. We’ll talk about how collaboration technologies work behind the firewall, as well as how people in larger organizations are choosing to engage in the conversation already taking place on the Web.

In “Microblogging,” I’ll talk about how these tools like Twitter and Utterz and Qik and BrightKite are being seen as consumer tools, but how they matter to enterprise technologists. Further, I’ll talk a bit more about the state of unified communications and how much closer we are to the dream of powerful presence and integrated phone apps.

BP: On the subject of microblogging, you spend a hell of a lot of time on Twitter, having made more than 18,500 posts. Two questions here: 1) Do you really “dip in, dip out” when using Twitter (some of us are really envious if it’s true!) 2) What’s the real magic with Twitter in your eyes, and why has it become one of your key communication tools over the past year or two?

CB: I use several tools to view Twitter. When it’s working, I use the Jabber client most of all, because it’s the fastest, more stream-like experience to watch the flow. I really like Twhirl (great purchase, Loic LeMeur!) for its functionality, too. I also have cooked up several searches using Summize, and I have RSS subscriptions to some of these so that I can keep tabs on topics that matter to me. Finally, watching over almost 9,000 conversations is tricky. I’ve built a few simple tools to follow the people I *most* need to stay tapped into.

The real magic of Twitter is that it’s a powerful, connected, pulse-driven network, and when cultivated and tapped into properly, it can yield great network effects of all sorts, including group search, and specific promotional experiences. I’m not sure how I was effective in doing some of what I did before without it. But as I type this, Twitter is down yet again. I want stability.

BP: How should enterprises be viewing and testing out Twitter-like applications today? Any reason they shouldn’t be empowering their employees with microblogging and presence tools?

CB: Presence tools are perfect for the enterprise. Imagine a team of 12 engineers across 3 locations, overseeing a complex computing platform. One engineer might send a short status message (like a tweet on Twitter), saying that she’s getting processor spikes on her web servers. Engineer 2 says he’s not seeing anything. Engineer 3 responds that he *just* started a backup batch, and maybe something’s broken in the code. It’s the ultimate project status tool.

BP: Apart from speaking and moderating sessions, what other plans do you have for E2? What kinds of conversations are you looking to have?

CB: I’m looking for more stories of collaboration technology being used behind the firewall. My passion for social software doubles when I think about how businesses can use these tools to deliver more value for their employees by building simple-to-use platforms that promote simple status and presence sharing, document and information exchange, rich media, and profile/friending activities. I’m hoping to talk with people doing work in that space.

BP: You attend your fair share of conferences — and you organize some as well. What words of advice can you offer to Enterprise 2.0 attendees on getting the most out of the event?

CB: Before the event, check upcoming.org for related parties. Scan Twitter using Summize to see who else might be going that also uses Twitter and connect that way. Check Facebook. Check Technorati.com and Google Blog Search. Do everything you can to find people’s blogs, presence applications, and otherwise, and get a better understanding of who’s going.

During the event, make sure you try hard to meet the people you hope to meet early in the event. Time has a way of creeping up. Bring TONS of business cards. Do everything you can to defer longer conversations to later. If you’re a media maker, take pictures, shoot video, and capture the event as best as you can.

After the event, connect up with people you meet. Drop everyone a short line using the business cards you’ve collected. Build potential relationships early to keep momentum. And reconnect with your family. They missed you while you were gone.

Photo from Chris Brogan’s Flickr photostream.

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