I came to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week expecting to hear about all the challenges companies are having proving the value of collaborative technologies to their employees and how they were trying to get pilot projects off the ground and what vendors are doing to sell tools like blogs, wikis, and mash-up engines. What I didn't anticipate is that I'd see innovative uses of collaborative technology right here at the show. Exhibit one: Morgan Stanley.The Morgan Stanley IT team has about 10 people on site, including the company's VP of knowledge management and a few members of his team. During the keynote, I noticed that several of them were typing furiously away at their BlackBerrys anytime the keynote speaker made an interesting (or uninteresting) comment, so I asked what was up.

Apparently, these guys formed an ad hoc discussion board, a sort of persistent chat room, that constantly updates as they comment on the keynotes or the various sessions going on. From what I could see, comments stream in relatively real time to their screens, and it allows the team to share ideas and thoughts as the speakers speak, rather than having to wait until after discussions for a de-briefing in the hallway or during meals.

Just another case of Enterprise 2.0 in action.