E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

My New Business Card for Enterprise 2.0 in Boston – Did You Get Yours Already?

I am sure I am not the only one experiencing this: you bump into people all over the place (Customer meetings, workshops, seminars, conference events, TweetUps, etc. etc.) and you end up with several dozens of business cards you keep promising yourself you will look back into when heading back home. Yet, you arrive and that bunch of new business cards gets piled in a drawer with all the others. Several hundred of them! And you never look back! That drawer remains closed till the next time you will fill it up again!

Well, that’s what I have been going through myself over the years. And I think it’s time that I put a stop to it. And look for some much more revolutionary and innovative way of keeping in touch with all of those great people I get to meet every so often. So, here, here is my new business card:

What the…? That’s not a business card, Mr! I bet that’s what you are thinking about this very moment. Well, yes, folks, that’s my new business card. A poken. My poken. My new business card. When I was last time in Madrid I met up with Nacho Guijarro, who happens to be a mutual good friend from a fellow IBM colleague, César Vitero, so we got to talk for a while and he introduced me to the concept of the Poken, and I went "My goodness! I want one of those! Like right NOW!" And a few minutes afterwards I had mine. Way too cool!

Pokens are fun! And they surely fulfil a need that most of us with a heavy presence in the social software world out there were missing out big time: a way to keep in touch with our new connections online and in our mutually shared social software spaces! Traditional business cards don’t do that; they are just too much focused on the physical world alone, which is probably why I never go back to them or why I don’t plan to use them for much longer! Yet, with my Panda Bear Poken (There are several designs, by the way, to suit everyone’s needs!) things are now different. Much different; I have got my list of new contacts right there! At my fingerprints and at the same social software spaces we already share a presence at! Just wonderfully simple and effective!

Well, I do realise that not many folks may have pokens with them, but I am surely looking forward to hook up with folks who may have one while attending this week the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston. It sounds like it’s going to be plenty of good fun and I am surely hoping to put together another blog post at a later time detailing what my experiences have been during this week.

For now, though, if you would want to find out plenty more what Pokens are good for and how they can enhance a face to face event to help continue further with your new connections into the virtual world of socials software, check out this great presentation that my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Thorsten Zoerner, put together just recently on how an IBM event got the most out of the Poken experience…

So … Do you have your poken(s) ready, folks? I’m surely looking forward to have them "shake hands" then! Bring it on!

(Oh, and if you would prefer the traditional one, you can still get it from me if you go over here)

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Workshops, Seminars, Customer Meetings, TweetUps, Twitter, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Business Cards, Biz Cards, Connecting, Connections, Friendships, Relationships, Face to Face, Virtual Handshakes, Handshakes, Meetings, Nacho Guijarro, César Vitero, IBM, Pokens, Poken, Thorsten Zoerner, IOD2009, Slideshare, IBM Information On Demand, Berlin, 2009

Enterprise 2.0 Conference – What to Expect – Day 3

And with this one other blog post I am just about to put together I’m concluding what you can expect from the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference event, taking place in Boston, and which will start in just a few hours from now. This time around with a shorter agenda items, since it only lasts till mid-day, but equally packed with plenty of things to look forward to. So here you have got some further insights on what to expect for Day 3 and where I will be hanging out during the course of the day. Let’s see if this time around I can keep things on the shorter side…

• Reality 2.0: Enterprise Social Networks (A Field Research Study) #e2conf24 with Mike Gotta, which I am sure will be another great speaker session from Mike, detailing some of the really good work he has been doing on the research study on Enterprise 2.0. Alas there will be a couple of other conflicts to fight with in this same time slot:

  Starting with Social Software – Creating Value Today, Establishing Opportunity Tomorrow – Sponsored by IBM #e2conf48 with Jeff Schick which I think would be a rather interesting session for folks wanting to find out plenty more what IBM is doing in the space of Enterprise Social Software with nifty and powerful offerings like IBM’s Lotus Connections. But, there will be another conflict in between with this one as well, for me. Goodness!

  The Outlook for Enterprise 2.0 Abroad #e2conf50 with Oliver Marks moderating the panel and with Richard Collin, Soren Stamer, Thomas Vander Wal and Luis Suarez as the speakers. Yes, that’s right; yours truly is going to miss both Mike’s and Jeff’s sessions, because at the last minute I have kindly been invited to participate in this particular panel with such an International panel of participants that I just couldn’t refuse. Specially, when the topic of the panel will be around how the market conditions and adoption of Enterprise 2.0 outside of North America. Stay tuned, because our panel will be rather provocative, putting on the table some of the challenges for adoption of social software that most folks don’t want to talk about … (Sorry, that’s how far I can say for now … heh)

• After trying to solve that conflict with the agenda, the next session I will be attending will be the one on Twitter-like Tools for the Enterprise #e2conf20 with Gil Yehuda as the moderator and David Schwartz, Mark Dowds, Ross Mayfield, Tim Young and Yoshi Maisami as the main speakers which I am sure would be a rather fascinating panel on the role of microsharing / microblogging tools on the Enterprise and their role in changing the way we communicate, collaborate and share knowledge. Perhaps one of my favourite topics as of late, judging by my own interactions using several of these tools on a daily basis, both internal and external…

  But, once again, there will be another conflict, because I also would want to attend this particular session from a fellow IBM colleague, and really good friend, who after all of these years I will have the chance to finally meet up face to face!, Jennifer Okimoto, with Enterprise Web 2.0 Anti-Patterns, ROI and Metrics #e2conf29. Originally this session was going to be done by another good friend, and now former IBMer: Aaron Kim, but unfortunately Aaron won’t be at the conference (Although he will be thoroughly missed! For sure!), so Jen will be chiming in instead. So I will need to see how I can resolve this second conflict of the day …

• And, finally, the last session of the day that I will be attending will be this one: Strategies for Building Sustainable Online Communities #e2conf46 with Oliver Marks, again as moderator, and with Andy Fox, David Wormald and Ted Hopton as the speakers. Again my interest in attending this session comes from a long time experience having done community building for a while and always keen on learning plenty more, realising that we may still be at the tip of the iceberg on all there is to know about managing, facilitating and participating in online communities; one of the hottest topics in the Enterprise 2.0 world at the moment, specially with that growing obsession from every business to have a communities program. Well, this panel session will surely set the stage on how you can move further with the development and sustainability of those communities themselves. Really interesting topic, I am sure, specially, if you come to consider how communities are perhaps the major drivers of social software inside the corporate world…

And that would be it, folks. The event of events will then wrap up with the usual Enterprise 2.0 Town Hall #e2conf17 session; this time around with Steve Wylie, as the moderator, and Jessica Lipnack, Oliver Marks and Susan Scrupski as speakers, detailing what the event has been like, what we learned, our biggest ah-ha! moments of the event and the usual recollecting of feedback to provide an even better Enterprise 2.0 event in 2010!

Thus this blog post puts together the last final details before the show starts tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed this series of "What to Expect" from Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston. And let the fun begin! I may be able to share a couple of quick blog posts here and there in between, but remember that I will be live tweeting most of the time over at @elsuacon, as well as my usual twitterings over at @elsua.

Then later on, and over the following couple of weeks, I will be reflecting some more with highlight blog posts from each day on what I learn and detailing some more of the details I will be originally sharing through my live tweeting… And, finally, for the real social networking activities, the socialising part of the conference event, as usual there will be only one place; the one and only: Twitter through @elsua

Are we ready? Ready to be WOWed once again? I surely am!

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Agenda, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Reality Check, Twitter, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Mike Gotta, Jeff Schick, IBM, Lotus Connections, Connections, Enteprise Social Software, Oliver Marks,  Richard Collin, Soren Stamer, Thomas Vander Wal, Luis Suarez, Europe, Asia, South America, Privacy, Security, Data Ownership, Gil Yehuda, David Schwartz, Mark Dowds, Ross Mayfield, Tim Young, Yoshi Maisami, Microsharing, MicroBlogging, Enterprise Messaging, Jen Okimoto, ROI, Return On Investment, Anti-Patterns, Aaron Kim, Online Communities, Sustaining Communities, Andy Fox, David Wormald, Ted Hopton, Social Software Adoption, Town Hall, Feedback, Ah-ha Moments, Steve Wylie, Jessica Lipnack, Susan Scrupski, Live Tweeting, @elsuacon, @elsua, F2F Social Networking, Social Networks, Socialising, TweetUps