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

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – The Networking

A bunch of folks out there may have been wondering where I have been hiding in the last couple of days, after I came back from a wonderful week at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, since I haven’t been much online, hanging out in my usual external social software spaces. I am sure plenty of people were curious as to whether I would be sharing any further highlights (Other than the live tweeting I was able to do throughout various sessions) about the event itself, since a bunch of them are starting to flourish all over the place.

Well, fear not! I am back! Back into my usual regular blogging and slowly, but steadily, re-surfacing again in all external social software spaces where I usually hang out. It’s just the last couple of days I have been doing a massive catchup with everything that’s been happening at work, while I was away, but also, because I wanted to take some timeout and reflect on what I learned during the course of that week in Boston for Enterprise 2.0 and start drawing a mental picture of what I wanted to share as highlights and what not.

And I think I am ready! Ready to share with you folks my main highlights from what I flagged back then as the event of events, and still is! So much so that being away now for a couple of days from everything may have been a little bit as well to recover from that physical networking fatigue of just far too many people to talk to, but too little time all over the place and, in the end, not meeting up with enough of them. But let’s bring this one up in an upcoming entry …

For now though, I thought I would get things started with this upcoming series of blog posts by combining them with other things that have been happening and which I have also found a rather fascinating read from elsewhere and not related to the conference (That’s been part of the online catchup I have been doing so far as well…). So, hopefully, a combination of both highlights posts and the usual blogging will help get folks an idea of what’s been happening lately. And still keep up with the variety of topics so you won’t get bored in the process.

Thus you may be wondering why I am starting this series of articles with this one single highlight on Networking, right? Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious, but one of the major key highlights from the overall event was to be able to eventually meet up with a bunch of the incredibly smart talent that there is out there in the Enterprise 2.0 space and that I have had the pleasure, and honour, to hang out with in various social software spaces for a while now. To name them all it would not make good justice since I am sure I would be forgetting the odd name here and there, but I can certainly tell you this year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference has been one of the most networked events I have experienced to date!

One single event where my average sleeping time went from the usual 7 hours per day down to 4 per day and I still didn’t have enough hours in the day! One single event with the highest number of parties, TweetUps, dinner invitations, local gatherings, informal meetings that I can recall. Ever! Fantastic!!

Of course, I took some pictures, just like everyone else that was there. And one thing that I learned after the event is that my Nokia N95 is getting a bit too rusty and the quality of the pictures hasn’t been as good as I thought they would be. First time that happening. So I took tons of pictures, but most of them were far too dark, or with moving "targets", or just not good enough quality worth sharing. However, some others are, so I have placed them all in my Flickr account and here you have got a couple of them, so you can get an idea of what networking was like while at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston.

Then in another blog post I will share what that networking meant for me during the entire event as well as a couple of thoughts on how to improve it for the next year … Thus let’s get the ball rolling!

Ouchie! No comments on this one, right, Maggie?

(Goodness, I wish plenty of the other photos I took from the different parties and TweetUps I attended would have come out nicely… Alas they didn’t … double sigh … Although, on the other hand, seeing these perhaps it’s much better they didn’t come out after all that well anyway )

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Highlights, TweetUps, Twitter, Party Time, Parties, Social Gatherings, Informal Meetups, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Connecting, Connections, Friendships, Relationships, Face to Face, Nokia, Nokia N95, N95, Pictures, Photos, Flickr, Maggie Fox, Luis Suarez, Dan McCall, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations

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