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

I Think I May Have Just Experienced The Future…

As I have just mentioned in my last blog entry, the last few days I have been embarked on my latest business trip, coinciding with a wonderful visit all around to Helsinki, Finland, where my good friends from IBM Finland invited me over to participate on the IBM CIO Forum event, with the rather innovative initiative of “Redefining Work 925“, and a couple of other events, and where, after being there for about three days, I think I may have just experienced the future… The future of a fully networked and interconnected world… Our world. And what it would look like altogether. And, yes, it’s much more exciting and brighter than whatever I could have ever imagined!

As a road / air warrior, I get to travel a fair bit and visit not just mainland Spain, but a bunch of other countries in Europe, and North America. I have yet to visit South America, continental Africa and Asia, although I know it will all come together eventually at some point, but if there is anything that Helsinki, Finland, has shown me in the last couple of days is that you can have more than a decent Internet connection, and for free!!, while you are carrying on with your work and personal life helping it become ever so much more engaged, participative and interconnected with the Social Web available out there!

In another blog post I will detail some of the highlights from my visit to Helsinki, what I learned and what plenty of other folks are doing out there in the area of Social Computing, but for now I just couldn’t help thinking about putting together this short blog entry to explain why my expectations on connecting to the Internet, for work, or personal stuff, will never be the same again after this business trip. And here is why…

That’s a snapshot of the free wi-fi connection at the hotel where I stayed those days in Helsinki. And this is the one from the free wi-fi connection at the Helsinki airport, which is even much more remarkable:

For a good number of years I have always been complaining (Yes, I guess it’s complaining, because that’s probably what I have been doing all along…) about how poor the quality of wi-fi and Ethernet connections are in a good number of countries I have visited (US, Canada, Spain, France, UK, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Mexico, Netherlands, Hungary, Switzerland, etc. etc.) and on top of that how expensive it is for the quality of service that we get, even worse here in Spain, where the prices for ADSL, for instance, are some of the most expensive in Europe with the lowest bandwidth! And not just at hotels, conference venues, Internet kiosks, regular 3G connectivity, etc. etc., but also at our own homes! I was reaching the point of believing that we would have to get used to living through such poor quality standards of service with no remedy, waiting for our ISP providers to keep making big bucks while never delivering, and eventually give up on it all.

Ouch!! Well, see the difference? Maybe not! Maybe we should not get used to such poor quality standards on providing wi-fi connectivity, regardless of the venue. While In Helsinki, I certainly experienced the future. And it is just gorgeous and bright! It’s something that I never expected it would be quite shocking as it was, yet so rewarding and fulfilling. Have you ever heard about being empowered, as a human being, thanks to technology and the Internet, regardless of whatever you may be doing? Well, I experienced that! And so much more!

Yes, I guess that expectations have risen to a new level for yours truly, with regards to what a Decent Internet Access would be like, specially, while on the road, since, after having experienced a new wonderful world of fast, quality connectivity, things will never be the same. In fact, I keep questioning myself with such an amazing connected experience with the Web how come there are so few Tech related conferences taking place in the Nordics? I don’t think it’s about the weather, although last week surely was quite another experience!, but I know, for sure!, that is definitely nothing to do with the availability and accessibility of Internet connection, because over there, it just rocks! And I just can’t wait to come back to experience the future once again, … And perhaps with a bit of nicer weather I may have moved over there altogether!

IBM Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2011 – The Agendas #ls12 #ibmconnect

You can surely feel the vibe and the excitement building up nicely over the last few hours. I’m already in Orlando, Florida, having had a really good night sleep and plenty of rest, probably the last one of the week!, once the Lotusphere mayhem breaks loose and chaos unleashes with no remedy and I can already see lots of buzz and people getting excited about what’s to come over the next few days. So I thought that perhaps for the potential last blog post from yours truly for a short while over here, while I get to enjoy plenty of offline social networking, it would be a good thing to share some insights around the agendas of both Lotusphere and IBM Connect that will be kicking off officially tomorrow morning and that, by the looks of it, this year they are much more social than ever before!

Yes, that’s right! If there would be a single keyword that could describe quite nicely both agendas from both events running in parallel that keyword would be social. This year, more than ever, we will be seeing how Lotusphere has become more socialised than ever before and the IBM Connect parallel event that got kicked-off last year surely has improved, and tremendously!, the overall quality of the lineup of speakers and the overall topics themselves as well. It’s going to be tough to choose between one or the other, or perhaps try to attend both!

That’s essentially what I will be doing this week myself. IBM Connect runs shorter, just a couple of days, versus the four days of Lotusphere so, initially, I have decided that this year I will be putting more focus on the IBM Connect event itself for Monday and Tuesday, and then for the rest of the week Lotusphere all the way! And here is why…

Lotusphere itself is probably one of the most complete, varied and comprehensive conference events out there around Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and Social Business at the moment that I can think of. It combines both a rather strong technical focus, with an incredibly energising business focus that makes up for all audiences to get exposed to everything in a single event. This year, Lotusphere itself is divided in a whole bunch of different tracks, each of them capable of satisfying even the most demanding of tastes. To name:

• JumpStart & Master Class Sessions: The warm-up of the conference event for sure and the one that sets the stage of what’s about to happen in the next couple of days. Already started on Sunday morning and throughout the whole day, it will bring folks an opportunity to get exposed to the main themes of the conference through the week.
• Insights and Innovation: Tracks that “focus on the business value, implications and opportunities of new technology” and perhaps the perfect opportunity to see what IBM Research has been working all along in the last year, specially, in the area of Social Research for social computing. 
• Technology for Collaboration Solutions - Infrastructure & Deployment: This is the perfect track for techies out there to get exposed to a good number of IBM Collaboration Solutions covering multiple areas from traditional offline collaboration, real-time, or social collaboration. There will be a track out there for everything to meet their taste(s). 
• Technology for Collaboration Solutions – Application Development: Another techie track specially meant for developers out there who would want to get exposed to what’s happening with IBM’s products and their development and where folks can have a direct opportunity to interact with the developers of the products they may be using already or perhaps just interested in…
• Best practices: Not liking much the term, as you folks already know, if you have been reading this blog for a while, but this track focuses on sharing good practices on applying technology to complex problems, scenarios, business issues, etc. etc. to get the most out of what technology can do to help out business become more effective at what it does already.
• Customer Case Studies: This is probably my favourite track from Lotusphere and the one where I feel I am going to be spending most of my time attending the various different sessions from IBM customers who will be sharing their experiences, as case studies, on how they have become a fully integrated social business. This is the one that has always become my main source of inspiration for learning about what’s happening out there, outside IBM’s firewall, on what other folks are doing to push forward for innovation, open collaboration, and open knowledge sharing to become more effective businesses at what they are already excelling at! Always very inspiring to see what other people are up to and how we can learn plenty more how to leverage some of those good practices, techniques, solutions to our very own issues. After all, it’s just too scary to think how close our corporate environments are to one another!
• Show and Tell: The practical track. The one that is most oriented towards those folks who would want to see technology at its best, applied with plenty of good, hands-on live demos of what (social) tools can do for you. Very helpful for those folks who would want to play with the tools and learn plenty more about them while at the conference!

Now, to mention and share all of the different sessions for each of those tracks would probably make it a bit cumbersome to go through all of them. So, instead, what I would like to do is to point you folks to the absolutely delightful piece of work from The Turtle Partnership, that, once again, has pretty much nailed it with the must-have, essential LS Mobile App that contains all of the tracks with all of the sessions and its full details, and a great opportunity to add them into your own calendars, which is basically what I did yesterday while on the plane and my calendar for this week looks massive, to say the least! W00t!! Can’t wait!!

But that’s all for Lotusphere. Like I said above already, this year I’ll be attending the IBM Connect event as well, where the agenda itself is probably one of the most impressive ones I have seen in a long time with regards to Social Business related topics. As you would be able to see, it includes top notch, high quality external speakers like Guy Kawasaki, my good friends Sameer Patel and Rachel Happe, plus a whole bunch of IBM customers ready to share their story on what it is like becoming a Social Enterprise and its real value and business benefits altogether!

It’s going to be tough to try to select amongst the various different tracks for this parallel event, but will be trying my best to select the ones that I would think would be the most beneficial for everyone to enjoy from my live tweeting that will be starting up soon, within the next few hours.

Like I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, there will be plenty of options and opportunities to follow up the various different keynote sessions, including the OGS (Opening General Session), as well as various other breakout sessions, but one resource that I thought was worth while remembering and bringing it up again would be the great and unique opportunity to livestream a good number of those sessions. You can find a pretty good and comprehensive blog post with the scheduling over at this link, put together by Constance Daglis. Worth while looking into it, specially, knowing that there will be recordings afterwards, in case you may have missed them during the live sessions.

I guess that would be pretty much all of it. Like I said, I will be doing lots of live tweeting on the sides mentioning which sessions I will be attending and all to, hopefully, give you guys a glimpse of what we are about to get exposed to ourselves. But I wouldn’t want to finish off this blog entry without highlighting one of the main activities that those folks attending live should not let go by just like that. It’s probably one of the most impressive and immersive experiences you can enjoy while at Lotusphere and that is to visit AND participate in the various IBM Labs available, specially, the User Experience and Innovation Labs, along with the Developer ones where you will have a unique opportunity not only to interact with developers and designers of various IBM technical solutions, but you would also have an exclusive opportunity to check what even us, fellow IBMers, have not seen just yet: IBM Research with their social innovations getting ready to show the world what they have been working on over the course of the last few months.

This experience of the Labs is, by far, one of my all time favourites, because it just gives us all an opportunity to not just witness and experience the world of social today, but also the world of social of tomorrow! Which is, no doubt, when it really gets exciting! And I am hoping to be sharing plenty of insights in this regard as well as I get to spend plenty of time with those folks learning, interacting and participating with them throughout the entire week!

Get ready! Both Lotusphere and IBM Connect are already here! The buzz is already building up quite nicely, so you better prepare yourself to be WOWed and overwhelmed once again! Because you will … no doubt!

And I just can’t wait for it to get started!

IBM Lotusphere and CONNECT 2012 – Here We Go Again! #ls12 #IBMConnect

Yesterday was my last vacation day and today, once again, to kick off another exciting year ahead of living social, and a few other things, I am sure!, I am on the road again on what means my first business trip of the year, with plenty more to come along over the next few months! And like every year, it is time for that yearly pilgrimage to what, to me, is *the* main IBM event of events on the topics of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and Social Business and, specially, this time around more than ever. Of course, I am talking about the IBM Lotusphere 2012 event, which this time around, also comes along with the second edition of the CONNECT 2012 event. Orlando, here we come! Are you ready?

The first word that comes to mind when describing what we are about to experience, those of us, lucky enough to be there in person, is probably going to be overwhelming. At best. And very much so! The amount of online resources, references, places to check out (and hang out for a while before, during and after the event!), communities to join, blog posts, podcasting episodes, live tweets, plusses, articles, various press releases, and whatever other publications that keeps popping up all over the place (And we haven’t even just gotten started!) surely don’t have anything to envy to the real life experience of being there, where this year there are going to be even more social activities than I can remember in the last 4 editions that I have been to so far! It’s going to be rather difficult and very tough at times figure out what to do and where to go to, thinking about the richness of what promises to be a great event, for sure!

But that’s just fine! That’s where I am hoping that serendipity will do its magic (once again) and help out clearing up the good mess and total chaos we are just about to get exposed to. Last year it did such a wonderful job that perhaps one of these days I should describe on a blog post how I look up to these kinds of massive events without having that sense of having lost it all and lose track of everything that’s happening… But, so far, it looks like my tips for those folks going there for the first time still stand more relevant than ever before for yours truly as well: walk around with a couple of good, comfortable shoes and network! Never stop moving! The rest will come at its own pace!

For those folks who may not be coming to the event though, but who would still be interested in finding out some more of what will be happening, there are lots of ways to catch up with it altogether. Let’s start perhaps with some of my favourites… Beginning with the Lotusphere Social Media Aggregator or the Social Business Aggregator, where people can follow up with all of the social media activities coming along in a single place. No need to have multiple windows open or anything; those two aggregators will help folks get sorted out right away! Phew! And thank goodness for that!

Moving on with the tweets … There will be plenty of hash tags that folks will be using during the event and which have already started to get some steam in the last few hours as plenty of us are heading to Orlando to attend the events. First, we have got the general ones for #ls12, #IBMConnect or #IBMSocialbiz; then there is also a hash tag (#ls12u) for the several hundred students that will be attending the event in person as well; and another one for scavenger hunts under #ls12hunt, another one for the usual TweetUps under #ls12Tweetup and then there is this other one, #ls12ask, rather interesting, and new as well, where folks watching over it may be able to ask questions to developers and product managers about IBM Collaboration Solutions products. Yes, indeed, going straight to the source! hehe

But there is more! Watch out for the #TEAMSOCIAL group. A very special group of very smart and talented folks, which includes plenty of the IBM Champions recently announced and fellow IBM volunteers, who will be making sure that this year you are the one who becomes more social than ever!, by putting together a whole bunch of different activities that I’m sure will get publicized in time for everyone to enjoy the experience to the max!

There is also an official blog for the event: The Social Business Insights, where a bunch of guest bloggers will be sharing along their experiences, insights, and highlights of both events before, after and during the course of the entire week! Worth while subscribing to it, for sure! Then we move into the online communities space where there are a whole bunch of options in there already up and running. We will have the IBM Lotusphere Community, the IBM Connect Community (Notice that for these two you would need to have an account over at the Greenhouse), the IBM Social Business Facebook page, the Lotusphere Community LinkedIn community and other groups like the sempiternal PlanetLotus, which will continue to always provide lots of great insights not only on both events, but also on the overall IBM Collaboration Solutions community (Formerly known as Lotus).

On the YouTube front there will be a couple of channels to watch out for. Starting off with IBMSocialBizEvents, followed by the IBM Social Business one and perhaps also the IBM SmarterPlanet Social channel, where I am sure we will starting seeing a whole bunch of video interviews, and recordings of the various different activities during the event.

Lotusphere and Connect 2012 will also have a strong presence in Flickr with a couple of links that will try to capture most of the imagery from the event. Starting off with the IBMSocial Business account or the Flickr group IBMSocialBizEvents.

Of course, on a face to face conference event things would not have been the same if we didn’t have our mobile devices to help us enjoy the experience even more. And this year both events come fully loaded with lots of social mobile opportunities. Going from Foursquare checkins (Even for sessions!), the always incredibly helpful LSMobile Session App, Instragram and a few other bits and pieces that I am sure will gain air coverage as we move closer to the starting time. So stay tuned for more to come along!

And then, finally, my favourite resource of them all and the one that’s surely going to challenge the way I have been doing live tweeting, blogging, plussing in the past, which is the availability of Livestreaming of a good number of the keynote presentations (the Opening General Session, a.k.a. OGS), and breakout sessions which would surely give a new dimension to the entire week. The main link for the livestreaming will be over here with the corresponding replays over as follows: Lotusphere and IBM Connect.

Gosh, and the list of online resources to keep up with quite an amazing week to follow both events keeps piling up on and on and on. And all of that without mentioning the social activities on the side; yes, the ones that all along have also been my favourites and which I can clearly summarise them this year with three single keywords: networking, networking, networking! Indeed, the amount of informal gatherings, parties, cocktails, receptions, dinners, drinks at the bars, etc. etc. are just simply mind-blowing! I think I would not be exaggerating much if I were to confirm that we would probably have to clone ourselves a couple of times just to make it to all of them! Going to be a huge challenge having to make a pick without going crazy! But good fun altogether, I am sure! hehe

I bet I am leaving behind plenty of stuff, for sure! Hoping that, if that’s the case, folks who may have had an opportunity to absorb more of the events logistics may be able to drop by and share their thoughts in the comments adding further on some more of the activities that will be going on… That would be much much appreciated by everyone, including me!, to figure out what’s happening this year.

Now, to close off this first initial blog post from the series of entries I will be putting together, to share along plenty of the highlights from both Lotusphere and CONNECT 2012, here’s the challenge I am facing this year with what I hinted earlier on about my own live tweeting, plussing or blogging experiences. If the vast majority of the keynote sessions and breakout sessions are going to be livestreamed, like they are starting off on Monday morning, what’s the point of live tweeting or live blogging, without risking the opportunity to repeating yourself, amongst several other hundred twitterers and bloggers when people out there may be able to watch the sessions online, even with the replays available right afterwards, as well as the opportunity to download the presentation materials for each of the sessions? Hummm … I am not sure what you folks would think about, but the last thing I would want to do is bore the online audience(s) to death with repeated messages or blog posts about the very same stuff they may have seen themselves through the livestream. It would sound pretty much like a “marketing” machine-gun of mindless tweets and retweets that I am sure are going to turn people completely off right from the start!

Nice challenge, eh? And a tough one to come around it, I would think! So this year I have decided to take a different approach. I will be doing some live tweeting over at @elsua for both #ls12 and #connect12 but, instead of reporting live the course of events from the keynotes, as well as the breakout sessions, I will just be doing some casual live tweeting, but always trying to add some new insights on additional thoughts, with the aim to make it somewhat original and provide rather my ¢2 on what I have learned, what I may have found important, or what I would think would be of interest to those folks I have been interacting with for a while or, just simply, what may be worth while annotating without sounding too repetitive about all things Social.

Then when I get back home next weekend, after the event is over, I will be putting together a series of blog posts where I will be sharing my major highlights from both events, as well as what I have learned throughout the entire week and some additional thoughts folks may not have heard or read about from what we get exposed to. I was initially thinking about doing some blogging during the course of the week as well, but knowing how challenging that’s going to be with a non-stop conference from 7:00 am till 7:00 pm, plus the extra curricular social activities, I think I’m going to spare the very little energy left that I would have (And, most importantly, the last few hours of sleep I will have!) and save it for something that time and time again I just can’t get enough from live events: offline social networking!

Yes, indeed, as good as it gets!

Look forward to seeing you all at Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012 … Oh and don’t be shy! Say “Hi!” whenever we may bump into each other! The week is long, the conferences are just about to get started. Let’s go!

Let’s keep having plenty of good fun altogether!

PS. Big Kudos to both The Taking Notes Podcast as well as This Week in Lotus podcasts, where Bruce Elgort, Julian Robichaux and Stuart McIntyre & Darren Duke have done a tremendous piece of work through a good number of podcasting episodes to help us all get around what promises to be one of those events not to forget in a long while! Thanks much, folks!! Well done!