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!

As more and more blog posts are starting to come along sharing further insights on some of the major highlights from the recent IBM Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012 events held last week in Orlando, Florida, I guess it’s now time for me to start sharing my two cents on what both events were like, what I learned, what I thought were some pretty interesting developments and happenings, as well as a bunch of other tidbits that I think would prove useful to share over here in this blog. So over the course of the next few days, perhaps couple of weeks, and in between other blog entries here and there, I will be sharing plenty of those highlights pointing folks out to individual keynote and speaker sessions that I enjoyed quite a bit attending and learning from, but this time around with a slight difference. Not going to give entire details for each of them, since for the first time ever that I can remember, and over the course of the next few days, we are going to start seeing how recordings of live streamed sessions, as well as presentations for each of them will be shared out there publicly for everyone to enjoy, if not already. So, instead of sounding a bit too repetitive, I’m going to be sharing my thoughts and personal opinions about what I gathered from each of the sessions I attended, as well as the overall events themselves. Ready? Let’s go!

I couldn’t start this series of blog posts without mentioning something that I have talked about in the past, while trying to redefine my own Social Web experience, and which from there onwards it’s now pretty much shaped how I view things with regards to technology, connectivity, and all things social, whether attending conference events live or not. I guess, at this point in time, if you have been reading this blog for a while now, you will see where I am heading, but, to be honest, I couldn’t kick-off this series of entries without commenting what, to me, has been one of the major highlights from the overall conference events from last week: once again, and for the zillionth time, the conference wi-fi connectivity throughout the entire week failed big time. Appalling. A mega fail, actually, if I may add!

So, why am I saying that incident was one of the most powerful and empowering highlights from the overall event? Am I crazy? No. Not really. At least, not anymore. If you folks remember, there used to be a time when I tended to get really upset whenever I would be attending technical conference events and the wi-fi connectivity would not be working accordingly to meet up the expectations we all had. Not that I would want to constantly be connected to the Social Web for my own purposes, but, essentially, because for the vast majority of the occasions I always was very keen on sharing along, through live tweeting, further insights and additional thoughts that those of us, who were privileged enough to be there in person, could share with those who didn’t have that opportunity.

Over time one comes to the conclusion that in today’s world it’s almost impossible to host and organise a technical conference without taking for granted that the wi-fi connection will fail. Even for IBM itself. I am saying almost, because there are a couple of exceptions where really relevant events have managed to make it happen consistently over the course of time without failure and the experiences have been phenomenal, for both folks attending the event live and those watching from the distance. Yet, for the vast majority, they haven’t been able to make it consistently. And, once again, IBM has fallen into that trap as well, once more.

Why am I saying “once again”? Well, because, if you folks would remember, last year the connectivity throughout the entire week of Lotusphere was just absolutely brilliant! Yes, there were a couple of hiccups here and there, but overall it was just fantastic! So energising and refreshing seeing how your own employer can get it right with regards to providing a beautiful experience to help connect the dots, those physical and virtual ones, that I guess I was expecting too much this year. You know, if you set up the standard that you know how to make wi-fi work at large conferences, and you succeed big time!, the least I am going to expect is that in following, sub-sequent years you would be able to keep up with that expectation and meet, once again, that standard. No rocket science, right?

Thus what happened this year then? Not sure about all of the details, and I doubt I would ever get to find out more about them, but I can tell you what happened. None of my iOS devices managed to get connected throughout the entire week. None of them! And that means that, for the vast majority of the event, I was in the dark. Frustrated and irritated? Upset and extremely disappointed? Furious that, once again, we have gone back to square one? No, I wasn’t. You know, when life gives you lemons, the best thing you can do is do some lemonade! And that’s just exactly what I did. And, boy, I had a blast the entire week making it one of the best conference events I have attended in a long long while! What happened then, right?, you may be wondering …

Well, this is what happened… I no longer get stressed about that lack of connectivity, nor upset, irritated, frustrated, disappointed, gutted, and whatever else that, once again, the whole world would be missing out seeing Lotusphere, or whatever the event, through my eyes. Yes, a few weeks back, while on holidays, I decided it was no longer worth it stressing about it, losing focus from the real thing, that is, attending the event live!, and perhaps be that loud mouth that no-one wants to keep hearing telling the same thing over and over again. That’s why now I only give it about 15 minutes at the beginning of the event to try to get connected to the Social Web. If it works, great! If it doesn’t, right away I lose the motivation to keep trying and I move on, never coming back. I am done with the negativity and the subsequent frustration that typically comes out as a result of not being connected. Time to move on then …

And that’s why, while I experienced the same disappointing behaviour of not having a working wi-fi connection while at Lotusphere, I remembered this absolutely brilliant article by Mary K. Pratt, over at CIO.com, under the suggestive title “How to Get the Most Out of IT Conferences” where she shares plenty of amazingly good insights on how to get the most out of technical events without having to rely on being connected to the Web. What a great idea! Taking conferences back into the time where we were all involved with a completely different game altogether. Meeting people face to face, and engage on what, as of late, has become one of my favourite activities when I attend live events: physical social networking. It cannot get any better than that! In that article, Mary gets to share hints and tips from various different angles, which I thought would be worth while sharing over here, so that you could see how that game can change for the better, without the hassle, nor the frustrations:

• Know Your Purpose
• Do Your Homework in Advance
• Learn to Network, The Right Way
• Put Yourself Out There
• Create Your Own Opportunities
• Recap and Reach Out
• Have a Post-Game Plan

Of special interest for folks out there would be the sections “Learn to Network, The Right Way“, as well as “Put Yourself Out There”. Specially, with golden nuggets like this quote:

“But networking isn’t about how many business cards you can hand out and collect. Rather, it’s about  building relationships and finding ways to help others. [...] “Networking is the art of building and maintaining connections for shared positive outcomes“

Or this other one:

“It’s tempting to spend downtime fiddling with your iPhone, but checking email or downloading an app won’t advance your career. So put away your smartphones and laptops and find ways to be more engaged in the event“

And that’s exactly what I did! I put down my iPhone and my iPad and started embarking on some pretty massive offline social networking talking and conversing with as many people as I could possibly find and bump into. Whether they were folks I knew from the past, or just recently met, or just got introduced to them, I basically pretty much didn’t stop networking throughout the entire week! And that was just absolutely delightful!! Even if I didn’t have enough physical hours to meet up with all of the folks I wanted to talk to and catch up with!!

That’s when it came to me the realisation that perhaps we need to look with fresh new eyes into how we participate at live conference events. Take for a fact that the wi-fi connection will fail, what’s next? Well, to me, from now onwards it’s going to remain pretty much exactly like I did during the course of last week: network, network, network!

Knowing that there would always be replays for some of keynote and breakout sessions through the live streamed recordings, knowing as well how the vast majority of the presentations would be made publicly available has certainly helped a lot as well in another aspect that I wasn’t really aware till I faced it myself. How many times have you been engaged on an amazing conversation with other fellow attendees, to then realise you need to dash off quickly into the next breakout session. Then the heat of the moment is gone, and the conversation dies right there?!? Far too many times, don’t you think? Well, I missed a bunch of sessions just because of that! I made a conscious choice that I rather prefer to have the human contact, that human touch of the conversation, that sparks that inspiring moment you know you can bump into while meeting other people and be wowed big time than rushing off from one session to another. And it was the perfect choice!

Because over the course of the entire week I have been involved in quite a few amazingly deep conversations on the topics of Social, Adoption, Enablement, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, you name it, and right now my head is spinning with plenty of ideas that I would want to share over here across with you folks, as reflections, in multiple upcoming blog entries. I guess that’s probably the main point of “Recap and Reach Out“, that Mary mentioned in her article, while jotting down these thoughts over here in this blog, which, in a way, doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, don’t you think?

Perhaps that’s my own way to contribute, from here onwards, into the Social Web after attending all of these conference events and see that, since we are not going to be connected, we may as well do something much more productive: stay focused, learn, engage, converse, practice and truly live offline social networking! The Social Web is always going to be there. You might not have another chance of meeting those people, face to face, you are learning from a great deal any time soon! So you may as well take the chance and dive right in!

And that’s exactly what I did! As frustrating and irritating as not having good, reliable connectivity last week at Lotusphere was (By spending those 15 minutes to get connected initially) like I said above, this year, the event has been one of the very best yet to attend and learn plenty more about all things Social, as well as the Social Enterprise.

The most rewarding bit from the overall event was the huge amount of conversations I had with plenty of customers, and business partners, who were very keen on sharing their success stories, their experiences with adoption, their journey to become fully socially integrated enterprises and their passion for helping drive, redesign and redefine the future of the workplace for the corporate world of the 21st century. Not just for their businesses, but also for their own customers’!!  In short, to me, Lotusphere and IBM Connect this year have demonstrated clearly how the conversation has moved from the trying to justify the WHY and the WHAT (Yes, the sempiternal set of inhibitors, showstoppers and ROI related questions) into the more socially transformational the HOW. Biggest key takeaway for me so far has been having learned from them all so much in over the course of one week than the last six months of trying to catch up with the Social Web. Yes, indeed, and I should be grateful to the lack of connectivity to be able to do that, because, from now onwards, I will be coming back for more!

Now, I just need to ensure I do justice to all of those folks I talked with and learned from, as they are about to be featured on upcoming blog posts, from yours truly, where I will be sharing their story, which I guess is just probably as good as it gets… Applying storytelling and narrative to business, and, in particular, solving business problems through the lens of Social. Who would have thought about that, right? As interconnected and networked as we are, we are back to basics: sharing and learning plenty more from one another and from our own stories that we keep telling while meeting up face to face, something that even the Social Web would never be capable of replacing. And perhaps it shouldn’t. It makes us all much more approachable, closer, engaged, in short, humane and that is a good thing!

Thank you much, Lotusphere and IBM Connect, for enabling and facilitating a new, refreshing view for yours truly on how to get the most out of technical conferences from now onwards …

Ohhh, by the way, seeing Ok Go! play live in front of an engaged and riveted audience of several thousand geeks blasting out quite an amazing tunes and positive, energetic vibes surely was one of the major highlights as well!

Now that Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012 are both behind us, and what a truly amazing experience that was altogether!, it’s time for me to come back to the blog and resume those regular blogging activities as before, once again. Lots to share and lots more to talk about! However, and before I get things going covering some of the major highlights from both events and what I learned from them, I would want to put together this blog entry to share with you folks one of those incredibly depressing and horrifying experiences one can get exposed to when doing business travelling: being treated, without much respect, like a mindless object by an airline company on your way home. Yes, indeed, once again, travelling for business has taken a new low for yours truly that I am not sure I would even be capable of recovering from any time soon. And this time around with a different airline from the usual suspects I have been travelling with in the past. An airline that last year was voted #1 US Airline for Business Travellers, but that this year it seems they have soon forgotten about it, including its partners. This time around the culprit is Delta Airlines.

Last year I heard plenty of really good things from colleagues, friends, and fellow biz travellers, about all of the pleasant experiences they kept having with Delta Airlines advising me that the next time I would go to the US I should go ahead and try them out and see what it would be like. So this time around, as I was heading over to Orlando, Florida, for Lotusphere I decided to give them a try and fly with them. That was a big mistake.

The one way trip was absolutely delightful and uneventful. The way business travelling should well be, a standard, even if too long in transit, but very doable. Very friendly staff and really good service all around. And, surprisingly, everything on time!, which, if you folks have been following my recent travelling over the course of the years is something that I do appreciate quite a bit, since it hardly ever happens anymore. However, the roundtrip was a different story. Well, actually, still is, since I’m currently travelling back home having left Orlando on Saturday afternoon and won’t be arriving home till Monday evening, marking a new record for me of an outstanding 58 hours in transit all along! Yes, 58 hours before I can finally be home!

How can that be, you may be wondering, right? I mean, after all, you were flying with #1 US Airline for Business Travellers. Delta Airlines. What happened? Well, a whole bunch of misfortunes, to say the least. That’s right, the following is an approximate account of what happened in the last few hours and although I know that nothing is going to happen about it, nor that I would be worrying much about it anyway, since it was my first time, and last time!, I will be flying with it, and its partners!, I figured I would go ahead and share it along, as a way for me to keep me sane and get it out of my chest before I go crazy thinking how surreal it all was right from the start!

I would probably agree with you folks that what you are about to read further on below is a rant, something that you may all find it a bit surprising altogether, since I hardly do that over here in my blog, but I thought I needed to get it out there as a liberating exercise for yours truly, more than anything else, because I am a firm believer that if you set a certain standard and a concrete set of expectations it’s the least we can expect from you, as a business, that you keep it up and you maintain it. For your own good, not just ours.

Something that perhaps Delta Airlines may have lost with the change to the new year. That’s why I would also share this word of caution with you all and advise you to stop reading, should you not want to muse further on about this experience that has completely changed my perception of what business travelling should be all about. I will try to tame myself as much as I possibly can, since being angry and upset will never take you anywhere, as we all know, specially, in the written form, but there are just some things in life that we, human beings, should no longer tolerate in today’s time and age: being treated like an inanimate object you can shuffle around just like that to suit your own needs. Never mind theirs!

We are all people and we should be all treated as such! And failure to do that implies that what once was a respected and trusted airline, highly recommended by friends and colleagues, is no longer the case. At least, for me. It all starts, like I have mentioned above last Saturday afternoon, when I headed over to Orlando Airport, a.k.a. MCO, to embark on the first leg of two back home to Madrid, then to Gran Canaria (This last leg on a different airline, by the way). Arriving with plenty of time is something I have already gotten used to, since you never know what may happen, so this time around it wasn’t any different. I was there with plenty of time and already with my boarding passes sorted out, ready to embark.

And we did! Full airplane, all tight, still everything on time, surprisingly, till more and more fellow passengers started their own embarking procedures and the first problems arose. It looks like in the US it’s becoming customary, as of late, to board the aircraft with an overweight piece of luggage that most folks consider carry-on, but that in reality it’s just a full suitcase on its own! So when you are on a fully flight, it starts slowing everything down, because every piece of that heavy luggage needs to be towed away properly or checked back in! Which is eventually what happens. Funny enough it looks like people also learned the trick with Delta that if you take your overweight luggage with you by the gate and it weighs too much, they checked it for you for free. How nice! Not …

See? First problem encountered… We left MCO about 30 minutes later than usual and all of my alarms set off dramatically thinking that I barely had another 30 minutes to make it to my second leg of the trip from Atlanta to Madrid, Spain. But I was confident. I just needed to go from one gate to the other and nothing else. I could do it. Still looking good! Of course, those were my thoughts, but reality had other plans reserved for me. When we landed in Atlanta and we were taxying to our corresponding gate we heard from the captain the news that totally destroyed what, till then, was an enjoyable experience somewhat. Apparently, another aircraft was positioned at our very same gate, making it impossible to do any other thing than just wait. And right there, that wait nailed it for me. I have just lost my flight to Madrid. Or may be not …

We finally parked at the gate, or whatever you would call it, and managed to get myself on the front row to get out of the plane as fast as I could, thinking that if my flight to Madrid would be delayed by just a little I would still be capable of making it. You know, what are the chances your flight would be leaving late? Plenty, right? Well, wrong! This time around the plane left on time and you should have seen me running like crazy from Concourse A to Concourse E in just a couple of minutes! I had to make it to that plane whatever it would take! It was my last chance to arriving home by Sunday afternoon. Well, there went my hopes when I arrived at E2 (The farthest point possible!) and my flight to Madrid just left 5 minutes before. Yes missed by a mere 5 minutes!! All of that running and heavy sweating for nothing!! Why did I bother?

Arrrrgggghhhh !!!

The ground staff were very kind and polite in understanding my desperation and advised me to go to the ticket counter where they could try to rebook my trip for the next flight. I knew from before that I would still have a couple of options to flight that Saturday evening. One to Amsterdam and the other one to Paris, from where I could take another flight (A new one altogether) to fly directly home by-passing Madrid. So I arrived at the ticket counter and the nightmare begins… A huge queue just ahead of me, meaning my flight to Paris was already a lost opportunity, since I wouldn’t be able to make it to rebook my flight and take that one that was supposed to be leaving a short while afterwards. It took ages for the queue to clear out itself till I got my turn, by which time the flight to Paris was already on its way out.

So after talking to the affable, sympathetic and rather amicable Lilia, one of the various customer service representatives, I ended up on a cul-de-sac, because she could not rebook me for the flight to Paris, for which I was already too late, and the flight to Amsterdam was already fully booked. Desperation and frustration levels on the rise! And big time! Usually, I am not too bothered if I miss a connecting flight. These things happen on a regular basis, so one gets used to it over time. But this time was different. I needed to fly out that evening to arrive in Europe on Sunday, so I could get back home on that same day as on Monday morning I would need to deliver an online webinar to 100+ fellow colleagues in IBM Switzerland and needed to be sharp and fresh for that presentation since it was going to be broadcasted to a live audience.

Starting to see my stress levels on the rise as well, once more, I asked for the supervisor to offer an opportunity to make it up for the whole mess I was getting into and see if we could get something else going on. After a while I finally got to talk to her and mentioned to her that, in principle, I wouldn’t have a problem flying out on Sunday evening, as long as I would possibly manage to get an upgrade to business class, so that I could very well get a good night rest arriving to Madrid on Monday morning ready for that webinar. Something I thought would not be much of a problem, nor an issue, for Delta to arrange seeing the big mess I was getting into, because of this situation. A regular business traveller, yours truly, was at stake at this point in time to continue flying with Delta or not if things were not going to be resolved accordingly.

Not a chance!

The supervisor insisted that Delta would never do those kinds of upgrades and that, if anything, I would have to content myself with getting on the plane on Sunday evening to arrive on Monday to Madrid on economy and spend the night in Atlanta, after all. Oh oh, trouble ahead, as you can imagine! But then again, maybe not! All of a sudden, I remembered all of these wonderful stories about how social certain airlines have become as of late with an extensive use of social media tools, including Delta Airlines with Delta Assist, KLM and Air France. All three of them partners, as you all probably know by now. So during my conversations with Lilia and the supervisor I engaged with the airlines through Twitter as well on my iPhone (And a rather expensive wi-fi bill of a couple of hours!) and although I never heard back from Air France, I did hear back from both Delta Assist and KLM. Very friendly support, for sure, very sound in their commitment to provide support from afar but after a rather long exchange of tweets and DMs none of the two managed to eventually go the extra mile and help this unfortunate business traveller.

So much hype and buzz for social media and right there, once again, it all failed for me. I was about to cry in desperation knowing that I would have ahead of me the beginning of one of those weeks difficult to forget. But I eventually gave in. Just wanted to go for a much needed rest and get out of the airport as fast as I possibly could. So I asked the supervisor what we would do then as compensation for having missed the connection and she mentioned they would find a hotel for me near the airport, but, surprise, surprise, that I would have to pay out of my own pocket with my own money! Errr, WHAT?!?!? Really? And no voucher for something to eat for dinner that evening, or toiletries to help me get through that night and the following day? Really?

Indeed, NO compensation at all! Yes, that is how you treat your customers, your potential regular business travellers, with empathy and a bit of caring. NOT!! In fact, the supervisor stared at me baffled enough about what I asked for that she suggested, no, wait, she made a reservation for a 47$ per night hotel room, as I seemed to protest having to pay for my own hotel room!, in what I would probably call a motel, according to what I saw. So embarrassing that I wanted to take pictures of it, since I just couldn’t believe it, but it was just so disgusting that I refrained from doing so. And what’s worse, around 4:30am in the morning I had to call reception and protest about the huge, loud noises from people on the corridor at what seem to be quite some wild party! Right, just what I needed!

Without hardly any good sleep, the Sunday morning came along and I thought I would, at least, try to advance some work related stuff, before I would be taking my flight back home in the evening. No. That didn’t happen. Apparently, the hotel free wi-fi was out of service for a couple of days due to the weather conditions and the staff didn’t have much of an intention to try to address it before I would be leaving again, so I decided to freshen up as much as I possibly could with a bar of soap and head back to the airport, where, yes, I would have to pay for the wi-fi and all, but, at least, it was working, so I could get some stuff done.

And after having spent the whole day at Atlanta airport, working along, I finally embarked on my evening flight to Madrid, in economy, hoping to be in almost a half piece for tomorrow’s (Monday) webinar. And that’s where I am at this moment, while I am putting together this draft blog post. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, hoping to arrive in Madrid at 9:15am approximately (Now writing further on into the future we arrived at 9:45am … 30 minutes late! Again!), without any other option than spend the day in Madrid since my next flight to Gran Canaria would be colliding with the online event I need to host and having to book a hotel room to try to get some rest, deliver the online session, head again to the airport and, hopefully, embark on what I hope would be the last leg before arriving home.

Home sweet home…

58 hours later, from last Saturday afternoon, when I left Orlando, I am hoping to be home, perhaps with a jetlag I can’t probably remember in my entire life and which is going to take me days to recover from (First time in my life!); with a much deteriorated physical and mental body and perhaps much worse with what promises to have been quite a horrifying experience for any road / air warrior out there, because throughout the whole weekend I didn’t get a single sorry nor an apology for the inconvenience, not even an understanding of the disastrous consequences of not having enough rest to deliver an online education event where one needs to be sharp and ready and not a single bit of compensation on something that they clearly messed up themselves in the first place!

One thing, for sure, I no longer expect a response. Nor an apology, or a sincere token of gratitude to compensate for the damage done and incurred. It’s already too late for me. I am usually very patient with these kinds of things, since, like I said, they happen far too often, but they say you only have got a single chance to leave a first good impression on someone and somehow Delta Airlines, along with KLM and Air France, since they are all now partners and on the same boat altogether, just managed to mess it up and big time. And, even more, they have all proved, and rather well, that some times, even social media isn’t invincible or that magic solution that will get you out of trouble. At least, for me, which, as a social computing evangelist, I find extremely disappointing, since what could have promised to be quite an amazing success story, it turned out to be one of my worst nightmares to date, with regards to travelling.

Thanks ever so much, Delta Airlines (KLM & Air France), once voted #1 US Airline for Business Travelers, which I can certainly start to wonder now, for proving, once again, how broken the airline industry is at the moment and why I keep longing and anticipating for a massive, much needed, reboot of the system. That same industry most of us once loved, but that we cannot longer say the same. Your days are numbered. No doubt about it after this weekend’s experience.

Like I said, Delta, don’t bother to respond, engage or reply to this blog post. It’s out of my head now, and out of my body system, too, I hope. Thanks to this experience I will no longer plan to fly with you, nor your partners, in the next foreseeable future. Oh, and please, do allow me to wish you plenty of good luck on your journey to become a true social business, because, right now, you are far from it. At least, according to yours truly, your customer…

As my body and intellectual soul continue to ache just half way through the ordeal of reaching home sweet home…

Oh, by the way, the whole crew from flight DL108 is absolutely wonderful, with a special mention to Rosa, who has just brought me a lovely cup of freshly made coffee, so that I could finish this blog post while on the plane, since I just can’t get to sleep due to how tired I am… Thanks much, mi muy adorable Rosa! I needed it!

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!

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!

Summer is over and that, basically, means that I have just kicked off the next round of business trips from now till year end. And, indeed, I just did that, as I came back yesterday from my first one of those, this time around to Brussels, Belgium, where I had a wonderful time participating in a customer workshop talking about The Social Enterprise and its own wider adoption of social software. Fascinating and rather enlightening discussions, on both ends, over the course of 4 hours, no doubt!, but more on that later… For now, this is going to be just that unusual blog entry where I will be talking about something else, completely different, from the regular topics I cover over here. And all of that because of something that happened yesterday, on my way back home, that I guess is going to be difficult to forget any time soon.

I have been doing business travelling over the last 15 years and, as most of you folks out there know already, some years more often than in others, but in most cases rather regular scheduled trips all along. Well, for the first time in those 15 years of being a road (Errr, I mean, air) warrior, yesterday I had the longest layover I have ever experienced at any airport. I was stuck in Madrid (In T2) for 9 hours non-stop. Yes, you are reading it correctly. 9 hours.

Now, I can imagine you may be wondering why didn’t I hit the road, grab a taxi and head downtown to enjoy what promised to be a rather gorgeous autumn day, right? Initially, I thought about doing just that, but then again, coincidences in this world teach you that some times whatever you may have planned doesn’t always work out the way it is supposed to. Like this time. Just as I was on my way to Brussels on Thursday last week I found out that one of my former team colleagues, and rather good friend, who enjoys, just as much as I do!, a lovely glass of red wine over a delightful conversation, was also arriving, around the same time as me, at the same terminal, at the same airport where I was. What are the chances of that? She was flying from Milán, and I was coming from Brussels, so we decided to get together, catch up with each other properly face to face for a good couple of hours, enjoy the one or two glasses of red wine and just let part of the afternoon go by enjoying catching up after not having seen each other for a good while.

And we just did that! We went to one of the bars at the T2 terminal, grabbed something quick to eat, and, of course, got ourselves a good supply of wine. That part of the afternoon was just absolutely brilliant! Believe me, don’t ever let people tell you that social interactions through the Web are just as effective, engaging and nurturing as those face to face, in real life. No way! There is no substitute at all for them! So whenever you have a chance to reach out and cultivate them, by all means, go ahead and do it! We had a wonderful time catching up with each other on what we have been doing the last couple of years and it was rather refreshing to see how that pure chance got us together in the first place while in Madrid’s airport. From there onwards, I shared with her a few tips on what to do in Madrid for the remaining time that she is going to be there, and we both departed to our usual schedules for the day. Hers to hit town and enjoy the lovely weekend before work kicks in next Monday. Mine, wait for a little bit longer and make my flight home after a few days away. And that’s where things went awry.

What was supposed to be just one more hour before departing, it turned around into becoming a 5 hour delay before our plane finally took off! Goodness! I guess technical faults in an airplane about to take off can cause that kind of trouble. Anyway, if you are a frequent traveller you know how things go from there. First they tell you 30 minute delay, then 60 minutes, then we move into two hours, and, finally, on the 4th hour waiting there, things are now ready to head back home! That’s the kind of suspense I am not very keen on experiencing and living through on a Saturday afternoon, don’t you think?

Anyway, a long time ago, after a continuous and rather frustrating experience, as a business traveller, of delayed flights, missing them altogether for whatever the reason or just about whatever other complication, one gets to learn that no matter how angry or upset you get about things, never mind picking up useless arguments with people, the delay is still going to be there, or if the flight is cancelled, there is nothing you can do at all either. So I tried to make the most out of my afternoon at Madrid airport and I think I reached the conclusion I need to pick up another one of my hobbies from all along that, lately, I had it almost abandoned: Read fiction. And a lot of it! Specially, when you are stuck at the airport with a bunch of hours before your next flight takes off.

I love reading. I have always enjoyed it quite a bit, even when I was a whole lot younger and perhaps my mind should have busier with something else. However, as of late, perhaps in the last few years, I have neglected reading fiction for far too long, focusing, almost exclusively, around business reading, specially, around the top of the Social Web and the Social Enterprise. My iPad Kindle is ful with books around these business topics, and while I was listening to Spotify on my iPhone (Something for which I am very very grateful, since it made for a wonderful afternoon listening to some of my favourite #elsuastunes), I realised I didn’t have enough fiction materials. And, funny enough, while I was pondering about that and sharing the odd tweet here and there (Guess that’s what happens when you get stuck and bored at the same time!), a good friend of mine, Rogelio Pérez-Bustamante, gave me a quick phone call where we talked for a little bit.

I tell you, things don’t happen just like that, without any purpose. There is always one. You just have got to go, figure out and find it! And seize the opportunity. For this time around, Rogelio actually told me that a rather good friend of his, Ernesto Uría, was just about to present live, this coming week, at 19:00pm CEDT on Tuesday, at the Ámbito Cultural of El Corte Inglés, a new book of delightful short stories under the suggestive title “Ficciones y Aflicciones” (“Fictions and Woes”). The book is in Spanish, and I have yet to find a copy of it for my iPad Kindle or buy it at the recently launched over here, in Spain, Amazon. But right there, while I was talking to him and he was sharing with me plenty of his notes about the short book, and how much he enjoyed it, I just realised I needed to read more fiction. It would have made for a fantastic and delightful afternoon, right there, if I did have a copy of Ernesto’s book and read through it. Somehow it just hit me.

You know, with all of the stuff that’s happening out there, in our now more complex than ever world, a world in where we all know, and are starting to realise, that things would never be the same anymore, it still pays off to have some brilliant fiction reading sitting right next to you, whispering in your ear, enticing you to leave everything behind, “pick up” the book, and start reading, letting your mind do the rest. Yes, indeed, I do need to read more fiction, I do need to find a way to evade myself from being stuck at the airport for so long and don’t feel much into business reading, really (Hey, it was the weekend, remember?!).

But it gets better, because while I had been pondering and musing further on about it all, and perhaps re-start that fiction reading with a splash and get a copy of Ernesto’s book, Rogelio shared with me the speech he himself is going to deliver on Tuesday’s public presentation of “Ficciones y Aflicciones” (“Fictions and Woes”). And goodness! Right there, it blew my mind away! What a surprising, refreshing and staggeringly good read! It’s just 8 pages long, but I can tell you they will certainly trigger that inner urge to want to know more. To get busy and start reading Ernesto’s book right away! Yes, I know, I know, you would probably be expecting by now to have a disclaimer or something, right? Well, here it is. Rogelio is a good friend who is now just starting to dive into this whole world of the Social Web and social networks; we have been having a bunch of conversations on why social networking is taking everything by storm, and how it is changing us all as a society altogether, and I can tell you his opinions about this financial crisis, as well as what he thinks of Europe, would probably make for one of the most fascinating reads out there on the Spanish blogosphere… Not to worry, I’m working on that! I mean, helping him out get his own blog going

The truth is that I hardly know Ernesto (Here is a short, but rather good interview with him, in Spanish, if you would want to read more about him and his work), but you know how it goes, the friends of my good friends are also my friends, so pick perhaps this unusual blog entry with a pinch of salt or two, or, better, go and get a copy of the book and then let me know whether you like it or not. From what I have been talking to Rogelio about it, he just confirmed it would be one that I would enjoy to dive, back again, into the world of reading fiction. And after reading his opening speech, I would probably have to agree with him on it… Ohhh, and he’s been rather generous to allow me to publish it over here, before the book’s public launch on Tuesday. So go and grab a copy of it, in Spanish, at this link and start reading. You will enjoy it!

See? This is probably what happens when you have far too much idle time in your hands, and brain!, on a Saturday afternoon, while being stuck at an airport for a few hours, wanting to find a way to successfully escape, for a while, from everything that’s happened around you. And somehow, yesterday’s experience has confirmed as well that perhaps every odd weekend I may post another entry on something rather unusual, not very much related to the topics I usually cover over here in my blog. They may make up for some interesting and serendipitous new findings and somehow I am starting to feel I may be enjoying it quite a bit! Hopefully, you, too, folks!

(I will let you know, by the way, what I thought about the book itself myself, once I get my hands on a hard copy, but guess what’s going to be the first thing I’m going to be suggesting Ernesto pretty soon… Indeed, where is the eBook for me iPad Kindle? )

I know that plenty of folks out there are probably waiting for the next blog post in the series of #e2conf 2011 Highlights from the Enterprise 2.0 conference that took place in Boston, MA, a few days back, by yours truly, but the truth is that in the last couple of days I have been distracted by what seems to be raving the Social Web as of late: Google’s attempt to get social with Google Plus.

A bunch of people have asked me to share across what my ¢2 worth of commentary would be like on that new social networking site and while I am working on that blog post already, I can certainly share with you folks that so far I feel, rather strongly, that it could well be the integrated, pervasive and circling around user experience I have been waiting for to kiss good-bye to all of the others. Including Twitter, which, for those folks who know me, would come as a big surprise, I am sure.

But so far on the first iteration of G+ I can see how all of the issues and bugs that I have been experiencing with Twitter over the years are now long gone! Forgotten altogether! But anyway, that’s not the purpose of today’s blog post. I thought I would go ahead and resume the #e2conf 2011 Highlights posts with this one where I will be sharing My Top 10 Reasons as to Why I Enjoyed #e2conf, this year more than never! The purpose of this entry is to capture all of those loose ends about the conference, before I go ahead and dive into the actual content of keynotes and breakout sessions, which is what the next series of articles would be about. So let’s go and do it! Let’s see all of those reasons…

1. The Conference Venue:

   In the last few years, the #e2conf event used to take place at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel and although the venue may have been rather appropriate, by moving it this year to The Hynes Convention Center, the difference has been tremendous! As a starting point, a lot more space to mix and mingle, or have private conversations as you may see fit; then closer to downtown, which means having proper food for lunch while still networking with attendees, or for those lovely walkabouts feeling you are *in* the city! Hosting an event in such a large venue allows for participants to feel there are plenty of folks, but without that sense of being overwhelmed, in fact, at times, it was quite the opposite! That all was quite a nice change from previous years and I, for one, welcome the switch for future editions as well.

   Did I mention as well how the conference venue was just right opposite the Apple Store? hehe Yes, I know, you can’t beat that either, if you are an Apple Fanboy/girl! 
   
   

2. The Wi-Fi:
   
   You would remember how last year the wi-fi worked really really well and provided us with a unique experience of staying connected to the event itself and not only those who were present with us, but also engaging virtually through our favourite social networking sites. Well, this year we had a new venue, so we were all, probably, a bit too skeptic that it may not work as designed / expected… The end result was phenomenal though! It worked rock solid for the entire conference event and it surely gave us all, conference attendees, a huge opportunity to share the excitement with those who couldn’t be with us in real life. Just wish Twitter would stop being so silly and not allow us to keep track of hash tags and previous events through the search engine, so that folks would be able to check the life tweet that went on throughout the several days it lasted.

   Thank goodness for the wonderful piece of hard work done by Jim Worth, who managed to capture all of the live tweeting that went one during that time and shared it across over at the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Social Web Coverage June 20, 2011. Like I said, over time, one learns how to survive without wi-fi connection, while at a conference event, but when you have it, boy, does it make a difference in providing an immersive online learning environment where everyone benefits from?!?

3. The Keynotes Format: 

   That’s right! The Keynotes new format was probably one of the most refreshing changes coming along from #e2conf and a clear sign the conference organisers are listening and engaging actively, because last year the feedback was rather brutal on the ill effects that vendor-driven keynotes would have for the audience. So this year they changed the format to make the keynotes less vendor-driven, much shorter!! -15 minutes maximum!, although I would have loved for 20 minutes; that’s probably the ideal format, in my opinion, for an engaging keynote without deviating too much into off the track talk and demo pitches. 

   One of the other things I really enjoyed about the keynotes is that they are all recorded and made available at The Brainyard and open / public to everyone to watch. Some of my favourites that I would strongly recommend folks to take a look at and watch through those precious little gems of 15 minutes would be: John Hagel, Mike Rhodin, John Stepper, Sameer Patel, Andy McAfee, Bryce Williams, Lee Bryant, Ming Kwan, Sara Roberts, Ross Mayfield, Bert Sandie and Deb Lavoy.
   
   Not to worry, on my next round of blog posts I’ll be putting together some further thoughts on the content shared during these keynotes as well as what I learned from them, where I will include full links to their online presence, if you would want to follow up further with any of them. Stay tuned, but overall the content of those keynotes was just outstanding! True love and passion for the subject! (And I will come back to this point later on …) 

4. The Quality of the Breakout Sessions: 

   While I was in Boston, and throughout the entire week, I kept mentioning how the quality of the presentations was incredibly high; the highest I have seen in the several years I have been there. To the point where some of them were the best of their kind in the last 3 to 4 years! So to make them justice I will be blogging separately about each and everyone of those breakout sessions that I thought were wonderfully engaging learning experiences so that you could have a glimpse on what was shared and discussed further along. 
   
   Another key item that surely highlighted the success from the overall quality of the breakout sessions was the fact that there were a bunch of different tracks that certainly helped orient folks better on what to attend and what not: Analytics and Metrics; Architecture; Business Leadership; Community Management: Engaging External Audiences; Community Management: Inside the Enterprise, Governance, Risk & Compliance; Mobile Enterprise; People, Culture and Internal Communications; Sales and Marketing; Social Apps and Platforms; Sponsored; Technology Leadership and Video and Unified Communications.
   
   Yes, I know you could say there was a bit of everything for everyone, which, I guess, is what every conference event should be aiming at eventually, don’t you think?
   
   

5. The Big Shift:
   
   This is probably one of the main reasons why I enjoyed the #e2conf event this year; more than anything else, because it, finally, showed good, strong, healthy indicators of maturity within the industry and how not only the technology is maturing, but also us, as knowledge workers, and the companies we work for. From a technology and social tools perspective to a pure social one, one where culture and other business related issues were almost omnipresent. All over the place!
   
   Thus during the course of the week we saw how we have been shifting from that mentality of “What is Enterprise 2.0?“, to the “How do we do Enterprise 2.0?“, to this year’s “Why does our business need to live social? What business problems are we trying to address eventually? How can I benefit the most from Enterprise 2.0 to help my business thrive in the 21st century by going social?“. Indeed, quite refreshing, if you ask me! And about time, too!!
   
   Now, we need to move further on with that prediction I did at the beginning of this year, where I mentioned that by 2012 we would all stop using terms like “Enterprise 2.0″ or “Social Business” to just call it Work! Because that’s essentially what we are doing: smart work through social networks and communities.

6. The Networking:

   Well, after the first of the series of blog posts I put together with these highlights, which you can catch up with over here, if you haven’t read it just yet, there is very very little I would probably need to add, for sure! It was quite an experience, this year, like no other! Not only from the perspective of meeting up some good old friends with whom we all keep sharing our favourite war stories on Enterprise 2.0, but also new friends whom we could share our experiences with and learn from theirs! My favourite part of it though? Well, something that doesn’t seem to be happening at other conferences … The lack of competition and showing off you are doing things better. Just a pure sharing and learning experience on all things 2.0, although that may well be my own perception… what do you folks think?

7. The Extra-curricular Activities: 

   It was rather interesting to see how, this year, compared to other occasions, the number of cocktails, receptions, after the conference day local gatherings, dinners, parties, pub crawl activities, etc. etc. had gone up sky high! At times those of us who were attending the event were even triple or quadruple booked for a single afternoon / evening! To the point where you would need to split up your presence in between events, so that you could hang out for some time without disappointing everyone. Tough to do, I know!, but GREAT fun! Although after I came back from Boston I realised I may have had far too much fun, as I keep trying losing those extra few pounds I brought back with me from the US

   But from here I would want to share a special and warm thanks with all of those folks who hosted such events for us and made them all lots of great fun! I can assure you we had plenty of good laughs, good food, great company, and even better conversations! And you all know who you are … if you can still remember, right? hehe

8. The Amazing and Immersive Learning Experience:

   Was, indeed, bigger than ever! Now, I can imagine how most folks would think very fondly of the Enterprise 2.0 event as the place where they would go and find out more about what’s happening in the industry, talk to their already existing customers and new prospects, see what other vendors are doing in this 2.0 space, listen to what industry analysts would be talking about, network quite a bit with other conference attendees, etc. etc. But, to me, it’s all slightly different. To me it’s that yearly pilgrimage to meet up with fellow 2.0 practitioners, share back and forth our own experiences in helping drive social computing within the enterprise, AND as a result of it, learn and absorb, A LOT!, what other folks have done so that you could reuse it and re-apply it when you get back!

   That learning experience is priceless. That, to me, is what makes it worth while going back to Boston, and Santa Clara, year after year. It’s those first hand exchanges of experiences with people who know exactly what you are going through that makes it all worth while. Yes, I know that plenty of people would say it’s a lovely echo chamber and everything, but, I am actually probably one of the very few who may feel very grateful for such echo chambers, because if there is anything out there that they are very good at is recharging your batteries, so when you come back in full force it would last you for a few months no end to keep gently pushing and become that trust agent who keeps aiming at making a difference at the company you work for!

   It’s that adrenaline rush you know you need, but never dare to ask too often, because you may like it a bit too much. I actually did this year and I had a total blast, even though it took me a couple of days to recover my own voice as a result of it! Totally worth it, though!

9. Good to Be Back in Boston!:

   Of course, who wouldn’t, right?!?! I have been coming back to Boston to attend Enterprise 2.0 a few times already, but this year it was rather special. The weather was just stunning (At least, for the first couple of days), encouraging everyone to be out there, mixing and mingling with people, hanging out on the streets, at the local bars & restaurants, watching the world pass by, thinking how we may not be that different all of us altogether from one another. The fact that the venue was very much downtown surely made a huge difference in enjoying a good couple of summer days in Boston!

   I also spent Sunday afternoon at Harvard, with a couple of good friends, and we enjoyed one of the most pleasant walks-around-town I can remember! Pictures, of course, will be shared shortly at my Flickr account. But don’t worry, later on in the week Boston showed us all the other side of things, when it wouldn’t stop raining for a day or two! Goodness! Hope next year it will hold up for a little bit longer! Boston in the summer can surely be as gorgeous as they say!

10. The Love Fest Atmosphere: 

    And, finally, something that I may have hinted in a good number of the reasons I mentioned above, but which I think still deserves its own space over here. Heading back to Enterprise 2.0 every year has become that massive love fest of 2.0 practitioners who embark on that “fantabulous” activity of group hugs, lovely cosy dinners, pub crawling to interesting places, etc. etc. whenever they bump into each other, wherever that may well be!

    There is no competition; there is no show-off; there are no intentions of diminishing one company over the other’s business; there is a fair amount of knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning, without ever asking anything in return; there is no knowledge hoarding where you try to absorb and suck on everyone else’s knowledge and experiences instead. I am not sure whether I am alone in living that perception, but, I, for once, appreciate it very much, because even if your competitors, customers and business partners are there, that whole aspect of open knowledge sharing, collaborating and learning, will make us all better, much better, at what we already do. And that’s something that, on its own, makes it totally worth it for me the over 30h+ of travelling, back and forth, time and time again. 

Thus, as you can imagine, and after another one of those massively long and meaty blog posts, I will surely be looking forward to the next #e2conf event that would be taking place in Santa Clara, in November, even though I won’t be able to make it there I’ll be following it virtually, in anticipation for next June, when I will be heading back to Boston and revive an overall even better conference experience!

From here onwards, folks, we will be moving right into the overall content of the event and what I learned during those 4 days. Thus stay tuned for more to come! We are only just getting started!

Once again, it’s been a little while since I put together a blog post over here, but this time around for a very good reason. As most of you folks know by now already, I have just returned back from my last business trip, one of the longest this year so far, for sure!, as I got to attend the Enterprise 2.0 conference event (a.k.a. #e2conf) in Boston, MA, the whole of last week. One of the most wonderful experiences I have enjoyed so far in attending a tech conference. And I do realise that I keep saying that very same thing year after year, but this time around I can certainly confirm it 100% it’s been one of the best I can remember and for a good number of reasons! Yes, I am now back to work, back to the social grid, back to carry on with my usual blogging mojo. And that means it’s time to kick off another series of blog posts where I am planning to share some of the major key highlights from the overall event itself, as a way of sharing with you folks a few glimpses of what I found the most interesting this time around.

Thus from here onwards, and over the next few days, I’ll be putting together a series of entries, where I will talk about the conference itself, i.e. keynotes, breakout sessions, workshops, networking opportunities, etc. etc. And will try to mix it all with a few other interesting things I have bumped into over the last couple of weeks, so it won’t bore most of you folks. I will also share with you all some links of the phenomenal live blogging that happened throughout the event, specially, coming along from very talented, and good, friends like Mary Abraham, Emanuele Quintarelli and Bill Ives. And at the same time I will be pointing you to some of the great highlights and write-up blog entries that a bunch of other good friends and thought leaders in the 2.0 space have been putting together in the last few days. It’s going to be a busy time, but with plenty of good fun!

However, before we go into all of that, I thought I would resume my regular blogging activities sharing with you folks the inspiring video clip of the week mixed with what’s been one of my major highlights from the overall Enterprise 2.0 conference event for yours truly: the offline social networking interactions! Indeed, if there was a single key highlight I would want to stress out from the event itself, is how, once again, the offline networking was absolutely fantastic! Superb!  … To the point where I think it was the very first time at a tech conference, that I can remember, that I spent more time talking offline to folks than being online, both, before, during and after the various speaker sessions I attended. And that’s a new one, to be honest, because time and time again I always had that urge of wanting to check things online, see what people were thinking and commenting on, catch up with blog posts, etc. etc. And it surely was quite an exhausting activity. Well, not this year!

That’s right! A couple of days before the event I decided I was going to change things slightly on how I would approach attending the conference. So, except for the live tweeting I did for the various presentations I attended, I was basically offline for most of the time, talking and connecting with people in the real world! And, boy, was that such a wonderful experience?!?! My voice struggled quite a bit trying to keep up with the pace of conversing with some many good old and new friends. I am also ok with the fact that I gained a few extra pounds after all of those wonderful conversations over coffee breaks, lunches, networking gigs, dinners, after dinner drinks, late night drinks, etc. etc. It was totally worth it! Big time!

That’s something that I should probably be grateful to the Social Business Forum event, held in Milan, Italy, a few weeks back, because, once again, it showed me how important, and critical, it is to converse, share and learn from those around you, face to face, at such events. It’s amazing how the Social Web can take you away from those offline interactions, just because you may want to be in the know, when what really matters, probably, in most cases, is those very same face to face conversations we do with people who share the same common passion we have for all of this social business stuff. It’s true that I knew I would be capable of catching up with the online Social Web thanks to the absolutely wonderful piece of work from Jim Worth who created, once again, the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Social Web Coverage June 20, 2011, but this time around I thought I would try to be as disconnected from the online world, as I could, specially, before and after the main agenda was covered and dealt with.

And, goodness, did I make the right choice?!?! It was brilliant just hanging out with plenty of good friends whom you have kept in touch with through the Social Web over the course of time, as well as meeting a bunch of news ones during the event!, and do real, proper catchups! I wouldn’t change that for anything, to be honest! In fact, if there is something I have learned from that whole offline networking experience from last week is that I need to learn to become less dependent on the Social Web, and, instead, converse more with people in real life. Face to face interactions still do have a place, even in the workplace!, and they are critical for us all to build better, more trustworthy relationships, that we can then continue to nurture and cultivate online till we meet up again! And that whole experience was quite an eye opener to me, to the point where as I was coming back home, playing that catchup I mentioned above, I decided it’s probably a good time to start now break loose from the dependency on the Social Web and continue to enjoy those offline interactions, even while at home!

Which is why I am going to make a connection with the inspiring video of the week to show you what I mean with this. Yes, you all know, it’s now summer time! The weather is gorgeous probably in most places where you are, but instead of enjoying it all going outdoors, mixing and mingling with other people, you decide to stick around your computer for that little longer, which, eventually, turns out to be a couple of extra hours, here and there! Well, not anymore! At least, for me! And here is the main reason why:

You may be wondering why I am sharing such a lovely musical video clip titled Something Good Can Work from Two Door Cinema Club, right? Yes, I know! It’s not a summer song, by far, but, hang on for a minute, if you listen to it carefully and let yourself go for a bit, it does sound like perfect for the summer. Even more when you watch the video clip and you come up with some of those wonderful imageries, which is why I wanted to share this video clip this week, because the footage from the entire video, except perhaps the first few seconds, has been done in the island where I live: Gran Canaria!

In fact, a couple of the places shown throughout the video clip are just like 5 minute drive from where I live myself, which, making a connection with the rest of this blog post, you would understand what I mean with spending a lot less time online than what I am doing now to enjoy those outdoors. Who wouldn’t, right?

Well, they say that striking a good balance between work and life is perhaps one of the biggest challenges knowledge workers, specially, remote ones!, face in today’s working environment; there is no easy solution, for sure. In my own case, I have learned to switch gears and move away from that balance and, instead, strike for that work, life full integration. And I’m surely finding it somewhat ironic that I had to travel over 5.000 KMs away, to attend #e2conf, to realise what I really have been missing over here in the last few months with all of that frenzy happening at work and elsewhere on the Social Web…

So a big highlight for me, from the Enterprise 2.0 conference, is a big Thank You!, to everyone I conversed with, learned from, shared common experiences with, etc. etc. yes, you know who you all are!! (Too many to mention all of you over here in a single paragraph! And to those other folks I never managed to catch up with, unfortunately!! Will need to fix that next time around!), who showed me how important and incredibly paramount it’s to nurture, cultivate and enjoy to the highest level possible, face to face conversations and interactions with those close to you. Even if that means on the way back (I enjoyed a delightful weekend in Madrid, in between, as well!), or even closer: at home!

Continuing further with that series of blog posts detailing some of the major highlights for yours truly from the recent Social Business Forum conference event in Milan, Italy, I thought I would go ahead and share with you folks today the next installment where I would focus on the first part of the day, the one with all of the keynote speaker sessions, detailing some of the major key learnings and ah-ha moments I experienced throughout that morning. Then in later blog posts I will share some more thoughts on the various breakout sessions I attended and perhaps I will put together one final blog entry where I will link to the recordings of the presentations, once they are all made available. So, let’s get things going! How can I summarise an entire morning of inspiring keynotes in a single sentence or two. Let’s see… How about Social Business is not something entirely new, we already knew about it from before. Welcome to the 2.0 Awakening of Business!

Yes, indeed! That would pretty much nail it, as far as I can see, for those couple keynote speaker sessions that kicked off the event to a great start! At first, we had Emanuele Scotti and Rosario Sica (From OpenKnowledge) who spent a few minutes going through a fancy and elegant Prezi presentation (“Social Business on the Shoulders of Giants“) where they quoted a good number of great thinkers from our recent history, going as far back as Newton (Stayed tuned, because this reference will come up again!), sharing further insights which mimic, almost too close, plenty of the main thinking behind Social Business from all along, even for Social Computing and Enterprise 2.0. With a couple of those quotes as some of my own favourites. Like Fernando Flores’ “Trust is the main ingredient necessary for creating and sustaining a solid business relationship” or that other one from Rita Levi Montalcini: “Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them“.

That short session clearly highlighted how plenty of the same thinking that has been inspired and provoked for Social Business has got plenty of deeper roots, throughout the years, in how business used to run in the past, but that we seemed to have forgotten, or neglected, in the last few decades altogether. Great refreshing reminders that confirm how we may not be inventing anything new in here, maybe just an evolution, but perhaps going through that full awakening stage of reminding us all who we really are and what we do for business on a daily basis. Good stuff! Here’s the embedded Slideshare deck, so you can catch up with some of the remaining quotes they shared across:

Moving on into the next keynote session we had the great pleasure and true honour of having with us Bill Johnston, Director of Global Community at Dell, who under the very suggestive title “Paving the way to Social Business” did a fabulous job at describing how Dell has progressed from pretty much ignoring social media to become a full powerhouse leading the way in the consumer space in just over 3 to 4 years. I told him (half jokingly), at the end of the session, how much I enjoyed it, to the point that if it weren’t for the OS running in Dell machines I wouldn’t mind purchasing one myself just to experience their customer excellence!

Indeed, the set of slides that Bill put together were amazingly insightful and very much spot on in helping define what are some of the main challenges and great opportunities for businesses with a common goal: delighting their clients. And he basically shared plenty of insights on how they go about it over at Dell. You can have a look into the slides over at Slideshare as well and I strongly recommend you spend a few minutes going through them, specially, check out slide #6 on a rather inspirational holistic approach towards networks of value, which I am sure is going to resonate, quite a bit, with those folks who advocate, very vehemently, where the final frontier for Social Business is at the end of the day.

Or check slide #8: one of the most brutal slides you will see available out there and which describes, pretty nicely, how Dell came on board the whole social media bandwagon to be one of the industry leaders in this space at the moment. It’s a rather bold move to come out there and share stories like that one from that slide and how that evolution on wanting to become better will require an extra effort and lots of learning. Pretty much along the very same lines that we, over at IBM, experienced with Jams, back in the day. Just brilliant!

The rest of the slides are pretty interesting detailing as well several of the Dell initiatives they have got in place, like SMaC (Social Media and Community Team), or the Social Media and Community University, which comes pretty close to the same beliefs behind our very own BlueIQ Adoption and Enablement Programme, IdeaStorm, etc. etc. Worth while looking into! Just as much as the part dedicated towards the holy grail of social media; of course, I am referring to figuring out the ROI of these social tools as well as some very interesting piece of advice on “Planning for Social Media & Community Engagement“, where Bill shared plenty of good practices on how to get things started with plenty of pragmatic approaches and sound advice (Check slides #22 to #26).

However, if I were to highlight the one favourite slide from his presentation that would be, without a doubt, slide #10 where Bill just mentioned how critical listening is for any social media strategy. In fact, to Dell it’s “The Heart of our Social Strategy“. As it should be, for sure! That’s what we keep on insisting ourselves, social computing evangelists, as well that before you dive right in, check out what’s happening out there, listen to what people are saying, get to learn and absorb how they interact and from there onwards figure out and find a way that would suit not only you and your own needs, but those of your customers, which is what matters at the end of the day. And active listening is the perfect activity to get the ball rolling!

Here you have got the embedded code of Bill’s great presentation, so you can quickly flip through the charts and get a glimpse of what you can look forward to whenever the recording of his keynote becomes available at a later time:

And, finally, the last one from the morning keynote speaker sessions. This time around with the rather provocative, but very insightful Andrew Gilboy, Oracle VP E2.0 EMEA, who covered “Social Business, it’s also about the Processes“. And I do realise I am describing his session as rather thought-provoking and eye-opening from the perspective that anyone out there who may be involved with the whole concept of creativity and the arts, i.e. musicians, authors, play writers, filmmakers, etc. etc. must go through the first few slides (From slide #8 to #slide 20) to find out, in a very helpful manner, the state of their own industry and how if they continue to think along the lines of the 20th century business models they are bound to suffer quite a bit, if not disappear altogether! And all of that through a wonderful trip down the memory lane of the music industry in the last decade! A must-go-through, for sure!

From there onwards, Andrew covered that important aspect of identifying new social business processes that would apply not only to the music industry, but to multiple other industries as well. Just loved his distinction of how those (social) business processes have been working out their magic for both “left” and “right brainers” (Slide #23) to present a rather interesting and immersive landscape that no business should ignore, nor neglect.

Finally, another worth while paying attention section from his presentation was that part where he covered Opportunities and Threats with plenty of examples from other businesses who have already taken a potential threat and converted it into a huge opportunity, helping define the landscape of how business will be conducted in the near future. Really worth while having a look, if only to check out how those other businesses are becoming, and living, social.

Here is the embedded code of Andrew’s slide deck, so you can have a look into it right away as well:

And that was it from me for now! As you can see, plenty of great food for thought on what it means to become a successful and sustainable social business with lots to digest and think through. But overall quite a line-up of rather relevant, interesting and inspiring keynote speakers who definitely helped set the stage for a good bunch of great conversations we all had throughout the day. But that would be the time for another blog post, where I can talk about the remaining sessions, as well as those other conversations on the side … Stay tuned for more to come!

As mentioned in previous blog posts, here I am, once again, putting together this particular series of articles detailing some of the various highlights from the recent Social Business Forum event held in Milan, Italy, on June 8th, that I attended and presented at. Now, I won’t be able to detail most of what happened during the event, since there were lots of things taking place all over, but I am hoping that these few notes would help folks get a glimpse of what it was like, what I learned during the event and what I thought were some of the best keynote and breakout sessions altogether. To kick things off, this blog entry will focus though on my overall impressions of the event itself and what I thought about the whole atmosphere altogether, and if I were to summarise it in a single sentence I would probably say that the #sbf11 event has just redefined, for me, the way conference events should be like. In a single word: Converse.

That’s right! Over the last few years I have attended quite a few technical conferences and time and time again the main issue I keep bumping into is not having enough time to converse with fellow attendees to continue learning from one another. So whenever I am given the chance I go ahead and take it. I mean, what are the chances of meeting up the same group of smart, talented folks at another tech event like that one? Very minimal, to say the least! So I was very glad to see how the good folks over at OpenKnowledge took good care of the details and decided to give enough importance to the whole concept of entertaining conversations for those attending the event.

For us, keynote and breakout guest speakers, it all started the previous evening, as we were all invited to an evening reception, where both the food and beverages, as well as the venue, were rather accommodating and inviting. Perhaps, too inviting! (I still remember very fondly that delightful white wine and the gorgeous food coming along with it!). The end result was, eventually, meeting up with folks who I have known for a long while and with whom it was fabulous to catch up with again, but, more interestingly, meet up new friends who share a common passion, like most of us, for Social Business and the Social Web.

And that’s when it turned out to be rather interesting and exciting to get to know them a little bit better and find out that we are not all of that different altogether at all, regardless of the company we may work for, and have the perfect evening arranged to confirm that! How come very very few other conferences do that for guest speakers? There is probably nothing more accommodating than receiving a nice and warm welcome when you arrive in a foreign city to deliver a presentation the next day, I can tell you that! Even more, when a good number of the conversations I had provoked multiple follow-up ideas that shaped a few last minute changes in my own presentation incorporating a good number of new thoughts, ideas, and mind-blowing concepts that are still lingering in my mind… Priceless!

Then we move on to the day of the event itself … Now, I *do* realise how the conference wi-fi was not there as pervasive as most folks would have expected from a technical event, for whatever the circumstances. And contrary to how I would usually react in previous occasions, it didn’t bother me this time around. At all. Ha! Yes, can you imagine me saying that after all of what I have said and written about in the last few years? Well, I came to the conclusion, and rather interesting ah-ha moment, that not having wi-fi allows you to talk more, face to face, with people who are right in front of you waiting to engage. Physical interactions are still irreplaceable. No doubt! I mean, conversing over the Social Web is just such a wonderful thing that we have all have gotten so accustomed to it that we have been rather spoiled altogether. Yet, there is nothing like talking to people and participating in conversations, right there, as they happen, and you get to interact with others. Well, the Social Business Forum event allowed for plenty of that and so much more! To the point where I came to the conclusion of not worrying about wi-fi at conferences any longer from there onwards. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, let’s talk face to face and enjoy the ride! I bet it will be much more interesting and fruitful eventually,… At least, it was for me!

The conference event took place at the Marriott Hotel in Milan, Italy, and, once again, I would have to confirm how important and critical it is to have the perfect venue for it. This hotel was just it! Absolutely wonderful! But not only because of the lodgings and the logistics, but also because of the superb catering service. This is one of my big pet peeves at conferences, how over time and as the years go by the quality of both food & drinks has deteriorated quite a bit to the point where it’s almost non-existent… And this is just such a missed opportunity. Now, I *do* realise it may well be just my Mediterranean / Latin side of things, but having the right catering service is not only going to be very beneficial for us all (Why would we need to give up on our own health and healthy habits, while attending events! Right?), but also for the overall conference. Having the right combination of food & drinks, both during lunch and breaks, is going to help people become more comfortable, more chatty, more at ease with the environment they are immersed in, to the point where they would engage much more in those already on-going conversations. Why not embrace it, like the #sbf11 folks did? I mean, as an example, I extended, on purpose, a good number of great conversations while I was enjoying that second, extra creamy, white coffee going beyond the senses!

I guess what I am trying to say with all of this is the conclusion I came to towards the end of the event that perhaps it’s time for tech conferences to slow down a bit. And let us enjoy the pace of being humans again, while we talk to other fellow humans, face to face, without having to rush off to the next scheduled session. Now, I know that some of the breakout sessions hardly had any space to mix and mingle along the lines I described above, but overall I think the pace of the event, as well as lunch and coffee breaks were just right. And wish other conferences would take example and further notice and allow their attendees to see and witness the world slowing down a bit for a change. Somehow I feel we would all be much better off altogether! And come back for more! I surely will …

Ok, by now I am sure you have realised how this blog post with some of the highlights on the event itself have got very little to do with both the content and the speakers. Yes, that’s right! I thought I would get things started talking about looking after the details of making a great event a superb one. And that’s exactly what I witnessed four years later after my first, back then, Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Italy. Emanuele Quitarelli, Rosario Sica and their wonderful entire team at OpenKnowledge hosted a fantastic event, even though it’s not their specialty! I wish others, whose entire specialty is that exact same one, would pick up on some of their ideas to help revolutionise the way we engage and participate in tech conference events.

To me, eventually, it all felt like being part of a big family of good old & new friends, with a shared common passion around Social Business wanting to network, connect and converse with one another, learning from each other, without double agendas, second intentions or whatever other hidden purposes; just basically, conversing and sharing for the sake of wanting to learn more. And the fact that the evening of the event got a bunch of us together going out for dinner and a drink or two clearly indicates how most of the times it pays off being in good company, engaging in real conversations wanting to find out and learn plenty more about that person sitting right next to you, instead of trying to find a good excuse to go and grasp your mobile gadget to snoop around a way to make a move and leave that space.

That’s not us; that should *not* be us; we need to start humanising conference events once again. Forget about big, impersonal, mass media driven events. They are just so passe. The Social Business Forum has just shown us, if anything, the way we all have got ahead of us… Hope other tech conferences would do the same… and take their lead…

(Not to worry, on follow-up blog posts I will be cutting to the chase and focus plenty more on both content and keynote / breakout sessions… This one was just a little bit of an appetiser… hehe)