As Social Connections team we always try to get an optimum mix of speakers for our conferences. Not just the well known names from within the IBM ICS community but also experienced speakers from outside the IBM ICS community. To get the best possible diversity in Enterprise Social / Technology / IBM Connections related topics but also to ensure that the discussions going on during the event which are crucial to it’s success get new input and fresh perspectives.
Still undecided about attending Social Connections 10 in Toronto on Monday June 6th and Tuesday June 7th?
If you are then check out some of the great sessions by speakers from across the globe! Our agenda is now publish on our website Link and in our mobile app (where you can create you own personal schedule for the event! (Find out more about our mobile app).
Here is a selection of some the great sessions you need to come and listen to:
At finally, we have over 70 speakers at the event. These people are from all parts of the world and have some great content to share with you!
So what are you waiting for – Register now!
We are very happy to announce TrustSphere as a Gold sponsor to return for our Toronto event. Thank you for helping to make this a great event. See you very soon in Toronto
TrustSphere is a recognized market leader in the field of Relationship Analytics, having pioneered a next-generation approach to analyzing both internal and external communication flow across an organization, to provide clients with actionable insights ; these insights are applicable to the following disciplines: Sales and Sales Management, Risk and Governance, Performance Management and Change Management. We call these pillars: Sales Analytics, Risk Analytics and People Analytics. TrustSphere teams with a variety of exceptional partners including IBM, Microsoft, SugarCRM and Salesforce.com; our products can also be found on the Salesforce.com AppExchange and SugarExchange.
TrustSphere’s Relationship Analytics delivers a unique set of social insights into IBM Verse and IBM Connections which are derived from analysing IBM Dominos and IBM SmartCloud.
The ability to leverage a company’s entire relationship network is an extremely powerful asset. Because Relationships Matter.
Featuring the fabulous demo team from the OGS Demo at IBM Connect, Sarah Gibbons and Christopher Crummey. They will be providing a demo on IBM’s New Way to Work.
I think I can safely say that a lot of people (including me) were impressed by the demo at IBM Connect earlier this year. Missed it, want to see it again, this is your chance.
With the first keynote speakers getting announced and the first abstracts for Social Connections 10 in Toronto flowing in, it is time to start thinking about submitting YOUR abstracts. Yes that’s right we are talking to all of you!
Social connections has always prided itself in being a very open conference that offers a podium to both the best of the best of seasoned and well known speakers as well as to anyone that can contribute from a wealth of day to day experience. Be it customers, business partners or vendors.
We welcome first time speakers as well as seasoned ones as we believe that it is important to hear the stories of those that might otherwise never get told. Stories of those ‘living it’ and working with it day in day out without being in the spotlight. Be it as an administrator, a developer, a business user, a project member or anything else. To do so we offer a variety of categories and time slot options ranging from 15 minutes to 1 hour to accommodate the different topics:
So if you are an experienced speaker and have a topic you know you can expand on or have never spoken at a conference before but feel you have something to contribute, a story to tell, a lesson learned that could help others in a similar situation then please don’t hesitate and submit a session. We would love to hear from you!
The abstract deadline is Friday April 8th.
Wednesday June 8th – 9am to 15:30pm
Lunch and refreshments included
The Social Connections team are please to announce that as part of our Social Connections 10 event that we are collaborating with Luis Suarez to host an unique event in Toronto – a Social Business Masterclass!
What if instead of “driving” adoption within your organisation, you could inspire and facilitate adaptation instead? What if you would have the means to re-define a new way of working with your fellow colleagues and peers through that very same adaptation to become a successful Socially Integrated Enterprise? What if that methodology, good practices, extensive expertise and know-how would all be at your fingertips, so you could apply it right away? What if you knew the nuts and bolts of getting your management and senior leadership teams all involved right from the start to help facilitate the final social business transformation you have always been looking for? Are you ready?
Come and join us on this one day masterclass to find out and learn how you can get the most out of your IBM Connections deployment to begin, or continue, that transformation journey into becoming a successful Social Business.
You will learn how to
Whether you are just getting started with your Social Business Adaptation Journey, or whether you are already a very well seasoned 2.0 knowledge worker, this workshop will provide you an opportunity to learn with other fellow practitioners through plenty of practical, hands-on advice, good practices, lots of hints and tips and, most importantly, all of the necessary knowledge resources available to date.
This session is going to be really focused, packed with value and offer tremendous opportunities to learn from both Luis and the other attendees’ experience. So do not hesitate too long. Places will be allocated in order of registration.
The cost to attend this masterclass is in addition to your attendance at the Social Connections Conference (the event is only open to attendees of the Social Connections conference). We have put together a really attractive rate for the masterclass and if you register before April 1st, you can benefit from a ‘Early bird’ rate!
What are you waiting for – please register now
We are very proud to announce that for this event, Social Connections 10 in Toronto, we will provide our attendees with a mobile app. The app has been published in the Google Playstore and the Apple apps store.
The app allows for Social interaction using attendee profiles and an activity stream. Please engage with each other. We will also publish our agenda as soon as we have it. We will be adding our keynotes in the next couple of weeks.
You will be able to create your own schedule, see speaker profiles, rate speakers and sessions. We will also have our sponsors listed in the app, so if you want to know more about them, you can. We will be adding more functionality over time, so go and download now and check the app on a regular basis.
May we ask you to allow the app to send notification, that way we can notify you during the event on schedule changes or other important information.
Please use the following link for: iPhone, Android
If you are running Windows Mobile, we have a mobile web version as well
We know we have kept you waiting. Maybe longer than both you and we wanted. But it was for a good reason!
After the great success of our last event in Stuttgart, and because this is our 10th event, we have cooked up something extra.
We won’t release all the details yet, there are much more exciting things to come.
But we can say this: It is with great pleasure that we can announce the dates and location for our next event. This time we will be crossing the Atlantic again, but to a new country for us. We are going to Toronto, Canada! Yes, you heard it right, the beautiful city of Toronto is waiting for us!
So gear up with your biggest smile and join us on June 6 & 7, 2016 in the vibrant capital of Ontario, Canada.
As before we are running a 2 day event filled with good speakers, captivating sessions, lots of IBM Champions, a Gala night you wont forget and of course the amazing Social Connection team.
But we cannot do this without you! So send in your abstract for that session you already have in the back of your mind here, or register here.
And last but not least, there is much more to come. Keep your eyes open here for more details, news and announcements. We will updating you on a regulat basis from now on.
Over the past year, the team behind Social Connections have been working hard to put the organisation onto a firm footing for the future.
As a thriving user group that had delivered 7 successful events between 2011-2014, and a growing leadership team featuring a number of IBM Champions from around the community, it was felt that it was time to cement the great work that had been done to get this far, and to build an organisation that would support and withstand the efforts of organising regular events across the world.
As part of this effort, I’ve been delighted to work with Wannes and Simon in particular, to transition the ownership of the events from my own company, Social 365, to a brand new entity (registered as a company in the UK). This company is solely responsible for planning and delivering the Social Connections events, and has been set up from day one with the right frameworks to enable it to manage the demands of worldwide events, including the complexities of tax and VAT across national boundaries, a team based in more than half a dozen countries, and that is capable of working with sponsors that range in size from independent ISVs to multinational corporations!
Back in November, we delivered Social Connections 9 in Stuttgart – the biggest and (from your feedback) the best event so far. This event was run by Soccnx Limited, and with the vast majority of the planning work done by others on the Social Connections team. Whilst I was incredibly happy to attend and to speak at the event, the plaudits for that event should go to the rest of the team – they did an incredible job!
So it is with this in mind, that I was ready to step away from the Social Connections effort at the end of 2015, and leave it in the very capable (and indeed, talented) hands of Wannes and Simon, and their brilliant team (Christoph, Doug, Femke, Jan, Lars, Maria and Martin).
I’m incredibly proud of what we have achieved with Social Connections, and can’t wait to see and hear from the team as they plan for the events in 2016 and beyond.
It’s great to be back at home base, recovering from the Social Connections 9 event and resuming normal family and work pace. After the hectic weeks leading up to the event and the effort of actually running it, this is proving to be a welcome and much needed change!
Before too much time passes, the team wanted to quickly write up the event for those that couldn’t attend. We tend to follow a broadly similar pattern for each Social Connections conference, so hopefully this will help you to decide whether you should attend the next one!
After a short introduction from the team, the first day of the two-day event kicked off with a warm welcome from Barbara Koch (Solution Sales Leader Social Business & Commerce, Germany) and Huguette Ranc (Vice President, Client Success Social & Smarter Workforce, Europe). We quickly moved on to the event keynotes. We’ve been proud of our keynote speakers and sessions at every event, but think that we surpassed all previous lineups this time, featuring presentations from John Stepper (Deutsche Bank), René Schimmer (IBM), Eric Marzo-Wilhelm (ThyssenKrupp) and Silvia Cambie (IBM). The keynotes varied in tone and content, but were all very well received by attendees. After the first break, and alongside the third keynote, the breakout sessions kicked off (with Victor Toal having the honour of launching the technical content for this event). We had 23 breakouts planned for the first day, split over several tracks to have something of interest for every type of attendee. Rooms were full, speakers were energised, and the audience seemed to appreciate the content as well.
Meanwhile, our sponsor lounge was already alive and buzzing. With a record 16 exhibitors (from a total of 22 wonderfully supportive sponsors) the area filled up nicely at each and every break time. After the last session of the day, we served drinks in the sponsor lounge and kicked off our Speed Sponsoring with MC Tony Holder. This was the opportunity for our sponsors to convince their audience of their solutions in just 3 action-packed minutes and to open up conversations for the next day.
With Speed Sponsoring closing out the formal agenda for the day, the team had arranged for bus transport to Sensapolis for our Gala Reception. The idea was to pick an informal location (Sensapolis is primarily an indoor child’s playground) to ensure that our attendees had an opportunity to network, but also to thoroughly enjoy themselves in the process! We offered some activities after dinner such as a challenging climbing wall, karting and Segway-riding. We even had a professional photo booth (with topical props!) to provoke some fun pictures. It worked out exactly as planned, check out the pictures here. Thankfully, despite the fun, games and beverages consumed, everyone managed to make the bus to their hotels and were picked up again on the second day.
On Friday we had another 32 sessions lined up, split over 4 breakout rooms. Many of the sessions were extremely busy, but the most popular was surely “What’s coming in IBM Connections Next” from René Schimmer.
We closed the day’s agenda with the popular ‘Ask IBM’ session. We had some unscheduled departures from those earmarked for the panel (due to the Lufthansa strike and people rebooking their flights) so we owe a debt of thanks to the other IBM people that stepped up on stage and maybe answered some questions outside their comfort zone.
As is now our custom, we couldn’t depart from the venue without our Social Connections community photo!
As a conclusion, we think that this was the best Social Connections event that the team have run so far and it feels as though we are improving every time. We received a lot of compliments as an organisation team, but we could not have done it without a superb venue, supportive sponsors and insightful speakers. I would like to thank our awesome team (onsite, off site and those that had to leave early!) for all the work and all the fun. I’m very sad that we did not have the time to have some quality time together!
Finally, I wanted to share some statistics with you. Social Connections 9 had:
Thanks to everyone that attended.
You can check out all the photos from the event on our Flickr photo stream, and see a really good summary of the social media coverage from the event in this Storify (curated by Alexander Kluge).
See you all for Social Connections 10!
