boston

25/042016

Sponsor Spotlight: Kudos

News boston, prague, soccnx, sponsors, stockholm, switzerland, toronto, zurich by Lars Samuelsson

So, Social Connections 10 is approaching at breakneck speed and we’re busy preparing for the event on every free minute we can find.

Today we want to slow things down just a little bit to put the spotlight of one of our core sponsors, they have been with us for many events, for which we are truly grateful.

Our ISW friends from down under brings you Kudos!

Check out http://www.kudosbadges.com for a look at a truly great product that extends IBM Connections to new levels!

Please take your time to see these guys at their booth and listen to what they offer, it’s great.

10/042015

We are sold out!

News boston, registration, soccnx by Lars Samuelsson

Let’s start this off with a big THANK YOU to everyone that has registered!

We can, as of today, say that we are sold out for the Social Connections 8 event in Boston. We are so psyched to see the interest in the conference and the team are working hard to put the last details in place before the event.

Also, as always, we send lots of love to our sponsors. There are more companies supporting this event than ever before, so we have been thrilled at the response. We really could not run Social Connections without you!

The team can really feel our own excitement building up for the event, and we sure hope that you feel the same way. If you have got any questions, do reach out to us via social media or email.

The reason we are closing registrations now is due to space restrictions at the venue, we want to make sure that everyone has a seat for the sessions.

There’s not much more to say right now except, again, thank you so much, we hope to deliver a fantastic experience for you. And see you all in Boston in just a few days!

09/042015

Social Connections 8 gala reception announced… Enjoy ‘A Night at the Museum’!

News boston, gala, gala reception, reception, soccnx by Maria Nordin

After the first afternoon of the Social Connections 8 event has concluded, we would like to continue the day’s conversations in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Therefore, we would like to invite all registered participants to join us for a complementary gala reception at the fascinating Museum of Science, courtesy of our Champagne sponsors, Trilog Group.

As the most highly attended cultural institution in New England, the Museum of Science offers novel surroundings and out-of-the-ordinary experiences that are sure to intrigue and entertain all our attendees!

With an array of interactive exhibits extending across three levels, the Museum’s Blue Wing may be the most unique and entertaining space in Boston. Where else can you dine amid dinosaurs and experience a hair-raising one million volts of lighting all in the same evening?

To top all that off, there will also be a variety of live music on offer all evening – you may just spot a few very familiar faces too!

Given our central location at IBM, no formal transportation will be required – the Museum of Science is just a short walk from the conference location.

Please contact us if you have any special dietary needs or allergies.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston!

08/042015

Social Connections – The show must go on!

News boston, future, soccnx by Social Connections

In the last week several members of the Social Connections team attended Engage conference in Ghent, Belgium. It was a great event and I recommend everybody to visit it next year. Many of us love the way Theo Heselmans runs this event and Engage always provides us with inspiration on how to improve our own conferences. By the way, Engage is sponsoring our event in Boston and we greatly value their support.

The reason for this post is that members of our team received a lot of questions in Ghent regarding the future of Social Connections after Stuart’s recent career move. Though this user group is his baby and his involvement is now somewhat reduced (he won’t be in Boston, for example), we want to make clear that Stuart is still with the Social Connections team, and we continue to plan future activities and events.

The team will cover the future plans in more detail at the Boston event, but we want to make a few statements earlier, to avoid concerns and rumours:

The event in Boston is definitely NOT the finale! We are already planning and working on the Social Connections 9 event in Western Europe this autumn. As usual, we will announce the exact date and location during our closing session in Boston.
The group remains IBM-centric and focused on IBM Connections and related topics, as it always has been.
On the other hand, we want to widen our scope to include more speakers from ‘outside the bubble’, presenting on generic topics like collaboration strategy, social business adoption, digital transformation, the future of work, and so on. Again, there is no big change, the talks on these topics started many events ago.
We have already started to look for possible venues for Social Connections 10 in 1H16. Any suggestions, recommendations or offers are welcome! 🙂

The world of social collaboration continues to evolve and the team are delighted that Social Connections has became a significant event in the conference calendar (the only semi-annual multi-continental user group we’re aware of!).

Whilst the Boston event is somewhat limited by the venue’s capacity, it has still seen new peaks reached for numbers of sponsors, sessions, speakers and even IBM Champions in attendance. In addition, it has seen even closer collaboration with IBM itself, with previously unimaginable access to product managers, designers and development lab staff.

The team are happy to continue to share in discussions about the future direction of this user group – we greatly value the input of our long-term sponsors and speakers, and of course we try to listen to all members of this great community. However, the team are also very confident that our own strategy and direction means that the future of the Social Connections user group is both bright and assured!

We can’t wait to see you in Boston!

04/032015

What should you expect at Social Connections 8?

News boston, expectation, prague, soccnx by Wannes Rams

Every Social Connections event has been different – after all, we’ve hosted every one in a new country so far! So the culture, the language and the surroundings definitely influence the kind of atmosphere and interactions that take place. That’s the joy of being a truly international user group!

However, there are certainly common themes…

A gathering of like-minded and passionate advocates of Social Business technologies, collaborative approaches and the use of IBM solutions.
Awesome content from internationally renown speakers, plus some case studies that you’ll hear nowhere else.
Hearing the latest product news – from IBM and from third-party vendors. We’ve been thrilled to hear from IBM product managers at almost every event – including Heidi Ambler, Luis Benitez, Kramer Reeves and in Boston, Suzanne Livingston.
A mix of business and technical… From high-level strategy and user adoption tips right down to geeky sessions on TDI assembly lines and widget development. The team always aim for a broad mix of deep content.
An atmosphere of openness and sharing. Attendees come with an attitude of wanting to make the most from the event, the opportunities and to be ready for meeting others that may start as strangers but will likely become friends in the long-run.
We weave ‘Social’ with ‘social’… This is about having fun, making connections, and re-energising ourselves and each other for the hard work ahead!

That’s a lot of words, right? Well as ever, a picture paints a thousand words, and a video… Well that must be a million, right?

So here’s our overview video from Social Connections VI, the event that took place in Prague in June 2014…

Like what you see? Well there’s no time like the present! Register for Social Connections 8 today!

02/032015

Why should you attend Social Connections 8?

News boston, quotes, registrations, soccnx by Jan Valdman

In the few days since we announced our fantastic agenda for Social Connections 8 in Boston, the number of registered attendees has almost doubled!

For this event, we have asked each attendee why they have registered. Here are some of the recent answers that have been given:

Newbies

I’m a new user and would like to know more about Connections.
This will be my first one. Very excited to attend after seeing the great value presented at the previous 7.
I’ve never attended previously but hope to hear insights and feedback from other customers about their successes and challenges with social, what use cases they have, and their adoption strategy.

Learning & Education

Our organization is deploying Connections 5 in 2015. I’m looking for ways to make the business side of the deployment a success.
My group is responsible for support of Connections and helps with user adoption. I would like to hear how other companies are using Connections and what worked best in their organization.
I want to learn what clients are doing
I train business students to work effectively with Connections
Learn more how Social Business trends are driving companies today
Build and extend their skills and knowledge, work in real collaboration between BP and Customers
Plans fell through the last year to attend and me and my team have a strong focus on developing social solutions.
Learn. Meet up with friends.
Learn new things! 🙂
To Network with individuals who share the common passion for Enterprise Social Networking and to keep up to date with latest developments in this domain.
speaking
We are implementing Connections and I want to be better informed about the best way it should be used.
I am looking forward to meeting with customers and understanding the community’s input on our user experience direction.
Thought leadership and Connections
I am most interested in developing additions to IBM Connections

Keep with Trends & Future Evolution

I manage IBM Connections at my company. [I need to u]nderstand the technology, the road map, and network with industry champions.
Hear interesting thoughts and visions about social software – and the location begs for information about future products and developments following
The location leads to expect information about the future of the IBM social products and about new products/thinkings
Keep up with trends and deep diving
Keep up on where IBM is going and some deep diving

Speaking/Sharing

As a IBM Premier Business Partner we are involved in many social collaboration projects. I want to share experiences with the social collaboration community.
I hope to be speaking and also attending technical sessions.
I was a speaker at Social Connections 7
To share knowledge and learn
Share Connections knowledge, network, attend other presentations
Learn from this wonderful community and share my experiences!
An opportunity to meet others and share my story in the hopes that it inspires others.

The Community & Networking

Excited to reconnect with this community and learn more about social adoption.
To meet all the great people here! 🙂
Getting to know more people in the IBM Connections area
Meet customers and how they are being successful at getting value from Connections.
Networking, Education, Visibility
Networking, Latest technical infos on IBM Connections, Speaker 🙂
Obviously to build network 🙂 I hope to see more deep technical session
Connect with customers and partners
Networking, new insights, learning
Social relationship, technical session
I want to meet clients and partners
To meet like minded people.
I was a speaker and attendee at Social Connections 7

And the last but not least:

Because its the best event in the world regarding the product IBM Connections !
To meet all the people!

So, what is your reason to attend?

25/022015

The Social Connections 8 agenda has arrived!

News agenda, boston, soccnx by Lars Samuelsson

We are so super excited! Today we are unveiling the Social Connections 8 agenda for our event in Boston.

As you know from our previous announcements, we have keynote presentations by Suzanne Livingston and Ed Brill. We couldn’t be more excited by these well-known IBM big-hitters (and hugely respected supporters of the community) headlining our conference content.

That said, we have been absolutely blown away by the response to our call for abstracts, and can now formally declare that we will host a grand total of more than 60 sessions over the two days, a total of 57 speakers, including an incredible 17 IBM Champions.

We feel this is our strongest lineup to date, which feels extremely pleasing with our first trip to the US, kicking it off with a bang!

We’re covering everything from Case Studies and the brand new ‘Future of Work’ track, through to the nitty gritty details of how to configure your IBM Connections environment or start developing for the platform. Even better, we are thrilled to debut a new ‘Design’ track, staffed exclusively by IBM’s awesome design staff from the labs in the Boston area. In short, there is something for everyone, and I can honestly say that we are so so proud to present this to you guys.

We’re not going to promote any specific sessions right now, apart from a call to check out the sponsor sessions. After all, without their help we would have no chance of putting all this together!

If you haven’t taken a look at the agenda yet, do it right now! It’s here!

And if you like what you see… Register now!

17/022015

Two months…

News boston, soccnx by Wannes Rams

Social Connections 8 is approaching fast! In fact it feels as though the pace is picking up with every day that passes!

With this being the first Social Connections event that has been run in the USA, the team is working hard to pull together the very best experience that it can.

What does that mean? Well we’ve been busy on:

The abstract submission process. We’ve been delighted to have received a great number of abstracts submitted for this event than any we’ve run before. We’re also thrilled at the range and depth of the topics that we’ve seen, as well as hearing from some awesome speakers both old and new. Despite this, we’ve extended the deadline a teeny bit (by one week to next Sunday, the 22nd February). Why? We would love some additional sessions in specific tracks – Spotlight, the Future of Work and Case Studies. The team will review all abstracts that are submitted, but those are the ones we’d most like to add to the very balanced agenda that we’re pulling together. Submit your abstract now!
Planning the agenda. Whilst the final set of sessions are yet to be confirmed, we’ve already started to add key sessions to the schedule… If you’re waiting to see the agenda before confirming your own attendance, it will be published early next week.
The gala reception. Those that have attended previous Social Connections events will know that we really lavish a lot of focus and attention on our receptions – from a Welsh castle, to the Guinness factory in Dublin, at the lakeside in Zürich, a villa overlooking Prague (and the fireworks), to the gallery in Stockholm. Therefore we know we have a lot to live up to! We’re busy confirming the venue and arrangements for the Boston reception (with complimentary attendance for all attendees), and should have some news to share very soon.
Recruiting sponsors. We sometimes feel that we don’t say this enough… We could not run this event without our sponsors – they are absolutely key to funding the event and enabling us to deliver a conference that meets your needs. (For background, the small fee that we now charge to attend the conference barely covers the daytime catering, let alone the reception, the signage, the materials, etc. etc.) Therefore we hugely value their support for Social Connections, and are delighted that IBM, Kudos, GoodMeeting, TimeToAct, Ephox and Panagenda have already committed to sponsoring and exhibiting at the Boston event.
Planning some great ‘extra-curricular’ activities. Whilst formal sessions are key to any conference agenda, we feel that the really great interactions often take place outside the auditorium or breakout rooms. Therefore we’re ideating hard to try to provide a really great mix of activities at the conference. From SpeedSponsoring to unconference sessions, to opportunities for feedback on designs, there will be plenty of chances to get up close and personal with key IBMers, speakers, and IBM Champions.

So, with just 58 days to go, there really is no excuse! Register for Social Connections 8 today!

02/022015

Have you registered yet? We’re only two and a half months away!

News boston, registration, soccnx by Lars Samuelsson

Hi guys,

Hope everyone who went to ConnectED got back safe, and everyone else, i hope you are safe anyways!

Now that ConnectED is over, it’s time to focus on Boston and Social Connections 8. The team is still super psyched to get this show over to the US for the first time, and we wanna see you there! Listening in to some of the buzz in the corridors at ConnectED, there is interest in attending too!

We know that you are waiting for a schedule with some sessions, we’ve been working hard for you to get it as soon as possible, and now it’s here! Please head over and check it out at the schedule page. We also got the speakers page up, check it out! We will update them both with details as soon as we have them confirmed.

Do you have questions on attending? Please contact us at @soccnx on Twitter or like our Facebook page, that way you can also stay up to date with what we have in store for you in April.

Oh, yes. Now that we’re through with ConnectED, we will once again kindly remind you to submit your abstracts. We got some real goodies in already, but are looking for more! Please, don’t be shy!

We’re also working on hammering out the details for the evening reception on thursday, so stay tuned for that. We promise, we’ll try to put it a bit closer than in Stockholm. (Yes, we saw the feedback).

Speaking of the feedback, it was lovely, and we’re really trying to take it all in, don’t be shy to tell us if there’s something you feel that we’ve missed, we wanna make this event as awesome as possible for everyone attending.