It’s been a while since we closed Social Connections VII in Stockholm, but it’s finally time to do a wrap-up and an official send off, over the Atlantic ocean and to Boston, MA.

First of all, our team. 

Stuart, Brian, Martin, Jan, Wannes, Maria. Some of them I knew from before, some I met for the first time, but I hardly think i’ve ever worked in a team that was so hell-bet on delivering a project. We’ve done our fair share of stressing about with getting it all together, but the feeling of seeing it play out was all thereward i ever needed.

Thank you guys!

Secondly, Stockholm.

It was great seeing so many people coming to my home town to be part of this conference. From all across the globe, people came to socialize, and freeze their toes while beeing outside. I sure hope you liked visiting, and that you got to see a glimpse of the city as well, however, it is a lot more comforting in the summer, so I urge you to come back by then. It’s not as dark, and not as cold.

So what can we say about the event itself?

We had a 100% attendance rate, which is totally amazing. There were some nervous discussions in the team about the idea of charging for the event for the first time. In the end we are happy that we did.

The event itself seems to have been very well received, the results for the survey have been fantastic, also the amount of answers have been much higher than previous events. We wanna give you all a big thank you, it really helps us in planning onwards for the future!

Our sponsors?

What can we say apart from that we are so happy to have you? You are the ones making all this possible. Infoware, Affecto, IBM, TrustSphere, Kudos, TimeToAct, Connect2Cloud, Intravision, Longana and Belsoft. We know that you all put so much energy as well as your time and money into sponsoring this event, and we are forever grateful for that.

The sessions?

The agenda was a little different this time to previous events, with the volume of abstract submissions lower than before, but the quality was definitely still there!  With fewer sessions the team had the opportunity to offer some longer 65-minute slots for the more technical topics, whilst still offering at least four session options for most time slots.  With speakers from more than 15 countries, including many IBM Champions, we feel that the agenda was one of the strongest we’ve fielded.  The feedback has been good, though a few attendees suggested we needed to go a little deeper for those organisations that have been using Social Business technologies for a number of years.  We’ll certainly be looking at that for the next event.  Our speakers did a fine job, so we thank them all!

The receptions?

We always try to deliver receptions that make our even especially memorable for our attendees. We know that everyone takes time out from their families and friends to travel to the event, and so we want to give them a reason to feel they’ve had a special and enjoyable time as well as achieved their work goals.

This time that took the form of a gala reception at the Fotografiska photo gallery on the water’s edge. Whilst the venue was a little bit of a trek, hopefully the quality of the food, wine and conversation more than made up for the effort involved in getting there!

As usual, we invited our speakers and sponsors to attend a special reception to thank them for giving up their time and energy to plan, prepare and attend the event.  This time we hit the Hard Rock Cafe just 100 yards from the conference venue.  Beer flowed, friendships were rekindled, and the world was put to rights!

So where next?

Stuart and the team are not so presumptuous as to claim that they’ve conquered Europe, but with events in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and now Sweden over just 3.5 years, Social Connections has given it a good go!

So we’ve expanding our reach and heading to the US for the first time.  To Boston (or Cambridge to be precise), on 16th and 17th April 2015.  Registration is open, the call for abstracts has been made, sponsors are invited, and we’ll reconvene for Social Connections 8 in just a few months!

So finally…

Thanks for coming to Stockholm, to my home town, it was great to have Social Connections here and to welcome so many to this great city. See you in Boston!