Come to Social Connections, and more specifically to the keynote of IBM’s Vice President, Offering Management and Design, Watson Talent and Collaboration, Aarti Borkar to learn about the strategic vision from IBM on the Future of work.
Learn how IBM will combine the different parts of the portfolio to create a unified toolset to take on the challenges companies face today and tomorrow.
We are announcing our 
first session!
We are proud to present Mr. Pink Jason Gary as a speaker at Social Connections. Jason will tell us all about the future of IBM Connections which we know as Connections Pink.
Those of you who attended IBM Connect remember the excitement and vibe in his session where the room was so full we all had to stand in the back and along the walls.
We can’t wait to hear more from Jason on the latest updates regarding Pink since IBM Connect.
Jason will be speaking with Baan Slavens. Baan is Senior Offering Manager for IBM Connections. Baan focuses on understanding the collaboration market and the future direction for collaboration for IBM Connections. She is also the Offering Manager for IBM Connection Mobile and the lead for the strategic direction of all the mobile applications in IBM Collaborations.
Check out the full description of this session here.
More to come! This is only the first of many great sessions we have lined up for you. Stay tuned for more information.
Register for the conference through our website, and note that we are accepting abstracts until end of the month if you are interested in speaking.
It is just 10 days until the Social Connections 8 call for abstracts slides ever so tightly shut.
Yes, you have just ten short days in which to submit your great ideas for sessions at the upcoming IBM Social Business user group, which takes place in Boston on 16th and 17th April. We’re looking to select 20-30 really tip-top sessions to fill out our provisional event schedule – we’ve had some really super abstracts so far (thanks go to everyone that has submitted) but we’d really love more!
For the first time at Social Connections, we will be offering a selection of session durations:
We are inviting sessions in the following tracks:
The theme for the conference is ‘Beyond the Enterprise‘, so you may wish to give some thought to how your topic relates to this. You can take it any way you like, e.g. bridging internal and external communities, working with partners, making Social Business relevant to small organisations, creating non-work-related social communities, and so on. It’s not mandatory for the abstract to relate to the theme, but obviously it would be even better if it did.
The deadline for submitting an abstract is Sunday 15th February 2015, so you need to get your proverbial skates on!
Some advice that might help:
If you’re new to speaking at events such as user groups and conferences, please don’t let that put you off! We all have to start somewhere, and we’d love to support you make your debut at Social Connections 8! You might want to consider submitting for the Spotlight track mentioned above, which would give you an informal 15-minute slot to cover your case-study, concept, solution or idea. If you need longer, but feel unsure about delivering a session alone, please reach out to the Social Connections team – either one of us would be delighted to assist or co-present, or else we can recommend another speaker that might be ideal for your session.So, ten days and counting! Hope to read your abstract(s) very soon!
Today, we are proud to announce the agenda for the upcoming Social Connections VI event in Prague on 16th and 17th of June.
Featuring a record 44 sessions over two days, we think this is more than likely the most comprehensive IBM Connections-focused event ever. In fact, the team received so many awesome session abstracts, we had to schedule a fourth room to allow us to accept more sessions than we otherwise could. Even then, we were forced to turn down a few that we’d have loved to see ourselves so we send our commiserations and apologies to those that submitted sessions and were not selected…
Here’s a high-level overview of the schedule for the event:
| Selected Highlights | |
| 09:30 | Registration Opens |
| 10:00 – 12:00 | Optional Jumpstart: Introduction to Social Business (in Czech) |
| 12:30 – 14:00 | Lunch, meet the Sponsors and networking |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Opening General Session |
| 14:30 – 15:15 | Keynote: IBM Connections “Next” is Here – Why It Matters! (Luis Benitez, IBM) |
| 15:15 – 15:45 | Leveraging Global CEMEX: a reinforced Global Networks Model to move from “Good” to “Great” (Luis Garza, CEMEX) |
| 15:45 – 16:15 | Break |
| 16:15 – 17:00 | Keynote: The IBM Social Mail Roadmap (HP Dalen, IBM) |
| 17:00 – 17:30 | Social Business Adoption in 5 easy steps (Alan Hamilton, IBM) |
| 17:45 – 18:30 | Speed Sponsoring |
| 19:30 – 23:00 | Evening Reception |
| Selected Highlights | |
| 09:00 – 09:45 | Keynote: IBM – Understanding the journey of becoming a Social Business (Chris Crummey, IBM) |
| 09:50 – 10:55 | Breakout sessions (4 rooms, 8 sessions) |
| 10:55 – 11:20 | Break |
| 11:20 – 12:25 | Breakout sessions (4 rooms, 8 sessions) |
| 12:25 – 13:15 | Lunch, meet the Sponsors and networking |
| 13:15 – 15:05 | Breakout sessions (4 rooms, 12 sessions) |
| 15:05 – 15:20 | Break |
| 15:20 – 15:55 | Breakout sessions (4 rooms, 4 sessions) |
| 15:55 – 16:40 | Pardon the Interruption (panel session) |
| 16:45 – 17:30 | Keynote: The Future of Work – Towards the Networked Enterprise (Luis Suarez, elsua S.L.) |
| 17:30 – 17:45 | Closing General Session |
The idea is that those travelling from further afield can arrive on the Monday morning for a social lunch before the event formally kicks off at 14:00.
For attendees that are more local, there is a jumpstart session in the local language on the Monday morning, providing an introduction to Social Business for those that are new to this enhanced way of working.
We conclude the first day’s agenda with Speed Sponsoring and then an exclusive evening reception for all attendees (more details to come very soon!).
We are honoured to have four tremendous keynote speakers (Luis Benitez, HP Dalen, Chris Crummey and Luis Suarez) on the agenda spread over the two days – we’ll be highlighting each of their topics over the next few weeks.
On Tuesday, we kick off with Chris’ keynote, then go into a pretty intensive set of breakout sessions.
As before, the majority of the sessions at Social Connections VI will be just 30 minutes long, so we put the onus on our speakers to be fast-paced, concise, focused and most of all, exciting! Why 30 minutes? The team love the TED-style of short sessions delivered by passionate and opinionated experts – we think it makes for a more interesting event. With 8 breakout slots on the agenda, the shorter sessions also give each attendee a change to pick and chose a mix of sessions that works for them – we have tracks that cover management, case studies, administration and development so there should be something for everyone.
The day concludes at 17:45 so again, those travelling can hopefully get home on the Tuesday evening if they wish. Of course, if anyone wants to make the event part of a longer, more relaxed stay in Prague, we won’t be surprised at all! In fact, we have a special Social Connections ‘Tag It On‘ workshop taking place on Wednesday 18th June at the same venue. Look out for more news later today…
For the first time, we have a full online agenda for this event allowing each attendee to create their own customised schedule which can be exported to their calendar. It has a mobile UI option and a printable view, as well as listing all our speakers too.
So, two (or more) days in beautiful Prague, over 40 great sessions, brilliant IBM and community speakers, many IBM Champions, great opportunities for networking and social engagement, and much more besides. Social Connections VI will be a super event, and thanks to our sponsors, it will be absolutely free to attend!
What are you waiting for? Register now!
