News

Latest news from the Let’sConnect user group

06/082015

Three months to go!

Hello everyone,

August is here, people are returning to work and hopefully starting to think about which IBM Connections user group they are going to attend this fall/winter.

Well, since you are here, you already know the answer!

You should of course register for Social Connections 9, right now!

When Stuart posted on the organisation team’s chat yesterday that we are only three months out, I think we all woke up a bit and realized it’s time to double down, in order to guarantee you an event to remember!

Of course, there won’t be an event without all of you attending, socializing, spreading your wisdom or whatever else might be your aim for these two days in Germany. Whatever your reason is, you are more than welcome!

I know I promised to update you on keynotes and so on, we are very very close, so please be patient. We are working on something great, we have no doubt!

If you’d like to speak at the event, then please do submit an abstract before the call closes at the end of the month. We’d love to hear your ideas!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to anyone on the team. We are always happy to help out or assist you in any way.

Also, as usual, please engage on Facebook, LinkedIn or on Twitter!

The countdown has begun, we hope to see you all in Germany!

Cheers!

20/072015

Sponsorship opportunities available for #SOCCNX 9

News soccnx, sponsors by Simon Vaughan

The clock is ticking and the countdown has begun for the IBM Connections event of 2015 – Social Connections 9 in Stuggart – Thursday November 5th and Friday November 6th 2015.

With a venue that can hold 250 people, this promises to be the largest event that we have held. With keynote speakers from IBM, Business partners, IBM Champions and most importantly of all – Customers, this is the event that you need to attend to learn from others and find out what is coming to the IBM Connections platform in 2016.

As for previous events, sponsorship opportunities are available and it is due to the contributions from our sponsors that the event is such a success.

From past events we have received great feedback from our sponsors. Below are some examples:

‘What an event, the number of people we met far exceeded our expectations. We will certainly be at the next event!’

‘It was great to meet so many Connection customers and the interest in our product was amazing. It is the first time we have sponsored this event and we will be at the next event!’

‘Speed sponsoring was great! The chance to showcase our new product to both IBM and IBM Connections customers was really worthwhile.’

‘Thank you Social Connections team! The team responded to all our questions in the run up to the event and ensured that we received maximum return from our sponsorship. We will be at the next event!’

We have recently announced the sponsorship packages for the next event. For the first time we are offering a ‘Early bird offer (sign up and pay by August 31st to get a 10% discount) and a discount for those organisations who have sponsored this event in the past.

Are you a Business partner who has a solution to offer in the Connections space – If so, what are you waiting for?

Interested in sponsoring the next event?

Detail of the packages can be found here or get in touch with one of the team by sending in an enquiry to info@socialconnections.info and ask us about our sponsorship packages (before they are all gone!).

20/072015

Summer is here, time to plan for November!

News nine soccnx germany stuttgart by Lars Samuelsson

Hi everyone,

Greetings from the site of Social Connections VII.

The weather is about the same now as it was back in November, cold, gray and rainy. As a light in the dark, we are sure up and running towards the ninth installment of the lovely circus that is Social Connections.

Just in the last few weeks, we have issued both a call for abstract and a call for sponsors.

The abstracts have started to come in, and we already have our first sponsor lined up. Now we wanna disturb your hopefully lovely summer holiday by asking you to do the same.

Send in your abstract! We would love to hear from all of you, be it thoughts around social business, IBM Connections in particular, the cloudy parts of the IT world or anything else that comes to mind?

If you have ideas, just send them in, we’d love to hear from all of you. Beeing a first time speaker in Boston, it’s a big rush to get up there if you haven’t before. Take a chance and enjoy yourself, it’s an awesome experience.

Also, in that sense, if you are a first time speaker, and feeling a bit shy on getting up in front of people.. There isn’t a crowd in the world to be better to do it in front of, trust me.

Sponsors? As usual, we can’t do this without you. You are the backbone of this whole thing, otherwise it would just be a gang of people sitting in various parts of the world, talking about doing something. You guys have always been awesome, and those of you who decides to back us this time around as well, we’ll love you just a little bit extra much! So head over to the sponsors page and sign up!

We promise to share more details on keynotes and such in a short while, working hard on it to offer you guys something really great this time again. Stay tuned for that!

And for those of you beeing on a holiday with me just popping in, have a great vacation, and remember to check back as soon as you’re finished tanning on the beach!

Cheers

/Lars for the #soccnx team

keep-calm-and-submit-your-abstract-featured

30/062015

Calling for abstracts – submit yours now!

News abstracts, sessions, soccnx9 by Martin Jinoch

Hi everyone!

We have a call for abstracts running for Social Connections 9 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Do you have something super awesome that you want to tell the world about IBM Connections, or Social Business as a concept? Send in an abstract now. We would love to have you do your presentation. This time around we have some different time slots to choose from. You can go 15, 30 or even up to 60 minutes if you got something extra inspiring for everyone to hear and see!

Haven’t got anything yet?

Still plenty of time left. We will close submissions on the 31st of August.

If you’re asking what’s in it for me? You’ll of course get all the awesome recognition and kudos from your peers, plus the opportunity to take part in our ‘Ask the Experts’ panel, you’ll receive complimentary admission to the event including the gala reception and be offered an invite to our exclusive VIP reception.

And for those that might be too shy to talk. Register for Social Connections 9 now, and we’ll see all of you in Stuttgart on 5th and 6th of November 2015!

Cheers!

30/062015

Calling for abstracts – submit yours now!

News abstracts, sessions, soccnx by Martin Jinoch

Hi everyone!

We have a call for abstracts running for Social Connections 9 in Stuttgart, Germany.

Haven’t got anything yet?

Still plenty of time left. We will close submissions on the 1th of September.

And for those that might be too shy to talk. Register for Social Connections 9 now, and we’ll see all of you in Stuttgart on 5th and 6th of November 2015!

Cheers!

17/042015

Social Connections 8 – what a first day!

News by Wannes Rams

It’s been an amazing first day at Social Connections 8.

Awesome atmosphere, captivating keynotes, sensational speakers, innovative ideas shared, satisfied sponsors, great speedgeeking, and to cap it all off, a night at the museum!

What does day 2 bring? A keynote from Ed Brill, another 30 or so breakout sessions including our new TED-style spotlight track, a chance to grill the assembled IBMers at the ‘Ask IBM’ session, and even unconference sessions to allow more informal discussion and debate. It promises to be another exciting Social Connections day!

See all the photos below or at our gallery, or follow along at Twitter.

[twinesocial app=”soccnx” collection=”113575″ theme=”display-wall” pagesize=”50″ scrolloptions=”autoload”]

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!

07/042015

Sponsor Highlight: AppFusions

News by Wannes Rams

As we are approaching April 16, the date for the first day of the Social Connections conference, we will be highlighting all our sponsors. This event could not happen without their support and we are delighted to have them on board as each one plays a really important role in helping to fund the event but also as a member of our community.

So we present you one of our sponsors for Social Connections, Bronze sponsor for Boston: AppFusions

AppFusions is a packaged systems’ integration company focused on saying “Yes!” to your most common integration challenges between the business systems you use the most. AppFusions’ solutions are use-case / pain-point driven – solving logical yet challenging integration problems, with eliminated hassle.

Due to AppFusions’ extended partnership and technology relationships with some of the most prolific collaboration and workflow platform vendors in the industry, such as IBM, Microsoft, Dropbox, Google, Jive, Atlassian, Box, Lingotek, Egnyte, Alfresco, and more, AppFusions’ solutions bridge and scale to your Enterprise needs. Our 50+ solutions (and growing) include everything for IT integration and deployment success: rich native user interfaces to engage users more, seamless and secure authentication hurdles solved, smooth logical data transactions to save you time, and sustained platform version support as you grow.

With AppFusions, gone are the days of long RFP processes, lengthy requirements’ definition phases, long procurement approval cycles, delayed or deferred PoC windows. Instead, AppFusions’ solutions are available and deployed within days, and often hours. Our solutions are ready to go: quick to deploy yourself (or with light support if needed) – for trial, and quick to appease – to buy.

With AppFusions, you succeed faster, better, smoother. Because that’s the way it should be.

For more details, visit www.appfusions.com.