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Latest news from the Let’sConnect user group

14/042014

Social Connections VI agenda announced!

News agenda, event, ibmcnx, schedule, soccnx by Wannes Rams

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:

Monday 16th June:

	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

Tuesday 17th June:

	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!

08/042014

Social Connections VI: Five reasons to attend

News connections, prague, soccnx, socialconnections by Wannes Rams

Social Connections VI is less than 70 days away and I’m personally getting very excited for the conference. I’ve got June 16th and 17th circled on my calendar in bright red!

People have asked me “What is Social Connections?” and “Why should I attend?”; so I wanted to share five of my top reasons why I’m attending Social Connections VI. As an IBM Champion and being on the Social Connections team, some might say I’m a little biased…but, don’t forget I’m also an IBM Customer!

Sponsors – How cool is it that this conference is completely FREE to attend? Yeah, that’s pretty cool…thanks a lot to our sponsors for that; but that’s not the only reason that I feel having our sponsors at the event is a benefit. I love that I can sit and talk directly with these experts who have developed solutions for IBM Connections. These discussions are not a sale pitch. They get me thinking out of the box about what’s possible with my IBM Connections deployment and how to make my life supporting IBM Connections easier.
Speakers – Wow. In the past, Social Connections has had some great speakers. No offense to the excellent people who have spoken previously, but this year is shaping up to be, hands down, the best list of speakers we have ever had. Seriously awesome. And with the more intimate atmosphere of Social Connections, all of these speakers are available and willing to talk to you after their sessions. Or if you missed a session because you were attending another you can always catch the speaker during a break or the evening reception to discuss.
Content – Professional, passionate presentations and discussions that tell the story of real world experiences with IBM Connections. Solutions to the problems you are facing right now in your own organizations. Ideas that make your IBM Connections deployment better, that can increase adoption and give your organization a higher ROI with the tool. What else could you ask for? I can’t think of much more. (The agenda is almost complete and will be published soon!)
Attendees – You will have the opportunity to network with with other experienced IBM Connections users and leaders in the social business world. The best part is that this goes beyond the engaging discussions you have at the conference. You will leave the event with relationships and the ability to continue the discussion. Having a network to reach out to and bounce ideas off months after the conference has been one of the biggest benefits of my previous attendance of Social Connections.
Location – Let’s face it…even if you are local to the Czech Republic, who doesn’t want any excuse to travel to Prague?! Prague is listed on countless “Top 10 cities to visit in Europe” lists. If the pictures and the write ups do it half the justice, we really are in for a treat. Maximize your travel investment and come early on the weekend or stay a couple days after. I know I’m hoping I can arrange a little bit of tourist time.

I really hope to see you at Social Connections VI on June 16th & 17th! It’s going to be a great event (as always)!

Click here to register!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly:

on Twitter – @oneillbp311
on LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com/in/oneillbp311

Or start a public discussion:

LinkedIn Group – Social Connections – The IBM Connections User Group
Facebook Group – Social Connections – The IBM Connections User Group
Google+ Community – IBM Connections Professionals & Power Users

04/042014

Sponsor Highlight: Infoware

News infoware, prague, soccnx, socialconnections, sponsors by Wannes Rams

During the lead up to the Social Connections VI event in Prague in June, the team will be highlighting each of our valued sponsors in turn. We are delighted to have their support – without it we really couldn’t deliver this event and offer the completely no-fee attendance that we do.

We are happy to announce our next sponsor. Back again for another year of sponsoring Social Connections and this year as a Gold sponsor: Infoware Solutions

Infoware – your Social Business Knowledge Partner

Infoware is one of the largest IBM Premier Business Partner in Scandinavia with full focus on IBM Social Business. With good understanding of their customers’ challenges and expertise Social Business, they develop successful products that make IBM platforms more efficient. Their experiences include content and user management, as well as social platforms for collaboration and knowledge sharing. Today, they have gathered all of their company experience in implementing and managing IBM Connections, and developed a revolutionary tool for easy and powerful management of content and user access.

Infoware works long term with large organizations, where social strategies vary widely. Together with their clients, they are navigating through organizational and cultural challenges. Thanks to the reduced distances in the organizations, clients can then cost-effectively increase both knowledge sharing, productivity and innovation.

We bring business value in Social Business!

DomainPatrol Social – stay social

Do not glue your business content to the bookshelves
Let your organization evolve with your shared knowledge
Reorganize your IBM Connections content in a snap.

As you may know, DomainPatrol Social is the powerful tool to move and merge content or users in an IBM Connections environment.

What does it do?

DomainPatrol Social can move individual entries or whole Blogs, Communities, Wikis, Forums, Activities to and from Communities.

You can also merge content from Wikis, Blogs or Forums and even move or merge whole Communities. Additionally you can administer User Access and Roles in a convenient way. Solve highly complex administration tasks in a simple UI.

Why do I need it?

Ease the administration for your IBM Connections environment forever; perform complicated tasks in a snap.

DomainPatrol Social shapes your social business platform into an attractive arena that grows with your organization. DomainPatrol Social makes the users trust IBM Connections with their time and documents. Clean up the IBM Connections for less support, issues and problems during upgrades.

Vist Infoware’s website: www.infoware.com

Try DomainPatrol Social for free: online.domainpatrolsocial.com

03/042014

Sponsor Highlight: FRITZ & MACZIOL

News fritz macziol, prague, soccnx, socialconnections, sponsors by Wannes Rams

We are very excited to announce our Budweiser-level sponsor for this event and the sponsor of our speakers and sponsors reception: FRITZ & MACZIOL

Since its first release in 2007, FRITZ & MACZIOL believed and has heavily invested in IBM Connections and is one of the biggest providers of services related to Connections in Germany.

Besides implementation of the product they offer consultancy services and add-on products to IBM Connections.

Their senior engineers have deep experiences in implementing and optimizing the product on various platforms. High availability infrastructures including fail-over solutions for all components including DB/2 database and file server back end are used by many of their customers. Some of their experts also contributed add-on scripting and authentication solutions to the community like Christoph Stoettner (IBM champion) and Andreas Artner (AdminCamp Germany). They also offer administration courses for IBM Connections administrators and development courses for web developers e.g. using the Social Business toolkit (SBT).

FRITZ & MACZIOL’s business consulting team is offering services and consulting around getting started into the new ways of working with IBM Connections. They are offering a complete model for introducing Connections including a technology and governance framework, change management methods, guidelines, training and education. They are specialized in the entire portfolio of IBM software and also provide integration of Connections with WebSphere Portal, WCM, BPM and we are also experienced in the application of business analytics techniques based on Watson to IBM Connections.

In addition during the last years, FRITZ & MACZIOL have also created a bunch of ready-to-use add-ons and products for IBM Connections:

C3 – Contacts, Connect, and Communities: “Knowledge Accelerator” is an add-on to IBM Connections that provides a self-service login module, a password change add-on, a “terms and conditions” application and additional features like an expert finder. It is installed upon IBM Connections to improve the experience and usability of the product.

Migration of IBM Quickr to IBM Connections: Since software withdrawal announcement of IBM Quickr in mid of 2013 customers are able to use IBM Connections Content Manager (CCM) as replacement for formerly used Quickr team places. FRITZ & MACZIOL are offering services around consulting and migrating data/information from IBM Quickr to IBM Connections Content Manager by their certified IBM software experts.

Big Data meets IBM Connections: The benefits of IBM Connections for a company are more than establishing a set of Social Business tools to improve communication and collaboration between people. If Connections is used as intended, i.e. as an open platform for sharing information and data, discussions, insights, ideas, opinions etc., it becomes a treasure of data containing a lot of knowledge about the company itself. FRITZ & MACZIOL are offering a ready-to-use solution by applying methods of business analytics and big data to IBM Connections data. They are using IBM Watson, Hadoop & Co. to bring additional value to your Connections investment.

Soccer World Cup app – Brazil 2014: FRITZ & MACZIOL has a ready-to-use World Cup app based on web standards that can be integrated into IBM Connections for motivation and gamification. A review of research on gamification shows that most studies on gamification find positive effects from gamification. This app is fully integrated into the Connections user experience and can be used e.g. inside a community.

The FRITZ & MACZIOL group is part of the Royal Imtech N.V., an internationally acting Dutch company group, being leading in the areas of mechanical and electrical engineering and ICT. The ICT Imtech division covers the entire ICT chain including software and hardware, business intelligence, control technology, platform automation, data and telecommunications, data modelling, data centres, ICT infrastructures, internet and intranet applications, managed IT services, and communication technology and other.

Visit FRITZ & MACZIOL’s website: http://www.fum.de

28/032014

Last Call for Social Connections VI Abstracts

News abstracts, event, prague, soccnx, socialconnections by Wannes Rams

Planning has kicked into high gear for our sixth event and many of the pieces are falling into place nicely. We are really excited with the location we’ve selected in the heart of Prague. We already have over 100 people registered for the event.

The first round of abstracts have been submitted and we have a lot of great speakers and sessions to pick from to fill the agenda. With this years event expanding to one and a half days, we have a little extra room for more sessions and we wanted to put out one last call for abstracts. And, don’t forget, Social Connections is a user group event for IBM Connections. It’s not all just about known and established speakers, we love to encourage new and upcoming speakers to contribute. To gain an impression of our past agenda, take a look at our agenda for Social Connections V in Zurich last June.

Each session slot is 30 minutes and should be given in English. Some exceptions will be made this year for sessions being presented in Czech. We will have limited interpretations services available at the event.

The two categories for which we are looking to fill the last few slots are:

Administration & Infrastructure: How to do it? What do you need to set up and maintain a good IBM Connections environment? Installation, setting-up, security, integration and anything else that you need to know to administrate a stable environment.
Development: How do you develop for IBM Connections? Building plug-ins, widgets or doing customizations and integration. Anything related to extending the IBM Connections platform.

If you have an exciting story to tell or a unique process to show, don’t hesitate to submit an abstract! The deadline for submitting an abstract is 30th March 2014. We look forward to hearing from you!

07/032014

Sponsor Highlight: Kudos Badges

News isw, prague, soccnx, socialconnections, sponsors by Wannes Rams

So first out of the blocks, we have the Gold-level sponsor that is travelling over 10,000 miles from Australia to be at the event…

Kudos Suite for IBM Connections by ISW

The Kudos Suite is designed to encourage IBM Connections users to leverage the full benefits of a social enterprise. Kudos rewards user adoption, measures performance and increases productivity.

Kudos can transform and accelerate organisations usage of IBM Connections by encouraging users to leverage the full capability of social enterprise as well as increasing their productivity thru clever design.

Kudos Badges for IBM Connections is a flexible gamification engine for IBM Connections. By providing achievements and rewards (Kudos Badges), rank and leaderboards (Kudos Rank), simple next steps (Kudos Progress), and missions (Kudos Missions), organisations can dramatically improve their user engagement and adoption of IBM Connections.

Kudos Awards & Kudos Thanks have been designed to enable Social Recognition of great work amongst your employees and customers. Creating a positive culture is essential in todays workplace. When employees are recognised for their achievements it can have the effect of multiplying the positive benefits of the work they have performed across the organisation.

Kudos Analytics is a light weight analytics and reporting tool focused on enabling organisations to understand what your usage patterns are. Analytics provide insight into active Connections usage, utilisation, and which features are being leveraged well or not. Providing insights for Administrator, Community Managers, and Personal Analytics, Kudos enables organisations to optimise and target adoption strategies to the areas that need extra attention.

Kudos Boards transforms Activities within IBM Connections into a visually manageable format. Leveraging the tried and true method known as Kanban, Kudos Boards features the ability to filter by person, priority or colour, and drag and drop your Tasks as activities progress or circumstances change.

The Kudos Badges solution has won IBM awards, and is a really popular ‘reward and recognition’ solution for IBM Connections. As ISW broaden the Kudos portfolio to include analytics and task management solutions, the Social Connections team are delighted to again welcome Adam Brown and the ISW team to the event.

If you’d like to learn more about Kudos Badges, see a demo and chat to the team behind the product, then register for Social Connections VI today!

13/022014

Social Connections VI venue and dates announced! Register now!

News prague, soccnx, socialconnections, vi by Wannes Rams

London, Cardiff, Dublin, Amsterdam, Zürich…

Social Connections has certainly spread its wings over the past 2.5 years… So, where next for the IBM Connections and Social Business user group?

Here’s some clues:

Yes, that’s right, Social Connections is headed for the beautiful and historic city of Prague in the Czech Republic!

What’s more, we’ll be bigger and better than ever… It will be our first ever two-day event, starting at 12pm on Monday 16th June and concluding our formal agenda at 6pm on Tuesday 17th June. This schedule is designed to allow those short of time to travel in on the Monday morning and out on the Tuesday evening if required. However, if one has more time to spare, then it would be easy to tack on a leisurely weekend stay too.

What won’t change is that we’ll be making sure that ‘Social’ is not just a buzzword, but is instead at the heart of all that we do. Once again, we’ll have a very special complementary reception for all attendees (this time on the Monday night), splendid catering, plenty of Czech beer on tap (including the original Budweiser!), speed-sponsoring and much more. The team is planning some exciting new networking opportunities too.

However, there will also be some awesome business and technical content too – this is a Social Business conference after all! The extra day means that we’ll have a series of fantastic keynotes and main tent sessions on the Monday afternoon, and then a full day’s multi-track agenda on Tuesday – featuring at least three rooms/tracks for business, technical and case study sessions. As usual, we want to keep the content varied and the energy high, so most sessions will be 30 minutes in length giving plenty of opportunity for great speakers to enthral you with their knowledge, passion and expertise.

So where in Prague will this take place? Out of town at some bland and faceless conference centre? No, we’ll be right in the historic old town area on the stunning Wenceslas Square plaza, at the Hotel Ambassador Zlata Husa, with the main sessions being held in the gorgeous art nouveau Congress Hall:

It promises to be a truly amazing event, even if we do say so ourselves…

The cost to attend? €1,000? €500? No, due to the incredible support of our sponsors, the event will be free to attend! You just need to get yourself to Prague.

Space is limited, so you will want to register ASAP.

We are looking for additional sponsors and also for speakers.

So if you would like to submit an abstract for the event, please do so ASAP – the submission process closes on 30th March, with those sessions submitted before the end of February given best chance of being selected. We are particularly keen to see abstracts from first-time speakers, case studies from customers and thought-leading topics from analysts. However, all Social Business and IBM Connections-related abstracts will be considered!

As you can probably tell, the team are hugely excited to be announcing this event! We can’t wait to be in Prague, and hope that you’ll join us there too…

21/012014

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News soccnx by Wannes Rams

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21/012014

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News soccnx by Wannes Rams

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi sagittis, sem quis lacinia faucibus, orci ipsum gravida tortor, vel interdum mi sapien ut justo.