We are very happy to finally open the registration for Social Connections 13 in Philadelphia!
Don’t wait too long. Our Early Bird tickets are very limited! Please register using the form below or by following this link.
Are you thinking about speaking at Social Connections? Our call for abstracts already started. You are welcome to submit your session proposal.
Also, don’t miss to visit our venue page to check out our amazing venue as well as useful information around Philly.
Just when you thought you could start relaxing before the Christmas Holidays we would like to have your attention for a little bit with an important piece of information.
The Social Connections team is today announcing our next stop on our never ending world tour, where we bring people who have collaboration close to their hearts together.
This time we are heading for the East Coast USA, April 26-27, 2018!
The reason why we haven’t pinned down a specific city yet is that we are looking at more than one option. And the reason for that is that there is so many good places to chose from, which makes the task quite pleasant.
So while we are investigating and choosing the exact right city and venue, book April 26-27 2018 in your calendar for 2 days of networking, collaboration, learning new things from IBM, doing business, learning new trends within collaboration and communication, learning technical skills, meeting old and new friends and more.
We also might want to tell you that we have a few new tricks up our sleeve, which we think you will like.
Stay tuned for more information!
Happy Holidays from the Social Connections team
Finding a venue for our Gala night is one of the most fun tasks when planning the Social Connections conference.
We all know our attendees look forward to the days with sessions, learning, networking and fun. We also know that our attendees almost as much look forward to our Gala night where they can wind down/wind up (whatever they prefer) after a day of conferencing with their peers, friends, colleagues, customers and partners.
Our Gala nights are often positively talked about long after the conference, which we are very happy for. So we always take time to find that place where we think we can achieve that special Social Connections Gala vibe we all like so much.
This time we found the oldest cellar vault in Vienna. Arrive hungry! The chefs here concentrate on traditional and fresh food, often from local producers.
The Melker Stiftskeller is part of the Melkerhof in Vienna’s Schottengasse 3 in the first district. A certificate from 1629 proves that there was a wine-cellar connected with the Melkerhof already at that time. The Melker Stiftskellers fine cuisine developed out of this wine-cellar.
In addition to the good food there will be some extra fun we can’t reveal yet.
So join us for an evening of good food and lots of laughter in a historic environment!
Melker Stiftskeller is located in Schottengasse 3, A-1010 Wien and is a 10 minute walk from our conference venue.
Register for Social Connections here! Make sure you secure your spot to our fabulous gala night!
Welcome
A palace! Nothing will suit us better than a palace when we return to Europe for our 12th conference. Welcome to Social Connections 12 in Vienna and Palais Pallavicini.
The beautiful city of Vienna is awaiting us with its stunning architecture, good restaurants, chocolate cakes, castles, horses and den schönen blauen Donau.
The venue we have chosen is one of the most stunning ones so far. The fabulous Palais pallavicini which foundation was laid in 1582. Home of a monastery, a count and now the aristocratic Italian family Pallavicini.
Close by you will find hotels, shops, restaurants and public transport. Right in the heart of Vienna.
Find out more about Social Connections 12 in Vienna here!
Register here! Our 2 day release party has begun. 10 tickets for only 99 euro a piece!
First of all a big THANK YOU to all of you who partiticipated at Social Connections in Chicago in any way.
Without you we couldn’t do an it!
We had 2 great days in Chicago and what a city! Friendly and welcoming people, good food and a never-ending sunshine. I’m sure that many of us who were there definitely have Chicago on our list of vacation cities.
What makes Social Connections so great is just that; that we arrange our conference in a new city and country each time. That way we all get to extend our network and meet both old acquaintances and make new ones every time. New IBMers, new business partners and new customers. Lots of people to get to know and learn from and new business opportunities for our sponsors.
Great thing no. 1
Our sponsors. We are truly amazed at how innovative you are. You offer so many interesting and smart solutions and you showcase so much expertise and all it is available to all IBM’s customers. We are especially happy for our returning sponsors, but also our new sponsor friends which makes us equally happy.
Great things no. 2
Our speakers. You are all great! The knowledge, the expertise, the diversity and depth of your sessions is amazing! We had sessions about IBM Connections Pink, Docker, sponsors showing their solutions and the all popular sessions on real life customer stories.
Great things no. 3
Everyone who attended! You are the best! You came from near and far. Many locals from Chicago and some of you came all the way from the other side of the globe! That mix is hard to beat! Here are some statistics. We were 167 attendees which feels like good number in the US where we are the new kid on the block. We also managed to get really great and big American customers there both attending and speaking. We were 70 companies represented which also are happy with. And 14 countries.
Great thing no. 4
Evening events! As some of you know we take pride in doing the full circle of networking by putting a lot of effort in finding a cool event for our gala reception to which all attendees are invited. In Toronto we for example visited Hockey Hall of Fame and in Stuttgart, Germany were visited Sensapolis which is an indoor playground and restaurant combined.
This time we held the reception at the very cool table tennis club called AceBounce. That was if I can say awesome. It was so fun to see everyone playing matches with 2 or even 6 people in. All combined with really good food.
So by this the team of Social Connections, also called ‘the Midnight Squad’ as we mostly do our work around midnight, would like to thank you all again a fantastic 2 days in Chicago!
Last but not least
Social Connections 12 comes to Austria on October 16-17! We are now heading back to Europe and our fall event and the planning is already in full swing! Make sure you are in the lookout for more detailed updates from us. Subscribe to our newsletter here, follow us on Twitter here, on Facebook here, join our LinkedIn group here, our blog here.
We hope you all can be there!
Contact us if you are interested in being a speaker, sponsor or attendee!
We know that a perfect way to end the first day our conference is a fabulous Gala evening together with old and new friends! Other ingredients should include good food, refreshing beverages and something extra fun. And this is the Chicago edition!
Welcome to a fun and playful evening at the table tennis club Ace Bounce – the home of PING PONG.
Ace Bounce offers an immense subterranean playground. Filled with ping pong tables each with their own party going. All kept in perpetual motion by DJs. And topped off with generous servings of food and beverages by award winning chefs & mixologists. Perfect for our conference!
We are sure you will enjoy a night with a game of table tennis and a bite to eat with your customer, your IBMer or that other business partner!
Register for Social Connections here and then check your email for the registration link to this evening event! Make sure you secure your spot to our fabulous gala night! 1 ticket per attendee.
So come and play with us! The Social Connections team is in hard training! 🙂
The Social Connections team is proud to announce that IBM will be hosting an IBM Connections Next Developer Briefing the day before our event.
The briefing will take place at the IBM building on 71 South Wacker Drive in Chicago, IL 60606 on Wednesday May 31st. It will start at 9 am and will end at 5 pm. Join Alan Hamilton and the other IBM speakers for a full day of exciting new technology.
Join us for this exciting preview of some of the technologies and techniques we are using to build the next generation of IBM Connections. This is a technical briefing to allow customers and business partners to understand how many of the components and technologies fit together for “Connections Pink”.
Presented by the IBM developers themselves, this is an ideal opportunity to get ahead of the curve and be ready to experience what Connections Pink will deliver. It is also the ideal primer for you to implement IBM Connections 6 with Orient Me – which is available now.
Open to customers and IBM Business Partners.
Places are limited so register here
Deployment and configuration of Connections 6.0 including Orient.Me
Muse Middleware Proxy – Customisation of Connections using Muse
Have you seen our Mobile app? Check it out here
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.
After a frantic couple of weeks, the searching, comparing, discussing and negotiating is over!
We have made the choice, signed the contract so it is official – It’s gonna be Summit West that will host Social Connections 11 in Chicago.
The event will take place June 1 & 2 in this amazing downtown location!
The venue we have chosen for our 11th event is for sure gonna rock. It is called Summit Chicago and is located in the heart of Chicago with plenty of hotels nearby. Those of you who joined us in Toronto will recognise the high quality, the professional staff and the fantastic location!
Want to find out more about the location – please follow this link http://www.summitchicago.com/
We are extremely excited that we can finally kick off things and start finding speakers, sponsors, event venues for our evening events.
In the meanwhile we have opened call for abstracts and registrations.
For our sponsors, the ones that make this event happen, see the sponsor page for our packages
Join us for 2 days of learning, networking and fun. We will be running tracks spread over 3 separate rooms on a variation of topics. Of course we will talk about IBM Connections, both cloud and on premise and we will provide you with the latest news on 6.0 and Connections Pink. Apart from that, we have decided to add some more content next to IBM Connections. We will be having a limited number of sessions on Watson Workspace and Analytics.
We have created a special IBM Connect rate for the first 20 people who register before the end of IBM Connect. This rate will automatically expire after IBM Connect, so make sure you register fast. $99 for this conference is not even a bargain, it’s nearly a free giveaway!!
We hope to see you all in Chicago for a great event.
The Social Connections team
(Maria, Simon, Wannes, Lars, Martin, Femke, Doug, Christoph, Jan)
While we are working hard on planning Social Connections 11 in Chicago we want to do a shout out to another great conference: IBM Connect in San Francisco!
The Social Connections team have four speakers at IBM Connect delivering 5 sessions, details below, so we’re pretty excited!
IBM Connect 2017 promises to be an interesting event. Firstly, it is in a new city and conference venue, the Moscone Centre, San Francisco, which guarantees something new and refreshing. Secondly, with new Watson based cognitive functionality within the IBM Collaborative solutions, there’s exciting new content for IT professionals, developers and business leaders giving a great opportunity to teach, learn and share how they will deliver a new way to work using IBM Watson and the other collaboration solutions from IBM.
We look forward to networking with all our friends and also learning from thought leaders, researchers, gurus, Business Partners and experts who are driving results and transforming organisations, both large and small, around the world.
With over 200 sessions being delivered over 3 days it’s going to be difficult to choose which season to attend when we’re not delivering our own. Nothing beats hearing real-world insights from industry-leading companies, learning about the technologies, APIs, platforms and services that boost your existing solutions, extend productivity and deliver new business results.
IBM promises these goodies:
As discussed, we’re proud to have Social Connections team members contributing to IBM Connect. We look forward to welcoming you at one of to our sessions!
We hope to see you at IBM Connect 2017!
