zurich

25/042016

Sponsor Spotlight: Kudos

News boston, prague, soccnx, sponsors, stockholm, switzerland, toronto, zurich by Lars Samuelsson

So, Social Connections 10 is approaching at breakneck speed and we’re busy preparing for the event on every free minute we can find.

Today we want to slow things down just a little bit to put the spotlight of one of our core sponsors, they have been with us for many events, for which we are truly grateful.

Our ISW friends from down under brings you Kudos!

Check out http://www.kudosbadges.com for a look at a truly great product that extends IBM Connections to new levels!

Please take your time to see these guys at their booth and listen to what they offer, it’s great.

20/092013

Social Connections VI – the next chapter…

News connections, event, norway, soccnx, social, sweden, zurich by Wannes Rams

Social Connections V was a blast!

Beautiful city (Zurich), great turnout (180), fabulous sessions (26), wonderful sponsors (10) and much much more besides…

We still have lots of great content and photos to share from the event, so look out for those over the next few weeks as the team recover from their post-event stresses and strains and plan for the next event.

Next event?!

Yep, you heard it right… We’ll be back for yet another fantastic Social Business and IBM Connections user group very soon.

When?

After five events in just under two years (it seems crazy just saying that), the team has taken a well earned break and is now planning for the next event to take place in April 2014.

This has given us an extra four months or so to pull together the details for an even bigger and better event next time. This will ideally allow us to grow the agenda into a multi-day event and thus give everyone involved even better bang for their buck (or in the case of attendees, even better value for their free registration fee)!

Where?

The million dollar question!

After events in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland, there has been talk of heading to locations in Europe or even to the USA. The team are keeping all options open for the future, but after much consideration, have decided that the immediate plans are to continue to grow and sustain our wonderful European community.

We are therefore looking for an event location in Sweden or Norway for Social Connections VI. Finding a classy location with good travel links that can accommodate up to 250 attendees, can host 3 or 4 sessions simultaneously and have space for sponsors and networking is not as easy as it may seem, particularly for a self-funded user group!

Therefore, we are definitely open to suggestions! We have already had some great ideas flow in over Twitter, but if you know of a great location that we might be able to use for Social Connections VI, please do let us know. Likewise, if your organisation would be interested in helping us to organise the event in your neighbourhood then we would love to hear from you!

Who?

As you may be aware, Social Connections is run by a team of experienced, passionate, knowledgeable but slightly mad volunteers! As attendees to previous events would hopefully attest, this group manages to put on large, well-organised events that would put many a professional events organisation to shame.

This event will see some significant changes in this team (more details later) so we are on the lookout for more willing folks to step forward to join the team, particularly those native to Scandinavia. We can promise lots of laughs, strong coffee, camaraderie, in-jokes and lengthy Skype chats. In return, there’ll be no pay, but you’ll get to be part of one of the best teams and events around! If you’re interested, get in touch by email or reach out to Stuart, Sharon or Simon over one of the many social networks.

What next?

Look out for more details on socialconnections.info, on Twitter and in the LinkedIn community. We hope to have some date and location details for you very soon.

03/062013

Social Connections V – Less than four weeks to go!

News connections, soccnx, social, zurich by Wannes Rams

We’re into the home straight! Social Connections V takes place at the end of this month, and it’s full steam ahead as the team pulls together the last of the logistics, prints banners and brochures, confirms bookings for buses and dinners, orders beer for the SpeedSponsoring and much more! Whilst we still have a few spaces available, registration is fast filling up, so if you’d like to attend this fantastic event in the beautiful city of Zurich, there really is no time like the present – register now!

Remember, thanks to our sponsors, it is absolutely free to attend…

With that in mind, we thought it was worth bringing you up to speed on some updates:

The full agenda has been published, along with event timings, sessions and speaker names
The event reception has been announced for all registered attendees, with a fabulous dinner arranged on edge of Lake Zurich (there are less than ten spaces available for the evening event, so if you haven’t registered yet, do so now!)
Local hotels are filling up fast. Our recommendations are the Novotel, Ibis, Ibis Budget, and 25 Hours. More details available on the event FAQ.
The ‘Doing Business with IBM Connections’ Masterclass with Michael Sampson workshop has been announced and is attracting great attention. This TagItOn session is a chargeable day’s event taking place at the same venue on the day before Social Connections V, allowing attendees to maximise the value they receive from their trip to Zurich. Michael’s new book on attaining personal productivity and business value from Connections has just shipped, and this masterclass will lead attendees through the core topics covered, including using the platform for managing meetings, holding discussions, running projects, making decisions and more. Of course, the greatest benefits of attending will likely be the opportunities for discussion and learning directly from Michael and others on the day

With this in mind, we have a fantastic opportunity for you…

At close of play this Friday we will draw one lucky person from our list of registered Social Connections V attendees to be awarded a complementary ticket to the masterclass (worth €449), and another 3 to receive 50% discounts (€224.50). All you need to do to be included is to be registered for the main Social Connections V event. Should the winners already be registered for the masterclass, we will of course honour their discounts and refund the difference.

So, if you’re like to attend the biggest and best IBM Connections event this summer, or to learn from one of the true gurus of social collaboration, you know what to do… Register now!

We’ll see you there!

03/042013

Curious about the Social Connections V sessions line-up? Here’s a sneak peek!

News soccnx, SoccnxV, Speakers, zurich by Wannes Rams

After announcing Heidi Ambler and Michael Sampson as our fantastic Keynote speakers for the IBM Connections user group event in Zurich on June 28th it’s time to lift just a little bit more of the covers of what you can expect this June. As abstract submission is still open we can’t disclose the full program yet but as the number of great sessions that have been entered is so big already we decided to give you a little sneak peek of some of them to wet your appetite

First of all, in the Business track we’ll have a session by Tim Clark from Collaboration Matters who’ll be discussing how to project manage an IBM Connections implementation by using examples from a real life implementation project

Project Managing a Connections Install

Deploying Connections is easy. 10 days of I.T. effort and then tell the users the url. Right?
Well, No. You are so far away from the truth it might actually be funny.
Let Tim take you through the Project Management (PM) of a Connections project from start to finish and show you all the gory stuff in the middle too.
He’ll explain why you need to PM a Connections project and suggest best practise stages for you too.
Experiences from real world PM from real world Connections install projects..

But if project management isn’t your thing then the development stream might be an option. Mikkel Heisterberg of Intravison will tell you all about the Activity stream and how to develop for it.

Developing for the Activity Stream

The future of business is social and the activity stream is the way events and messages are communicated in the social business. In this session you’ll learn all there is to know about the activity stream including exactly what it is and how to interact with it using your favorite development environment whether that be JavaScript, XPages, Java or even the plain vanilla HTTP based REST API. This session is for you if you want to start working the Activity Stream.

And if Administration is what makes you tick then check out the great sessions by Victor Toal from ToalSystems on managing your Connections install:

IBM Connections: So you have it installed – now what?

You have successfully installed IBM Connections in your environment – but now what comes next? Installation is one thing, but keeping your new environment up and running requires a different focus:
What are some of the regular actions you should be doing to proactively keep your environment running?
Where do you start looking when something looks wrong?
How do you fulfill some of the requests users now come to you with?
How do you correctly change configurations without breaking what you just built?
These questions and more are what we will explore during our conversation about IBM Connections.

Or the session by Gabriella Davis from Turtle Partnership on how to identify and solve problems once they arise.

Tools of the Problem Solver

In even the best built, most redundant and intensively supported environments – sometimes things go wrong. In this session we’ll look at how the IBM Connections administrator can work to diagnose problems through logs, database performance, maintenance and auto started services. We’ll also review how to gather the information IBM support will need to help you

As said, only a little sneak peek… more great sessions are yet to come when the full program will be announced in the first week of May!

So mark your calendar for June 28th in Zurich this summer and sign up. Don’t wait too long, seats are limited and going fast. This is one event you don’t want to miss!

08/032013

Social Connections V – Keynote speakers announced!

News connections, keynote, keynotes, soccnx, social, switzerland, zurich by Wannes Rams

The Social Connections organising committee are delighted to be in a position to announce the two (yes, two!) keynote speakers for our next event in Zurich, Switzerland to be held on Friday, 28th June 2013.

Opening the event will be the fantastic Heidi Ambler, Director of Social Computing at IBM, presenting her perspective on the latest and greatest news on IBM Connections and the new Connections Content Manager solution.

Heidi is a long-time Loti (joining the organisation in 1991), and has previously been product manager for Smartsuite, Notes, Workplace and Connections. Now Heidi is responsible for the product management team for IBM’s Social Business products, so has the challenge of managing such talents as Suzanne Livingston, Baan Slavens and Luis Benitez. We are honoured and delighted that Heidi will be making the trip over from the USA to take part in the event.

Closing the day will be someone who will have travelled even further to be with us, over 11,000 miles from New Zealand. Industry analyst and collaboration strategy guru Michael Sampson will be wrapping up the event with a bang, delivering a second keynote on how to take Social Business solutions and ensure they truly add value to individuals and teams in your organisation.

Michael’s passion is helping organisations to make collaboration work, when their employees have to work together effectively while separated by distance and time. Michael advises end-user organizations in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and the United States on making collaboration work.

And a very special bonus…

Given Michael is travelling so far to be with us, it would be madness not to make the most of his time in Europe. Therefore we are thrilled to announce our first Social Connections +1 event.

On the day preceding Social Connections V, Thursday 27th June, Michael will be delivering a special workshop for Social Connections attendees. Entitled ‘Doing Business with IBM Connections‘, Michael will be delivering a full day’s training on how to best use IBM Connections to solve your personal and organisational problems, to deliver enhanced productivity and to get the very best value from the investment you’ve made. Unlike Social Connections itself, it will be a paid event but we have no doubt that attending the workshop will pay for itself many times over! We’ll be announcing more details in the couple of weeks, but definitely keep the date free!

Call to action…

If you haven’t registered for Social Connections V yet, go do it now (see button below) It is shaping up to be the biggest and best Connections user group ever! We now have 9 amazing sponsors who are funding what will be an incredible day.

We are also looking for additional presentation abstracts for the event. If you are a seasoned presentation veteran or someone who has never stepped on stage before, we would love to hear from you. We plan to review the session abstracts on 1st May, so you have just a few weeks to get those sessions in!

Also, look out for more information on hotels and travel very soon… In the meantime, get registered!!

22/012013

Social Connections V goes Swiss!

News event, soccnx, switzerland, zurich by Wannes Rams

After much deliberation, we are delighted to announce the location for Social Connections V!!

The international and independent IBM Connections user group will be visiting beautiful Zurich, Switzerland on June 28th 2013!

IBM Switzerland has graciously offered us the use of their IBM Client Center and it already promises to be a busy day. Sponsors are being lined up as we speak and abstract submissions are open for speakers interested in speaking at this wonderful event. As at our previous events we will be offering three tracks (Management, Administration/Development, Case Studies) of 30 minute sessions to ensure there is something for everyone, regardless if you are a user, an administrator, a developer or a manager interested in Social Business.

As with all our events we are also planning on providing a full ‘social’ evening program so that people can continue the discussion they had during the day well into the night.

We are thrilled to organize our next Social Connections in the land of mountains, Swiss cheese and chocolates and we look forward to seeing you there!

To register for this event please visit our registration page here, or use the button below: