abstracts

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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.

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 1th of September.

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!

05/022015

10 days…

News abstracts, schedule, sessions, soccnx by Wannes Rams

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:

15 minutes – solely for Spotlight sessions (see below)
30 minutes – the standard session length, used for ~75% of our session slots. You will increase your chance of being selected by opting for this session length
60 minutes – for in-depth technical sessions, where it is difficult to get to grips with the content in 30 minutes

We are inviting sessions in the following tracks:

Administration – sessions relating to administering Social Business platforms. It could be the design and build of infrastructure, upgrading, managing users, migrating to the cloud, integration with other services or platforms etc. Sessions relating to cloud, hybrid or on-premise infrastructures are welcome! (30-minute and 60-minute slots)
Case Study – sessions focused on telling the story of existing Social Business projects. We love case studies! And the more honest the better! Ideally these sessions should feature at least one speaker from the company that uses the platform, but they could be accompanied by a vendor or partner. (30-minute slots only)
Development – how and why to develop for these services. We’d love you to share your tips, techniques and experience of developing solutions or applications, where you might hit issues, and how you overcome them. (30-minute and 60-minute slots)
Future of Work – new for this conference, sessions in this track should explore topics around the area of improving the productivity of individuals and organisations through the use of social technologies. (30-minute slots only)
Management – sessions that take a higher-level view of the issues, challenges and opportunities that surface when deploying social platforms. (30-minute slots)
Spotlight – also new for Social Connections 8, this track is designed to give new (or experienced) speakers the chance to present a short session on a topic of their choice. Think of it as being akin to TED talks, but within the framework of Social Connections. You can choose to use a presentation deck or not, to prepare earnestly or to speak from the heart, the choice is yours. What we’re after is insight, interest and passion – the rest is up to you! (15-minute slots only)
Sponsor – for those organisations that are sponsoring the event at Gold level or above, there is the option to submit a Sponsor session for the conference. (30-minute slots only)

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 an experienced speaker and want to submit your session that you presented at IBM ConnectED, or will present at InterConnect, Engage or ICS UG, then we’d be happy to accept it. We’d just advise that you might tweak it to suit the session lengths described above. Also, we do try to have a really interactive atmosphere at Social Connections, so make sure you leave some space for questions and feedback from the audience.
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.
We’re always very keen to receive submissions for the case-study track, so please give some thought to whether you can tell your own organisation’s story regarding adoption of Social Business technologies. Typically case study sessions get really high ratings from attendees, as well as comments that suggest how useful they’ve been in assisting their own organisation’s journey.
Please consider submitting multiple abstracts for different topics and tracks. The selection team will be trying to create a balanced and informative schedule for the two days of the conference, therefore we may (for example) have a surplus of great management sessions, where a quality administration abstract would have been selected.
Submit ASAP! We’ve already highlighted a number of speakers on our site and will be selecting a few key sessions throughout the remaining few days of the process to list on our site. If you have a great idea for a session, get it to us right away…

So, ten days and counting! Hope to read your abstract(s) very soon!

14/012015

Calling for abstracts – submit yours now!

News abstracts, sessions, soccnx by Lars Samuelsson

Hi everyone!

I know that we’re pushing ahead towards IBM ConnectED with insane speed, but this is a friendly reminder that we have a call for abstracts running for Social Connections 8 in Boston.

Do you have something super awesome that you wanna 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!

This is the first time ever we’ve run Social Connections in the US, and you have this amazing opportunity to be the first ones out, the pioneers! How the West was won, (I know it’s the East coast, but from our European point of view at least) and so on.

Remember this, most of you guys have a few flight hours getting to ConnectED, why not spend them planning your next event already?

Haven’t got anything yet?

Take your time during IBM ConnectED, get inspired, find something cool – something you want to share with the world and your peers, and write the abstract on the way home instead. We will close submissions on the 15th of February.

And for those that might be too shy to talk. Register for Social Connections 8 now, and we’ll see all of you in Boston on 16th and 17th of April!

Cheers!

01/092014

Social Connections VII: Calling for abstracts – last call!

News abstracts, deadline, soccnx, stockholm, submit, vii by Lars Samuelsson

Hey everyone!

We’ve reached September! Where did the summer go? (Or indeed, the winter for those from the Southern Hemisphere).

What we’ve also reached is the final stretch for submitting your abstract for Social Connections VII!

We know that we said that the deadline was last week, and we got a lot of great ones in, to make that date (great job by the way!)

However, we do realize that when we started planning and announcing this, most of you were on vacation, hopefully enjoying life! Therefore we have decided to give you all a few extra days to top it off.

Now we hope that you who barely got your head out of your inbox for the first weeks of work will sit down and think “Hmmm, I really would like to go to Stockholm and share my wisdom on how to avoid getting stuck in the inbox by using social software, in the middle of November”.

We can’t wait to see what kind of stories you want to share with the rest of us, but whatever it is, please observe the new deadline of September 7th. Come on and hit us with your best shot! And yes, the fact that Pat Benatar started playing in your head right about now is a gift from us. 😉

Are you up for it? We sure are!

Tick…tock…tick…tock

It’s the final countdown! To use a quote from a famous swedish band. Musical references all around!

Have a nice one, and see you all in Stockholm in November!

21/082014

Social Connections VII: Looking for speakers, submit your abstracts now!!

News abstracts, sessions, soccnx, Speakers, stockholm by Wannes Rams

Do you want to speak at the number one European (and soon US) social conference? I know I want to, let me give you some reasons to submit an abstract…

We have 5 different tracks to make sure everyone can find sessions that fit their interest.
- We are looking for some high technical sessions in our Development and Infrastructure tracks to make sure all geeks (like me) get their subscribed dose.
- In our Case study track we are looking for some real world stories that show the true value of the products
- We are also looking for sessions that can convince CIOs, CEOs, … to actually invest in the products we all love in our Management track
- And last but not least, we would like some of our sponsors to showcase the real value of their products in the Sponsors track
I have been told Stockholm is an amazing city. So if you are tired of the hot weather in the region you live in, join us to experience some real wintertimes! 🙂 You can find an introduction to Stockholm here.
It is a great conference to speak at and of course you can watch all the other great sessions. I have spoken at two Social Connections in the past and it was a great experience.
Join the exclusive VIP reception on Friday evening

So are you up for it yet? Of course we are looking for some experienced speakers, but we are also looking for some hidden gems. People that have an interesting story to tell, but might not realise this yet themselves. so if you haven’t spoken at a conference yet, but you feel like this is your moment, go for it. All sessions will be 30 minutes, so you only really need 20 or so slides, plus a story to tell!

To get an idea of sessions at our past conference, have a look at the Prague agenda and the recorded sessions.

We are expecting your abstracts before 31/8 via this link. We can’t wait to hear from you!

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!

17/072012

Social Connections IV registration is open

News abstracts, amsterdam, connections, iv, netherlands, registration, soccnx, social, sponsors by Wannes Rams

No sooner has Social Connections III in Dublin been and gone than thoughts turn to the next event!

As may know, so far the IBM Connections user group has visited England, Wales and Ireland. Therefore the next step is to head to mainland Europe and to one of the most ‘social’ European cities, Amsterdam!

On Friday 30th November, Social Connections IV will take over the IBM Forum in central Amsterdam for a day of tremendous IBM Connections content, Social Business education, customer case studies, ‘Birds-of-a-feather’ style discussions, networking and fun.

Registration has just opened, and thanks to the generosity of our sponsors is completely free once again.

An action-packed day of 30 or so sessions is planned, and we are inviting abstracts from potential speakers – we’d love to hear from you if you would like to present on a business-related or technical subject, or if you’d like to chair a panel or BoF-style session. We’d welcome sessions from Lotusphere veterans and never-spoken-before newcomers alike, and if you have a Connections customer story to tell then you’ll be pushed to the head of the queue!

We are also very keen to sign up additional sponsors, so if you have solutions or services to sell to the IBM Connections community, please do get in touch!

The entire day is completely free to attend, and there will also be a reception on the Friday evening – details will be shared ASAP.

As you can see from the wrap-up video from Social Connections III below, the day will be incredibly informative and also great fun, so there is really no time like the present – register today!