Lotusphere Comes To You Israel was held today at IBM Israel, with over 75 customers, business partners, analysts and social software advocates, wanting to hear more about IBM’s strategy and direction on enterprise collaboration and social software. Our agenda was pretty packed, and slightly delayed, but overall it was a great event.
I have many things to say about these past 2 days, but right now I just want to ‘sign out’ and relax. A more detailed post will be published soon.
Israel from Blinklive-blogged (sort of 😉 from the event, so you can read his impressions to get a feel on what we talked about. Thanks Israel !
The presentations from the event will be posted on the event website next week.
8 days before Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software event (a.k.a LCTY Israel/Lotus Collaboration Event) and tension is rising… our day is coming.. fast… 60 people have registered so far, and our telemarketing guys are doing an excellent job answering calls and telling people what we gonna cover during our event.
3 IBM/Lotus executives will be joining us next week in Israel, meeting customers and business partners, other than speaking at the event: Alan Lepofsky, Lotus Strategy, SWG – coming all the way from Boston; Jason Risley, WebSphere Portal Sales Manager for South-West Europe – traveling from Madrid; and Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Manager for South-West Europe – from The Netherlands.
We have a full agenda, with business partners showcase, excellent speakers and live demos – but seating is limited… hurry to register. There are couple of ways to do that:
The KM Summit will focus this year on the place of knowledge management technologies in business processes and core applications, and how such technologies can be implemented at the business. My 30min on stage will cover the evolution of social software (Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn and others) and how businesses all sizes can implement such collaborative tools within the business – with Lotus Connections. The KM summit is well-known in Israel, and it’s a good opportunity to showcase Lotus solutions in that arena. Registration is still open.
The SGS event is creating a lot of buzz here, and the event will be broadcasted LIVE in Secondlife, so if you’re unable to attend in person, you’ll have a chance to catch up all the action. I’m gonna speak on the business aspect of virtual worlds, and what’s IBM is doing there. It’s much like the presentation I gave earlier this year at IDC Herzeliya, but more focused on IBM, Academy and Research.
This year’s Lotus Collaboration event will focus on Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software. 2008 has been marked by several analysts and IT companies as the year of social software – the year in which social networking will pave its way through the corporate firewall, and into the business processes. The event will be half-day, focusing on Lotus Stragety and social software solution, and the agenda is packed!! Our BPs will showcase their solutions and we’ll host 3 Lotus managers from Europe and the US: Alan Lepofsky from Lotus Strategy team in the US, Arjan Radder from The Netherlands and Jason Risley from Spain. We’ll also provide you a glimpse of the social software future, when a colleague from IBM Haifa Research Labs will present and demo a solution that might find its way to the Lotus portfolio… Here’s the agenda (you can also view it on the site): 09:00 – Registration, networking and BP showcase 09:30 – Welcome, Dvir Reznik 09:45 – Keynote – Lotus Software Strategy, Alan Lepofsky, Lotus Strategy, SWG, IBM US 10:30 – Social Networking at your Business, Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Manager, SWG, IBM South-West Europe 11:15 – break 11:30 – SONAR – bridging the social networking gap, Inbal Ronen, Collaboration Technologies Dept., IBM Haifa Research Lab 12:30 – Collaboration in Harmony – demo, Dvir Reznik, Lotus Sales & Alex Balk, Lotus Technical Sales 13:30 – WebSphere Portal – Smart Solution for a Web Portal 14:15 – Lunch
After 3 days of army reserve training, just before heading home, I stopped at IDC Herzeliya, to lecture on The Next Net – What it means to your business, to the members of The Israeli Innovation Forum – an academic program for executives, run at the Arison School of Business. The forum aims at creating a community for executives to promote innovation in Israel, while fostering the knowledge and expertise of its members. For full disclosure I’ll mention that the forum is run by IDC with sponsorship from IBM Haifa Research Lab.
There is at least 1 video in my lectures, and on this I had 2, although I had only 30 minutes. The first video was The Facebook Song, which I saw at Lior Zoref.
This song provides a good intro and ice-breaker to the subject of social network – there are many disciplines, topics, focus areas – 30min was quite a challenge.
Just before slide 3 I did a quick survey, to see if social networking and web 2.0 era had any effect on business leaders – so I asked how many track blogs, write blogs or members of any social network. I liked what I saw – over 60% of participants had their hands up on all 3 questions, which shows social networking and social software is not overlooked, and business leaders are taking it seriously, looking for business opportunities.
In slide 6 a small shiver crossed my body – I noticed that I’m obsolete – not part of the NetGen. I’m almost 30 (presents are welcome), started working with computers in high school, and had my first cellphone only 10 years ago. The members of the forum reassured me that I’m still very relevant, so it’s cool. For now.
Despite the time (8pm), the members were very cooperative and we had some interesting discussions, on facebook, viral marketing and innovation at the business. To wrap us my lecture I pointed people to BusinesWeek Special Report, Social Networking with the Elite, which I wrote about earlier this week. When I referred to the CIA as the Central Intelligence Agency, one participant told me which CIA is the “important” one – the Culinary Institute of America. I should start cooking more… Gabi, thanks for the tip. Now I know.
As a (bit long) side comment, I must say Lior is a business colleague/competitor I value – he holds a unique vision on digital media and true to the ‘try it yourself‘ rule, was responsible for several breaking marketing ideas in Israel. The latest being Yossi and Lior‘s Test Broadcasting, a 15min clip, on technology and marketing.
This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.
It’s been an exciting week, particularly the last 2 days.
