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NewCommForum 2007: "Let's Take 'The Conversation' Offline, Too"

 

Jen McClure has pulled off another great event, and as with past NCF events, my favorite conversations were in in the "hallway."  Among the many people I connected and reconnected with this year are Joe Thornley, John Cass, David Parmet,Tom Foremski, Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein, Brian Solis, Chip Griffin, Laura Sturaitis, George Vasquez, Brian Oberkirch, Tony Obregon (my friend and former partner in crime), Adam Zand, JD Lasica, Tom Abate, Phil Gomes  (who is looking more and more like Lenin -- that's a compliment, Phil), Dan Forbush, Andy Abramson, Jennifer Jones, John Hallett, Debbie Weil, the "Shels" (sounds like a dreamgirl band, but I am of course talking about Shel Israel and Shel Holtz)  And there were many other people that I met this year -- many do not yet blog -- from many different types of organizations that are delving deep into social media.

The great thing about NewCommForum is the context that Jen has provided for meeting people -- people you read and hear about all year round, but rarely have the opportunity to meet face-to-face.  As I have often said, the socialization of the Web has greatly improved the way we communicate online. Still, there's a lot of room for innovation in the offline world.  I like what Jen has done to help close the gap between the early adopters and the rest of the business world.  I also like what Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein are doing at Social Media Club, which has been organizing numerous social-media events throughout the U.S.  They are moving surprisingly fast.  But what really impresses me is the format that they are experimenting with -- "the world cafe," an easy-to-follow process for running highly interactive, socially gratifying meetings and "unconferences" (cf. barcamps).  It's the offline equivalent of social media, and I expect we're going to see many more business events organized this way.

Social Media Club -- Live/Pt. II

Too late in the day to write, but I need to say -- before I lay down to sleep -- that Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells and Brian Solis produced a great "unconference" today on the SAP Palo Alto campus. Chris used the World Cafe format, which I believe has a big future in corporate America. Tomorrow I will post a video of Chris describing how this format works. Bottom line: with this format, everyone gets an opportunity to speak. It's an offline application of "wisdom of crowds."

For a nice recap of cool quotes at EOD, see Jeremiah Owyang's blog.

Social Media Club

If you are a Bay-Area based communications pro, and you want to learn more about social media, I highly recommend the October 23 event on the SAP campus, "From Social Media to Corporate Media." Led by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells of the Social Media Club -- an organization that Tom Foremski and I are supporting -- this one-day event will provide newbies and social-media vets alike with a fresh look at corporate best practices in a workshop setting. Headliners are Robert Scoble and Lisa Stone, but you will not want to miss my afternoon interview with SAP's Geoff Kerr. He'll talk about some of the innovative stuff going on at SAP; it's one of the most interesting and evolving case studies yet. To register, go here.

SAP's Shai Agassi: "How 'Bout a Hug?"

I'm blogging from Las Vegas today at SAP TechEd '06.  I'm here at the behest of Mike Prosceno, VP of Marketplace Communications for SAP.  Among other things for this event, Mike has assembled a "bloggers corner" (something SAP did recently at SAPPHIRE) -- hence the interesting, hybrid description of my role on this badge (consultant/blogger).  Adds a very human element to SAP's market relations, which is fitting because the human side of IT has become an important part of SAP's technology and service development.  In his keynote this morning,   Shai Agassi, President of the product and technology group, kept returning to this theme. 

*He spoke about a new, emerging role at large enterprise called BPIO -- the "business process information officer," who works side-by-side with the CIO to ensure that business objectives are in fact aligned with IT (a key objective in all SOA projects).   

*He made a quip about a cool motion graphic in his presentation which apparently played well at SAPPHIRE, a show that more broadly targets the business community ("the business guys there loved the dancing charts"). 

*But the best part of the presentation was Shai's running joke about his alleged habit of refusing vacation time from his subordinates.   In an interactive onstage demo with an SAP staffer, Shai illustrated the many ways he can use SAP products and services to reject the staffer's vacation request.  When the staffer admitted defeat, Shai was human -- he gave him a hug.  Hope we see the footage.  The folks at PodTech are here this week covering the whole show.