Upcoming: Lotusphere 2010, part 2 : conferencing

OK, one more thing before I rush to the airport. You know, I’ve said it’s about the networking when going to conferences – both on site and virtually.

For the latter documenting and live-blogging & -tweeting an event is essential as it gives the people who are remote a chance to participate in the event. Here, an etiquette needs to be followed when live tweeting (avoid noisy keyboards, add suitable and clever hashtags, keep the signal-noise-ratio sensible while still filling the back-channel with (first hand) information and valuable front-line impressions, don’t tweet behind the back of the presenters).

Overall the rule seems to be – don’t waste the time of your audience. Keep it short, that’s why it’s over and out for now.

Upcoming: Lotussphere 2010, part 1 – preparing and travelling

OK, it’s only a few hours till I am leaving for Lotusphere 2010 – I packed some Lotus podcasts on my Sansa, ran through Andy’s excellent guide, checked the Lotusphere 2010 Blog’s session overview again, then bookmarked the online directory at ontimesuite on my Android phone, earmarked the sessions I want to participate in, added more people to my #ls10 twitter list (there will be more additions over the next days), thought a second about Smarter Work, then jumpstarted again into some pre-conference news and posts, told some poor souls who must stay in cold Germany about the Webcasts the german Lotus team will do, and promised to bring back insights (and a tan).

Speaking of tans insights – making this trip to Orlando is cool if you’re coming from an icy frogpond city, even cooler is it to meet people like Luis and Luis and …

Luis compiled another post on how to get the most out of Lotusphere (virtually) – where I earmarked again some sites like the Posterous web site, the Slideshare space for presentations, Planet Lotus and more – hmm, it seems Lotus Knows how to spread the word.

Sounds like flattery? Isn’t meant to be, transparency & disclaimers as usual apply – I was invited to Lotusphere by IBM Germany, knowing that I’m a blogger and would probably write about it, no further arrangements have been made, I am writing my honest opinions anyway, yes, IBM Germany has employed me at times for consulting assignments is a valued customer and I know and like people working there.

Don’t make we write that whole sentence under each of my posts or tweets, will you?

Upcoming: 2010 conferences calendar (and what are they good for)


Yes, the social web continues to change this consultant’s and analyst’s work – it’s changing the ways we think, interact and work. Yikes, one could say that the plethora of networked information and virtual network opportunities should be enough for everybody, but I don’t care for information overload fears and shivers.

Thus information-(over)loaded conferences are fine for me (that is if they provide some inspiration, they’re always wonderful and productive interruptions …), but besides these and some other reasons of going there as a freelancer, it’s basically about the opportunity for meeting old friends and real networking. They are chances to have the real personal conversations that deepen networks. And that’s why here’s my preliminary schedule for 2010:

First and right around the corner is Lotussphere, next week in Orlando. I am basically sitting on packed suitcases, but the whole event has it’s own tag here already and will trigger a lot of posting for sure. More coming up later on …

Did I say real conversations need face-to-face contact? I need to reframe this, otherwise my participation in the Virtual Enterprise 2.0 Conference on February 2, 2010 won’t fit, huh? I expect this to be equally good as my virtual participation in last year’s E2Conf in San Francisco (much of it is buried inside tweets and bookmarks, alas).

Now, it’s so much easier to participate in such an event than actually getting there, that’s why I am hesitating to register for Lift Austria in March. But the topic “Enable!” is as tempting as Vienna in spring …

Mechanistic models and a deterministic worldview may have worked well for the last centuries, but are not apt for the upcoming challenges we are facing today. Rather, we need completely different concepts and attitudes, accepting that the underlying processes escape our control and are unpredictable. It seems that the concept of “Enabling” is the key to this shift of thinking. Enabling is the art of carefully configuring adequate levers (physical space, networks, resources, etc.) that best support specific innovation processes, such as idea generation, prototyping, market entry, etc.

OK, then, on with already booked events – starting with re:publica April 14-16 in Berlin – Germany’s blog, social media and digital society main event. Then CeBIT & WikiCAMP in March, the german LinuxTag 2010 in Berlin (will see if I can make it there, June 9-12) – because it may collide with my travel plans for the 2010 E2Conf in Boston, June 14-17. Later this year I will try to return to Copenhagen for another reboot …

Add to this several BarCamps – including the Barcamp Nürnberg (February), Barcamp Furtwangen (May), BarCamp Bodensee (June) and possibly BarCamp Ruhr too (may collide with Lift Austria, sigh).

Oh, and right – I need to get some work done in between as well 😉

Above picture of cute calendar work http://www.flickr.com/photos/booberrystudio/ / CC BY 2.0

LeWeb posts 24 thru 25

leweb logo

You know by now I enjoy joking at times (basically when I am leaving my serious consultant habits for good when at cool conferences) – and again there are no posts 24, let alone 25.

Still, I’ve blogged some more neat stuff at my other blog – business model innovation design (I told you about my posterous blog yesterday). Sort of crossposting and interlinking gabfest today:

LeWeb ’09 – posts 1 thru 23

sitting among my fellow LeWeb bloggers

No, I’m only joking – there ain’t 23 posts by me on LeWeb by now, but I’ve collected some neat stuff at my posterous blog. Not exactly material for the generic frogpond feed but it’s probably interesting for some of you. Tasty snippets and mostly short comments:

Looking back: DNUG Herbstkonferenz und Social Media Guidelines

hugh_blogEin kleines Resumée meiner Beteiligung an der Diskussionsrunde “Bloggen, Zwitschern, Youtube und Co. – das Social Web für Wissensarbeiter” letzte Woche bei der DNUG Herbstkonferenz in Fulda. Mit Lotus-Kunden und -Partnern haben wir, d.h. Thorsten Zörner, Stefan Pfeiffer, Lars Basche und ich am 18. November einen recht interaktiven Workshop gestaltet.

Den ursprünglichen Plan entlang der IBM Social Software Guidelines verschiedene Aspekte anzureißen und in eine interaktive Diskussion zu kanalisieren haben wir kreativ neuinterpretiert und – das Feedback der Zuhörer aufgreifend – etwas modifiziert.

In jedem Fall waren wir authentisch, und das Feedback war positiv. Stefan schreibt von einem “sehr lebhaften und interessanten” Workshop, bei dem es sich lohnen würde ihn auszubauen und zu erweitern. In der Tat, wir könnten mehr Zeit gebrauchen und füllen: Das Thema Social Media in Unternehmen bietet verschiedenste Ansatzpunkte für weiterführende Workshops (oder wenn man so möchte Ansatzpunkte für konzeptionelle Hilfestellung, grundsätzliche Ratschläge und Erfolgsfaktoren), ob man nun den Schwerpunkt eher auf Breite oder Tiefe legt ist nicht so entscheidend, bzw. kann jeweils an das Publikum angepasst werden.

Erfolgversprechend bleibt aus meiner Sicht der (spezielle) Ansatz die (IBM) Social Software Guidelines auf Empfehlungen für das Agieren im Social Web “abzuklopfen” – zum einen weil die interne Kommunikation in Blogs, Social Networks und Intranets ein gutes Übungsfeld für das Agieren im Internet sein kann, zum anderen weil sich die Grenzen zwischen “hier Intranet” und “dort Internet” ohnehin auflösen. Der Dialog im Social Web geschieht quasi auf einem veränderlichen Spielfeld, entsprechend müssen die Social Media Guidelines flexibel und adaptiv gestaltet sein. Sie sind eben weniger feste Regeln, denn Handlungsempfehlungen und -heuristiken.

Interessant in diesem Zusammenhang sind die verschiedenen rechtlichen und kommunikativen Fragen, die sich rund um Social Media Guidelines ergeben. Dr. Carsten Ulbricht von Diem & Partner hat hier zusammen mit Saim Alkan von aexea einen sockeb Leitfaden für das “digitale Miteinander” diskutiert (hier als pdf):

[der] Fachaufsatz „Social-Media-Guidelines für Unternehmen – Regeln für das digitale Miteinander“ zeigt, wie Unternehmen das Verhalten und die Kommunikation ihrer Mitarbeiter auf den neuen Medien regeln können und dürfen.