Apr 27th, 2011 |
Seems like just yesterday we finished the agenda for E2 Boston in June, and now it’s time to start planning for Santa Clara, coming up November 14-17, 2011. Last year’s Santa Clara conference exceeded expectations with over 1400 attendees, and I’m confident this year’s agenda will attract many more.
We’ve partnered with Spigit again for the Call for Papers but changed a few elements. For starters, there is no longer a community vote component to the process or a separate group of “Crowd Favorites” submissions which are reviewed by the Advisory Board. As many of you are aware, there were mixed feelings about the community vote within the E2 community. Many felt that it was the equivalent of a popularity contest, while others were disappointed when their submissions were not selected even though they received the top number of votes. These issues came up no matter how clear we were votes did not guarantee selection. What we hoped the community vote would do was become another way for the E2 community to provide feedback about submissions, and give us and our advisory board a clearer picture of what should be included in the conference. What we didn’t totally anticipate was people who weren’t invested members of the community, trying to cheat the system in a variety of ways, and the confusion and suspicion it would produce around the whole process. So we’re simplifying things.
The point of partnering with Spigit for the Call for Papers was for the process to become about idea management and innovation and include anyone and everyone interested in the Enterprise 2.0 Conference; not just a boring online form where no one else saw great content submitted except our advisory board, where no one could actively participate in refining and improving submissions. We want potential attendees and thought leaders to have a voice in this process. As submissions come in in, we’d like everyone to provide feedback via comments on individual submissions or categories, about the content of the submission or the speaker. If you see a way to improve a submission or know of a relevant speaker, speak out! Network with fellow members of the fellow community and create unique content to submit for the conference! If a certain submission really resonates for you, “Like” it. And no, “likes” are not the same as votes, and have no bearing on whether a submission is selected. What they do is engage the E2 community, provoke conversation and hopefully stimulate the kind of idea generation we need to make this year’s Santa Clara conference better than ever.
So all submissions made will be reviewed by the Advisory Board, not just ”Crowd Favorites”. The Board will look at the amount of collaboration via feeback/comments, edits made to submissions because of comments, and general activity around a session when making their selections. And as always, they’re looking for high quality, unique and compelling stories of innovation, case studies, and speakers/thought leaders with the kind of expertise and experience our audience has come to expect.
We hope these changes will encourage more of you to submit and participate in the process, and that we’re eliminating any confusion, anger or disappointment surrounding the voting element.
Looking forward to checking out everyone’s submissions so keep them coming!
