The first is Rachel Happe, the track chair of the Community Management: Engaging External Audiences track, who just wrote a great post on what she’s looking forward to, and what attendees can expect from her track. 

See everyone soon!

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!

Submissions are searchable by category, speaker or keyword, and votes received by each session will be viewable by all participants. Sessions advance to the “Crowd Favorites” stage based on community votes, after which they will be reviewed by the E2 Advisory Board. All submissions’ comment and feedback activity will be considered during the review process. Submissions selected by the Advisory Board will then proceed to the final “Selected Sessions” stage and speakers will be contacted in March.

We look forward to discovering the topics and ideas you want to see incorporated in the E2 Boston 2011 Conference Agenda. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at mfarrell@techweb.com or (415) 947-6250.

Boston conference dates are June 20-23, 2011 at the Hynes Convention Center. We’re sorry to say good bye to the Westin Waterfront where E2.0 has been held for the past 6 years, but the growth of the conference necessitated a change and we’re excited for the move. Registration will open in late January 2011.

And first on the planning agenda, is the Call for Papers which is open now through December 22nd, followed by a community vote January 3rd – January 15th. This time around we want the Call for Papers to be a forum for the generation of good ideas and speakers, not simply a portal where submissions are made and then voted on. The Proposal Collection stage should be a collaborative process and we highly encourage all to participate from the beginning via proposal or topic feedback and comments. Submit your best ideas or suggest ways to improve a submitted proposal. If you have a speaker who could bring a new perspective to a submitted topic, let the submitter know. The point is to work together to create the conference content that will be featured in Boston next year.

If you participated in the Boston or Santa Clara 2010 Call for Papers, you’ll receive an email inviting you to the new Call for Papers. If it’s your first time submitting or participating, simply sign in and create an account. We’re debuting several submissions topics which reflect feedback we received from the agenda in Santa Clara and the growth of Enterprise 2.0:

Internal Community Development
Customer Engagement
Social CRM
HR Collaboration
Case Studies
Leadership and Organizational Change
Social Tools and Applications
Governance, Risk and Compliance
UC, Video and the Mobile Enterprise
Standards and Interoperability
Analytics & Metrics
Learning and Development

For detailed information on the submission process, go to the Call for Papers.  We haven’t changed any requirements of the Proposal Collection stage so the process is quite simple.  As always, submissions made will be immediately viewable on various discussion forums where we encourage everyone to provide as much feedback as possible. Submitters can also attach files with supporting materials to submissions. And inviting friends/colleagues to view submissions and publishing them to a variety of social networks is made easy.

After the Proposal Collection stage closes on December 22nd, the Community Vote will begin on January 3rd and end on January 15th.  Receiving the most votes does not automatically mean your submission will move on to the final Selected Sessions stage and be included in the conference.  The vote is just another step in a process meant to engage the E2.0 community and give us a sense of what people want to see at the conference, and we hope that it is treated that way. The amount and depth of feedback and collaboration around a particular proposal will also be strongly considered.  As always, the feedback of the community will be one of the primary criteria for selecting sessions for Boston 2010. However, all sessions are subject to final review and approval by the E2.o Advisory Board.

I encourage everyone to submit their best ideas, experiences and speakers, collaborate to improve these submissions, and tell us what they want to see in Boston next year.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at mfarrell@techwebcom or (415) 947-6250. I’m looking forward to reading your submissions, participating in discussions around them, and cultivating a meaningful dialogue around the tools and ideas that are the future of Enterprise 2.0.

And the Call for Papers winners have been selected! As always, we were very impressed by the quality of submissions we received and the selection process was not an easy one.

Congratulations to the following proposals and their speakers:
Communities 101: Planning and Executing Award-Winning Communities
Community Managers: Why do you need them and what do they do
Patterns of Observable Work
Governing Social Collaboration for the Enterprise: A Delicate Balance
People, Culture, Behaviors…
The Coming Social Software Backlash

Additional Panelists selected from the Call for Papers:
Ellen Feaheny, CEO, AppFusions
Sam Ramji, VP of Strategy, Sonoa Systems
Esteban Kolsky, Principal and Founder, ThinkJar LLC
Adam Blum, CEO, Rhomobile
Brian Kellner, Vice President of Products, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
Mark Tamis, Associate, Social CRM and Social Business Strategist, NET-7
John Pavolotsky, Counsel, Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Thank you to everyone who submitted and voted. Your contribution to the creation of the conference agenda is greatly appreciated and we hope to see many of you at the conference in just a couple of months. If you have any questions about the agenda or the Call for Papers, feel free to contact me.

We encourage all who submitted, all who plan on attending Enterprise 2.0 Conference Santa Clara, and anyone interested in Enterprise 2.0, to review the submissions, and vote for their favorites. Submissions are searchable by category, speaker or keyword, and votes received by each session will be viewable by all participants. Sessions advance to the “Crowd Favorites” stage based on community votes, after which they will be reviewed by the E2 Advisory Board. Submissions selected by the Advisory Board will then proceed to the final “Selected Sessions” stage. Selected speakers will be contacted in August.

We look forward to discovering the topics and sessions you want to see incorporated in the E2 Santa Clara 2010 Conference Agenda. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at mfarrell@techweb.com or (415) 947-6250.