If you’re interested in community management be sure to check out this track update from Ted Hopton. Ted is a community manager at UBM and chairs the track on “Community Management Inside the Enterprise”.

If you’re an online community manager, the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston is the place to be this month. Whether you’re managing an external community or an internal community for employees, you’ll find an entire track of conference sessions tailored to your needs.

I’m an internal community manager and the chair for the Community Management: Inside the Enterprise track. I’m excited about the practitioners we have on the program for Boston, and I know they are eager to share their experience with you. In fact, I think you’ll find all of our speakers to be approachable and interested in connecting with fellow practitioners, so I recommend introducing yourself after a session you’ve enjoyed. I’ve met some terrific people at the Enterprise 2.0 Conferences and formed lasting professional relationships.

If you’re new to community management, you shouldn’t miss Trisha Liu’s Crash Course for New Community Managers. You’ll not only learn from her considerable accomplishments, but you’ll have the chance to ask whatever questions are on your mind and connect with a roomful of peers in situations similar to yours.

I’m intrigued by Kevin Jones’ session on Enterprise 2.0 Failures – And What We Learn From Them. I guess I’m a bit of a cynic, so when I spend days hearing from people about all of their successes, it makes me wonder about the problems they have and aren’t talking about. Kevin’s session should provide a healthy contrast by tackling the subject of failures head on.

As a numbers geek and metrics guy, I’m especially looking forward to Rawn Shah and Hardik Dave’s perspective in Match Your Measurement Methodology to Your Situation. And I’m curious to see what Eric Ziegler and Abha Kumar envision for the future in A Day in the Life – Enterprise 2.0 in 2016.

I know I am going to have to make some tough choices, too. For example, Rawn and Hardik’s measurement session is at the same time as Who Leads Social Business and What Does Leadership Look Like?, presented by Keri Pearlson and my good friend and fellow founder of the Community BackChannel, Jamie Pappas. Maybe I can get a colleague to attend one and I’ll go to the other, and then we can compare notes.

So, whether you come alone or with your colleagues, I hope to see you in Boston!

Ted Hopton, Community Manager, UBM

Tags: e2.0, e2conf, socbiz

For a full list of contest rules, see here.

Tags: 2011, boston, e2conf, enterprise 2.0, launch pad

Enterprise 2.0 Boston  is only a few weeks away and our agenda is looking great.  As a preview into the many compelling tracks and sessions at the conference, you’ll be hearing from a few of our advisory board members and track chairs on the E2 blog in the days and weeks to come.  

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!

The Launch Pad semifinalists have put together videos showcasing their solutions; take a moment to view them and vote for your favorite. The 4 companies with the most votes will demo live at Enterprise 2.0 Boston and compete for the title of People’s Choice Winner.

Contestants put a lot of time and effort into their videos, and the production and soundtrack on some are truly impressive. Click here to view the videos and cast your vote before May 20. We’ll announce the Final 4 on May 24.

Good luck to all the entrants!

Tags: boston, demo, e2conf, enterprise 2.0, launch pad, vote

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!

Drum roll please…

The jury has deliberated and the 7 companies below will advance to the next round for Launch Pad – here they are in alpha order:

1. Acquia
2. Groupideo
3. Next Principles
4. Personall Software
5. Podio
6. Saba Software
7. Splarchive

If you have been selected, congratulations! There’s one more step separating you from becoming a finalist: the video round.

Take a look here under Round 2: Video Submissions for next steps and instructions on how to submit a video. Semi-finalists have until April 29, 2011 to create and submit their videos – we will open public voting in the afternoon of April 29. The 4 videos with the most votes will demo live at Enterprise 2.0 Boston.

A big thank you to all the companies that submitted – we appreciate your interest in the conference.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask: paige at techweb dot com.

Taking a moment to celebrate and recognize the innovation taking place within the Enterprise 2.0 marketplace is important, but rather simple. Doing it in three minutes is indubitably more challenging .

Launch Pad is a fun, free contest that awards vendors in the collaboration space with an opportunity to present live at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. The competition is not limited to startups – all companies are encouraged to participate. The only requirement is that you showcase something new.

What do you mean by new?

We want to hear about a new product, a new partnership, a new feature — anything your company is proud to boast about in 2011. The announcement doesn’t need to take place live at the event (although we like that too); if it’s happened within the calendar year, it counts.

Sounds easy enough. How do I enter?

Craft 140 perfect characters and Twitter pitch to #e2conflp before April 11, 2011. That’s it.

Suspiciously simple – what gives?

Granted, there are a couple more hoops to jump through. The Jury will select the 8 best submissions, and those 8 companies will create 3 minute videos. After the community votes on the vids, the 4 with the most votes go on to demo live at Enterprise 2.0 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA on June 22, 2011.

Anything else I should know?

Full rules and key dates are all explained on the site. We’re switching things up slightly this year and adding a new twist to the contest: Launch Pad is officially on a diet and shaving down main stage demo time to three minutes a piece.

Jeez.

Yeah, sorry about that. Please remember to include the hashtag: #e2conflp (so we know you want to enter), and if you have any questions, just holler at me. Look forward to seeing your submissions!

Tags: 3 minutes, e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, innovation, launch pad, Twitter

Thank you to all who submitted proposals and have participated in the Call for Papers process.  Next up: the Community Vote!  We encourage all who submitted and all who plan on or are considering attending Enterprise 2.0 Boston to review the submissions, provide feedback via comments and vote.  This is not a popularity contest.  So please don’t cheapen the voting process by sending your entire company or PR firm to vote for your submission.  Vote for a submission or idea because you want to learn from it in Boston!  Vote for the case study that changed your perceptions of E2.  Vote for the best E2 innovations in UC, video and mobile, the ideas that are the future of social tools and apps, and the most inspirational stories of leadership and organizational change.  Vote for the submissions you want us to consider for inclusion in E2 Boston Conference agenda.  Last year over a third of the conference agenda and speakers were selected from the Call for Papers and we hope to equal if not increase that number this year.

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.

Did you know that there’s just a few days left to submit your session ideas for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. But this is not so much a “Call for Papers” as it is a “Call for Ideas” – an invitation for you to weigh in, share your thoughts and suggest how we can turn good ideas into great sessions.  We’re using an application that specializes in true crowd-sourcing and idea generation, not simply gathering and voting on sessions. Can the Enterprise 2.0 community, the people who are passionate about leveraging social and collaborative thinking in the enterprise, use these same principals to truly create and shape exceptional conference content? I believe so, but it will take your help!

Here’s how you can participate:

1. Suggest a topic – It does not need to be a fully fleshed out session.  Half-baked ideas are welcomed!

2. Comment – Take a look at the current submissions with an eye for making them better.  Does the submission resonate with you or does it miss the mark?  We want to know.

3. Suggest speakers  – Have you seen someone speak and thought “she would be great at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference”?   Now is your chance to tell us!

Thanks for your participation!

Last week’s Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara was a huge success and I’d like to thank all of our attendees, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors for their participation and support. The conference agenda’s new focus on leveraging collaborative tools to support a variety of critical functional areas in the HR Strategies and Social CRM tracks was very well received. We also had packed classrooms and active twitter discussions around all sessions in the Community Management, and Business Tools tracks. Lastly, we announced the creation of a news and community site for E2.0 professionals- The BrainYard (launching early 2011). The BrainYard is an industry news, opinion and community site for business and IT leaders interested in sharing information and learning about the enterprise collaboration and social software industry. Sign up today at www.thebrainyard.com to be alerted when it officially launches. And while Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara is still fresh in our minds, it’s time to start thinking about and planning for Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2011.

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.