Expectations for the Enterprise 2.0 Summit #e20s

I'm really looking forward to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit! Are you coming? If so, I hope to meet you there!

Recently the organizers shared a pie chart of the participants per country. To my surprise hardly any people from The Netherlands are coming! I was wondering why hardly any Dutch people attend this conference. Last year I was there with one other Dutch guy. I know of many people in Holland who are interested in Enterprise 2.0 and social business. So that can't be a reason. Is the conference not well-known? I don't think that's the reason either. The location can't be a problem either. So, what is? Let me if you have any thoughts on this. My goal is to get more people in Holland interested in the summit and hopefully many more fellow Dutchies will be at next year's Summit. And for this reason I won't just be blogging in English but also in Dutch about my conference learnings.

What are my expectations for this year's Summit?

1. Last year we had a great breakout session about the integration business processes and (internal) social networks. At that time using external and internal social tools was mostly something extra, next to the formal tools in the organization (email, ERP & PLM tools). In our group we debated how important it is to relate and integrate the social tools with the formal business processes (and accompanying tools). I'm curious if we will see examples of companies actively doing this. Or is social still isolated in most organizations?
2. In the previous year there was lots of discussion about the 'return on investment' of internal social tools and social business in general. The business cases have popped up. One of the great things about (internal) social media is that it is also challenging us to not only talk about results in terms of money and analytics, but also in the form of stories. I wonder which types of value the speakers will show and in which way they will validate the effort they put into enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
3. Lots of data has been created on internal and external social media. Last year's final presentation was about the promise of Big Data. Are companies using the data to improve they way they run it? How are they capitalizing on internal and external big data?
4. Mobile has been a huge topic in the previous year. Are organizations combining enterprise 2.0 and mobile and capitalizing on this trend?
5. And, related to mobile, I'm curious if companies are also working on location-based social networks (inside and outside the organization). What are the implications of local in the new enterprise?

Keep in touch to see if these expectations will be met! I'll be live blogging the Summit just like last year. Tweets can be followed at #e20s. And you can find this year's program here.

Are you coming to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit? What are your expectations for the conference?

PS. Contact me for a discount for the Summit!

Looking Forward - 5 Years of Blogging

My first post this year is to celebrate my blog's birthday! Wow, 5 years ago I started to blog. And although blogging (who said it would be...?!) hasn't always been easy I still enjoy it.

I started blogging to have a way to think out loud. To write my thoughts and ideas down and connect with other writing elsewhere in the blogosphere or on the Net. My main goal was to speed up my learning by not only reading interesting books, articles and posts, but also by publishing my thoughts, questions, doubts and learnings based on my reading. And I must say it really helped.

It definitely also helped to become more connected and visible in the communities that I'm interesting in. Social media in general, and social networking especially. But also: communities, social business, enterprise 2.0, knowledge management, intranet and content management.

One thing I'm wondering about is if a blog truly is a conversation platform. I know there are blogs that show it is. But my blog could use some more interaction and conversation (comments). (Although I get comments regularly, directly on the blog or in other social media.) I'm wondering how to move in that direction. Does it have to do with the things I write about or the way I write about them? Do people mostly comment on big blogs and not small ones? This is something I'm going to work on in the coming year.

If you have any thoughts on how my blog could be better or how I could get more interaction, please leave a comment. It would be greatly appreciated. As I truly appreciate the fact that so many people take the time to follow my blog and (just) read my posts. Thank you very much, you are a great inspiration to keep on blogging!