My visit to Bowling Green State University: Conference on Students Global Competitiveness
March 29 2009
Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking with students and faculty at Bowling Green State University's 3rd Conference on Students Global Competitiveness. The conference was organized by Jake Gallardo, a senior at BGSU, and the officers of the Students Initiative for Global Competitiveness. I enjoyed my trip to Bowling Green, Ohio, and only regret that I couldn't stay longer (the last flight from Toledo back to Chicago on a Saturday is at 1 PM...and as it started to rain/snow in Chicago later in the day, I was glad I made that one).
Fellow IBMer Keith Instone, a BGSU alum and ibm.com architect, attended the conference as well. This was great because, until a week ago, Keith and I had never encountered one another -- yet it turns out he is part of the team that made the addition of the new "Your IBM Expert" widget to the Lotus Notes/iNotes/Alloy product pages possible. Keith was able to provide additional perspective for the attendees and, more than once, act as a proof point for the way we use social networking internally at IBM.
Here is the presentation I delivered. Many of these slides were borrowed from other IBM presentations -- part of what makes all this collaboration valuable is that others before have said what I wanted to say, and we have internal tools to help collect and assemble the right messages. Obviously a number of my examples were of my own creation -- and as I had a live connection, I tried to make this session much more demonstration of how we work every day at IBM and a bit less slideware. Keith was live tweeting the session, and I posted his tweets as a comment on the slideshare page:
It's a must that I post this on slideshare -- an earlier presentation of mine there is actually how Jake found me and asked me to speak (as well as some of the other speakers). Very cool application of "social networking for good"!
This presentation will form the basis of a webcast I'm doing tomorrow for an IBM Chicago audience, and for another session later in the week for the re:publica conference in Berlin (which I'll deliver via e-meeting). One of the challenges I've tried to set for myself in delivering presentations about social networking is to refrain from talking about products, and simply talk about results. It's really enjoyable to take a break from my normal presentations and deliver this one. I'm signed up to be an academic ambassador for IBM and hopefully more engagements like this will come in the future.
Thank you again to Jake for inviting me, and to BGSU and this organization for being wonderful, accommodating hosts. You all have bright futures ahead.
Post a Comment
- 2
Andy Piper http://andypiper.co.uk | 3/30/2009 5:25:55 AM
Interesting - a friend pointed out Keith's tweet mentioning you mentioning me - now I can see the presentation itself :-)
- 3
Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/30/2009 8:19:09 AM
@2 yes, I chose that particular w3 blog entry to highlight because you have 30 comments and 13 favorites... wanted to show the level of interactivity we can get using these technologies inside of the company as well as outside. I also thought that it was a good entry to show the context of why we have blogging guidelines in the first place. All lines up to tell an important part of the message.
@1 thanks for the endorsement!
- 4
Carla Neiderhiser | 3/30/2009 8:36:14 PM
Ed, thanks again for coming to speak at our conference. I think you shared some extremely valuable knowledge with our attendees!
Viel Glück with the conference in Berlin.
All the best!
Carla
- 5
Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/31/2009 11:14:36 PM
Interesting that my example on slide 9 has just been validated by none other than Anthony Bourdain:
{ Link }
Do you think social networking and digital media have a negative effect on maintaining the original spirit and integrity of a restaurant?
If you build a restaurant around marketing and networking before you're open, it's like writing a book to appeal to a perceived audience; you end up with no integrity. It's the same with writing a menu. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. I do believe that once you open your doors, whether you like it or not, you are, for better or worse, at the mercy of bloggers and Twitterers. You can't rely on the same old food critics anymore.
Thanks for the slides - very eye opening presentation.
I cannot think of a better sideline for you than to be an academic ambassador for IBM. Seems like a natural outgrowth of your presence in the blogosphere, and your ability to generate the community spirit for IBM/Lotus products and solutions.
Bill