Live @ Lotusphere: Product Showcase Walkthrough

For those of you who couldn’t make it here in person, and wanted to know what the Lotusphere 2011 Product Showcase looked like, here’s a quick 1-minute walkthrough.

I shot this on my new Canon S95 camera which shoots at 720P.

There’s no interviews, or talking, other than the show floor murmur.  But it will give you an idea of the look and feel of what things look like on the Lotusphere show floor.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on the Lotusphere Livestream, where new Q&A interviews with social business experts from across the industry are added by the hour!

Live @ Lotusphere 2011: Social Business Announcements

Well, we’re about halfway through day two (including Partner Day) of Lotusphere 2011…that is, if you don’tinclude the parties.

Late in the morning, we made a couple of substantial press announcements that bear mentioning here in the Turbo blog.

First, we announced a new initative to help organizations become social businesses with the broadest support for smart phones and cloud delivery models.

Whether accessing applications on premise, from a mobile device, or in the cloud, social businesses of all sizes need to communicate and collaborate on the fly across a global network of clients, partners and employees.

To fully enable a social business, IBM is announcing:

• New software to help organizations socially enable their business processes using the most successful mobile devices, including tablets, such as RIM’s BlackBerry and PlayBook, iPad, iPhone, Google Android, and Nokia devices
• New software and services to help businesses embrace the social business models through cloud computing, including a technology preview of IBM’s cloud-based office productivity suite
• The plans for the next release of IBM’s social software portfolio to enable social business, including a social business framework for software developers.

This is all due to a major shift occurring in the enterprise, the adoption of social software that is rapidly becoming a vital business tool which is enabling organizations to transform virtually every part of their business operations fro marketing, customer service and sales, to product development and human resources.

Social business offers the world of possibility that occurs when all of the energy and opportunities that have been generated around consumer models, such as Facebook and Twitter, are focused, and brought to bear on business challenges.

According to IBM’s 2010 CEO Study, 57 percent of companies who have invested in social business tools have outperformed their peers citing collaboration as having a direct impact on their organization’s growth.

In fact, social business software is rapidly gaining momentum in the enterprise. The market for worldwide social platforms is expected to increase by 33 percent in 2011 to $630 million, and triple to $1.863 billion by 2014.

IBM is also introducing a new licensing model for customers eager to embrace cloud computing. With Domino Utility Server for LotusLive, customers can now shift, develop and deploy collaborative applications onto the IBM Cloud, complementing their use of LotusLive Notes.

Accessible from IBM Lotus Notes and other client interfaces, Domino Utility Server for LotusLive provides flexible licensing and deployment options from the IBM cloud or other cloud providers, and will be available in the first half of 2011 for cloud or on-premise use.

To continue the dialog around social business, IBM will host a Web-based Social Business Jam from February 8-11, 2011, where thousands of leaders from around the world will pool their knowledge and experiences to examine the next generation of business.

Social Business Jam participants will cooperatively explore the value of social technology in business, its challenges, and the management system required to drive a social transformation resulting in a blueprint for organizations to help them become a social business.

Visit here to obtain more information, product images, pictures from Lotusphere.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on the Lotusphere Livestream — if we can wrangle away the alligator that was chewing on our Ethernet connection, we’ll be back up and webcasting live around 2 PM EST.

Live @ Lotusphere 2011: Kevin Spacey Sends The Elevator Back Down

Today’s Lotusphere 2011 opening general session kicked off with a real shebang.

I think.

The Great Hall of Loti, The Dolphin Hotel, Lotusphere 2011

I couldn’t completely see, as I was somewher

e near the back of the massive hall inside the Dolphin, and a few thousand faithful Loti were directly ahead of me as the The Mass Ensemble kicked into their new age collaboration musical act before Lotus GM Alister Rennie took the stage to set the stage.

I counted 15 massive video screens throughout the room, if that gives you an indication of how massive it was.  I thought perhaps I’d shown up for a rescheduled Rolling Stones show.

But alas, “Start Me Up” wasn’t the theme.  It was “Apocalypse Now”-redux, as Rennie explained: “I love the smell of social in the morning.”

Me, too, Alister, especially when I can actually get online and BE social.

But if the conference theme “Get social, do business” couldn’t exactly be practiced in the Great Dolphin Hall of Collaboration due to the once again wi-fi overload, it could certainly be felt amongst the faithful.

Rennie went on to explain that this going to be a really important year for social business and Lotus, and that we would be hearing from a variety of customers and partners relating their own success stories.

And that’s when the surprise opening speaker appeared.

Let’s play a little bit of “Jeopardy” to tune up for the forthcoming Watson/Jeopardy matches in order to guess who it was: He created the imagined character Keyser Söze in the 1995 film, “The Usual Suspects.”

Answer: Who was Verbal Kint?

And who played Verbal in that film?  Two-time Academy award-winning actor, Kevin Spacey, of course.

From the moment he appeared, Spacey’s monologue was straight from an early Lotus collaboration playbook.

As the actor’s fluid presence filled the room he explained how collaboration had been key to his entire thespian and film career, and in a nod to “Pay It Forward,” explained that giving back to those who struggled to break into the business was an obligation.

“You should spend a good portion of your time sending the elevator back down,” Spacey explained, indicating that those who had made it in entertainment, or any business, should think about how to help give  those that come after them a hand up.

Spacey’s way to give back was to start one of the first social networks for the entertainment industry, Trigger Street.

Spacey related that he started the site in 2001-2002 as a community platform for undiscovered talent to showcase their work and to receive peer feedback and criticism.

“My own life has been blessed by people give me those same opportunities,” continued Spacey, explaining Jack Lemmon had once seen him perform as a 15-year old student actor, and that Spacey would go on to perform with Lemmon in three films, including “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

Spacey also explained how we came to be involved in this year’s Academy-Award nominated film, “The Social Network,” about the questioned germination of Facebook, then moved towards his denouement:

“What is your vision for yourself and your company and the world? I think we should be optimistic. When we do it and work together, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.

“Listen to someone else’s point of view.  Good ideas can come from everywhere…Having a positive attitude won’t solve all our problems, but they might just piss off enough pessimistic people to make it worthwhile.

Kevin Spacey tells the Lotusphere 2011 audience they have a responsibility "to send the elevator back down" and to help those trying to come up.

Now that’s the Kevin Spacey I know and love. Pay it forward…even if with a little attitude.

Live @ Lotusphere: The Social Business Market’s So Big We Gotta Wear Shades

Whenever I attend a conference like Lotusphere, one of the first things I do other than check into the hotel, make sure I have coffee (and cream) in my room, and find out what time the closest bar closes, is to head to the nearest market intelligence breakdown so I can start to understand the immensity (or lack thereof) of what it is we’re going to be talking about.

IBM market researcher Carol Galvin presents an overview of the $100B social business marketplace during the first day of Lotusphere 2011 in Orlando, Florida.

I don’t do this just because it’s fun — although it can be that, too — but so I can start to get my head around the market opportunity for a given space, and all the goodness that sits behind those wonderful numbers, projections, and soothsaying.

At this year’s Lotusphere Business Development Day (which is still going on as I write this), IBM principal segment analyst Carol Galvin and senior strategist Catherine Lord, IBM Collaboration Services Strategy, provided just such an overview, spending an hour at the Swan this morning outlining the $100B social business marketplace opportunity.

Yeah, that number got your attention, huh?  You didn’t hear me wrong: $100 billion.  With a “B.”

A big, fat, social “B.”

Oh, and I’m not talkin’ about that in the context that $50B of that is Facebook’s market valuation.  I’m talking about just the enterprise social business opportunity.

Before they got to the particulars, Carol and Catherine painted a broad canvas of what’s driving this opportunity: We’re coming out of a recession, globalization has driven expanded Internet and mobile access into people’s hands in parts of the world that largely missed Web 1.0, and the way we’re all working together and collaborating is changing.

Bigtime.

Furthermore, the new delivery models are evolving.

The cloud (or “SaaS”) opportunity alone is expected to grow 11% for the collaboration space at a compounded annual growth rate through 2015, resulting in an overall $17B market on that front alone.  The portal market will continue to grow at 5.4% CAGR during that time, and social software 5.1%.

And we haven’t even gotten to the social analytics opportunity (somebody’s gotta analyze and leverage all that social data, right?  Well, right??!)

Other key factors driving the external environment include the continued introduction of new devices and means of access (think everything from the iPhone to the iPad to GoogleTV and beyond). Those new “windows” into the cloud simply mean more opportunity for connecting, managing, and learning from these systems and new data end-to-end.

But, let’s also not forget the changing demographics, which means changing behaviors by people, arguably the most important ingredient in the social business soup.

The complexion of the workforce is changing around the world, and it’s the emerging markets which are growing the most quickly.

That, combined with the stimulus led dollars opening big coffers in healthcare, public sector, and the transportation/infrastructure sector, suggest the social business market’s so huge…well, yeah, ya just gotta wear shades.

But they can’t be just any old shades:

They preferably should be GPS-enabled, allow you to visualize in real-time where all the other cool shades are, and, collectively, be able to tell you what’s the coming thing in shades before anybody else (including your competitors).

If you’re still wondering why companies should compel themselves to become more social, try on the fact that of those growing higher than the average in their industry they’re 57% more times likely to use collaboration!

Or look at it through the lost opportunity lens: Each of your employees who haven’t gotten past the “productivity plateau” and embraced good social business practices is costing your organization $10K a year in lost productivity.

To help you with the math, at IBM that would be an estimated $4B in lost opportunity a year.  Ouch.

I definitely don’t think Sam Palmisano would be a happy camper CEO if we were losing $4B in lost opportunity just because we weren’t taking advantage of the social business opportunity at IBM — which, by the way, we are.

I would  venture to say IBM is one of the world’s most social companies, and much of what we’re learning we’re putting to use on behalf of our customers.

So, that’s the big picture on what the market looks like and where it’s going — let’s now get #ls11 to blossom into full swing and learn how we can all tap into that $100B pie and, in the process, learn how to work better together around the globe.

Live @ Lotusphere 2011: Getting Your Bearings

Happy Sunday, and let me offer up a warm Lotus greeting for everyone who has already arrived in Orlando for Lotusphere 2011, and to you who are still on planes, trains, automobiles, horse and buggy, or whatever else might be bringin’ ya.

Today’s Business Development Day has already kicked off (reserved for IBM Business Partners), as have the JumpStart sessions.

View from the Dolphin, Day 1, Lotusphere 2011, Before Turbo's Debrief

View from the Dolphin, Day 1, Lotusphere 2011, After Turbo's Debrief, When Things Became Much Clearer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you haven’t already received your credentials, registration is open from 7 am to 9 pm — simply follow the signs in the Dolphin Hotel and you’ll find your way to registration desk.

If you don’t know where the Dolphin is, you’ve got bigger problems than I can help you with but I do wish you luck.

You can probably find some help from others by dipping your toes in the Lotusphere Twitterstream. Just follow #ls11 on your favorite Twitter client, or stop on by our newfangled social media aggregator and keep an eye on a garden variety of Lotusphere-relevant streams.

Your favorite Lotus bloggers and Tweeters are registered there, and let’s face it, they’re the ones who can point us to the best par-tays.

Oh, and if you start to get that deer-in-the-headlights feeling, remember, that’s normal.  Take a deep breath, meditate for a few minutes, then remember, you’re in control and can make your own decisions.

To help, remember, the conference is broken out into five tracks: Insights and Innovations, Technology for Collaboration Solutions: Infrastructure, Technology for Collaboration Solutions: Development, Best Practices, and Customer Case Studies.

There’s also a variety of special sessions, including those from sponsors, the JumpStart sessions, and Show-n-Tell, but that’s enough for now, I can see your head is starting to explode.

That’s why we throw a big Welcome Reception on Sunday night, to help you stop with that sense of overwhelmingness-ness.  At this shindig, however, and unlike “Blazing Saddles,” you’ll need your stinking badge, so please register and bring your badge to the reception. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with Big Dennis, the security dude, and you really don’t want to be messing with Dennis.

If you forget any of this, don’t worry, much of it is in your Full Conference Guide, and the Reader’s Digest version is in the Pocket Agenda (well, not the part about Dennis).  They should be able to help you find your way and answer most of your questions.

Of course, all of that is the party line.

Now, here’s Turbo’s Recommended Lotusphere 2011 Tip and Trick (singular, as there’s only one): When it’s time for a big session change, just go walk out into the middle of the foyer, then watch the crowd.  Wherever the most people are going, follow them.

This is social business, people.  Get with the program.  It’s all about crowdsourcing, distributed participatory design, going along with the crowd to understand the greater collective intent!  Those people know where it’s at and where it’s happening, and they will lead you to the path of Lotusphere enlightenment.

Of course, they might just lead you right out into the Disney beach, but hey, that might not be so bad!

And finally, to answer that question on everybody’s mind, who’s this year’s guest speaker in the opening session?

What do I look like? I don’t know anything, I just work here.

Enjoy your Lotusphere 2011 experience, and remember: Get social, do business!

A New Network In Egypt?

It’s a gorgeous January Friday afternoon here in Austin, and as CNN plays in the background and as my Twitterstream for the hashtags #egypt and #cairo screams by faster than any stream I’ve seen to date on TweetDeck, I marvel at the creativity and inventiveness of people in and out of the region to keep the social mediated conversation moving along despite Internet crackdowns by the Egyptian authorities.

It takes me back to other times in the past when the revolution was televised — Tienanmen Square in 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of the same year, the Green revolution in Iran, and most recently, the more social mediated movements in Tunisia, Yemen, and, now, Egypt.

Putting all political proclivities aside, the ability for vast numbers of people to organize — in this case, like some dynamic, headless snake with no organizing head or political party at the helm — seems akin to watching a new inflection point in history.

It appears nobody has to be in charge, because nobody can be.

The network is the people, the people are the network, and though some individuals may be taken out of the network through violence, attrition, or other means, like some great and dynamic labyrinth of humanity, the packets continue to somehow stream through and reach their desired recipients around the globe.

Is a new network being created in Egypt as the rest of the world stands by to watch?

And what might be the message being sent?

That the hierarchical command-and-control structure of the nation-state, no matter its political orientation (dictatorship, democracy, meritocracy, or what have you), is being called to question, and what could or will replace it continues to be a great unknown?

Will a new government in Egypt emerge, one crowdsourced by the participation of the “crowd”?

Perhaps, perhaps not.

But whatever it does become, the journey will have been as important as the destination, and the reverberations of the lessons learned will likely be felt in government, business, and other human endeavors around the globe and for years to come.

I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be a witness the to the time and tidings, and am entirely hopeful the situation will come to some peaceful denouement soon.

The Lotus Cloud Is Getting Bigger…

…and Leon’s getting la-rrr-ggg-errrrr!

Sorry, still bemoaning the loss of Leslie Nielsen all these weeks later.

And with just three days left to Lotusphere, I’m in an “Airplane” kind of mood!

Scott Laningham and I have been tuning up our videocasting chops in pre-production preparing for all the video interviews we’re going to be conducting in Orlando (sorry, no Mickey), and we have a feast of IBM and Lotus executive and partner celebrities lined up.

To whet your appetite for all things Lotus, Scott and I synched up earlier this week for a pre-Lotusphere podcast. Scott spoke with Kathy Mandelstein and Colleen Hayes with the IBM Collaborations team for a sneak preview, and I added a few thoughts of my own about what I’d be looking forward to at Lotusphere 2011.

To keep the drumbeat going, we also announced some new partnerships and increased adoption of LotusLive public cloud services earlier today.

IBM announced partnerships with Ariba and SugarCRM to help clients take advantage of social commerce and CRM in the cloud.  We also announced the widespread adoption of LotusLive with a whole range of new clients benefiting from IBM’s cloud initiatives.

You can read more about both here.

Recent research from IDC demonstrates that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold by 2013, to some $44.2 billion (U.S.).

And based on a survey IBM conducted in the mid-market recently, there’s growing adoption of cloud computing among midsize firms, with two-thirds either planning or currently deploying cloud-based technologies to improve IT systems while lowering their overall costs.

Adoption of cloud computing is on the rise. Recent IDC research shows that worldwide spending on cloud services will grow almost threefold, reaching $44.2 billion by 2013. With this increased interest and adoption, businesses across the world are embracing IBM’s public cloud services for easy-to-use collaboration tools to connect with colleagues, partners and suppliers quickly.

Additionally, according to a recent IBM survey of more than 2,000 midsize companies, there’s growing adoption of cloud computing among midsize firms, with two-thirds either planning or currently deploying cloud-based technologies to improve IT systems management while lowering costs.

Check out the video below to learn more about how Lotus and SugarCRM are bringing customer relationship management to the cloud, and, of course, keep an eye on the Turbo blog throughout Lotusphere as more news emerges.

Dawdling At Davos, Innovating @ IBM

The World Economic Forum officially kicked off in Davos, Switzerland earlier today.

Once again, there must have been a misunderstanding, as my tickets never arrived or got lost in the snow or something.

That’s okay, I’m too busy getting ready for Lotusphere, but I do like to keep at least one eye on the discussions and memes emanating from Switzerland this time of year.

Joke though you may about the $100,000 cocktail parties and fancy dinners featuring dishes with fish we’ve never even heard of in Texas, and would much less put in our mouths, there’s plenty of important people talking about issues relevant to the day, and to the global business environment.

If you’re looking for some venues to follow the tidings yourself, The Wall Street Journal has a special Davos section. And The New York Times “Dealbook” has its “Davos Diary.”

Even the headlines of the coverage so far are most revealing.  These from the Journal: “Europe’s Fate Still Looms in Davos.”  “Uneven Global Growth Bedevils CEOs.” “Banks Return With a Goal: Pushing Back.” “At Davos, Focus on China.” “Food Prices, Inflation Seen as Key Pressures.”  “Michael Dell Sees Upside of Austerity.”

I’m sorry, did someone mention there was a global economic recovery going on somewhere on the globe?  Anybody?

Even the headlines on China coming out of Davos seem bearish, as if waiting for the Great Red Chicken Little to come clucking down from the top of the Great Hall of the People to announce China’s growth has receded into single digit positive growth territory.

Me, I’m more of a glass half full kinda guy.  (Though I’m not going to specify what it’s typically half filled with. This is a family blog!)

And so, it seems, is Michael Dell. According to the Journal’s report, Dell reckons the austerity measures will prod governments and companies around the globe to invest in technology in order to boost productivity.

I’m all for that.  Imagine me now doing my Jim Cramer “Mad Money” impression: BUY BUY BUY!

To be somewhat fair and balanced, there was at least one slightly bullish headline: “Davos Forecast: Crowded With a Chance of Optimism.”

Niiiiice layup (of a headline).

The story goes on to observe though there are still lingering concerns around financial risk and sovereign debt and the like,  others are looking towards longer-term threats (like managing cybersecurity threats or natural-resource scarcity).

Note to Self: We’re also going to have to become more sensitive to the feelings of those “emerging” economies around the globe.  WPP’s  head honcho, Martin Sorrells, explained that we had to “get out of the lexicon the words ‘developing’ or ’emerging.'”

To which I pose the question, how, really, emerging can you be when you’ve had years of double-digit economic growth while much of the West has been trying to dig out of a big, black hole that even Stephen Hawking might have trouble finding the bottom of?

That’s why I liked Obama’s SOTU speech last evening.

Innovation.  Education.  Infrastructure.  Those are all ideas I could get my head around and which seem a logical way forward if we in the U.S. wish to become a “re-emerging” economy.

So, team, I’ve decided it’s time for a pep talk, or in this case, a pep video.

I share this following video, by one of my favorite documentary filmmakers, Errol Morris, commissioned by us as an homage to IBM’s contributions to the world over the past 100 years.

So go ahead, please, and ignore the Davos idle chatter and doom and gloom.

Put that purchase order through, everything’s going to be okay.

We at IBM have already helped invent this future and send a man to the moon.

As we stand on the precipice of this still new century, why wouldn’t we stand ready to innovate our way around the globe and through the next 100?

IBM’s Virtual Desktop

Happy Monday.

I never published my picks for this week’s AFC and NFC championship games for the NFL, but I’m going to tell you them after the fact, and just to prove what an Honest Abe I am, I’m going to tell you the good and the bad.

First, I picked Green Bay over the Bears.  Chicago, you’re a wonderful city, if cold this time of year, but I just figured Green Bay QB Aaron Rodgers had the mo going into this game, and I was right.

However, I don’t agree that quickly replacing 2nd stringer Collins with Hanie was a bad idea, as Collins wasn’t getting it done, Cutler was already out, and Hanie went on to complete 13 of 20 passes for 153 yards AND lead two scoring drives.

As for the Jets and the Steelers, well, I had that one all wrong.  But then again, the Jets that showed up in ‘Burgh country were not the same team I saw beat up on the New England Patriots last week.  I don’t know what happened to that team, but my cheer for “Jets, Jets, Jets” was transformed into “Crash, Crash, Crash” to my friends on Facebook.

So, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will play Superbowl XLV at Jerry’s House in Dallas.  Looking forward to it (and, as always, to the TV commercials, silly though many of them will likely be).

Now, back to business.  IBM made an announcement today worthy of a few pixels when we announced the Virtual Desktop for Smart Business, a new mobility offering that provides anytime, anywhere access to personal desktops from mobile devices (including tablets, netbooks, laptops, and thin clients).

This new IBM Virtual Desktop lets Windows or Linux desktops be hosted and managed centrally, which as most IT administrators would concede, can help lower the cost and complexity of managing PC environments as they deploy new apps and automagic software updates (and, in turn, help reduce help desk requests).

The new solution is flexible, in that the Virtual Desktop for Smart Business can be deployed on a customer’s own infrastructure or through an IBM Business Partner’s “private cloud” hosted environment.

IBM Virtual Desktop: Self-Configuring, -Healing, and -Protecting

The IBM Virtual Desktop has self-configuring, self-managing and self-protecting features that enable easy installation and management, plus continuous backup and recovery.

“IBM continues to tackle the needs of smaller companies with powerful solutions that are easy to install, easy to manage and priced right,” said Ken Espiau, Operations Director, Northcom Technologies, an IBM Business Partner. “With IBM’s Virtual Desktop offering, there’s only one console, one system and one implementation to make managing desktops much easier. Our clients can realize benefits of cost savings from the desktop of up to 40% while we’re able to gain a recurring revenue stream on back end management.”

The solution is offered as a pre-integrated, ready-to-run software package priced at $150 per user per year for a one year contract.

IBM Virtual Desktop will be delivered through IBM Business Partners who will provide local consulting, networking and software infrastructure skills to ensure smooth installation. An early adopter program drew strong channel interest with well over 100 IBM Business Partners actively providing feedback and preparing to use the program to tap into the growing demand for desktop virtualization solutions.

IBM Virtual Desktop for Smart Business is available today in North America, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Poland (although the $150/user cost is subject to pricing variance local market depending).

IBM plans to make the offering available in China, India, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

IBM Business Partners can take advantage of Virtual Desktop training and sales enablement resources here to get started providing solution bundles with System x server and storage configurations.

What’s Big And Yellow And Lands Every January In Florida

If it’s January, you know what time of year it is, at least ’round these parts.

It’s time for….Lotusphere 2011!

Last year was my first foray to Lotusphere, but as I surmised then, hopefully not my last.

And so now I’m getting excited that January 30th is just around the corner (that’s only 10 days away!)

I’ve been participating in a number of team and planning calls around our communications and marketing efforts for Lotusphere 2011, and again also getting very excited about the caliber of speakers, thought leaders, and subject matter experts who will be in attendance.

If you’re planning on attending, or even if you’re not, you can use this page as a conduit to a number of the other key resources relevant leading into, during, and even after the event.

This year, I’ll be once again joined by my partner-in-crime, developerWorks’ own Scott Laningham, where I’ll be blogging some of the general sessions and also doing some live and on-demand interviews of IBM executives, business partners, and perhaps even some random strangers from off the street.

You’ll be hearing a lot about social business coming out of this year’s event, a drumbeat that began at the Lotus social business kickoff events held in NYC and around the globe last September.

To keep up with all the action, I would recommend you utilize this IBM Lotusphere 2011 Social Media site, which will help you follow any variety of voices emerging from and around Lotusphere 2011.

Also, as mentioned in a prior post, there’s our first-ever IBM Social Business Industries Symposium, where line-of-business execs and their ilk will come together to learn about social business opportunities and challenges.

(Word has it that Wired editor Chris Anderson will also be in attendance.  Click here to read my interview with Chris Anderson from 2007.)

So, you say, that’s all great and stuff, but I’m ready to get going sooner rather than later, and I want to participate even if I can’t attend in person.

Well, I don’t know what to tell you, there, kimosabe.  I guess I could throw out some red meat coverage from last year’s L’sphere, to whet your appetite.

But I could also point you to points beyond.  In February, IBM is going to be hosting its first ever “IBM Social Business Jam.”

THERE’s your opportunity to have your voice heard and to help shape the social business discussion moving forward.

This is going to be a web-based event from February 8-11, 2011, one that transpires in this, IBM’s centennial year, and which is going to provide an opportunity for thousands of leaders from around the world to pool their knowledge and experiences to examine the next generation of business.

Lest you think getting your jam on won’t be a good use of yours or IBM’s time, “jamming” is the means by which IBMers reinvented their corporate values in the early 2000s, and also how we initially developed the investment ideas (smarter cities, electricity, etc.) that later made up the core of the IBM Smarter Planet initiative.

So, be a part of history and come jam with us in February.

And, be a part once again of that which is big and yellow and lands in Orlando and come see us at Lotusphere 2011!