Having An Impact

I’m heading out to Las Vegas on Sunday.  Again.

And I’ve worn out all the “what happens in Vegas” and “Hangover” jokes, so I’ll get straight to the point:

I’m heading to Vegas to have an Impact.

Seriously.

Impact 2011 starts this weekend and kicks into high gear on Monday, and I’m going to be there to blog and provide some live videocasting support.

The IBM Impact 2011 Global Conference is expecting to bring together more than 6,600 technology and business leaders at a single event to learn how to work smarter for better business outcomes.

At Impact, IT professionals will be able to master the latest business process management, SOA and Cloud solutions and obtain certifications, and business professionals can sharpen their leadership skills and learn best practices for overcoming complexity with increased agility (including a track on marketing!)

The event will be hosted at The Venetian and Palazzo Hotels in Las Vegas, April 10 to 15, but if you can’t make it live and in person, there will be plenty of folks providing social media coverage.

Here’s how you can keep up with Impact both at the event and remotely:

First, follow TwitterID @ibmimpact and hashtag #ibmimpact

Second, check the IBM Impact Conversations site at ibm.com/social/impact.

Third, check the IBM Impact blog.

Fourth, keep an eye on the Impact Livestream channel.

And keep an eye on the main Impact portal to get a bird’s eye overview of the event agenda, speakers, and topics.

So, come on down to Vegas, leave your ATM card at home, stop by the trade show floor, keep an eye out for the klieg lights and stop by to say “hey” to Scott Laningham and I.

P.S. Speaking of having an impact, I want to take a moment to wish my esteemed IBM social media colleague, Adam Christensen, a bon voyage and best of luck in his new position as the social media lead for Juniper Networks. Adam has been a shining social media beacon at Big Blue these past few years, and I know I speak for many of his colleagues when I say we’re all very sorry to see him go, and that he’ll be very much be missed as he helped us all make IBM’s world-class social media efforts what they are today.

Clearly, our loss is Juniper’s gain, and we expect great things from him there.  But, as Adam himself Tweeted earlier, “once an IBMer, always an IBMer.”

Good luck in the new venture, buddy…we’ll all be eagerly awaiting the latlong of the best taco stands in Silicon Valley.

Google Dance

Google co-founder and now CEO Larry Page has wasted no time in shaking things up at the search giant, particularly in its bid to become more social.

The Los Angeles Times Technology column has the skinny, and is reporting that Page has elevated key leaders of a number of its business units into SVP positions, and is giving them more “responsibility and accountability.”

At the same time, Nicholas Carson with Business Insider is reporting that “all Google employees will have their 2011 bonuses either go up or go down as much as 25% depending on how well Google ‘perform[s] against our strategy to integrate relationships, sharing and indentity across our products.'”

That is, depending on how social Google gets over the next year.

Ah, Larry, welcome to the world of complex organizations rife with competing interests, internal cooperation and coopetition, and massive complexity.  Are you sure you wanted to become CEO?

As Carlson observes, there’s no question who the target is of this “social bonus.”

Call it “The Facebook Effect.”

Me, I feel like I’m back on the sidelines of the Browser Wars of the late 1990s, waiting for Netscape and Microsoft to constantly try to reup one another on browser features.

Only this time around, there’s much, much more at stake, as these platforms are laying the foundation for consumer (and, possibly, business) IT services for years to come.

So does this mean Mark Zuckerberg’s going to offer up his troops a “search bonus???”