Social Business Epicenter

Thoughts On Swarming

Had a long and productive talk with Adina Levin (Socialtext) about the swarm notion for the event. She suggested supporting swarmlings — members of the swarm — where they already post things, and aggregating it all together into a Wordpress blog. So, I think that is what we will be trying to do.

As people come into the swarm, they will be able to tag entries with “#sbepi” or “social business epicenter” and those will be filtered and aggregated into that blog.

(PS Adina is joining the swarm, too.)

[Update: I recalled that Tumblr directly supports creating posts from an RSS feed, so I will be rigging up a new blog on Tumblr for the swarm.]

The Swarm: Rethinking The Program Committee

By Stowe Boyd

I am trying to rethink the way that conferences are conceived and worked through. I have worked on dozens of program committees, and they have their strengths, but they get bogged down a lot of the time.

So I am creating a swarm to help me push around ideas about the Epicenter event, and I am going to (among other things) work with the swarm to figure out how we are going to work this all out, what themes, memes, and schemes we should focus on at the Epicenter.

I am happy to say that JP Rangaswami (BT), Tim Young (Socialcast), and Adam Hertz (TuneIn) have joined the swarm.

Social Business Epicenter: The Book

By Stowe Boyd

The notion of social business is relatively new, perhaps only 18 months or so old. It is, however, the outgrowth of deep thinking and experience in the application of social tools in business that goes back over a decade. The thought leaders, visionaries, and practitioners that will be joining me at Epicenter all have distinctive voices that should be heard, and perhaps getting down some of those thoughts on paper is a good idea as well.

I think that a book of essays by the guest contributors to the Social Business Epicenter is a good idea, and will meet the needs of the larger community who may be unable to attend. Of course, we will be providing a copy of the book to all attendees, as well.

Social Business Epicenter: Apr 2010: New York City

By Stowe Boyd

Today, more than ever, management is reexamining and rethinking the basic principles of business: how to innovate and prosper. To that end, managers are looking to stay in step with a changing world, and the rise of the social web in particular.

How should today’s business leverage what is being learned about the social web? Certainly what is going on today is more than just social media marketing, limited to marketing and community outreach efforts. Some of the leading thinkers in this area believe that we are at the start of something much larger than a retake on marketing.

We are seeing a rethinking of work, collaboration, and the role of management in a changing world, where the principles and tools of the web are transforming society, media, and business. The mainstays of business theory — like innovation, competitive advantage, marketing, production, and strategic planning — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced in the context of a changing world. The rise of the real-time, social web has become one of the critical factors in this new century, along with a radically changed global economic climate, an accelerating need for sustainable business practices, and a political context demanding increased openness in business.

These issues cannot be dealt with one by one, but instead approached as connected elements of a new world order for business.

The Social Business Epicenter is designed to address these issues, and to bring together a community of visionaries, practitioners, and tool makers, to collectively explore what the form the social business — and our aspirations to design it — will take.

In the next two months, I will be working with a diverse group of people, but most especially my partner, Jeff Pulver, who will be producing the Symposium with me. We will be refining the program, and developing  I will be making ongoing announcements about the event, including the selection of a final date — now planned for mid-April in New York.