A Groundbreaking Approach to IBM Social Business Briefing

Digirati's Head of Social Business, Rooven Pakkiri, reflects on this week's IBM Social Business Briefing.

On 26th October, Digirati and partners hosted an innovative Social Business Briefing at the Royal Exchange in London. Breaking with tradition - but very much in keeping with the new trend for greater Collaboration and transparency in business, the event was ground breaking and original in many ways:

• the seating plan was in the round not theatre style
• guests and hosts were seated together around small circular tables to create an intimate, informal, cafe style atmosphere
• there were no speakers but rather thought leaders
• no slide presentations instead questions for discussion and debate
• invited guests were provided with these questions beforehand
• after the Q&A discourse attendees were treated to Live Collaboration on the IBM Connections Social Business platform straight from their cafe style seating.

The level of participation from guests was quite staggering and heart warming to those of us who had conceived this event. It seemed that both the topic (Social Business is so hot right now) and the event format lent themselves to lively debate. Time raced past and before we knew it we were over our allotted time having covered just 4 of the planned topics for discussion but in such a comprehensive and all inclusive way that the room was buzzing with energy and passionate engagement.

A short comfort break was followed by the Live show which involved 4 of the hosts taking on the personas of employees using Social Business for Collaborative Decision Making at a global engineering company and concluding with the CEO taking a position on a Bid - No Bid position over an opportunity to take his company in a new direction. Guests were able to see first hand the power of Social Business technology in terms of reaching into the Corporate memory to deliver real business insights. They also became familiar with Social gestures on the platform and begun to see how things like the Influence Chart in this world take precedence in many ways over the conventional Organisational Chart.

This experimental event and format proved to be a big hit with all who attended with people asking about dates for the next event and promising to bring other colleagues along next time.

The objective of the business breakfast was to help these pioneer thinkers in their companies clarify their thoughts on Social Business and prepare their own roadmap. Our feeling was that this objective was fully met and a precedence for future event style was set.

For more information here are some slides (pdf 1MB) that were used to introduce the event.