Lotusphere's the biggest event of the year for the IBM-Lotus community, right?
Yeah, that's undoubtedly still true. And this year all conference attendee's are going to be bombarded with messages from IBM about the Social Media Revolution and about how organizations are going to have to adopt a Social Business Strategy if they wish to do anything more that just survive in this Post-PC World that is defining the early years of what is - after all - now the 21st Century.
But is IBM really "eating its own dog food"?
My personal view is that it most certainly is not and that it is becoming increasingly guilty of a "do as we recommend, not as we do" approach.
Take their approach to the organization of the Lotusphere 2012 event as a classic example. Where is the IBM sponsored pre-registration, social business site that they could have pushed up to generate more interest in the event? Where are the online forums where exhibitors and attendees can connect with IBM and/or the event organizers to have questions answered and/or issues dealt with? Why was there no mention at all of Lotusphere 2012 on IBM's website until a matter of days before registration for the event opened?
What kind of truly "social business" would keep a potential exhibitor waiting for more than two weeks for a response to a sales inquiry?
No, EBSG will NOT be exhibiting at Lotusphere this year. Instead, we will save the $20k or so that it would undoubtedly have cost us and put that money towards a far more direct, more social business-centric means of connecting with and supporting not only our own customers but the IBM-Lotus end user community as a whole.
AND, we will be encouraging the 20 or more international IBM-Lotus Vendor Partners who we represent here in the USA to do likewise. Even if only 10 follow our lead, 10 x $7.5k = Ouch!!!
This year, I think that we should actually focus on providing knowledge, insight and "rewards" to those, who like us, actually want to live the social business experience rather than just hear about it.
Lotusphere 2015? May not even be one at this rate!!!
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