Enterprise 2.0 Preview: Practical Advice On Enterprise Social CollaborationEnterprise 2.0 Preview: Practical Advice On Enterprise Social Collaboration

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Many of the headliners at this month's Enterprise 2.0 conference will be from FedEx, Wells Fargo, Nike, American Airlines, and Yum! Brands--keynote speakers from companies that are proving the value of new social collaboration and mobile technologies.

Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2012 is the latest edition of the social business conference from UBM, the parent company of information and The BrainYard. The event will run June 18-21 at The Hynes Convention Center, in parallel with the new Mobile Connect event. Keynote sessions will be open to attendees at both conferences, showcasing how social and mobile technologies together are rewriting the rules of enterprise applications.

"We're going to have a huge focus on customer stories," promised Paige Finkelman, general manager of the Enterprise 2.0 conferences. Social software leaders like IBM, Lithium Technologies, and Microsoft will also be represented, but the emphasis on telling the stories of the organizations implementing these technologies "cuts through the noise to provide companies the information they need to fully unlock the value of enterprise social tools and technologies," she said.

The latest list of confirmed keynote speakers includes:

-- Bryan Barringer, Manager, Enterprise Collaboration Implementation, FedEx Services.

-- Nathan Bricklin, Senior Vice President, Head of Social Strategy, Wells Fargo.

-- Phillip Easter, Director of Mobile Apps, American Airlines.

-- Richard Foo, Collaboration Director, NIKE.

-- Rob Gubas, VP, Global Marketing, Colliers International.

-- Art King, Global Infrastructure Architecture Lead, NIKE.

-- Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, MIT's Center for Digital Business.

-- Jeff Schick, Vice President, IBM Social Software.

-- Jared Spataro, Senior Director, SharePoint Product Management, Microsoft.

-- Michael Wu, PhD, Principal Scientist, Analytics, Lithium Technologies.

Additionally, the presentations will include a keynote panel discussion entitled "Inventing Management 2.0: Radical Yet Practical Insights to Becoming a True Social Enterprise". This panel discussion will be moderated by Chris Grams of the Management Innovation eXchange; panelists include David Mason with Mozilla Corp., Nyal Reed with The Educe Group, and Mary Woolf with Yum! Brands. The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), in partnership with Saba Software and the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, launched a Management 2.0 "hackathon" at Enterprise 2.0 in Santa Clara last fall. The results and conclusions are being presented in Boston.

[ See our special report: Enterprise 2.0 Boston 2012.]

The Boston conference will feature a new analytics and metrics track chaired by Johna Till Johnson of Nemertes Research, reflecting audience demand for more content on measuring the impact of collaboration technologies. "We're really doubling down in that area," Finkelman said. In addition to the sessions on the main conference program, one of the pre-conference workshops will be "How Do You Measure That? Social Analytics Explained," featuring Lithium's Wu and IBM Business Transformation Consultant Rawn Shah.

This edition of Enterprise 2.0 also adds an organizational and operational readiness track chaired by consultant and author Sara Roberts, focusing more attention on the prerequisites for social collaboration.

Another addition is The BrainYard Discussion track, where we'll be looking for your participation in discussions about internal social collaboration for employees and Facebook applications for business.

Meanwhile, the Mobile Connect event expands on the mobile collaboration content formerly included in Enterprise 2.0 and is chaired by Maribel Lopez of Lopez Research. Finkelman said she sees enterprise mobile technology as a separate but complementary topic to social collaboration. Attendees can register for one or both events.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard and facebook.com/thebyard

The Enterprise 2.0 Conference brings together industry thought leaders to explore the latest innovations in enterprise social software, analytics, and big data tools and technologies. Learn how your business can harness these tools to improve internal business processes and create operational efficiencies. It happens in Boston, June 18-21. Register today!