Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 New Developments & Evolution July 10, 2007

Due to popular demand, UNICOM has organised its third conference to provide a timely update on new advances in this fast-moving field of corporate communications.

As the web evolves into an indispensable tool for our daily lives, Businesses, even the most conservative, are sitting up and taking interest in the ways in which they can exploit Wikis, Blogs, Social Tagging, Instant Messaging, Video, Mash-Ups, and other tools to improve creativity, productivity, collaboration and visibility within an enterprise, as well as engaging clients and partners in more fruitful collaboration.

Social Tools are changing the way we do business: IBM, Toyota, even Wells-Fargo Bank, have invested serious money in Second Life; major law firms encourage their employees to blog; wikis are often far more powerful and useful than standard resources and have replaced intranets in many instances as invaluable sources of information and communication throughout the enterprise. RSS Feeds, Instant Messaging, Video - all can deliver greater involvement and transparency. Originators become real, human and influential, and for the new generation of techno-savvy professionals, the opportunities and applications are unbounded.

One of the key challenges for corporations is how they integrate these new technologies within the enterprise and figure out which best suit their needs, which are toys for people with time on their hands, and which really will make inter- and intra-organisational communications easier and more effective.

This conference presents new viewpoints and case studies explaining the value, application and (sometimes) the downside of social tools in a business context. It looks beyond the "why" of Enterprise 2.0 to explain the "how", giving all participants a true learning experience.

Key themes will include:

· How Blogs, Wikis, Social Tagging, Instant Messaging etc change the traditional models of managing knowledge and how they can support purposeful social networks
· Combining Video and Blogs for greater employee involvement
· Developing and maintaining communities
· Social Tools and the Not-for-Profit Sector: Overview of take up and measuring the impact
· Why IBM and other organisations are investing time and money in Virtual Worlds
· The use of podcasting and RSS feeds to target customers with clearly defined interests
· Twitter, Jaiku. Does microblogging have a role in business interactions?
· How to plan a strategy for encouraging use of social software in business
· Protecting organisational reputation in an open culture

Benefits of attending

Attendees will gain an excellent overview how social tools can be used in business today to foster collaboration, create greater cohesion, support innovation and win customers. Everyone will be able to go back into their organisations with enough knowledge to experiment with at least one of these tools to support at least one of those aims, immediately.

What delegates at previous UNICOM Social Tools events said:

· It was brilliant! One of the best
· Excellent speakers and range of content covered
· Very interesting and informative
· Very useful and relevant
· I enjoyed the conference and got a lot of ideas I now need to put into practice
· I had such a great time during the three days at the UNICOM event and the best part was meeting great people… The speakers were wonderful and I have come back with much enthusiasm and ideas
· Excellent conference - took some real practical advice away which I feel that I will actually implement when I go back to work
· Very Interesting. Informative. Fast-moving. Participative.
· Intellectually stimulating. Good quality speakers // Discussion // Networking.
· It was .. more relevant and had better speakers than any conference I have been to.

Speakers

Kevin Anderson, The Guardian

Lee Bryant, Headshift

Steve Bridger, nfp2.0
Suw Charman, Independent Social Software Consultant
Kurt Lyall, Tagseasy
Ian McNairn, IBM
Jim Moffat, elastictime Ltd
Adrian Moss, Focus Business Communications
Brad Meyer, Interaction Technologies Ltd
Lyndsay Rees-Jones and Ed Mitchell, CILIP [Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals]

Holly Stewart, IBM
Chris Vallance, BBC
Sam Watkins, BT

Early Bird Fee (until 1 June) - £600.00 + VAT

Official Website: http://www.unicom.co.uk/product_detail.asp?prdid=1538