Next Generation Knowledge Sharing & Learning Online Conference Event - In Spring 2008?
While I am just about to finish editing the audio recording (And fine tune the slide deck that will go with it) from my pitch on Social Computing @ IBM at the recent IBM iForum event in Zürich …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a proposal post, not an announcement: the author, fresh off delivering a Social Computing @ IBM pitch at the IBM iForum in Zürich, is editing the audio and slides while floating a next-generation online knowledge-sharing and learning conference for Spring 2008 — explicitly unconfirmed. The idea sits inside a busy IBM arc from late 2007: the company bought a web conferencing vendor in August, closed the $5 billion Cognos deal in November, and announced Blue Cloud offerings for corporate customers in Q1 2008 to chase Web 2.0 momentum.
The timing matters because the tools for such an event are exactly what IBM has been assembling all year, and peer experiments in online-first formats were already circulating — from Jon Udell's interview series with innovators to Amsterdam's Next Web Conference earlier in 2007.
First-order effects
- If the Spring 2008 event happens, IBM's own stack — the web conferencing vendor acquired in August 2007 plus the Blue Cloud offerings slated for Q1 2008 — becomes the natural infrastructure candidate, turning an internal advocacy pitch into a live product demo.
- Attendees and IBM's knowledge-management community get the Zürich Social Computing material distributed as edited audio plus slides rather than as a venue-bound talk.
Second-order effects
- Rival conference organizers and web-conferencing vendors face pressure to match a format that bundles social computing content with the delivery platform, shifting competition from seat licenses toward hosted event experiences.
- Corporate buyers evaluating Blue Cloud gain a concrete use case — large-scale online learning events — that tests the offering against real collaboration workloads before general rollout.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, professional conferences migrate from physical venues toward online, socially mediated formats, with vendors who own both the content and the conferencing layer best positioned to host them.
- Knowledge sharing inside enterprises gets treated as a recurring, produced event rather than ad-hoc documentation — a structural shift in how firms like IBM package expertise for employees and customers.
The trend: Enterprise knowledge sharing is moving from physical conference halls to online, platform-hosted events, with vendors assembling the full stack through acquisitions and cloud launches.