Those sessions would make it a busy four days, but also have about 35 meetings already scheduled. That means I am sold out, so I am sorry if any delegates weren’t able to get on my calendar. You can look for at the receptions (if the questions aren’t too hard) or set up a time to talk after the event if my slots were all taken.

This is the first time in three years that I am not looking at Symposium as the conference chair. I am looking forward to being “just” an analyst in one of my favourite cities in the world. Hope to see you there.

These were some of the top questions people were asking about.

• Promoting Social Software in Conservative Organizations.
  The initial issue many organizations faced with social software was how to get control of the mavericks and pioneers who were dragging in innovative solutions from wherever they could find them. As adoption deepens, more organizations are finding that their internal or industry culture is stronger than the impulses of these dynamic individuals. In conservative organizations, people feel that using wacky new software like wikis or microblogging would be seen as a bad thing, even if there is no official statement or prohibition. These organizations are looking for ways to encourage innovation and responsible adoption.
• Developing a Collaboration Strategy
  A bit of an evergreen, but definitely still a hot topic. There are lots of initiatives, some benefits, and lots of attention. How do we channel that energy into a viable strategy?
• Involving Customers in Social Software Efforts
  The first several iterations of social software concentrated on collaboration among colleagues. After that, the marketing or customer service organization started Social CRM efforts. Now, it’s time to develop a long term view of how to involve customers in the developing conversations.

This year is different for me because it is most likely the last time I will serve as chair for the event as well as attending as an analyst. This was my third year organizing the agenda, which is personally stimulating as well as a pleasant challenge. I became familiar with areas of our research that I otherwise would not have seen. I loved the chance to think about how we present our ideas as well as what the ideas themselves should be. I have loved working with the events team, leading to a much greater appreciation of the professionalism, work, and skills needed behind the scenes to pull off an event like this one. If Symposium is a success, it is mostly due to the events people making it seem (mostly) seamless. I will miss that part of the event, when I go back to just worrying about finishing the slides for my own presentations.

To everyone who made Symposium possible: Events staff, analysts, consultants, management, sales people, and (most of all) clients and sponsors: An enormous thank you. 

While five cities in five days is a quick pace, it’s not out of the ordinary. I really enjoy these tours. As well as eating some great food, seeing (briefly) some nice places (the train trip from Zurich to Milan is stunning), I get a chance to talk to lots of people about what they are doing. It is always a great source of research, as I hear about the questions people are asking.

Here are the top three questions that I heard on this trip:

• How do we introduce social software into a skeptical organization?
  Although social media is hot, it ain’t hot everywhere.Some organizations are more conservative, or have been around for a very long time and aren’t too eager to adopt new technologies. In these cases, people won’t use it because it is cool or because Gartner says they should.
• Should we start our own customer community or build onto one that already exists?
  After hearing all the reasons why customer communities are good for you, this issue comes from those who have not yet really started. They face the dilemma of going where their customers already are (like on Facebook or a more specialized site), or trying to draw them to a site associated directly with their own brand.
• How do we handle privacy? Our users and customers find this stuff creepy.
  This is a huge issue in Germany, where attitudes towards personal and professional privacy are very highly developed, but was a hot issue across Europe this tour. Importantly, the questions were not about legal restrictions and requirements on privacy, but about how social media makes people feel. Many are not comfortable with sharing too much in their professional lives, and social techniques make them uneasy.

I’ve got some ideas about how to answer these questions, and will work them out in formal research notes in the coming weeks. I also will be talking about some of these (especially the first one) at Gartner Symposium in Cannes. Carol Rozwell will cover this in Orlando. There are also sessions on privacy in Europe, and social CRM.

I’m an analyst, so I love getting attention, but some kinds of attention are tricky. Clint Boulton, a journalist at eWeek.com, summarized and commented on what I had to say in a slideshow on eWeek.com entitled Cloud Computing: Microsoft’s Stealth Attack in Enterprise Social Software. I have been quoted by Clint before, and have a lot of respect for his insights. I generally agree with most of what he says in this analysis as well, except for some of the emphasis. Only one slide in the webinar concentrated on Microsoft, while the title of the article could make it look like I spent an hour talking about Microsoft. Given the hoopla Microsoft has been raising about SharePoint and its renewed social software features, I wouldn’t really characterize it as a “sneak attack” either.

To be clear: I am not complaining about being misquoted or misrepresented in this article. That has happened to me in the past, so I know what it is like. It’s disconcerting to see my words summarized in a way I don’t completely recognize though.

By the way, I will be talking about similar topics with updated content at Gartner’s PCC Conference in London next month and Cannes Symposium in November.

This week I got to spend a day with with the IT and external communications staff from several United Nations agencies in Geneva. As I expected, use of social media is a hot topic there both inside and outside of their organizations. They were concerned both with how to prevent or minimize missteps from their own staff, and how to react to others using social media to talk about their operations and activities. The political and humanitarian aspects of UN work added extra dimensions that I don’t usually hear about when talking with commercial enterprises. While politics is never very far from what they do, most people working at the agencies try to steer clear of it to get their jobs done. For those working in humanitarian areas, it is especially important to step gingerly around political considerations.

I was impressed by the earnest desire to not only be effective in using social media, but also to contribute to the greater good. I could see from the discussions and questions that each of these agencies is driven by a clear, specific purpose, whether it is caring for refugees or analyzing economic statistics.  The sometimes inflexible funding methods and often Byzantine administrative structures of UN agencies must not make it easy to concentrate on this purpose always, but it was certainly top of mind with the people I spoke with.

Instead, I want to talk about my anti-resolutions for 2010.They are “anti” in a couple different ways. The main one is that these are not things that I intend to do, but stuff that I hope that other people will do. That is much easier.This is also what analysts usually do; we rarely do stuff, but we comment a lot on what other people or organizations should do. Most of the resolutions are also “anti” because they describe something that I hope won’t happen rather than new things that should happen. I am generally not a negative person, but there’s a lot of undesirable activity going on out there. After reading this, please stop it. Thank you.

1. Vendors should stop confusing “You can use it to do that” with “We designed it to do that”
   Maybe it’s because I am working on a new magic quadrant (for “Externally-facing Social Software Platforms”), but I’m growing weary of vendors who think because a feature can conceivably be (mis)used to fill a need, that they should be considered just as much as a product specifically designed to meet a particular set of requirements.

   You can use a heavy duty flashlight to hammer in a nail (I know; I’ve done it), but that doesn’t mean that a flashlight should be considered part of the hammer market.

2. Organizational planners should stop thinking that participation in social media is enough.
   Don’t get me wrong; I think participation is wonderful. Participation, (or at least monitoring if that’s all that you can swing at the moment) in communities and broader social conversations is the best place to start.

   But merely participating cannot be the end goal. You need to understand what you realistically can get from the community, and what you can contribute, with emphasis on the latter. If you contribute well, you have a much better chance of benefiting at some point.

3. More enterprises will look beyond SharePoint
   I have nothing against Microsoft SharePoint. It is good at serving several needs, and just fine for addressing many others. But there are plenty of other good products out there, doing innovative things. In too many cases, SharePoint has become the default answer no matter what the question. Rather than asking “How can I use SharePoint to do X” most of the time, a better question would be “How can I do Y” or even “What should be the role of SharePoint in supporting my efforts to achieve Z?”
4. Vendors should stop thinking that it is the analysts’ job to promote their product.
   I shouldn’t be, but I’m regularly surprised and depressed at how often this comes up. The biggest part of my job is to help end user customers make better decisions, and to help vendor customers develop better products and marketing strategies. I am not a direct part of those marketing efforts, however.

   I talk about vendors and products a lot, but not because the vendor is a client, or because they took the trouble to brief me. I realize that briefings take time and effort, and appreciate it when vendors invest their time in talking to me. But neither that nor being a client creates an obligation to promote a product.

5. Please don’t blithely assume that analysts are scuzzballs.
   Again I shouldn’t be, but I am often unpleasantly surprised at the ease with which some people assume that analysts are unethical, sleazy, scumbags who do nothing unless bribed. I have no problem with people disagreeing or challenging judgements, but I am as insulted as Tom is by offhand, unsupported assumptions that question my integrity. Luckily, I have enough customers who seem to value the advice which my colleagues and I provide. If we were really as scuzzy as some people seem to think, no one would put any weight in what we have to say.

   I can’t speak for the entire industry or even all of Gartner, but I know that for a fact that I have never been asked to favour a vendor client over non-clients in any research I have done. Most of the time, I don’t even know for sure which ones are clients. We spend a great deal of time discussing how to keep our independence, and none on how to reward paying clients. In the last month, I had two situations where I know that Gartner lost revenue because a vendor client expected their customer relationship should deliver them more mentions in research notes and conference presentations and better ratings (see #4). We showed no hesitation in making clear that this is not the way we work.

6. Please don’t let the Apple people get pitted against the Android/ChromeOS folks
   I suspect that the time is soon coming when we we will see “I’m a Mac, and I’m a ChromeOS” ads, or at least spoof videos along the lines of Apple’s ads making fun of PCs. Since I am more of a PC/Blackberry type, most of this will pass me by, like when the cool kids in high school  split along a strict Michael Jackson/ZZ Top divide (I was more of a Joe Jackson fan).

   I already find most Mac vs. PC discussions irritating (they both work, they both have problems, IMHO). But a split like this will inevitably encourage the disturbing trend that splits the world into camps that generally either talk past each other, or shout at each other. There’s enough of that in politics; let’s try to avoid it in tech where we can.

7. No one will “Reply all” to more than ten people.
   Yeah, that would be nice.

As for last year’s anti-resolutions, as I expected not many of them came to be, or stopped being as the case may be. A little bit of progress on numbers 7 , 8 and 9, but not much. However, this year’s list only has 7 items instead of 10, so I suppose that is close enough to good news to be worth celebrating.

Happy new year to everyone.

That isolated word comes to a screeching halt when the last session ends. Physically, the world inside the conference room disappears in a few hours. Workers start tearing down the show floor and some of the conference area even while the last presentations are being delivered. By early afternoon, the site doesn’t look the world we’ve come to know so well for the last four days. From having every minute planned and parceled out, having two hours with nothing specific to do before my train leaves is an odd experience. That’s when I take the chance to stare off into space for a bit. The view from the Croisette is really quite nice, it turns out.

Aside from the normal questions about vendors and best practices, I was surprised by the number of organizations looking to take advantage of new vendor dynamics to shake up the hold that they perceive that Microsoft and to a lesser extent IBM has over their collaboration strategies. They welcome the advantages of integrated offerings and upgrades with more functionality, but dislike the idea that they have no choice but to stay with their incumbent vendors. I think the traditional titans could be in for a surprise when they see the number of organizations seriously looking at Cloud computing as a way to shake up existing relationships, and taking steps to understand which parts of their collaboration lineup can be commoditized and federated.

As conference chair again this year, it was gratifying to see that some of the changes we made this year went well. We continue to see more senior executive attendees, which is reflected in the CIO track. We dramatically increased the number of workshops and roundtables, most of which were well-attended. Several analysts and about 20 attendees were actively tweeting, with about 200 messages per day. Scheduling the analyst keynote on Monday afternoon to give attendees the option of arriving on Monday morning seemed to go over well. The stormy weather on Monday morning was not very welcome, but there’s not a lot we can do about that.

Right now, several analysts are on their way to Tokyo for the Japanese Symposium. I have started the trip to Australia for the event there to be held next week. I expect these to be just as intense.

I started to collect some of the best practices we have found to use in a research note, but since not many of our customers organize conferences like this, I figured it would have limited relevance. That’s what blogs are for.

Best practices for tweeting at events

A few weeks before the event, start tweeting about the event using the #hashtag you want to use. That establishes the hashtag so that you don’t have people trying all kinds of different ones. At Garter, we have established the convention of using #gartner plus a two or three letter abbreviation for each conference. For example, the upcoming Symposium events will use #gartnersym while #GartnerPCC was used for the Portal, Content and Collaboration conferences. We don’t differentiate the location or year in the hashtag, since it is kind of fun to see these as a rolling event across time and space.

Use Tweetdeck or some other client app to monitor mentions of the event’s hashtag. You can set up a search panel that automatically displays new tweets with that text.

If someone says something cool, retweet it.

During the keynote or sessions you can see, quote what is interesting, and always add the hashtag

Tweet any interesting trends or non-confidential insights from customers.

If someone complains about something minor, respond to them (too cold in the meeting rooms, where is the veggie lunch…)

If someone has a major complaint or wants to challenge what is said in a presentation, engage them if you feel like it, but don’t let the discussion descend into a long argument.

Publicize events happening on the show floor, mention room changes or extra sessions, encourage people to sign up for 1on1s, especially if they are filling up.

Organize a tweetup: meet other Twitterers at a certain time, preferably when there is an open bar. It’s a nice way to put faces to @names.

Consider displaying a rolling list of tweets on a display in the hallways.

Displaying tweets during a presentation is trickier. It works in some situations where the speaker is prepared for it, but it can be very distracting to be reading with one eye while trying to say cogent things delivered in an engaging way. If a non-speaker is moderating the session or will be posing questions, they should monitor the twitter stream for comments or questions.

Save some of the best Tweets and display them in the locknote, if there is one, or collect them in a blog post

Look here for more tips on live tweeting.

The series of Symposium conferences is a big event for Gartner clients and analysts. For analysts, it is the flagship opportunity to get in front of clients, gain exposure for new ideas, and demonstrate what they can do. Customers look forward to an intense week where they can hear about a wide variety of IT topics from all of Gartner’s research groups, meet with vendors and peers from other organizations, and talk directly with many of the analysts who produce the research they use all year. Obviously, a lot of effort goes into these events, so let me describe a bit of how it happens.

I will talk mostly about preparations for Orlando and Cannes, the two largest editions. These events are closely coordinated, because they are the closest in size and timing, and the interests and requirements of the potential attendees align most directly. Cape Town, Tokyo and Sydney tend to be smaller events, which allows them to focus more on the specific needs of the local markets.

Formal preparations start when the conference chairs, together with Events staff and research managers define the overall structure and themes for the event. This year, we are putting more focus on the Gartner for IT leaders’ roles around which more and more of Gartner’s research is organized. The conference is divided into specific tracks for each role, plus one strategic initiatives track for content which crosses several or all roles.

I talk about Symposium 2009 themes

A track manager is responsible for the content in each track. Track managers have responsibility for both the Cannes and Orlando events, and also work with the chairs for the other Symposia. While much of the content appears in several venues, there is room for quite a bit of divergence across the geographies. Analysts are encouraged to tailor their presentations for the different locations to allow for local differences.

The larger analyst community gets involved when the Call for Contributions goes out in April. Analysts use an online tool to contribute their ideas for the presentations they would like to develop, along with background information like the target audience and why the topic is important.

Track managers use these proposals to select the content for their tracks, based on the slot allocations determined primarily by the respective conference chairs. Conference chairs divide the the total number of session slots available as determined by budget, rooms available at the conference venue and scheduling across the different tracks. Track allocations are driven by expected profile of delegates and the need to have adequate coverage of every track. We use surveys of last year’s and prospective delegates as to what topics are important, as well as delegate speaker evaluations.

Inevitably, many (if not all) track managers are disappointed by their allocations. There is always far more content than can be presented, so competition for the scarce slots can get intense. Selecting the content for tracks feels like pouring 30 liters of content into 10 liter sacks. There is always good stuff that doesn’t make it in.

The overall agenda starts to take shape in May and June, and is pretty nailed down by July, when the detailed scheduling process begins. This involves assigning sessions and presenters to time slots and rooms. It starts with an intense day sticking bits of colored cards onto sheets hanging on the walls of a conference room. Each card represents a session, and each color a track.

The goal is to create a balanced agenda with few content clashes (where there are two presentations at the same time that would appeal to the same people) and no speaker clashes (with analysts speaking at the same time in two different rooms). We also try to make sure there is something for every role in every session and that analysts aren’t too overloaded with back to to back presentations. Delegates dislike it when there are several sessions they want to see at the same time, and analysts don’t perform as well when they are run ragged from too many pitches on one day.

After the initial planning sessions, the agenda is transferred to spreadsheets and online tools. The next couple weeks are taken up with fine tuning and lots of small changes, based on analyst availability, last minute ideas, content changes, etc. As the weeks pass, it becomes increasingly hard to make changes, as each shift triggers a cascade of other changes to minimize clashes. This information is posted to the online Agendabuilder so that customers can begin to plan which sessions they want to see. Click here to see the current agenda for Cannes and Orlando.

Analysts spend July and August building and reviewing their presentations, which need to be finalized well before the conference. Every presentation goes through a rigorous review and editing process where other analysts examine their peers’ work for accuracy, quality and to contribute new ideas and suggestions. Editors check the content for consistency, quality and format them based on standards applied to all Gartner presentations.

In this post, I have only talked about the analysts, but something as big as Symposium obviously requires work from many more people. This is also a busy time for the people working with sponsors, planning logistics, setting up the thousands of 1 on 1 meetings, negotiating with keynote speakers, reserving hotels, designing the graphics, preparing the IT network, and on and on. It is a lot of work, but is always worth it.

• Using an online chat system to collect questions during sessions and allow participants to talk online among themselves.
• Hosted a ‘back from the future’ session where colleagues from 2028 told us about what IT life will be like.
• Tore apart a low-cost PC on stage to discuss and demonstrate how the vendor kept the price  low.
• Recorded analysts on video for the Gartner YouTube channel and for use in a cost-cutting best practice session.
• CIO case studies delivered by the CIOs.

Some of these ideas worked, some better than others. We will be continuing the ones that did, but we’re also looking for other ways to improve the Symposium experience.

If you have ideas about what you would like to see at Symposium (especially Cannes, where I am chair), please add them as comments on this page, or you can email me directly at jeffrey.mann@gartner.com if you prefer. I can’t guarantee we will be able to do all of them, but I’d love to hear your ideas.