Early Registration Ends January 11th

KA Connect 2012 is just over three months away. It’s really exciting to see the program coming together. Here are the themes of this year’s conference.

• Building a Research Function
• Converting Knowledge into Products
• Skunkworks
• The Technology Studio
• Thought Leadership 2.0
• Service Innovation
• Social Media
• Innovation in Practice

Cool, right?

As a reminder, early registration pricing ends on January 11th. So if connecting with other progressive minds in your industry is one of your New Year’s resolutions, now’s a great time to sign up. 

The KA Connect 2012 Program Is Up

We’ve been working for months to find the right mix of topics and speakers for KA Connect 2012. I think you’ll agree that this is a pretty killer lineup:

http://www.ka-connect.com/conference_program.php

Register before January 11th for $995. (Full price is $1,395.)

Calling all T-Shaped People

We’re just about four months away from KA Connect 2012. Between the speakers we’ve confirmed, the topics that are emerging, and the attendees who have already registered, I can tell that this is going to be the best KA Connect yet. I recorded the video above to share my thoughts on the conference with you.

I hope we’ll see you in San Francisco next April.

What do YOU want to talk about at THE Marketing Event 2011?

I’ll be facilitating an Open Space-style session from 2:15-5 PM at THE Marketing Event 2011 in New York next Friday. What’s Open Space?

Open Space is an approach for hosting meetings, conferences, corporate-style retreats, and community summit events, focused on a specific and important purpose or task—but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme.

The idea is to recognize two things: 1) That the folks who attend a conference are equally as interesting as the speakers up on stage. 2) Important topics and questions will come up in the week leading up to the event and throughout the day that the organizers could not have anticipated and planned for in advance.

We’ll be dividing the Open Space session into (3) 45-minute blocks. We’ll have 4 tables set up, each with a flipchart. Each table will have an event organizer present to help keep the conversation on track, but other than that, Open Space is meant to be very fluid and dynamic. We want you to be able to organize yourself around the topics and questions that are most important to you. We’ll post the final list of topics right after lunch.

Example Open Space topics might include "Social Media for Smaller Firms," "Building a Market Research Database," or "Communications Challenges in a Global Market."

We’re ready to start collecting topics now. You can submit your idea in one of three ways:

1) In the comments of this discussion on the SMPS-NY LinkedIn Group.
2) Via Twitter using the #TME2011 hashtag.
3) Find me at the event and pitch me.

So, what do you want to talk about?

Conference Seeking Skunkworks

This year we’re introducing a new component to our program called "Skunkworks." We are actively looking for dynamic speakers to give short talks about the future of our industry next April in San Francisco.

Who should submit their project?

You’re an architect, engineer, technologist, marketer, or researcher working in an AEC firm who is building something awesome, probably in your spare time, most likely just to see if it can be built. Maybe it is a mobile app, or a social media program, or a BIM plug-in, or a cloud service. Or something we’ve never even fathomed. You’ve got a skunkworks project going on and we want to know about it.

Perhaps people have told you that your idea is crazy. Or that your innovation is ahead of its time. Cool. That’s just what we’re looking for.

Hit Us With Your Best Pitch

We’re looking for up to ten speakers to give short talks (under 7 minutes) about their most innovative skunkworks projects at KA Connect 2012.

Interested? If so, please send us a short video (again, under 7 minutes long) about your project to connect@knowledge-architecture.com by the close of business on Friday, December 16th. The video doesn’t have to be professional; we’re looking for the power of the idea and your personal passion for innovation.

If we select your project, you’ll receive one complimentary registration to KA Connect 2012 on April 11th and 12th in San Francisco. Your talk will be recorded and posted on the KA Connect website and iTunes. Perhaps most important, you’ll connect with a tribe of folks who are all pushing our industry into the future.

We want to hear from you. What are you working on?

Behind the Scenes of KA Connect

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Bob Buday and Tim Parker of the Bloom Group several weeks ago. The Bloom Group provides thought leadership marketing consulting services to management and technology consultancies. They are the authors of Thoughts on Thought Leadership, a excellent collection of articles about thought leadership marketing for professional services firms. Finally, Tim spoke at KA Connect 2011 last year in San Francisco.

Bob and Tim have been active members of the KA Connect LinkedIn Group for well over a year. We have had several discussions over the last year about what makes KA Connect tick: why I started it, how it works, what the impact has been on Knowledge Architecture, and so on.  You’ll find many of the answers to those questions (and more) in the interview. 

I excerpted the following exchange because my advice is universal for anyone building a community using social media tools – whether it be an intranet, an industry association, or a company blog.

Hope you enjoy it.

Should Every B2B firm have a LinkedIn group?

BG: Would you recommend all B2B firms to set up things like LinkedIn groups and if not, what kinds of firms and under what circumstances?

Chris: I would definitely not recommend this for everybody. Anybody considering this should imagine the group two years from now. Are you still blogging? Are you still feeding this community? Do you have a topic or a series of topics that you and/or your firm are charged up about? Is there enough fuel to make this effort sustainable?

It’s a lot of work and sometimes a lot of non-glamorous work – inviting people, getting them in the database, making sure we respond to comments. Stoking the fire takes time, and you need to fuel it with questions or topics that you really want to explore over a long period of time. If you’re not curious that way about the kind of ideas that can become thought leadership, it’s a bad fit. You shouldn’t waste your money and time. You should do product marketing instead, if that’s what your firm is passionate about.

I know a couple of LinkedIn groups that are totally phoning it in. They’ve got a LinkedIn group and they might have more people than our LinkedIn group, but there’s nothing happening. It’s because it’s not really them. It’s not their culture. It requires a sharing, community-building culture and so it goes down to the core. If you’re not a sharing, community-building culture, why in the world would you want to start an online community? It doesn’t fit.

Continue to the full interview……

NYC Happy Hour on October 20th

© Anchor Steam Brewing

Axomic, CASE, and Knowledge Architecture are sponsoring a happy hour next week in New York City for clients, partners and friends.

We’ll be at East of Eighth from 5-7 PM on Thursday, October 20th.

Come on by, we’d love to buy you a beer.

(Please RSVP to Christopher Parsons.)

KA Connect is teaming with SMPS-NY to produce THE Marketing Event 2011

The Basics

THE Marketing Event 2011
October 21, 2011 | 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM
CUNY Graduate Center
New York, NY

About THE Marketing Event 2011

THE Marketing Event, SMPS-NY’s award-winning, seventh annual, professional development symposium, is a dynamic marketing conference that draws hundreds of A/E/C professionals from the East Coast and beyond.

But this year, things will be different.

SMPS-NY is teaming with Knowledge Architecture’s KA Connect to create “The Future Now,” a dynamic and forward-thinking symposium on how technology, communications, and the economy will change how we work. We’re bringing together marketers, business developers, technology innovators, media experts, thought leaders, educators, and firm principals in a conversation about ideas and best practices to suit these new paradigms.

So, if you’re looking for easy answers delivered as bullet points from a lectern, you won’t find it at this conference.

What you will find is the latest thinking on social media, in-depth conversations on how knowledge can transform your practice, and intimate breakout sessions devoted to the topics that matter to you most. What will those topics be on October 21? You’ll tell us.

Registration

Ticket prices for THE Marketing Event 2011 are as follows:

$300.00 SMPS NY Members
$250.00 Earlybird rate before October 1

$300.00 SMPS Member (Other Chapters)
$250.00 Earlybird rate before October 1

$350.00 Non-Member Registration
$300.00 Earlybird rate before October 1

Registration is now open. We hope you’ll join us for this exciting, dynamic day to discuss what the future holds for our industries and our profession.

Mark English on Social Media for the Small Architecture Practice

KA Connect 2012: The Future of Practice

The Future of Practice: Research, Marketing, and Technology in the AEC Industry

KA Connect 2012 is a knowledge and information management conference for the AEC industry.

Our focus this year will be on three intersecting trends driving the future of practice — research, marketing, and technology.

Thought leaders from all over the world will come together to share case studies, best practices, and ideas about how they organize information and manage knowledge in their firms.

Join us for a fun and dynamic event filled with short talks, collaborative discussion groups, and networking with some of the smartest folks in the industry.

Take advantage of early registration pricing while we plan. 

We’ll be announcing speakers, program details, and hotel information throughout the fall.  In the meantime, you can register early at our best rate.

We’ve moved the conference to San Francisco’s downtown museum district. We hope to see you at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on April 11th and 12th.