London, Cardiff, Dublin, Amsterdam, Zürich…

Social Connections has certainly spread its wings over the past 2.5 years… So, where next for the IBM Connections and Social Business user group?

Here’s some clues:

Prague Skyline

Prague bridges

Prague - Charles Bridge at night

Yes, that’s right, Social Connections is headed for the beautiful and historic city of Prague in the Czech Republic!

What’s more, we’ll be bigger and better than ever… It will be our first ever two-day event, starting at 12pm on Monday 16th June and concluding our formal agenda at 6pm on Tuesday 17th June. This schedule is designed to allow those short of time to travel in on the Monday morning and out on the Tuesday evening if required. However, if one has more time to spare, then it would be easy to tack on a leisurely weekend stay too.

What won’t change is that we’ll be making sure that ‘Social’ is not just a buzzword, but is instead at the heart of all that we do. Once again, we’ll have a very special complementary reception for all attendees (this time on the Monday night), splendid catering, plenty of Czech beer on tap (including the original Budweiser!), speed-sponsoring and much more. The team is planning some exciting new networking opportunities too.

However, there will also be some awesome business and technical content too – this is a Social Business conference after all! The extra day means that we’ll have a series of fantastic keynotes and main tent sessions on the Monday afternoon, and then a full day’s multi-track agenda on Tuesday – featuring at least three rooms/tracks for business, technical and case study sessions. As usual, we want to keep the content varied and the energy high, so most sessions will be 30 minutes in length giving plenty of opportunity for great speakers to enthral you with their knowledge, passion and expertise.

So where in Prague will this take place? Out of town at some bland and faceless conference centre? No, we’ll be right in the historic old town area on the stunning Wenceslas Square plaza, at the Hotel Ambassador Zlata Husa, with the main sessions being held in the gorgeous art nouveau Congress Hall:

Hotel Ambassador - Congress Hall

It promises to be a truly amazing event, even if we do say so ourselves…

The cost to attend? €1,000? €500? No, due to the incredible support of our sponsors, the event will be free to attend! You just need to get yourself to Prague.

Space is limited, so you will want to register ASAP.

We are looking for additional sponsors and also for speakers.

So if you would like to submit an abstract for the event, please do so ASAP – the submission process closes on 30th March, with those sessions submitted before the end of February given best chance of being selected. We are particularly keen to see abstracts from first-time speakers, case studies from customers and thought-leading topics from analysts. However, all Social Business and IBM Connections-related abstracts will be considered!

As you can probably tell, the team are hugely excited to be announcing this event! We can’t wait to be in Prague, and hope that you’ll join us there too…