In case you missed the first SOMESSO in Zurich end of October, no worries. Check out the opinions of the interviewed participants below for a clearer insight into the event and feel free to share it and / or comment on it. In the meantime, we’ll continue building SOMESSO London on May 15 and SOMESSO Barcelona in September `09. Thanks!
Over in Zurich, we found Arjen Strijker, the founder of SOMESSO and entrepreneur who saw a lot of commotion and fanfare around social corporate media, but not one event that actually brought all the parties together in its evolving ecosystem to discuss, share and add value to this high growth communication channel. So, he created SOMESSO a series of conferences centered around social media usage in corporate environments. They just finished their kick off event in Zurich and on the Somesso blog you can see why it was a success. - JLHTT: You just held a very successful corporate social media event in Zurich last month, what made you decide that Somesso was something the market needed?
AS: In my last job, I found myself rubbing shoulders with front-office bankers and other people working in financial institutions in Switzerland. I was (and still am) meeting them on regular basis and many have become my friends. Personally, I believe in social media and like to test and discuss the latest social media tools and solutions on the Internet and found myself quite often explaining to my friends in the financial world why and how they should be using these things to make new business in a better way. Although I knew already that banks and financial institutions generally are not early adopters of such new technology, I found that many people were interested but they just didn’t know where to go and how to start. After some benchmarking, it became clear that there was a need for a think-tank discussion forum / information share point (both online as “offline”) where corporate social media related issues are presented and debated. After some more market research I launched SOMESSO.
TT: You have put on events before in both venture and technology, what was the most challenging thing about putting on a social media event like Somesso?
AS: As the SOMESSO Zurich `08 audience experienced themselves last month, the most unique feature of SOMESSO is its exceptional mix of participants. This was also the most challenging issue about organizing this event: although I strongly believe in the strength of communities, no one could guarantee that all these different groups of people would mix and interact with each other to build new bridges and synergies to each others’ worlds. The audience ranged from sales and marketing experts to recruiters, agency traditional and new media specialists, entrepreneurs and VCs. We found that even at the first break everyone was interacting. It was rare – and pleasing – to see all these different categories of people sharing their ideas about corporate social media and presenting their latest projects and discoveries to each other. We are going to work hard to keep all future SOMESSO events with this same environment so we can satisfy all of the attendees’ networking expectations while recognizing the importance and enormous potential of social media in driving companies’ business values.
TT: Do you think that Somesso has legs? In other words what makes it stand out amongst all the other social media events in the market today?
AS: Yes. The purpose of SOMESSO is to bring together a unique mix of participants from a wide range of industries to discuss and debate the corporate social media trend on continuous basis throughout Europe. Different from all general Web 2.0, new tech or new media conferences, SOMESSO is a highly focused event that covers only the corporate angle of social media. At SOMESSO attendees can find answers to questions like “how will social media change the way a company does business?”, or “how do companies start building their short-term corporate social media strategy?”, or “how does a corporate social media strategy impact employees and external networks?”.
Also, due to the strong variety of people from different industries, the networking part at SOMESSO Zurich `08 was highly valued by the audience. Both the diversity of newcomers to corporate social media, as well as the diversity of industry experts that attended the event ended up doing business together. All this at a one-day event in a European city – next up London.
TT: You are Dutch and Tattletech is very fond of Dutchman, but you live in Zurich – do you see a difference in the approach to social media by country? AS: Yes, very much. SOMESSO Zurich was a success because we listened to our audience and gave them what they wanted to hear and learn. By example, Switzerland is still a pretty conservative country, which was reflected at the conference, as many companies – regional and multinational – had not started to look at social media tools or implementing a corporate social media strategy for their organization before they went to SOMESSO.
Furthermore, it was important for this event that we discussed the topic both from a starting point of view, as well as to provide the latest insights and fads on the subject (as the corporate social media and new media experts were strongly represented too). It was successful; the two groups complemented each other and created more discussion that could be handled in just one single day. By the way, this is why SOMESSO has also an online Twitter community where lots of continuous business is being created even now. The SOMESSO Facebook group continues to have new members request to join on a daily basis.
Our next event, SOMESSO London `09 on May 15, will have a more advanced and global character, which reflects in both speakers and topics, as well as in the general setting of the event. Due to a successful first event, we’ve caught the attention of several global industry leaders who want to participate at SOMESSO London and even SOMESSO Barcelona and Copenhagen – the other two cities scheduled for a SOMESSO event in 2009.
TT: If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?
AS: This is always a tricky question… I would probably be working on one of the other business plans that I’ve been compiling over the past few years. Really all of them are (in)directly related to bringing people together to increase their business (not their love-life, in case you might ask ;-).
bGrand is pleased to announce its partnership with SOMESSO.
SOMESSO is the industry’s first social corporate media conference and is designed to bring together all partners in the eco system of social media - venture, advertising and marketing professionals, start ups, angels, corporations - to create a dialog around how this medium is rapidly evolving into a communications strategy with long range effects. The next SOMESSO event will be held in London in May.
We’ve taken some time out of our hectic schedule to wipe down our website here at somesso.com and move things around a little, to make sure there’s room for information relating to our next conference in London during May 2009. We’ve decided to retain all of the information relating to our successful first conference in Zurich this past October, which you’ll now find in the Zurich ‘08 section. The front page of the website now features as a gorgeous overview portal to all our conferences, which we’ll update whenever we have concrete details to share with you. You can continue to find the SOMESSO blog right here, in which we’ll continue to let you know what’s happening in the world of SOMESSO.
We’re delighted to be able to present the video which made for us at our first conference in Zurich at the end of October 2008!