I had another excellent #e2conf experience this week, for many of the old reliable reasons as well as some new ones. Getting to reconnect with ‘my people’  fills my tanks with the needed information to move my methodologies forward. New tracks brought new life, new faces, and new organizations to the table as well. I heard many of the usual debates about how the conference could be run differently to better suit [insert practitioner, analyst or vendor perspective here]. I  saw the conspicuously-timed high viz blog debates (link-pimp campaign still well underway), and managed to learn a thing or two in between sessions, speaking and social hours.

For me the highlights centered around the Community, HR and SCRM tracks. Many know me as a community manager, but may not know that I’m heavily involved in organizational integration efforts as well. In my role, a depth in understanding the scope of potential issues, future vision and pragmatic tactics are what “it’s all about”. I found new perspective into each of the topic tracks that I’m carrying back to the office for action.

In the shout out department we have big ups to my good friend Luis Suarez for his well earned title, Enterprise Evangelist of the Year. Louis and the Blue IQ Team live and breathe collaboration like no other.  Well deserved and long overdue recognition for an exceptional guy. Big congrats as well to my friends at the newly formed Constellation Research for launching this week. What a great collective of folks. They’re certainly poised for a bright future.

On a less than positive note, I’m seeing a decided hardening of attitudes as the E2/SocBiz/Collaboration (pick your religion) space moves on. The vibe is increasingly competitive and less collaborative. Aggressive negative campaigning is common practice for some vendors. My reaction to such is about the same as my reaction to Fox News. Vendor integrity to me is simply providing and standing by a set of solid products and services, having excellent customer relationships, and contributing to the entire community to move things forward. The sometimes nasty debates among idealist and pragmatists touting methodology or perspective superiority come across as added noise that slow us all down while we rubberneck to decide if what’s being said has any impact for us. Additionally I see relatively new consulting entrants coming in with lots of opinions based more on blog research than depth of study or experience. It’s a little scary to think of some poor org buying into it and suffering from the missing pieces in the long run. All part of the game I guess. There’s much less in the camaraderie department than there used to be. And I get it. It’s business. We’ve all got skin in the game. I heard the clichéd “can’t we all just get along” riff more than I’d like this week. Don’t think it’ll change anytime soon. There’s money to be made here.

What’s exciting is that the big picture of our evolution is beginning to come into view for me. How we’ll integrate our efforts, where we’ll permeate our processes, what boulders will need to shift in order for us to make a little bit of progress toward our goals. Not to mention a better understanding of what the goals might really be.

Finally, huge thanks to the UBM TechWeb crew. Steve Wylie and his team run this marathon for us twice a year, and it’s no small feat. The town hall wasn’t over without mention that the Boston call for papers begins next week. Their made bed just got unmade, and I’m looking forward to Boston already.

Image courtesy of Alex Dunne See the rest of the #e2conf set on Flickr.