Collaborative Communities at Next09

Our team attended the Next09 conference in Hamburg this week and rate this event as amongst the best in Europe. With over 1,300 participants, 100+ speakers and moderators and a host of innovative sponsors and partners, the event exceeded our expectations.

We were invited to present to a group of more than 200 people on the topic of 'Collaborative Communities' focusing on the role of an online community within the sales process/ cycle of a company. One of Linqia's key missions is to increase the % of vibrant, active and engaging online communities drawing on the wealth of knowledge and experience our team has accumulated over many years.

Collaborative Communities by Maria Sipka

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Following the presentation, feedback and comments again proved that companies are still in the early days of exploring the possibility of integrating social media and online communities. There's uncertainty around where to start, what type of resources are needed internally and externally, the cost to setup and manage, which technologies to use and how to deal with the level of transparency the web has lead people to expect.

We were thrilled to meet so many wonderful people and companies including Petra Vorsteher from Smaato, Lars Burk from Tesa, Jeff Jarvis author of What Would Google Do, Erik Hauth from Wer-Weiss-Was, Tim Leberecht from Frog Design, Philippe Wyssen from Red Bull AirRace, Jurgen Ahting from Wer Liefert Was, Judith Andresen from Sinnerschrader, Nicole Simon for organzing a sell out Girl Geek Dinner, Thomas Stehle from Gutscheine, Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK and being the first to officially blog about our fund raising success at Linqia, Endru Tedjasukmana from Universal McCann , Henriette Weber from Toothless Tiger, Johannes Haus and Jackson Bond from the XING team, Chris Messina and Florian Wilken from Blog.de.