Recently, BEI: Back End of Innovation conference chair Julie Anixter wrote on Innovation Excellence of the 7 ways conferences cause you to innovate and I've also written here about the power of getting out of your normal routine at a conference; however, we want BEI to be more than a sum of the three days you spend with us in Boston. Ideally, we're looking to create a year round community of innovation leaders that are always engaged and inspiring one another and ultimately, a space for collaboration.
Back in June, Forbes posted an article titled "Crowdsourcing Social Good and Innovation" which read:
"Collaboration and idea sharing were once contained within local communities, groups, and organizations. But since boundaries fell with the internet's reach, the whole world has now become one big brainstorming group."
And collaboration is a theme that runs throughout the agenda this year. Our challenge is: how to best facilitate that collaboration and idea sharing, both at the event and before and after.
With that in mind, we're really excited about the latest innovation in the BEI community: the BEI Innovation Cloud. Powered by Imaginatik, this online collaboration space will be open through October 5th, 2012 and provides an online home for content and ideas driven 100% by our event attendees. Members in the community can identify discussion topics of interest that are not on the event agenda, tackle specific innovation challenge themes and more. Perhaps most powerfully, this could be a great space to start making those important conference connections before the event (and hopefully carry them on long after).
Plus, during a special session during BEI, Innovation Cloud will take center stage.
We'll use the discussion topics submitted online to shape group
collaboration. You can read more about the Innovation Cloud over on the Imaginatik blog.
Want to join the fun? Register for BEI today for access. Readers of this blog can save 15% with code BEI12BLOG. Already registered? Check your email for details logging in. We're crowdsourcing feedback as well: let us know what you think after you give it a try.
Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a
specialization in marketing. As part of the FEI team at, she tweets at @BEI_innovation and is the voice behind BEI:Back End of Innovation on Facebook and LinkedIn.