Looking forward to meet you at....

In the next coming months I will be speaking at several conferences and hope to meet some of you there.

Here's the list:

• October 29 - Brussels - Belgium: I'll be giving a full day Kluwer workshop in Dutch on "Web2.0 & External Communications. This is a training day focused on using social media for PR & Marketing efforts. You can find the details and registration form here.

• November 17 - Belgrado - Serbia: The regional EACD debate organiser for Serbia, Andrea Brbaklic,  invited me to speak at an event organised with the Serbian PR Society. I'll be talking about the impact of social media on the Public Relations profession. 

• November 24 - Antwerp - Belgium: I'll be speaking at a full day communications seminar for the communicators of the City of Antwerp on the use of social media for community relations. If you're from "'t Stad", do say hello.

• January 18/19 2010 - Amsterdam - The Netherlands: Marcus Evans is organising a conference of 2 days on PR & Media Relations Effectiveness. I'll be covering social media & media relations and am already looking forward to meet up again with Médard Schoenmaeckers from Syngenta.

Of course, I'll try to "liveblog" these conferences as much as possible and share my experiences there through Twitter updates or short videotweets.

European Communications Summit - July 2 & 3, 2009

This week I'll be speaking at the European Communications Summit organised by the European Association of Communications Directors (EACD) of which I am member since the start a couple of years ago.

The agenda is full with top keynote speakers like my ex-colleague Mike Wing, Vice President, Strategic and Executive Communications & the man behind the latest and very successful "Smarter Planet" communications campaign of IBM.

Mike Wing, IBMThe funny thing is that Mike and I have been colleagues at IBM for about 10 years and never really met in person. This will be the occasion to catch up in real life...

I'll be talking about how we're taking the first moves at Van Marcke Group to implement social media both for internal and external communications. I'll also touch upon the differences and/or similarities between a B2B and B2C approach/market.

Next to the interesting sessions with top communicators it is always nice to catch up with other colleagues from the profession. I am looking forward to meet again with Médard Schoenmaeckers, Head of Media Relations, Syngenta and Dirk de Muynck from Volvo Group among many others.

From a more personal angle I'll definitely be at the session by Jon Worth from the Atheist Bus Campaign, one of the most successful and daring NGO campaigns ever.

I also set up a TweetUp during the conference. You can find the invitation here and if you're on Twitter and coming at the conference, please sign up and let's meet.

The conference will be covered on Twitter, not only by myself but by several other people present. You can follow the updates by searching for the hash tag #ecs or right on the conference's Twitter page here.

If you come, looking forward to see you there !

Power to the employees ?

That's the slogan of the second conference of the BVIC - the Belgian Association for Internal Communications - where I have the honor to present and moderate on May 8th at the Flemish Parliament.

I like their approach; all speakers have 1000 seconds to "explain" social media in the context of internal communications.

Other speakers include:

Bruno Segers: known (ex)blogger, ex country Manager at Microsoft, current CEO of RealDolmen.

An De Jonghe: CEO of Ulysses Consulting & TrendQ.

Peter Mechant: researcher of the University of Ghent.
Frederic Dryhoel from the Picanol Group with a case study on the internal use of social media.

Later in the day there will also be break out sessions in the form of "workshops". I'll cover one on the use of social media in a crisis situation.

You can download the full program here (opens a PDF).

Looking forward to see you there and watch this space for some promo code, especially for my readers.. .yes you !