8:00 a.m.
Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:30 a.m.

Chairperson's Welcome, Opening Remarks & Presentation
The Read/Write Intranet: How To Drive User Engagement
And Productivity

Commitment. Trust. Credibility. Focus. Hallmarks of engaged users and high-performance organizations...and the holy grail for most communications strategies.

So what does the Read/Write Intranet have to do with employee communications and engagement? Everything. Growing percentages of your user population prefer - and increasingly expect - to interact with their organizations in the very same way.

With the power of user-generated content roaring across the internet, organizations have been slow to enable such read/write capabilities on their existing intranets and enterprise portals.

At this stage in the rapid evolution of social media, there are many different strategies, tools, and approaches. Some organizations are thinking about basic collaboration, others about two-way communications, and still more about workflow, motivation and a range of other issues.

In this session, we will explore the various facets of user-generated content, and how such robust technology can be harnessed within the enterprise.

Michael Rudnick, Global Intranet & Portal Practice Leader
Watson Wyatt Worldwide

9:30 a.m.

Speed Networking

Become acquainted with your fellow conference attendees in this fun and fast-paced forum! You'll have a chance to meet and greet your colleagues.

10:30 a.m.

Integrating New Media With Traditional Media To Multiply Results

Mayo Clinic is the most powerful health care brand in the United States. Besides word-of-mouth recommendations from former patients and from physicians, stories in the news media are the most important reason why patients come to Mayo Clinic from great distances, across the country and around the world, for medical care.

Mayo is using the same audio and video tools that make traditional media stories possible to create opportunities for enhanced direct interactions with potential patients. Through coordinated production and re-purposing of "old media" video and audio content for podcasts and web streaming, and by engaging in social networking sites such as Facebook, Mayo Clinic is taking "word of mouth" to a new level.

• Mayo has integrated mass media and personalized media to improve results from both
• Mayo has applied these tools in employee communications
• How advances in technology make this strategy more affordable for any organization

Lee Aase, Manager, Syndications and Social Media
Mayo Clinic

11:20 a.m.

An Intranet IT Portal That Drives Collaboration And Innovation

Johnson & Johnson Information Technology (IT) developed an engaging and interactive intranet portal, based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. This portal serves as an enterprise-wide communications vehicle for IT information, showcases innovation, provides a competitive advantage, improves productivity, and increases employee engagement.

• Developing a strategy for creating an employee portal
• Planning the introduction of social media
• Enabling a 2-way dialog for enterprise-wide IT communications
• Showcasing innovation and IT's capabilities
• Providing timely internal and external news

Patty Crowley, Portal and e-Communications Manager
Johnson & Johnson

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to connect with others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing social media concerns.

1:40 p.m.

Word of Mouth Marketing: Actionable Tactics to Build Your Brand With Minimal Investment

Word of mouth and social media are core strategies for any organization - but they get more important when budgets are tight. You need to build an army of customers who promote you because they love your brand, not because you're paying for media. Learn exactly what you should do to create a word of mouth marketing campaign for your organization. Learn specific strategies to engage with consumers and generate positive word of mouth about your brand. Learn the 5 steps to starting an impactful, effective, sales-driving campaign. We're going to get specific here: Who to hire, where to start, and how to make it successful.

• Finding the right people to talk about you (influencers and evangelists)
• Giving them something to talk about (viral email, samples, buzz, and more)
• Creating tools to make it easier for them to talk to each other (blogs, discussions, tell-a-friend forms)
• Participating in the conversation
• Tracking and measuring results

Andy Sernovitz, Author
Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
GasPedal

2:30 p.m.

How To Use Social Media To Stay In Touch With Today's Online Community

Are people in your organization wondering what a blog is, what you're supposed to do with a wiki, or how to use Facebook? Well, they shouldn't be because these and other social media terms are dominating our society. Your organization may be being discussed on blogs or featured on YouTube right now!

In this session, you'll learn what social media is, how it differs from traditional media, and why it is important for staff to be monitoring and responding to these new communications vehicles. You'll also learn how you can use some of these tools to redefine and enhance your current internal communications efforts.

• The importance of two-way communications and how to give your employees a voice. (Example: Fairfax County recently started a Chat with the County Exec, which has been very popular. It's a live, online moderated discussion where employees can submit questions about a specific topic and the county executive responds in real-time.)
• How to get your business message to the right audience by utilizing sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. (Example: Fairfax County and the library have launched pages on each of the three sites mentioned to get their message to their audience.)
• The rise of citizen journalism and how it could directly affect your organization
• How to push out information, both internally and externally, in ways beyond the traditional corporate emails and press releases (think RSS and Podcasts)
• How to create a social media policy for your organization so all employees employees are aware of their roles and rights

Jeremy Lasich, Deputy Director for Communications, Office of Public Affairs
Fairfax County, Virginia

3:30 p.m.

How To Integrate Emerging Media Into A Multi-Channel Brand

H&R Block is the world's largest tax services provider and one of the most recognized brands in America today. With over 13,000 retail offices in the U.S., Block has a physical presence within a five-mile radius of nearly every American home.

But Block is more than retail offices; it also has a strong digital tax product offering as well, but low recognition in the marketplace. With emerging media changing the way marketing communications connects with its customers, Block has had to also change. No longer do the tried and true tactics of more than 50 years continue to be effective means of acquiring and retaining new digital tax clients.

The new taxpayer of today is looking for do-it-yourself digital tax solutions from a company that they view as "digitally dialed-in" and H&R Block is not generally first of mind.

• How Block is blatantly advertising through Social Media...and getting away with it
• The ins and outs, pros and cons of launching an online community to put "fun" into tax and garner the attention of a new generation of taxpayers
• How to effectively use YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, & Second Life sites to reach new audiences

Paula Drum, Vice President of Marketing, Digital Tax Solutions
H&R Block

Denise Sposato, Communications Manager, Digital Tax Solutions
H&R Block

4:20 p.m.

How To Get Your Organization's Blog Off The Ground Quickly And Easily - And How To Overcome Common Pitfalls

A short time ago, CommAvia, a marketing communications company focused on the aviation industry, realized that something was happening with interactive media that they needed to be a part of in order to promote themselves as communications knowledge brokers. At first, they were not certain how creating a blog might impact their company, especially since their industry was extremely conservative about media.

They decided the best business decision was to jump in and learn as much as they could while they looked for ways to integrate their blog, Jetwhine.com, with their current business plan. A few months after creating their blog, something happened that was never expected. People liked the blog - - and they wanted more. Soon after, an industry sponsor requested to be involved anyway they could because it was clear to them that CommAvia knew much more about Web 2.0 than their own staff.

By last fall, Jetwhine.com had evolved into a significant part of CommAvia's external marketing strategy. By December 2007, they started having internal meetings focused on how they might expand their Web 2.0 presence within the industry for their current clients as well as some of the new companies they were connecting with.

Jetwhine.com is now one of the most popular aviation blogs on the internet, sometimes grabbing 2,500 hits a day from 93 different countries. All the successes at Jetwhine.com have come at a price, however - some related to the loss of a customer and some problems related to their having little understanding of the technology behind the blog.

• Why you should blog and when you should not waste your time
• How to know when anyone is listening and why you should care
• Whether the tone of your blog should be personal or corporate
• How to syndicate your blog for free
• How to handle a client when their name appears on your blog unexpectedly
• What to do when those same clients won't return your phone calls
• How to decide whether readers should comment freely, be moderated or whether there should be no comments at all
• How to know when it is time to call for help with the look and feel of the blog

Robert P. Mark, CEO
CommAvia

5:10 p.m.
End Of Day One

We invite you to join us for a drink as you relax with your peers. All conference attendees and speakers are welcome to join us for this special opportunity to continue networking. Don't miss this chance to benchmark new ideas over complimentary drinks!

Sign up during the day for dinner with a group. Take advantage of Chicago’s fine dining while you continue to network with your colleagues.