A few hours ago IBM announced the 2017 IBM Champions for ICS during the Dominopoint conference in Italy. This year 123 were picked, including 44 new Champions. An IBM Champion is a non-IBMer who evangelize IBM solutions and share their knowledge at conferences, on blogs, in forums, and in other ways. Congratulations to everyone picked, and a special welcome to the new Champions!
I was fortunate enough to be picked for a fourth year. It is a huge honor. Thank you Amanda, Libby and of course IBM.
On a related note, Amanda Bauman last week described how she and the IBM team used IBM Connections as a tool to reduce the time needed by the selection committee from 6 weeks to just 3. This is interesting reading, as it shows how Connections can be used for collaboration all over the world and save a lot of time.
This time, I pulled all of the unique nominees into an Ideation Blog in a dedicated IBM Champion selection community on Connections Cloud.
Each nominee had their own entry in the Ideation blog, complete with all of the nomination data received for that nominee. Including twitter handles, blog links, YouTube, and a listing from various people about their contributions. Over 70 IBMers were invited to review, validate contributions, and post their comments to the Ideation Blog. Where an IBMer was listed as a reference, that IBMer was invited to vote, comment, and support your nomination.
Connections is a really powerful tool, and I wish I could have convinced my old workplace to start using it. I pushed for it for years, but it was never adopted, for different reasons.t is a
