Turning Vision into Value

If you are based in the San Francisco Bay Area, or if you’re visiting, please invite your friends and colleagues and join us for the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute’s Innovation Society 2011 Series…

SVII “First Wednesday” Innovation Institute Meeting

Wednesday, February 2, 2011
6:00-9:30 p.m. (PST)

Bay Cafe & Restaurant
1875 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto (please see directions below)

Program:

The SAP Community Network – Driving the Social business Future

At the February Silicon Valley Innovation Institute interactive dinner event, Mark Yolton, Vice President of SAP, will discuss this enterprise giant’s “Community Network.” SAP has proven to be nimble despite its size, with innovative products for customers across industries.  Whether you are an innovator in a large organization, an entrepreneur, or an independent innovation advocate; you will be able to contribute to the discussion and find great value in this event.

Successful business operations and business innovation now demand that we adjust the way we engage and interact. Businesses must learn to manage an explosion of diverse and global information coming at them on a proliferation of devices that demand constant monitoring. Every moment of the day businesses must filter the information pouring in from fragmented sources and a multitude of voices, each leveraging the power of increased influence from unprecedented inter-connectedness. While these new channels and modes of communication and interaction can pose challenges, they also provide opportunities. SAP, a world leader in business software solutions with $15B in annual revenue from 100,000+ customer companies in 100+ countries, has broken the code to unlocking value through its early-adopter practices in social media and social networking.

In SVII’s First Wednesday February event, SAP Senior Vice President Mark Yolton will discuss how SAP has built collaborative social networking-based communities augmented by physical events and a B2B app store connecting more than 2M individuals around the world. He will discuss the core components of SAP’s collaborative community, how the community accelerates and enables new modes of innovation by SAP and in its vast ecosystem of partners and customers, and how the communities drive fundamental business objectives for SAP and business value for its members.

More about Mark Yolton:

Mark Yolton leads the professional social networking communities for SAP, the world’s largest business application software company. The SAP communities use social media tools and best practices to enable more than two-million individual members to interact around the clock and around the world in 200+ countries and territories.

These interactions focus on:

• Social Innovation—using wisdom-of-the-crowd and outside-in techniques to drive product and solution innovation, business process and business practice innovation, as well as best-practice sharing among SAP and its customers and partners

• Social Commerce—leveraging an online app store and solution marketplace, customer ratings and reviews, and rich contextual information to drive quantity and quality of sales leads and incremental revenue during the go-to-market cycle

• Social Intelligence—to facilitate the sharing of solution and best-practice knowledge among SAP’s ecosystem of customers and partners in order to increase their success and satisfaction, and to enable the mining of user traffic and topic data for insight into emerging trends and opportunities.

Program Schedule:

6:00 – Doors open for registration and networking.

6:45 – Community Dinner

7:15 – SVII business

7:30 – Feature Presentation

9:30 – Closing

Location:

Bay Cafe, Bayshore Ballroom
1875 Embarcadero Road, Palo Alto
www.BayCafeRestaurant.com
650-856-0999

In Palo Alto, take Embarcadero East past Ming’s restaurant, then turn left into the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course driveway; from the parking lot, walk up the wide path toward the golf course buildings; the restaurant will be on the right.

You can register and pre-pay for all programs by using PayPal. Although a limited number of tickets are usually available at the door, pre-registration is suggested so that dinner attendance can be planned in advance. Please note there have been some recent changes in pricing. For more information, and to register, visit the SVII web site.

SVII News and Upcoming Programs

The Silicon Valley Innovation Institute is growing in several ways. Our membership and attendance continues to grow. In February, 2011, we are going from one monthly program to two.

The first Wednesday evening programs at the Bay Cafe in Palo Alto will continue as before with the doors opening at 6PM, but with a 7:15 PM program only option for those who want the flexibility to eat elsewhere, to avoid some traffic congestion, or to simply save some time and money.

The new luncheon series, Silicon Valley Interactive Briefings, are a brand new innovative, evolving format intended to maximize the participation of those who attend by giving them the opportunity to “brief” each other about program related insights and information. These two hour sessions, to be held on the third Friday of each month, from noon to 2:00 PM (PST), at Serena Software, will begin with a program called Phone Physics.

Phone Physics Program:

Friday, Feb 18, 2011, noon-2:00 p.m. (PST)

Location:

Serena Software Inc.
1900 Seaport Boulevard, Redwood City, California

Schedule:

Noon – Doors open for registration and networking.
12:30 – SVII topic introduction
12:50 – Interactive Briefing
1:20 – Wrap-up
1:30 – Networking and closing

Register at the SVII web site, following the instructions for members or non-members.

Description

Silicon Valley has an unusual number of programmers, entrepreneurs and innovators. New start-ups are established here everyday. People talk about new ideas everywhere in the Valley. Many new technologies developed here have changed the world in the last 20 years. As an innovation leader in the world today, Silicon Valley has evolved unique resources and circumstances, which are regularly drawn upon to generate breakthroughs on demand. However, it seems that this innovation has not significantly impacted our education system. Why do we educate our kids in school, in the same way as 20 years ago, while the world has changed so dramatically?

In July, 2010, SVII held an innovation community-driven panel discussion to address this issue via a public dialog. Apparently, the Silicon Valley community feels a great need to increase innovation in our education systems. In response to this initial conversation, SVII kicked off an Educational Initiative (please see below), and has received support from Wells Fargo Bank and Serena Software. This educational initiative is intended to evolve dialog into action. The goal of the program is to make kids more innovation resilient, by providing a joyful stimulating innovation experience, which stimulates creativity and rewards the natural tendency toward innovation. Serena Software is generously sponsoring the SVII 2011 Educational Initiative kick-off meeting, including a light lunch, on Friday February 18th, from 12 to 2pm. The mechanism we have chosen to do this, is to develop an educational program called Phone Physics—which teaches kids about physics, through music on their phones.

What’s Phone Physics?

Silicon Valley is comprised of relatively affluent families, many of whom have smart phones. Kids in the valley spend a lot of time playing with these sensor packed battery powered portable programmable laboratories. As such, they provide the basis of a perfect platform, to make into mobile labs for kids to experiment with different ideas. This educational platform will help children to learn about physics and coding through music related programming on their phones in a way reminiscent of Hypercard but using a more modern environment, such as Scratch from MIT.

The event on February 18th is a new concept, an Interactive Briefing. Instead of having one speaker or a panel on the stage, SVII is developing a new program mode to better engage the audience by maximizing the interactive exchange. We will encourage attendees to brief each other on the topic to share ideas, make comments and identify resources. Each Interactive Briefing Program will be two hours long, with the first and last 30 minutes for registering, eating and networking. The central hour begins with a 20 minute SVII topic introduction, followed by 30 minutes of Interactive Briefing, where the audience-participants can communicate their perspectives and willingness to proceed. At the close there will be a 10 minute wrap-up. Silicon Valley Interactive Briefing events will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. (PST), on the 3rd Friday of each month. More details will be introduced in our website and newsletter.

To learn more about the upcoming programs and discounts, please visit http://SVII.net.

Ongoing Education Initiative:

The SVII Education Initiative began at the July 7th, 2010 Silicon Valley Innovation Institute event, which featured an excellent, in-depth panel discussion on technology and innovation barriers in K-12 education. Our expert panelists discussed some of the barriers that prevent modern classrooms from utilizing the vast technological resources currently available, and what we might do to reduce those barriers. Based on the exciting and challenging dialog that resulted, SVII has started work on an Education Initiative that will tackle some of the problems discussed at the July 2010 meeting, and afterward.

The SVII Education Initiative is off to a great start, and you can still join the effort and contribute your ideas! Members have used Ken Ketch’s Group Mind Express tool to create a collaborative space to work on this initiative. If you attended the session and had further insights to add, head over to the SVII Collaboration Center and make your voice heard. We will be adding more tools to that space as the initiative develops, so stay tuned.

Building on the insights gathered, SVII members hope to make a concrete, positive contribution to the world of education in the Silicon Valley. If you’d like to receive all updates about the education initiative, please email brenna@svii.org to be added to the list.

Help Us Shape SVII’s 2011 Program!

As we work on planning content for our 2011 monthly meetings, we would love to hear your input! If you have thoughts about speakers, topics, format, or anything else related to meeting content, email us at friends@svii.org.

Connect with the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute Community…

You can now follow SVII on Twitter @sviihq

Join the new SVII Facebook group and the LinkedIn group.

You can also use Eventbrite to register.

Stay in Touch…

For more information, and to join the e-list, email friends@svii.org. Plan to join the SVII Innovation Society each “first Wednesday” of the month.

Keep checking here for program updates, archives and summaries of past meetings. Even if you’re not based in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can receive SVII e-letters and keep up with past program discussions.

SVII is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization.

Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, is a member of SVII.

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