So last minute a vendor offered me a pass to the Gartner event down in San Diego, looks like some fun and I’m always down to network and hang out with fellow geeks. 

What’s interesting is how most of the topics are fairly generic in the Web world and yet one product is mentioned specifically by name in some of the Panels and Workshops.  SharePoint 2010/2013 appears to be a hot topic and is drawing quite a few speakers all things considered.  Of course, the fact that Yammer is one of their platinum sponsors probably doesn’t hurt.

Event site can be found here: http://www.gartner.com/technology/summits/na/portals/

Here’s their About the Conference blurb:

Engage at the Nexus of Social, Mobile, Information and Cloud

Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit delivers the tools and insights needed to tap into unprecedented portals, content and collaboration opportunities. Disruptive trends are yielding an array of business-critical imperatives: Deliver secure access across a widening range of devices. Mine and leverage nontraditional content. Use social software to drive efficiency and innovation. Exploit context-aware computing.

This summit represents the single most important event in the portals, content and collaboration space, where IT and business leaders gather to learn from the latest Gartner research and interact with 24+ Gartner analysts, peers and solution leaders. Experience new research and innovative thinking in a variety of session formats that drill down to your most critical topics.

They also hit pretty hard on the concepts of a mobile workforce, especially true in today’s world.  But it’s not just about being mobile either, it’s really about being able to build the best teams utilizing the best talent from anywhere in the world through the use of mobile technology.  There is no reason why you can’t have two outstanding team members who just happen to sit at opposite ends of the country in their own home offices.  The resistance to having cube drones who have to sit on the same floor or next to each other in cubes is swiftly evaporating.

Here’s their key benefits section on the conference:

Through analyst sessions, roundtables, workshops, tutorials and end-user case studies, you’ll gain the insight to:

  • Empower mobile workforces securely
  • Know when to use cloud and SaaS options
  • Deliver the experiences customers and constituents have come to expect
  • Harness social to drive innovation and delight customers and employees
  • Demonstrate the business value of portals, content and collaboration technologies
  • Add increasing amounts of context to everything you do
  • Understand how PCC impacts organizational dynamics
  • Use analytics to improve business processes

So, anyone else going to this event?  Drop me a line here or shoot me a PM over at Twitter.