The journey beyond IBM

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”

Don Williams, Jr

As some of you already know, with mixed emotions, I’ve recently left IBM to join Bell Canada’s Business Markets Division. It was definitely not an easy decision to make as I’ve made many friends over the past 4+ years at IBM and outside of IBM and I will miss them dearly.

Over the past few years, working closely with our valuable family of partners, bloggers, developers and IBMers, we have evolved our products faster — together with you, product launch cycles become shorter, business become open and transparent and improved customer centric focus all across our portfolio.

We have closed deals faster. We developed real relationships. We listened and we cared. Heck, we even changed how we approached marketing. And that is a major feat for a Fortune 500 like IBM. I am grateful to the smart inspirational business partners, superb developers and even more amazing intuitive folks at IBM and outside of IBM who have helped me poke the box and be different.

Over the years, IBM has provided me with an opportunity to speak at events (keynotes even), lead,  experiment, pursue my passions and learn from the smartest people on the planet. From the conception of Lotus Foundations to the worldwide launch of Lotus Knows campaign to the Project Northstar to IBM Software to Groundswell Award for DevleoperWorks to upcoming killer apps for the social web generation. (You would have to kill me to get that out!)

These past few years have been a blast and I look forward to changing a thing or two at Bell Canada as the Associate Director of Marketing, Social/Digital at Bell Canada.  I fully plan to keep in touch with my friends and as always, I am just a tweet away.

As again, thank you for everything and let’s change this world for the better together.

@BilalJaffery // linkedin // email: bilal at jaffery dot ca (Canadian eh)

The Business Value in Social Networks

How do you enable an organization to be open, agile and transparent? How does your brand to earn it’s influence in social media?

I talked a bit about that last night at the CUNY Virtual Enterprise Panel with my friend Daryl Pereira. From internal enablement to governance to social media marketing.

Social networks are everywhere.  As these systems continue to reach into the very fabric of our existence, businesses are increasingly realizing the value in social collaboration.

In this panel, we started our discussion on an exploration into how businesses are finding real value in social media. You’ll see how social networks within the workplace can make us more efficient and knowledgeable, and how a social business breaks down barriers between prospects, customers and its extended ecosystem.