I'm here in London preparing for Day 1 of our Infrastructure & Operations Forum in London.

I'll be taking the stage just two hours from now to kickoff the event, so it's only fitting that we also launch our new blog platform today as well! We're working very hard to embed social media into our events and it's exciting to debut the new platform with our clients.

Check back to see new posts and join the conversation. You can also get real-time feeds on Twitter by searching the #IOFE10 hashtag.

To help you with the new look and feel of the blog, I wanted to borrow the words from my colleague, Cliff Condon, the project manager rolling out the new platform:

  • Everyone’s welcome here. Forrester analysts use blogs as an input into the research they produce, so having an open, ongoing dialogue with the marketplace is critical. Clients and non-clients can participate — so I encourage you to be part of the conversations on Forrester blogs. 
  • We still have team blogs focused on role professionals. Our role blogs, such as the CIO blog and the Interactive Marketing blog, are a rollup of all the posts from the analysts serving that specific role professional. By following a role team blog, you can participate in all the conversational threads affecting a role. 
  • And now we’ve added analyst blogs as well.  If you prefer to engage directly with your favorite analyst, you can. Look on the right-hand rail of the team blog and you’ll see a list of the analyst blogs. Just click on their name to go to their blog. Or type their name into "Search." An analyst blog is a place for the analyst to get reaction to their ideas and connect with others shaping the marketplace. You’ll find the blogs to be personal in tone and approach.  
  • You can monitor analyst tweets.On role team blogs, you will see the recent tweets on the right-hand rail from analysts serving that role. On analyst blogs, the tweets shown are specific to that analyst.   
  • New "Recommend this post" functionality makes it easy to weigh in. If you find a post useful and insightful but don’t have time to post a comment, simply click "Recommend this post" to encourage others to read it.
  • It’s easier to get around overall. The addition of "breadcrumbs" near the top of the page will allow you to move between blogs in our network more readily. You can also click on specific categories in the right-hand rail to pull together all the posts on a specific topic, such as "mobile," from across our blogs. 
  • Feel free to read our social media policy. You can check out the company’s guidance to employees using social media by clicking on the "Social Media Policy" tab below.

 

Cliff's full post can be found here and I encourage everyone to check it out.

But we want your feedback! Tell us what you like, what you don't like, and what we can be doing better. There will be plenty of opportunity as we debut more content on our blog in 2010.

Ok, back to the show. I hope to you see you in London (or next week at I&O Forum Dallas).