Competitive Intelligence

SCIP European Conference in London

I flew in from Prague Wednesday morning to London Stansted to pinch-hit an afternoon pre-conference workshop at the SCIP European Conference in London, I’m second from right in the photo above enjoying a cocktail with friends the evening of the workshop, held at the London’s Thistle Tower Hotel – across the street from Tower of London, adjacent to Tower Bridge. Although I’d only intended to man Aurora’s booth at exhibits, I’d gotten a call from SCIP the prior Saturday as I was home from Silicon Valley for a few hours – enough time to repack before leaving for Prague that same day – asking if I’d be willing and able to help out and fill a recent speaker cancellation that’d opened up for the half-day afternoon pre-conference workshop Wednesday afternoon.

My first question was, "what will I be speaking about" and the topic, "Getting CI Customers Excited About Intelligence" (click the title to download the PowerPoint deck), seemed soft enough that I shouldn’t have a problem. So, Michael Reed at SCIP was kind enough to ask Melanie Wing (these slides are really hers, with a few additions) to ship me her slides, and Emily Gower was nice enough to tweak them out – THANKS GUYS! I couldn’t have done it without that help, only having a couple of hours altogether to contribute to finishing a three hour workshop. Emily, along with Andrew Minton, were also great help in the workshop itself – Emily serving as scribe and both of them provocateurs to give the European perspective on the subject – something really noticeable in the differences between the way North American and European CI practitioners evangelize themselves and their services across the enterprise.

Thanks all for a great time in London! See you all in Boston in March, hopefully!

- Arik

SCIP-Prague Chapter Half-Day Conference in Prague

I arrived in Prague on Sunday, toured the city and mostly relaxed Monday before today (Tuesday) meeting up with Mr. Tomas Vejlupek from Tovek and Yitka, one of his staffers (and a great Czech-English translator, as seen in the photo above) for a Chamber of Commerce event produced by the local SCIP Chapter, for which Tomas serves as Chapter Coordinator. Not much to report here other than that – sorry, guys… most of the event was in Czech, so I had a hard time following – but here are the slides from my PPT deck if you’d like to have a look at what I talked about, "SCIP: Strategy, Structure & Intelligence Leadership".

Meeting Tomas and my brother Derek in London tomorrow – so, cheers to Prague and thanks for all the Pilsner Urquell!

- Arik