go for Hippie 42.0, because this is the answer to all questions ... like ... acceleration, information entropy, demogaphic change, ubiquitous, dependency on accurancy and availibility, the coming BPC big performance crash by network conncetions and bandwidth overuse, ... 

Making hippie 2.0 mainstream.

I vote Hippie 2.0

You're speaking at the same conference that also presents folks like Josef Ackermann??? Do they know what's about to hit them? ;)

Seriously, though, what's the audience like at this gig?  If it's mostly people like Ackermann (or people who go to conferences to hear people like him speak), then undiluted Hippie may be too confrontational?  Could shut the dialog down before it's begun?  Dunno.

Apart from that sole consideration, my vote is for Hippie.  But you knew that. ;)

I like +Mark Masterson's thoughts on this, though I'd tend to say provocative/Hippie2.0 is typically better to grab attention. That said, to keep the attention, you may need to balance so as not to alienate your audience, especially when talking on the future of work. That is to say, if the ideas you are presenting are revolutionary, you may want to dial back the style slightly to make it more approachable.  Conversely, if the ideas have been heard before, perhaps it is time to get dramatically provocative in order to break through and grab the audience. 

Thanks much everyone for the lovely input and for the wonderful ideas / suggestions! +Ulrich Kampffmeyer Absolutely! That was also part of my thinking. That perhaps the business world may now be ready for Hippie 42.0 with a reason! :) Great themes!

+Hazel Woodcock +Doug Hall Thanks, guys! Appreciated the heads up as well! 

+Mark Masterson I knew you would be saying that and somehow I am not surprised you also saw my first inclination. Yes, it's that kind of audience. About 300 alumni, "former students", from business schools across the world coming together to define the future of the business world and how it would fit together within today's new world Kind of thinking that was perhaps the reason why they invited me in the first place to shake the stage a little bit as well. Perhaps not in full force or anything, but enough to shake the ground and get them thinking and prepare them for what's coming ;) 

+Jason O'Donnell great points, as well! And tend to agree that's perhaps the expectation that's been set up for my pitch, seeing who else is going to be going there as speakers. Interestingly enough, I am not planning on making it too provocative, but perhaps enough to raise the odd eye-brow here and there. Interestingly enough, I also think it's probably a good time to break through. My idea was to identify one or two or maybe even three issues from current workplace and how they would need to be addressed in the future starting tomorrow. One of them being employee engagement, for instance ... 

I will be attending the speakers' dinner the night before where we will hang out and everything so that would give me a sense as to how provocative I will be... Or not ;) hehe 

Hippie 2.0 it is, folks! :)

Luis, you should be you as hippie 2.0. With all of your talk recently about really making a difference then guys like you should use your influence to really talk about the future and not just peddle the same old, same old with new labels.

+Luis Suarez Hey, hippie 2.0 is way too sissy, hippies withdrew from the world, your goal should be to change things or what? So go revolutionary, radical, challenge the soft underbellies and all the accepted assumptions. Or will the corporate connection keep you back? Basically, don't be the entertainment... ;)

I guess that you will seem like a hippie anyways compared to most of those other speakers even if you are very conservative me
But please be hippie 2.0 on knowledge sharing! Corporate world needs more of it dearly. On the other hand, just be 100% hippie to wake that audience up after the lunch break :-)
Most importantly, have a walk along the Zurich lake, if the weather is nice. Very beautiful and only 500 meters from where you speak. 
Price for registration is a bit too high for me. Too bad that I can't buy a ticket just for your talk, as it's just 2 train stops from my 9-5 work. I will certainly check the local news, if they mention hippie Luis the next day  ;-)

+Casson McRae Loved, loved, loved your commentary about "_not just peddle the same old, same old with new labels_", which is essentially what I have been trying to avoid all along and what my current battles in the social spaces have been all along! Fantastic! Looks like the outrageous, optimist, free radical hippie 2.0 will continue to come out in full force to keep challenging the status quo! :)

+Sig Rinde Amen to those comments, too! Indeed, it's all about changing things! Otherwise, why bother? Exactly my trend of thought as well! Funny you should mention as well the corporate connection... It's been years since the last time I worried, or cared!, much about it! There won't be much of an entertainment going around, that's for sure! :) Perhaps my kind of entertainment ;) hehe

+Stefan Reist Thanks much for the heads up! Yes, indeed, that's the plan. Like I said, major themes I would want to touch base on would be openness, transparency, knowledge sharing, collaboration, honesty, values, basically bring back the human relationships back into a business environment, where it should belong all along!

Too bad you won't be able to make it to the event. I have been in Zurich multiple times and it's one of my favourite cities, so would be looking forward to take a walk around the lake! If you would want to get together for a drink or something, let me know, we may be able to make it work. Will be arriving the day before and leave the day after, so we could make it happen... Let me know...

Thanks much, everyone, once again, for the thoughtful feedback and for the suggestions! Inspiration is ON! :) 

Do you have time for a coffe or lunch? It would be great to see you here! 

+John Mueller Ohhh, I think so! I don't have the full scheduled sorted out just yet, but if you are going to be around, I would love to meet up, if not for lunch for a coffee break or perhaps even for dinner, if you can make it. As soon as I get everything finalised, I will let you know, John, how and when we can get together. I'll be looking forward to it! It'll be about time!! :)

+Luis Suarez  day before, same day, day after ... all works for me. Just let me know when and where, whenever your schedule is fixed and you have spare time for it. Drink is on me!

And there is even a thought about this?!  Hippie 2.0 my friend! Show the change in work by the change in the prezo.

+Stefan Reist Sure thing! I will let you know about it as soon as I have booked the flight, hotel and everything, but it should work. We should be able to make it happen. Thanks for the heads up! :)

+Kevin Jones Awww, thanks much, my friend! Much appreciated the heads up, Kevin! Head is spinning with all of the feedback and comments shared over here on topics I would want to touch base on. And all of that in 30 minutes or less! W00t! Love the challenge! Change the world in 30 minutes or go and hide forever! Yes, we are ON! :)

Perhaps this might help: More questions than suggestions perhaps, but questions that people like me that's been in traditional business for awhile is wondering when you say the word "social" to me. Social? Be social, you say. Of course I'm social , but how does it help making my work more effective? See my previous comment: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113595411388653488274/posts/SA1aaTbzhu1
Connected work, get connected, stay connected - to people, yes, but mostly to information (and resources) to get the job done most effectively. Use web technology for what's it worth - detailed linking capabilities. Everything is connectable, even this comment or  a paragraph within this comment.

If it is making YOUR head spin - I want to hear!  Would love to know what you are taking away from this conference.

+Rolf Idar Isaksen Thanks much for that commentary and for the wonderful feedback! It's really interesting, because in my original plan for the session I have no intention whatsoever to talk much about Social or Social Business, but more along the lines of defining a new kind of working together, openly, more transparently, by generating more trust, by learning from one another, with one single key premise: becoming more effective. It's no longer just about productivity, but about effectiveness and how do we affect that. Mainly, because of a huge issue that I'm finding it incredibly amazing we keep skipping it to no avail and which is the problem I will try to address: 

How can we engage employees / knowledge workers back in a corporate environment where 8 out of 10 of them feel totally disengaged right now as we speak? Trying to bring back into the game happy employees = happy customers engaged employees = engaged customers

Social Business may not have anything, or EVERYTHING, to do with it all, depending on how open folks are to the subject of helping redefine the workplace of the future with more autonomy, lowering the center of decision power, co-ownership, as well as co-responsiblity. Not bad for 30 minutes, eh? Now need to start packing it together ... hehe Thanks for the great suggestions!!

+Kevin Jones Absolutely! It's going to be one of my highlights of conference events that I have attended this year, so planning on doing massive live tweeting and blogging on the side about it! :-D hehe Stay tuned! :) 

Social Business doesn't seem to me to be new.  If you go back 100 or 200 years, business was social.  People knew people, conversations were essential to the running of business, personal recommendations were the best way to build a business.  Nobody got bogged down with email :-)
The geographical reach of businesses was smaller, and a geographically dispersed business had offices in two towns 30 miles apart. 
Over the last 50 years it has become steadily more normal to work at a larger geographical scale, and the social went out of business to some extent.
Now we can make the world small again.  I can have a conversation with a colleague in Spain, and a whole host of people from I don't know where.  We can exchange ideas, we (slowly) get to know a little about each other and nobody needs to travel by coach and four to conduct business.  Surely the social business we engage in is just a case of using modern tools and technology to bring back some good practices from a bygone age.
... or maybe reading 'A tale of two cities' is getting to me ;-)

Radical, provocative and challenging Hippie 2.0. Definitely. Really looking forward to seeing your presentation - and the conversation it generates.

+Hazel Woodcock You surely bring up a great point from the perspective of how businesses were run before we decided to automatised them over the course of the last 50 years when we came to the conclusion it was much better to manage and govern androids behaving and reacting like robots (Basically to orders), than to be given enough autonomy, responsibility, a lowered centre of decision power, trust, etc. etc. and let people be people. I think that's still part of the aversion we keep seeing with the word of social because people still associated with the anti-android effect, therefore more difficult / challenging to manage. That's why I'm not really ready just yet to drop Social altogether, more than anything else because it will help us bring up the way we did businesses before the 1960s till today. Why would we want to wipe out that part of our history, perhaps one of the most flourishing out there! hehe 

+Anne Marie McEwan Awww, thanks! I knew you would be saying that! I already have got the sketch of my presentation and will be sharing it over here as well shortly. Need to find tune the conclusion and we would go with it. I, too, really look forward to the day of the event ;-)) hehe 

Thanks again, Hazel, and Anne Marie, for the help and for the support! Appreciated

SocBiz = Social Business ... this is the Third World Fair Trade shop around the corner ... !

+Ulrich Kampffmeyer ROFL!! I suspect most folks from the audience may well identify social business with its original concept / meaning / notion than what we are currently using it for ;)

Congratulations on your thoughts Luis, and good luck with your presentation. You can actually profile it as a business case - productive, happy, connected, sharing workers bring results. And we need to show them how to use these tools for effectiveness

Hi +Rolf Idar Isaksen ! Many thanks! That's actually the point I would want to bring forward, specially, after I got this thread going on over here with all of these brilliant suggestions! Planning to use this thread live, on stage, to demonstrate how conversations like this one get to inspire productive, happy, connected and sharing workers to do what they know they do best: excel at their jobs, if given the opportunity! Just brilliant! So, a big thanks, Rolf, and everyone else on this thread for your help and for your support. It's greatly appreciated! 

Please do keep adding to it, if you would want to help me redefine the deck. Very shortly I will be sharing the main outline of how I plan to go through it, but this conversation has also given me another idea for a blog post I had in mind on another topic ... hehe Wonderful! Thanks again, everyone!

You're going to share this thread with the audience? That's brilliant.  A big shout out to Josef, then, if he's there.

:D

+Mark Masterson Oh, yes!! It's going to be my opening "slide", except that I will be showing it live from my iPad! :) I will ensure Josef will receive the big shout out as well, if he comes along :) hehe Thanks again for participating in the thread, my friend! :)

Update: While putting together a few thoughts already for this upcoming presentation I just bumped into this rather interesting article under the suggestive title "The Best way to Start a Presentation" > http://kcy.me/anry and thought starting my presentation then with the following one: 

If you were to name #1 business problem from today's corporate world ... what would it be?

Do a dramatic pause, and start gathering input from the audience, before I state what I think it's that #1 business problem... And move on with the rest of the presentation ... What do you folks think? 

(I would be incredibly interested to listen to what they think is their biggest biz problem, which I suspect is going to be completely different than the one I will be basing the presentation on... We shall see) 

How big is the room?  The smaller it is, the better this would work, methinks...

+Mark Masterson I agree, Mark! I have been told that there would be about 300 people in the audience, so I guess it's going to be a relatively large room, so good advice to keep in mind the timing thinking that it's only 30 minutes. Will try to find out some more about the audience itself and see how I could put it through without taking too much time either... Good thoughts on the audience as well... Will share some more details about the attendees, once I have got more info about them :) Thanks, my friend, for the heads up!

It might work, it might not. But if it does, you will get an incredible attention and participation from start, because they feel like they're giving the presentation with you. 

Thanks much +Rolf Idar Isaksen for the heads up! Yes, I surely agree with you that it could work, or it could not! That's exactly perhaps part of the point: taking a risk and see how it would pave out The good thing is that it's not going to be much of a massive risk, since the previous night we will be gathering for a dinner and meet-up and I will be using that opportunity to figure out whether the audience would be ready for that kind of questioning or abrupt start or not :)

In fact, one of the tips I keep giving people about public speaking that has worked really well with me is to try to mix and mingle with the audience the day before your event to test the waters and see how receptive they would be to your messages, whether they are rather moderate or whether they would be willing for some disruption. Lately, I enjoy those gatherings to figure out whether I need to do slides or just deliver the speech! I may eventually do the same thing for this one ;-) hehe

Presentations that are on the edge of anarchy and aren't fully planned until they are over are the most fun, and when they work are some of the best.

Ha! +Hazel Woodcock Some folks call those kinds of presentations being nervous and everything. I call them embrace chaos, while making the most out of it, and keep thriving!. Another great piece of advice! Thanks!!

I fear I'm late to this discussion, however...

'Hippie' has a slightly negative connotation for me. Somehow, it seems to imply an absolute - albeit passive - rejection of what is, in favor of an alternative that might be. An active rejection might be labelled as the work of a luddite or even - in extreme - a saboteur. I don't think that's where you are going, although you do want to effect a change.

I wonder whether an interesting alternative might be 'catalyst'? The presence of a catalyst enables - even enforces - a change or reaction, but does not actually participate in the reaction. In this case (and mixing some powerful terminology), are you not acting as a catalyst by introducing ideas, that will (hopefully) have an effect, while not in any way reducing the quantity or quality of the original ideas?

Hi +Adrian Warman ! Oh, of course, not! You are never late to this discussion, always happy to keep it going to fine tune and improve the overall presentation and themes I will be touching base on. I can imagine how Hippie may be bringing up the odd negative connotation or two. To be honest, it does for me as well. Specially, thinking how a bunch of those so-called (by themselves) Hippies are partially to be accountable for what's happening in the world today with the financial econoclypse and everything, when in their Hippie days they were all about, but the opposite of what they are today!

However, Hippie 2.0 is slightly different and that's the one that I'm advocating for. It's an enhanced version, as you would be able to read over at http://www.elsua.net/2010/07/22/forget-social-strategy-think-social-philosophy-hippie-2-0/ and why I also think it comes close to your concept of catalyst. In fact, I have always considered Hippies 2.0 to be outrageous, optimistic heretics, of a free radical nature, change agents, with an ability to change their surroundings and with a innate ability to influence that change to take place. So pretty much along your lines of the role of a Catalyst, I would think. But, like I said, that was the spirit of how Hippie 2.0 came into being when I first published that blog post over two years and the spirit is still the same. Intact. Pushing forward for that change :)

I know - I'm really late in this conversation as I was disconnected for a few weeks clearing the brain.  Where's "mobile technology" in your list - isn't that the hot topic for "The future of Work".  I seem to be bombarded with that topic at the moment wherever I look!  especially if you're going for Hippie 2.0...perhaps it's in there somewhere and I missed it... good luck!

+Marie-Louise Collard No, absolutely! You are not too late, since I'm still fine tuning the last few tidbits from the presentation itself! And mobile technology is there, although perhaps not so much as part of the pitch, but more in the form of how I am going to be presenting the session with just me iPad and iPhone and describing  what it is like a knowledge (Web) worker of the 21st century: global, distributed, remote, engaged, enabled, empowered, trustworthy, autonomous, motivated and committed. All of that to carry out work wherever and whenever and with whatever the social tools at our disposal! And that's when mobile technology would kick in as part of the dissertation :)

Thanks much for the feedback, Marie-Louise, and for the kind wishes! Looking forward to a smashing event! :)

Well then it sounds like you are including it "in real time" too, so to speak!  However "as part of the dissertation"  I would also encourage you to add that all the technology that enables "future" flexible mobile working practices comes with a warning! As a remote mobile worker you still need a clear framework of best practice which means knowing "when to turn it off" rather than becoming a 24/7 slave to your employers.  "wherever and whenever" must be finite.  Well you know my thoughts already on this....
I hope it goes really well - look forward to reading/seeing it!

+Marie-Louise Collard Absolutely! In fact, that's part of the speech I'll be giving around flexibility as well as work life integration. Notice I am not saying work life balance as most folks typically would claim since I have never believed in such balance. Work always wins. Rather prefer to have a combination of integration of work life with a pinch of salt or two of flexibility. And that's certainly going to be part of the dissertation as well. Need to figure out whether it'll be recorded or not, and if not, I will try to record the audio myself. Will let folks know how it goes ... Thanks again for the kind wishes, Marie-Louise! Greatly appreciated!