As previously blogged, I resigned from IBM yesterday as I have accepted the position of ‘Director – Digital Experience’ at George P Johnson (UK) Ltd. (GPJ).  GPJ are the global leader in the events marketing industry and are rapidly expanding their capabilities in digital marketing with the recent purchase of Juxt Interactive and MobilePromote.  I am looking forward to bringing my experience in all things web2.0, building communities and creating virtual events for IBM to bear in helping GPJ further develop their digital experience capabilities.  I am excited by the future as I believe 2009 will be the year that online events and experiences reach a tipping point, created by a perfect storm:

Credit Crunch + Green Issues + Advancing Technology = Great Time for Digital Experience

In my view digital experiences are often a lot of digital and not much experience, and I believe GPJ are well positioned to help brands improve that by presenting a coherent experience across all media whether physical or digital.

I have greatly enjoyed my time at IBM and have worked with some brilliant people on many different projects – thank you – you know who you are!  I believe IBM is continuing to do some great things in Virtual Worlds.  IBM’s innovative DNA and its mass adoption and experimentation with virtual worlds means that it is better placed than the average corporate to exploit its own innovations, so much of what is going on is internal and hidden from the media.  IBM is happily benefitting from saving large sums of money running it’s own virtual events, whilst everyone else catches up.

I would like to underline that this resignation is in no way related to any recent ‘resource actions’ at IBM or indeed to Ian Hughes (ePredator)’s recent departure from IBM, other than we both have confidence that these technologies are the way ahead and we are investing our careers in that belief.  Indeed the ibm.com team with whom I worked are having a great year with more opportunity than we knew what to do with.

It would be great to stay in touch – you can connect with me through this blog, via Twitter or Linked-In.