If anybody out there has a good story about how they used Chatter or any other social media program to improve or enhance a business process, or to improve internal collaboration or collaboration with business partners, please contact me and I will be absolutely delighted to include the story in my new book about how businesses use social media and social networking tools to improve existing business processes, or invent new ones! Social media is an exciting development in the history of business, and I would love to hear some real stories from the front lines. Thanks in advance!

Here's something I don't usually say about vendor events: I really enjoyed it! The Cloudforce 2 "roadshow" at the Sheraton in Manhattan last week was both entertaining and educational. OK, it was basically one long sales pitch for salesforce.com, but it was still extremely useful and very interesting. I think that Chatter, which is salesforce.com's social media platform for business, is absolutely fantastic. I'm a major fan of Marc Benioff, one of the first software geeks to envision "the cloud." I'm also impressed by the way he hasn't lost his contempt for enterprise software and the whole philosophy behind it. At any rate, I predict that Chatter will be a huge success. And no, I don't work for Benioff and I own no shares of salesforce.com stock.

Apart from the cool technology ideas, three things about the event struck me:

1. Excellent finger food -- lots of raw veggies, chocolate chip cookies and some very tasty micro-cheeseburgers. Everything a writer needs to stay healthy and alert.

2. Unusually high level of rapport between the presenters and the audience. The presenters really knew their audience, and the audience seemed genuinely appreciative.

3. Did anyone else notice the absence of senior IT people in the audience, or was it just my imagination?