Jon runs a company called Basex that makes a study of collaboration in business. They do specialized analysis, industry reports, and provide pretty much all the services you'd expect from an analyst company. I found this pretty interesting, given how important collaboration technology is to Lotus strategy.

It turns out that Jonathan also runs a series of conferences called the Strategic Thinkers conference. In fact, he's got one coming up in a few weeks, on December 2, in New York City. He requests questions and comments from attendees before they attend, and then tweaks the approach of the conference to those questions. I've never attended one of his conferences, but this one has me intrigued.

I've agreed to chair a panel there, which not only gives me a chance to check the venue out, it also gets me out of my office, which is always a win. While this shindig is clearly not for all of you, I think some of our readers might really groove on this topic. Because of that, I asked Jon for some talking points to tell you more about what to expect if you decide to go.

Here's what he said:

• Jon tells me that a hallmark of the Basex events is that it is not a bunch of talking head vendors, but rather end-user executives (this year from Marsh & McLennan, PriceWaterhouse, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, JP Morgan, not to mention the U.S. Navy) talking about knowledge sharing and collaboration issues.

• He says, "Our speakers aren't speaking from the theoretical but rather from their own experiences. They talk about what they are doing, what works -- and equally as important -- what doesn't work. The audience is on the same level as the speakers; its not like a lot of conferences with big name speakers and just random folks in the audience."

• This one seemed pretty interesting to me. Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of "The Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power", will be speaking -- and holding a special evening session which ZATZ subscribers can attend at no additional charge. Her new critically acclaimed work, "The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism" explains the social and technological forces leading to a new "support economy." Her work provides a "cutting-edge" framework for understanding the crucial roles that both collaboration and digital technologies must play in igniting the next great wave of wealth creation.