In today’s fast-paced environment, the key to a successful sales team is collaboration. Members of your sales team must be able to communicate with one another in real time, getting the information they need quickly, staying ahead of business trends, and exchanging best practices. Blackboard Collaborate is an ideal solution to build a social enterprise by fostering teamwork and enabling knowledge sharing within your sales team. The numerous features of Collaborate can be leveraged to deepen these channels of communication and knowledge exchange, both of which are crucial to winning sales:

Web conferencing takes your online meeting capabilities beyond those of the average customer meeting or training. With the ability to show and share presentations and applications on your desktop, you’ll be able to demonstrate the value of your product quickly and easily.

Blackboard has been selected as a finalist in the 2012 Institute for Excellence in Sales & Business Development (IES&BD) annual awards! These awards are meant to highlight how top organizations execute strategies that lead to revenue growth and overall business success. We are proud of our nomination in the Excellence in Sales Training category, especially the recognition of our Blackboard Learn for Sales solution.

Launched last August, Blackboard Learn™ for Sales is a cloud-based learning management solution that embeds social learning directly into the Salesforce CRM platform. This allows sales managers and corporate trainers to enroll in and complete required training courses and tailor training programs across their enterprise. Learn for Sales ensures that professional development resources are all easily available within the familiar Salesforce environment, thereby addressing evolving business priorities and measuring successes against team performances and defined business goals.

As you may have heard already, BbWorld 2012 will have five key themes this year – each Feature Theme Session will be presented by thought leaders in Education.

We rolled out the theme “Social Learning” last week and now we are proud to announce the Feature Theme Session Keynote Speaker for Digital Content – Tom Caswell! An Open Education Policy Associate at Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Tom handles special projects that directly impact the power of Digital Content such as running the Open Course Library, piloting a community college Open Learning Initiative (OLI) in Washington State, and supporting the OPEN initiative for Department of Labor C3T grantees. As a Policy Associate, Tom also raises awareness about the use of Digital Content and sets policies for sharing content.

For many regions across the country, April signals the start of the traditional tornado season. Just this past weekend, a tornado swept through Wichita, Kan., causing significant damage but luckily little injury. Because tornado systems often form quickly and without warning, they can serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of emergency preparedness and having a solid communications plan in place for your community.

Preparation and response plans are vital during urgent situations. But as more people have access to mobile devices, a communication plan for sharing updates and information has become increasingly complex. Many communities rely on Blackboard Connect to help get the word out during severe weather events, we have compiled a quick list of 5 helpful tips for communicating successfully before, during and after the storm.

I’m excited about this year’s DevCon, not just because I’m a foodie and I love the food in New Orleans. I mean, c’mon, no one can pass up a beignet from Café du Monde. Besides the enticing food, I’m excited for the great speakers and sessions.

On July 9^th and 10^th DevCon 2012 will descend onto New Orleans and give its attendees over 30 sessions devoted to topics like system administration and integration, security and performance, Blackboard Building Blocks development, and openness. This year we will also have sessions devoted to Blackboard mobile development, so those of you that are curious about how to develop using Blackboard Mobile’s SDK (software development kit) can satisfy that curiosity.