10 February 2009 The School of Engineering at the American University in Dubai (AUD) hosted a seminar entitled, “The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market.” The seminar speaker was Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels for the IBM Corporation. As a collaborative event geared towards bridging the gap between industry and academia, the seminar was attended by AUD faculty and students, along with engineering professionals from the computer technology industry in the region.

Carter shared her perspective on the next generation marketing techniques that address the complexities of today’s business world. Through a generous retelling of her success stories, she presented over 54 customer case studies. By identifying innovative targeted marketing strategies, the attendees learned some of the most innovative tools to becoming successful global marketers.

On the success of the seminar, Dr. Wathiq Mansoor, Associate Professor of Computer Engineering at AUD, commented, “IBM is the largest computer company in the world and they have been a great supporter for education worldwide. The visit of IBM Vice President to AUD shows the excellent reputation that AUD has among giant computer technology industries. IBM has created an Academic Initiative which allows the academic institutions around the world to access the rich resources of IBM courses and software. Our School, through its Computer Engineering Program, is a member of the IBM academy. We are in process of integrating the IBM courses and software into the computer engineering program courses. I have started to integrate selected topics of IBM courses into our Software Engineering course, and many other courses will follow. Furthermore, we are in constant contact with Mr. Andrea Emiliani, the regional IBM Academy representative, to enhance the joint effort between IBM and AUD to organize conferences, seminars, and joint research and application projects.”

During her presentation, Ms. Carter highlighted the companies across the spectrum that are leveraging Web 2.0 and social media techniques to reach new contacts and market to key influencers. Moreover, she emphasized the indispensability of incorporating those techniques into go-to-market efforts describing such ventures as, “the right thing to do.” She asserted that, “How the individual goes from a whisper to a scream involves using market trends and new technologies to drive better results in a more cost effective way.” Blogs, wikis, video, online marketing, widgets, twitter, gaming, social media, branding, campaigns, viral marketing, and e-mail and web communications, were among the techniques the speaker discussed.

Furthermore, Ms. Carter stated that “through the reach of the Internet, the customer, not the marketer, is at the center of successful marketing. Customers can opt-in or select the message that most clearly resonates with them, read an interesting blog, watch entertaining viral video, cruise Virtual Worlds and speak through Avatars. What does this mean to us? It means that the previously separate worlds of marketing and communications are merging: Marketing 2.0 is about marketing through communication,” she concluded.

Following the seminar, Ms. Carter met with faculty, chairs, and deans of academic departments and schools at AUD to discuss various opportunities for collaboration between IBM and the University. The discussion focused on establishing an IBM-AUD summer camp for high school students, and organizing a series of joint workshops and regional conferences at AUD.