E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Giving Up on Instant Messaging

I have been out on the Internet since, more or less, beginning of 1997 (Yes, I know, quite some time already), and back then and for a number of different years I started to use different Instant Messaging tools in order to get in touch with my colleagues, friends and family. That is why in the end I ended up getting multiple userid accounts: AOL, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, etc. You name it, and I have an account for it, I am sure. But over the last few months now I have noticed a change in the different tools I use for some real-time collaboration.

Indeed, over the last few months I have noticed how I am switching away, little by little, from the traditional Instant Messaging tools into VoIP / IM Tools. I mean, I cannot remember any longer when it was the last time that I fired up ICQ or MSN. Instead, I am finding out that every single morning when I come to work I start loading tools like Skype, Damaka, and, lately, with some of my colleagues, Google Talk. And I seem to be quite content with that because by now I have convinced most of my contacts to make the switch. And it certainly has been worth while the effort.

I am not sure if you have noticed it or not but from the perspective of knowledge sharing, collaborating and engaging much more actively with a group of people VoIP tools seem to be much more powerful than traditional IM tools. Why?, you may be wondering. Well, I am not really too sure about it but I am finding out that I get to establish a conversation via voice with folks a lot easier than with IM. In some cases people do not seem, nor want, to be fast typists, so collaborating closely with someone feeling that way becomes a bit difficult and slow sometimes. However, engaging with them using voice tools certainly does help. A lot.

Plus the fact that for most of the VoIP tools out there we can find different options to record the conversations and revisit them back whenever we would need to, which will help a whole lot more whenever we would need to try to capture meeting minutes, action items, ideas, thoughts, etc. etc. And finally, more and more of those VoIP tools are also putting together video conferencing capabilities, which will make it even easier to relate to people and get to know them by allowing us to put a face behind the voice, a key item to help boost your trust levels with your peers and therefore get much more meaningful exchange of knowledge and information.

That is why I was quite content to see that Festoon now provides video conferencing support not only to Skype, but also with Google Talk, all under the same executable. I am just wondering when Damaka would be added to the list. I mean, with over 1 million downloads you would expect that such a fantastic VoIP tool would be beyond the mark of having reached a significant enough critical mass. So as these tools get better and better and make collaboration a whole lot easier I am finding out that I get to use traditional IM tools less and less. And best part of it is that most of my colleagues and friends feel the same way, so converting them hasn’t been too difficult. So how about you ? Have you moved away already from Instant Messaging tools or are you still too afraid to jump into the VoIP bandwagon? What do you think ? Will you ever make the switch?

Technorati Tags : Instant+Messaging, VoIP, Damaka, Skype, Google+Talk

IBM Trying to Promote Internal Cycle of Growth

Not long ago a couple of elsua’s readers asked me via e-mail if I could provide them with some more information details about what IBM was doing around the area of Knowledge Management, Collaboration and knowledge sharing on a corporate level, and while back then I referred them back to the Alphaworks Collaboration web site where you can get a very good overview of what is actually happening, just recently I thought that this other particular news article in InfoWorld would be very enlightening for those who may want to have a look into some details further.

The article itself is titled IBM trying to promote internal cycle of growth and amongst other things you will get to read over there what IBM is doing with the IBM On Demand WorkPlace, specially from an internal perspective, as one of the most powerful options to share information with one another, search for experts using the Enterprise Directory called  BluePages and having quick access to ThinkPlace, one of the very last features coming onboard and that IBMers are currently using to continue boosting innovation from a collaboration perspective.

And also apart from getting to hear about some of the capabilities out there for IBMers you will also get to read about what some other work IBM  has been doing and for which we shall see some results coming out very shortly. Like, Green Pages, for instance. So as you can see things are still thriving around the collaboration and innovation areas inside of IBM. And one thing I am also planning to do with elsua is to give you a little bit more background on the happenings as we go along. Thus stay tuned for some further updates as they may come along.

Technorati Tags : IBM, IBM+Collaboration, IBM+ThinkPlace, IBM+On+Demand+WorkPlace