A couple of weeks ago there was one worth while reading news article over at SignOnSanDiego where Brian Truskowski, Vice President and Chief Information Officer for IBM, was interviewed with five different questions where he actually got to talk about what IBM is currently doing around the area of emerging technologies within Web 2.0 and social software in order to enable knowledge workers to share more knowledge and collaborate with one another, along with customers and, perhaps, in a smarter way, and since it seems to be a recurring question that I get every now and then I thought I would link to it so that folks out there, who may be interested in finding out how such a large corporation is making use of all of these emerging technologies, would get a chance to find out some of the latest happenings in this subject.

Thus in Five Questions: Brian Truskowski you would be able to find not only some very interesting facts about the IBM adoption of weblogs, wikis, social bookmarking, etc. etc. but at the same time you would be able to read nice gems like this one:

"These [technologies] are all better ways to connect people to each other."

Yes, indeed, something that I have been mentioning myself all along myself and for which I never get tired of reminding everyone. It is all about people, about making connections, about engaging in different conversations and whoever else says otherwise then I guess they would need to think again and figure out if they get it or not. There is always a good time to get started at some point though, just in case people out there may want to dive in.

In that same article you would be able to read how Brian mentions Jams as a way to engage IBMers and customers alike to drive through further on innovation and if you would remember not long ago I created a couple of weblog posts where I was actually mentioning the InnovationJam and how I actually managed to participate in Phase I of the initiative chiming in submitting ideas and collaborating with other folks.

Unfortunately, there was a second phase for InnovationJam that it actually took place while I was at the workshop in Cincinnati so I couldn’t participate as active as I would have expected. Yet, there have been thousands of conversations going on and at the moment, and as part of the catchup, I am actually reading through the archives of the event so that I can get some idea about what got discussed and where do we go from here. And by the looks of it not everything may be lost, because one of the new capabilities from the second phase of Global InnovationJam is the fact that there is still now one massive InnovationJam Wiki still up and running and which is still collecting, till end of the month, some further input on how to improve the quality of those ideas and make them actually into real opportunities for everyone to expand further on.

How cool is that? So even though I may have missed out on the overall event, Phase II, I still get a chance to participate with hundreds, if not thousands, of other folks expanding further on those ideas and see how things would move further. And yes, indeed, there are several ideas around the topic of Web 2.0 and virtual worlds and the impact they are having in the enterprise, but I guess that would be the subject for another weblog post …

Tags: Web 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Wikis, Weblogs, Podcasts, InnovationJam, Jams, IBM, Innovation, Emerging Technologies

I know that I do not get to share many of these over here and I also realise that it is not Friday yet, although, after having done such a massive catchup from everything else while I was away, I wish it were, but I just couldn’t help sharing this gem that a good old friend of mine, who I have finally found again after moving on (him) from IBM, shared it in an MSN group where we are both members.

Hands up anyone who thought that this is just too good to miss out:

Brilliant ! (Thanks, Tom S.!)

Oh, not to worry, if you are now looking for something really worth while reading, and diving into, check out the weblog post I created earlier on today about an online demo I attended yesterday on a superb online real-time collaboration emeeting tool called Vyew that I have now grown to be very very fond of. Here is the review I wrote on five reasons why you would want to make use of it. Highly recommended.

Tags: Dilbert, Knowledge Management, KM, Job Counseling, Vyew, Virtual Meetings, Remote Collaboration, Collaboration, Social Software, Web 2.0

Yesterday I created a weblog post where I was announcing elsua’s new look (Oh, by the way, do not forget to check the About document as you would be able to see an updated page with some further details about me along with some fancy new design. Love it!) and today I thought that I would share with you one really good hat tip on how you can get the most out of your syndication needs by making extensive use of Feedburner as part of your own weblogs. For quite some time now I have always wanted to find a way to get some statistics on the number of readers who are actually getting my content syndicated through different methods, RSS, Atom, Yahoo, BlogLines, etc. etc. For some time now I have been using Feedburner as well to shed some light along those lines and give me some partial numbers of the total readership through syndication.

And just recently I found out that instead of having to mess up with different files like .htaccess and the like there is this awesome WordPress plugin that actually does everything for you really easy and without you having to worry about anything else than just installing and activating the plugin itself.

Check out Feedburner Plugin 2.1, created by Steve Smith, over at orderedlist. What a fantastic WordPress plugin! You just basically install it in your own server like you would do with any other plugin (Check out the instructions directly available in this link), then activate it and you are ready to go. Of course, you would need to configure it under the sub-tab Feedburner from the Options menu, but I am sure that by now you would have already got one profile at Feedburner, like I do. And from there onwards you can just watch the total feed count grow larger and larger.

I remember how before doing this Feedburner was actually capturing 62 syndication hits and after installing the plugin the current hit count at the time of writing this weblog post is 216. Yes, indeed, 216! More than triple the amount of original feeds tracked !

Fantastic ! I am really excited about this because I never thought that I had so many other readers subscribed via RSS, Atom and whatever other feeds and the fact that I can now get Feedburner Plugin 2.1 to do that job for me is just wonderful! A huge time saver! A special thanks to Steve for putting together such a fine piece of work, and, most importantly, for sharing it with all of us! Well done !

(Oh, and don’t forget to check some of the other goodies that Steve has been putting together. You may find something else worth while checking further and playing around with. I already did!)

Tags: Feedburner, Feedburner Plugin, Steve Smith, Orderedlist, WordPress, Plugins, WordPress Plugins, Syndication, RSS, Atom, Newsfeeds, Productivity Tips, Blogging Tips

I am finally back home, folks, after a fantastic week in Cincinnati that I would be fully detailing in an upcoming weblog post shortly, thus expect weblogging to resume as usual over the next couple of days, after the usual catchup I would need to go through now. Yes, I know, too much e-mail, too many feed updates to catch up with, but it would eventually get there. I am sure. However, when I mentioned that regular weblogging is about to get going again, I think it would be a good time now to mention something as well that I have been working on for the last few weeks. Indeed, some time ago you would remember how I was mentioning that elsua was in very much need of a facelift and perhaps some spicing up in order to try to improve the reading and commenting experience. Well, I am proud to present to you, folks, the new elsua - A KM Blog look!

You may remember how I talked about customising a new theme for this particular weblog and how for a number of weeks I was unsuccessful to modify one that would please my needs, so in the end I decided to venture myself and create a new theme: elsua 2.0 Theme 1.0. Well, I didn’t create it myself since I lack the different technical skills to be able to do a decent job, but I managed to have it created through other means that I would also detail in an upcoming weblog post where I am going to recommend a service I used for it. Very impressed overall with it. But more on that later.

For the time being let me just detail what some of the major changes have been thus far with this new theme and what you would be able to expect from here onwards. I don’t think I would be making many more changes but still, you never know. The first thing that you are going to notice is that this weblog has now got a header with a picture and a logo. Yes, indeed, for some time now I have been contemplating the idea of having a logo and in fact a good friend of mine created the one you see showing as part of the header. Thus every time you would see that logo elsewhere or over here it would be referring to elsua, to myself. Something that I identify with very much. Hope you like it. The picture itself is actually one of the many pictures that I have taken from Gran Canaria that is very special to me where you would see represented Mount Teide, from Tenerife (Highest mountain in Spain), Roque Nublo and Roque Bentaiga, two of the main symbols from the island where I live. Such a stunning place ! And very pleased with how the header came out in the end.

Ok, what else? Well, you may have noticed how I have stuck with the three column theme so that I can fit in some of the different widgets that I have been very fond of all along, plus I have been adding some more that I couldn’t get them to work in the previous theme and they are now working all right. So, all in all, you would see how my contact details are now showing up on the top left of the screen. Just underneath you would be able to see the different syndication methods I have been using all along (And stay tuned for an upcoming tip I will share because it will help improve your visibility about your overall subscribers), then I put together as well the new Plazes badge, my already existing Flickr badge, and the blogroll (Which I am in the process of updating it as well since in the last few weeks I have been adding and removing some of the different feeds, so more to come on that one soon, too!).

Then on the right column you would be able to see my profile details from Technorati, elsua’s Frappr community (To which you are more than welcome to join in, if you haven’t done it already). Then over there you will see as well a couple of widgets related to some statistics based on ClustrMaps and GoStats. Right underneath you would be able to see the different categories I have been using all along, next to the archives, most popular weblog posts, recent comments, recent weblog posts (Using Feeddigest) from both elsua - A KM blog and my other Internet weblog elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog.

Right afterwards you would be able to see the Translate This Page plugin that would allow you to translate this weblog in whatever other major language out there. Then I have finally been able to include the widget from ZoomClouds that puts together a tagcloud of my own weblog (While waiting for TagCloud to go live again), next to this weblog’s swicki and the fun widget How much is your blog worth?

And to finish things off just to mention as well that in the middle column and towards the bottom of the page you would be able to see the tagcloud from my favourite Internet social bookmarking tool, BlinkList, where you can see a representation of all of the different bookmarks I have been tagging thus far, so that you can get to check them out yourself and see if you find something worth while reading for you.

From there onwards there are some other cosmetic changes that some of you have been asking about and which we have tried to add into the final theme so you would be able to bump into them as you go along. And that would be it. As you can see this has been a rather long weblog post but I thought I would give you an opportunity to check out some of the different widgets that I have compiled together and also how they would combine with this new theme that is going to stay here with us for quite some time now. I am very pleased with the final result and hope you like it, too. Also if you are reading this weblog post from a feed client you may want to pop over to elsua.net and check out the new design. And, finally, as usual, if you would have any feedback or any glitch you may have noticed about the new design please do not hesitate to contact me offline so that I can fix it as soon as I possibly can.

Time now to do the usual catchup of the backlog with almost everything.

Tags: elsua, Metablogging, WordPress, Themes, Flickr, Plazes, ClustrMaps, GoStats, ZoomClouds, BlinkList, Swicki, Feeddigest, Gran Canaria

I certainly had lots of things to comment on as part of the highlights from my current trip to the US, yet, today it still feels painful, very painful, despite those five years gone by already. At the time, I was in a conference call with some US colleagues talking about KM stuff when the first plane hit the WTC. We didn’t get to finish the call. In fact, we didn’t talk much afterwards. The rest of the day, pretty much like till today, was just that: painful. And I bet that it will continue to be like that for many more years to come. Yes, time heals open wounds they say, but I doubt I would ever want to close that one, for that matter. Not now, not ever.

In memory of those who died on September 11th 2001 and of all those who have died or suffered in its aftermath, never forget!

Not now, not ever.

Tags: 9/11, 911, September11, WTC, Open Wounds

If a couple of days ago I was actually creating a weblog post where I was highlighting how crucial face-to-face contact is for any team project or community specially for launches I guess I am going to be enjoying that a great deal over the next few days because this coming Saturday I will be flying to the US, through Madrid and Chicago, to Cincinnati to spend the whole of next week with my team in a workshop where we will get together a bunch of us to talk about some Knowledge Management and communities stuff, of course

It is going to be a long trip, specially on the way back, but certainly totally worth it ! I have never been to Cincy so it will be another US city that I would be adding to my list of visited US cities from the last few years. I am not sure what I will be doing just yet over there till the workshop starts since I haven’t got any fixed plans just yet, but if anyone of you folks out there reading this, and following elsua for some time, want to get together for a couple of drinks or something just leave a comment over here or drop me an e-mail and we will hook up !

Oh, and in case you are wondering, this time around I have done my homework so we shall see how that goes. I am not sure if I would be able to weblog and all since it would depend on my connectivity over there, but I hope I may be able to say a couple of things, including some major announcement of something that is in the making over here, in elsua, and which I am really excited about. But more on that later, hopefully, over the next few days, perhaps while I am already in the US.

Thus I hope I am able to meet up with some of the regular followers of this weblog. We shall see… Time now to start that packing !

Tags: USA, Cincinnati, Travelling