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

Five Things Meme – On Stuff Hopefully You Didn’t Know about Me

Tags: Metablogging, Blog Tag, Tagging, Jeff Pulver, Webloggers, Weblogs, James Snell, SoulSoup, Anol, DIM SUM, Basketball, University of Salamanca, English Degree, Movies, Soundtracks, Hotel, Denham Grey, John Tropea, Bill Ives, Dave Snowden, Larry Prusak, Shawn Callahan, Anecdote

Yes, I know. It had to happen at some point. Sooner or later I would have to give in and join the party. I am just amazed though that it has taken only nine days for someone to tag me (And twice!). It all got started with Jeff Pulver‘s weblog entry Blog-Tag: A Game for a Virtual Cocktail Party and from there onwards it has been a non-stop roller coaster of hundreds and hundreds of weblog entries where people have been sharing five things about themselves that others would not know about them because someone decided to tag them.

I know that there would be some folks out there who would feel that it is probably a silly game for webloggers out there. Well, if you ask me I think it is a terrific exercise not only to get to know some more some of the regular webloggers you follow but at the same time you are also given the chance to know five other webloggers that you may not know about. Yes, as simple and easy as that! Over the last few days I have been reading how a number of different folks within the area of Knowledge Management have been tagged this way and it has allowed me to build up an ever growing list of weblogs that I now follow daily. So, yes, any time soon expect an update to the blogroll because I am putting them all nicely for you to digest further.

Anyway, let’s get going. As I mentioned above, I have been tagged by two different people, James  (One of my fellow IBM colleagues) and Anol, over at SoulSoup (One of the KM weblogs that I follow on a very regular basis for some great insights on what is happening in Knowledge Management on the other side of the world!). So here it goes. The five things that you may not know about me, unless you are a close relative or someone I may know for many many years:

1. Before I started working in the IT industry, you would be surprised to know that I worked for a number of years as a cook in a number of different restaurants all over Europe going from Spanish (Of course!) to French, Argentinian, Chinese and German cuisines. Yes, a bit of everything. But over time I have grown to be very fond of DIM SUM. So if you ever want to entice me with anything just take me to your favourite DIM SUM restaurant and I will be sold on it! Yes, you can see that cooking (And eating!) is one of my other passions!

2. You may already know about one other of my passions, specially if you have read this weblog post, but what you may not know is that for a number of years, specially while I was at University, I actually played basketball for a local team (At a province level) and enjoyed every minute of it. So much so that I still miss it a lot, hanging out with the guys, playing some ball, enjoying the atmosphere around it. Yes, guessed it right. I am no longer playing but I guess I would love to go back at some point. Perhaps this weblog post will trigger that… Hummm, you never know.

3. Talking about University, most people think that I have been all of my life around the IT industry world, even to the point that I actually studied for it. Well, that is not the case, actually. I have been in the IT industry for nearly 10 years now, but originally I graduated as an English Teacher (Both English language and Literature) at the University of Salamanca in 1995. Yes, they say that those were the best years of one’s life and I can certainly agree with that. Specially, to me the last two where I got to meet some incredible people and teachers with whom despite the years I still keep in touch with!

So that would probably help answer my teaching and learning background, don’t you think?

4. Here is another thing. My favourite Top 6 movies of all time are actually also amongst my Top 6 most favourite soundtracks ! Now, what are the chances of that, eh?

5. And, finally, a funny one that not many people know about: once, many many years ago, when I was still at University, I actually worked, I initially thought, as a bellboy in a two star hotel in Central London, to then find out after a couple of weeks that it was much more than just a hotel. Ha! Who would have expected that, right?

So, that was it! Five things that you probably didn’t know about me before I started this weblog post. Gosh, the kinds of things I get to weblog while I am on holidays, heh.

Anyway, who should I tag now? Yes, the game is that I have to find five other people to tag them and get the ball rolling once again. Hummm, who should they be? Let’s see:

1. Denham Grey: Because there is just so much more we could learn from him that he hasn’t shared with us just yet

2. John Tropea, that incredibly amazing librarian that can certainly keep you busy reading for months and months and months. No end.

3. Bill Ives: Because I want to know a bit more from him apart from his always insightful KM thoughts and his great recommendations of restaurants and places to visit that he has been thus far!

4. Dave Snowden or Larry Prusak: Either one of them. Why not? After all, they were the two main guilty parties as to why I got involved with Knowledge Management in the first place a few years back!

5. Shawn Callahan: One of the folks behind Anecdote because I am sure he has got lots of great stories to share (Pun intended) and he hasn’t been tagged just yet.

And that was it, folks! I have got many more people that I really wanted to tag and I guess that perhaps at a later time I may be able to squeeze you in, but since I had to get started with a list of them, here you have it. Time for them now to keep the ball rolling…

It Is All about You, Indeed, but the Social You – About the Power of Online Communities

Tags: TIME, Time Magazine, Person of the Year, 2006, User Generated Media, User Generated Content, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, KM2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Online Communities

Well, it is official! I am now on holidays! Yay! And for the next few weeks! Excellent! So, to start with, I have been enjoying a couple of days off and away from the computer for just about everything else. But you will get to hear about that shortly. Not to worry. However, what happened? I have just been away for a couple of days and it looks like a whole bunch of the folks I get to follow on a daily basis from all sorts of different interest areas have gone wild and pretty much crazy and decided to link to the very same story that has been going around in the last couple of days. You will have to bear with me on this one, but I am just going to link to all of the different weblog entries that I have been finding while doing a little bit of catch up with my RSS feeds as at the end of that exercise there is a message for all of us that we should not forget and should act as a reminder as well for all of us.

I guess all of this has happened because of the recent TIME magazine article "You — Yes, You — Are TIME’s Person of the Year". Yes, I know, I get to receive an award of such merit and I am not even there to pick it up ! How dare I do just that? Shame on me! I guess that next year it will be difficult for me to be even nominated for it again. I suppose I have now lost my lifetime chance. My very own 15 minutes of online fame. My opportunity to tell everyone what it has meant being there, through thick and thin, all of these years. Whatever. I am not going to bore you any longer with the typical speech everyone has been sharing all over. I rather prefer to comment on another subject, still very much related, and which not many people have been noticing all along since that news article was published.

Yes, indeed, TIME may have just announced that TIME’s 2006 Person of the Year is you!, which I know is pretty cool, but the thing that most people seem to have been ignoring is that this is not an award about an individual or individuals just for the sake of that user-generated-media buzz, on the contrary. It is actually all about that user-generated-content shared with others. Yes, that is the whole point to me regarding TIME’s article: You, the social you, gets the "Person of the Year 2006" award, because whether we like it or not, without that social aspect embedded on all of those different interactions we got nothing. No Web 2.0, no social computing, no social networking. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

Yes, that is what I have found very remarkable about the article itself and that is the fact that for the first time in a long while, perhaps even for the first and only time, here we have got one of the most frequently read, and influential, traditional magazines recognising the power of online communities to change the world in such a significant manner that it gets to be nominated for such award. How cool is that? Doesn’t that make you feel good? Specially if you are an online community builder who has been struggling throughout the years trying to convince people all over the place, both inside and outside of work, about the power of the group, of the community, to make things happen in much more significant and powerful ways?

I am sure that this article is actually going to change the way most folks out there, specially knowledge workers, think about being part of a community, of a group with a common goal, a shared purpose, a common tools suite to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration on a specific topic and so forth. For us all, online community builders, it would mean that things would get a little bit easier, that we would probably not have to deal so much with the basics but from now on getting a bit more into the details on why communities just simply work the way they do.

So for that and for so much more, thanks much!, TIME, for such an award and for helping enlighten the world about what online communities and the power of social computing are all about. Appreciated waking them up!

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Oh, and in case you may be wondering what have been my favourite quotes from the overall article here you have them:

"It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before [...] It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."

And

"We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy"

Yes, indeed, it feels good!