Tags: Autoroll, Metablogging, Weblogs, Library Clips, MyBlogLog, WordPress, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Web2.0, Wdigets, Blogroll

While some folks out there in the Blogosphere are chiming in sharing their experiences (Check out, for instance, the superb weblog entry review that John created over at Library Clips) about the potential business value from using the fine service of MyBlogLog, an offering that you would remember I have been talking about recently quite a bit, I thought I would go ahead and introduce you to another interesting widget that claims to take things further into the next level. That is right, I am talking about AutoRoll.

AutoRoll is actually another worth while checking widget that would take you about one minute to have it installed (Works successfully in several weblogging platforms, WordPress being one of them, too!) and that it would take about one week to see some more relevant results. Yes, that is right, this is one other widget that would allow you to get some further insights from your readership, but you would need to actually wait for a bit to see the first good and meaningful results.

So what is AutoRoll, you may be wondering, right? Well, it has actually been mentioned already all over the place, but basically, and contrary to what MyBlogLog is, it is the blogroll of your own readers. It is a widget that displays  links to weblogs that your own readers are visiting the most often. Nifty, eh? Ok, the way it works is that AutoRoll traces the number of visits of each unique reader on each weblog that has installed this particular widget. Then the more often a reader visits a specific weblog, the greater his / her affinity is with that particular weblog. It is getting better, eh?

Well, there is much more. Because this particular offering will eventually provide you all, the readers of this weblog, with a very enlightening and entertaining blogroll based on other readers with similar reading habits. At the same time, it will help get some highly qualified incoming traffic to this particular weblog, something that I am hoping would work out as mentioned on the Web site because it would surely help me out increasing my KM related blogroll (You can never get enough KM related reading, right?) based on your own reading habits. Not too bad, eh?

Thus as you may have been able to see, I have already updated the left column of this particular weblog template to include the AutoRoll widget (If you are reading this weblog entry from the RSS feed you may want to pop into the weblog and check it out) and I would encourage you all to give it a try as well and see how far it would take us all. I am not saying that this is going to be a permanent addition. I am just going to give it a chance, for a couple of weeks, and see how it would work out. If I find out that it meets both of your and my needs I will leave it as is, but if it doesn’t I will go ahead and remove it.

So far I like what I am seeing and the potential value add; we shall see if that would remain the same in two weeks time… Time now to let it build up further on our own weblogging experience.

Tags: IBM, Lotus, IBM Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Collaboration, Real-Time Collaboration, YouTube, Video

One of the key challenges ahead for any particular social computing offering out there trying to enter the realm of the enterprise is actually going to be how they will be showing, and demonstrating successfully, the actual business value not only to knowledge workers but to the corporation(s) as well. We all know it is not going to be easy, specially in an environment where most enterprises are already making use of an extensive set of knowledge sharing and collaboration tools for their BAU activities.

Thus with that particular business environment in place, here we go with IBM, now trying to change that and bringing in forward a new set of social software tools that would, hopefully, at least, get some discussions going as to where they can prove their own business value to knowledge workers or not. And to give you a couple of teasers it looks like the marketing folks at IBM have been busy already putting together a couple of interesting videos that will try to help you get a glimpse of what lies ahead, if not already.

Both video clips have been shared, of course, in YouTube and you would be able to find them over here and here. At the same time, you may have noticed how Ed Brill, Adam Gartenberg, Jerry Glover and Ted Stanton have already been commenting on it.

The first video is just that, a tease. A short video clip that tries to summarise some of the business value of IBM Lotus Connections, the upcoming social computing offering from IBM for the enterprise. Yes, I know, it doesn’t provide much more information on how it will work or what it will do (I will be sharing some of that myself as time goes go by. Not to worry), but, at least, it is a good initial try to show what lies ahead around the world of social computing for the enterprise. Here you have got the embedded video link from YouTube:

The second video clip has been out there already for some time, but since I keep getting asked about it, I thought I would go ahead and add it over here as well. It is actually a video that features some of the business benefits of using Instant Messaging (i.e. in this case IBM’s Lotus Sametime) within the enterprise. You may be wondering what is so special about just another Instant Messaging tool, right? Well, over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you some stuff that actually makes Lotus Sametime special and very close to other social computing offerings, except that this one, this time around is coming from the real-time space. Thus stay tuned for some more to come.

For the time being, here you have got the second teaser video clip so that you can get an idea of where IBM is heading in the space of social computing / social networking for real-time interactions:

(Previously, on elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Innovation, IBM, Communities, Community Building, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Media, Dennis McDonald, Jeffrey Phillips, InnovationJam, Corporate Innovation, Enteprise Innovation, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes 8

Goodness ! I cannot believe it has been over a week since last time I created a weblog post over here. Has it been that long? WOW! I guess that between work and a whole bunch of other things happening at the same time days have gone by without me noticing much about them. I suppose that time flies when you are having fun, eh?

I have actually been following up on a number of different topics most of them related to Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities and Social Computing and they have kept me busy during all this time. The immediate consequence, of course, is the fact that I now have got a whole bunch of interesting stuff to share with you all, which I suppose would be a good thing as it would keep you busy reading for a while at the same time that it will give you a chance to chime in as well because some of those topics are actually quite engaging. But let’s just start with one step at a time.

Check out the recent weblog post that Dennis McDonald shared over at ALL KIND FOOD where he is actually pondering a number of interesting, and thought provoking, ideas around the subject of innovation and how social media and collaboration tools may actually influence how knowledge workers get to innovate without perhaps focusing too much on location (Like Jeffrey Phillips seems to suggest over at Innovation Location). It surely makes for an interesting read. You can find it over here: Needed: Enterprise Strategies for Innovation, Content Management, and Social Media Infrastructure.

While I was actually reading though both weblog posts, I just couldn’t help thinking about a recent featured article that IBM has published over at ibm.com around this very same subject: how innovation is actually shaping up, changing our daily lives over the course of the next few years and without focusing too much on location. And over there, in that particular article (Five innovations that could change your life over the next five years) you would actually be able to see how such an incredible event as InnovationJam, a worldwide event conducted by IBM last year with customers and business partners, managed to prove successfully how innovation is no longer very much based on location, but rather on something much more interesting and engaging. Read on…

That is right, if you get to read Dennis weblog entry you would be able to read some of that with really good gems, such as this one:

"[…] the more it reinforce my strong belief that social networking and social media tools within an organization need to be thought of as part of the overall communication and information management infrastructure. That is, such tools should be universally available to all so that, when new groups and projects form there are no artificial barriers raised to interconnection and integration"

Or this other one:

"[…] corporate management needs to understand both how innovative practices spread throughout an organization at the same time it plans for an enterprise content management and communication infrastructure that provides the needed tools to workers where and when they need them."

I must say that I certainly agree with Dennis on this one. Not only because he approaches boosting innovation following two different options, bottom-up and top-down, but also because he strongly believes that social media and collaboration tools have got a great deal to do with the fact that they can help increase innovation big time and regardless where you are, specially nowadays that we are all working in such a distributed environment.

Oh, yes, that is just so right. But I am actually going to venture and take things further into one step higher and that is to mention that social computing, along with collaboration, tools break the location barriers because of this particularly interesting aspect: knowledge workers gather together around a particular topic, have got a common tools suite within the social software and collaborative spaces and they are more than willing to share their knowledge, collaborate and innovate.

That is correct. To me, everyone is, or can be, an innovator, whether you have got the right attitude for it, or whether you have got a good team, or, even better, a community you are a member of, that keeps you motivated to keep it going that is another matter. But certainly location is no longer a restriction to innovate. That is something from the past, from the last century. Nowadays knowledge workers are starting to realise how important and crucial it is to go out there and share what they know and collaborate with others as part of a larger group (A community) in order to keep innovating, not only because of how exciting the whole exercise can be, but also because there is a new generation of emerging technologies that makes all that collaboration a lot easier to happen since you no longer focus on the fuss about learning how to use tools, you just use social software for that and focus on what you need to focus: innovate by collaborating with others regardless where they may well be.

Yes, I can certainly understand how some folks are actually going to say that this is perhaps a bottom-up approach towards fostering innovation within the enterprise, but I must say that you would actually be surprised to find out how many corporations are realising lately that innovation can take place much more efficiently and effectively as part of a community program. That is right, more and more businesses are starting to realise that by having a robust and lasting community building program they are actually allowing knowledge workers be part of those communities and help them innovate, no matter where they may well be.

That is why, like Dennis mentioned over at his weblog post, IBM is also going very strong in this area by launching different social computing offerings like Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 or Lotus Notes 8, amongst others, so that the different community building programs currently available inside (and outside of) IBM would empower knowledge workers to forget about the different complexities of the tools and just focus on what really matters: sharing knowledge, collaborate and, of course, innovate (Both internally with their peers and with customers)!

Perhaps, over the next few weeks, I will be expanding some more on this particular topic as well as I feel that it makes a nice connection with some of the different topics that I get to discussed over here. Thus stay tuned ! More to come …

Tags: Desktop Sidebar, Yahoo! Widgets, Konfabulator, Widgets, Productivity Tools, Windows, Tips

Given that yesterday I created a rather lengthy weblog entry I thought that today I would just create a quick post to actually share with you one particular productivity tip that I have been enjoying myself for the last few weeks. It actually has got to do with a piece of freeware that one colleague of mine shared in his Intranet weblog some time ago and which he thought would be worth while checking for other folks. And I must say that it surely is because it provides a new, and interesting, experience with your own (Windows) desktop. It is called Desktop Sidebar and you can download it from here.

Long time readers from this weblog would probably remember how in the past I have been weblogging a few times about what it used to be Konfabulator, now Yahoo! Widgets. Another superb piece of freeware that would allow you to have a number of different widgets with lots of different bits and pieces of information readily available directly from your Windows desktop. Yes, I know that Mac fans do have similar capabilities available. In fact, it all started with them

Well, I have been using Yahoo! Widgets  for a number of months now and have been making use of it quite extensively all along and *loved* the experience thus far. Till I actually read that other weblog post from that colleague of mine in his Intranet weblog where he encouraged folks to give a try to Desktop Sidebar. So I did. And WOW! I got rid of Yahoo! Widgets! I now got a new favourite Windows desktop tool, called Desktop Sidebar and with some really nifty features.

To start with, it comes up with the following set of pre-installed panels:

Not bad, eh? Well, it gets better. Because, perhaps one of the best, and most interesting, things is the fact that there is  also an ever growing set of additional plugins that people have been creating and making available on the main Web site. Really nice! Certainly a very healthy sign that this particular piece of free software has got a long history of enhancement after enhancement. There is almost a plugin available to perform an incredible set of actions or get information from a wider range of information resources.

Thus you can see why I have now switched over from Yahoo! Widgets to Desktop Sidebar. I could go on and on and on detailing some more about the different features and so forth, but I am just going to leave it over here and just encourage you all to download it and give it a try for a week, in case you haven’t done so already. I bet you will not be back. At least, I haven’t. Oh, and before you ask, yes, this is an application for those of us still on Windows 

Enjoy it!

Tags: MyBlogLog, Jack Vinson, MiramarMike, Sergio Nascimento, David Gurteen, Nancy White, Dave Snowden, Jay Cross, Euan Semple, Jon Husband, Harol Jarche, Stephen Downes, Flickr, LinkedIn, Del.cio.us, Second Life, Skype, Go Stats, Metablogging, Social Networking, Social Computing, social software, Web2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities, Communities of Interest, CoIs, Community Building

I am sure that you may have seen this already, but just in case, there have been quite a few folks who have been commenting on a recent weblog post that I created around one social computing offering in the weblogging space that I have been trying out lately and which I have grown to be very fond of: MyBlogLog. That is right. In MyBlogLog - A Proper Community around Your Weblog and 5 Reasons Why You Would Want to Install It I actually mentioned five different reasons on why knowledge workers would want to check out MyBlogLog to help them improve their social networks, amongst other things.

However, folks like Jack or Mike are actually wondering how I am actually making use of this particular offering myself. Basically, how I take advantage of this particular social computing tool in order to help me build up further my social networks. So I thought I would create a follow up weblog post where I will share with you all nine different immediate benefits I am getting from my extensive use of MyBlogLog. So without much further ado here you have got some of the main benefits I am getting from this application:

1. Find out some more about the audience of this weblog: Pretty much like Sergio Nascimento mentions already, I get to use MyBlogLog in order to find out who some of my readers are (Those who are also making use of this particular offering). I do know that there are a number of folks who read my weblog on a regular basis, based on the comments shared or IM or e-mails. However, I know as well that there is another group of folks who do read my weblog posts, but who prefer to actually keep a low profile, for whatever the reason. So with MyBlogLog I get to know those; who they are, where they come from, what their own weblogs are, those other folks who read from their weblogs, etc. etc.

So with MyBlogLog I am finding out a whole lot more of the folks who visit elsua.net and it helps me have a much better overview of who visits and stops over for a while. Regular statistics services in most cases do not offer this kind of extended data of your readership.

2. Find out other webloggers with similar interests: That is right, with this particular offering I have been able to find other KMers who also get to weblog about KM related topics, but that for one reason or another I haven’t been able to bump into their weblogs. Now, I check the main Web site a couple of times a day and I find the list of the most recent visitors. From there onwards I check out their profiles and those of their weblogs and those who are recurrent visitors and who weblog about the topics I am interested do get added into my blogroll. So in the last couple of weeks that I have been using it I have added already about 10 to 12 weblogs that are now part of my daily RSS reads.

Thus, as you can see, I am making use of it to help build up my own blogroll, because you can never have enough weblogs to read on the topics you are also passionate about. That is the whole point from social networks, if you ask me.

3. Find out about some other weblogs by digging further into their own communities: Yes, apart from helping me build my own blogroll from the folks who get to visit over here quite often I also get an opportunity to find out some more about their own weblogs and communities and therefore I get plenty of chances to build up my network(s) based on theirs. Take, for instance, the example from David Gurteen. His MyBlogLog profile gives you a good overview of other folks interested in KM, for example. From there onwards you can see how one of his community members is Nancy White (Her profile is here), who has got some other famous KMers like Dave Snowden (David has got him as well as a community member. Even Euan Semple is showing up in there!) or Jon Husband or Learning leaders like Jay Cross, Harold Jarche or Stephen Downes and the list goes on and on and on.

And before you know it, you find out yourself using that two, three, four, five or six degrees separation to build up your social network, and your blogroll, with very little hassle and with tremendous added value.

4. Identify common communities from my visitors: One key aspect of bumping into different folks, who read of my weblog and from their own weblogs and their communities, is that you keep finding out how folks who are part of your community are also folks who belong to other communities and before you realise it, you get a chance to create multiple complex relationships between communities because they share some of the community membership. This, on its own, is very helpful if you would want to get introduced to that other community by being able to send whiteboard messages to spark some further discussions and establish initial contacts. I have actually been introduced to a couple of communities that way. And from there discover some other interesting and relevant discussions that I probably would not have been able to in the first place.

5. Find out more about my readership with their extended contact details: That is right. I am not sure if this would be applicable to other folks but those folks who are into Knowledge Management have always got the tendency to fill in their profiles quite extensively all over the places they get to engage with. Just because of that, while checking different profiles I have been able to add a few contacts to my Skype contact list, or find out about their e-mail address or their preferred IM clients, their different profiles from other offerings like Flickr, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, Second Life avatar name(s) etc. etc.

I am not sure what you think about this, but considering that quite a few people actually takes the time to provide a bit of information details you actually get to know some more about them without necessarily having to ask for those. Nifty !

6. A picture is worth a 1.000 words: This is actually one of the main benefits I get from MyBlogLog. To be able to not only find out about my visitors, but to actually have a picture of what they look like or, if they prefer to use an avatar, to actually find out some more about them based on that image. It is incredibly powerful to be able to see the picture of those who follow you, because, you never know, you may be able to bump into them at some point and it is always a good thing to recognise them. Don’t you think?

I know that some people would not feel comfortable with having a picture available out there for others to see, but I am thinking that if you have taken the time to put one up in your weblog it wouldn’t matter too much to let other weblogs you visit what you look like.

7. Have quick conversations with those who read off my weblog: That is right. Some times I would get visitors who read off my weblog entries but do not leave comments because they may be on a hurry, or not have enough to say on the topic to add further on to it, or just simply because they have been diverted into whatever else. However, I am finding out that they keep leaving messages on the whiteboard from MyBlogLog. Some of them related to different weblog posts I have created, others on something that may not have anything to do with my weblog, but that it is still interesting as it helps build community and such.

Thus being able to get notifications of those whiteboard messages is actually quite handy, because it avoids cluttering your own weblog template and at the same time it is all placed into a single point of entry. Quite nice, if you ask me, since you, too, can also follow those public conversations. The private ones are just that, private.

8. Find out other communities and other webloggers who may not even get to visit my weblog: That is correct. In an effort to help build up new connections and conversations MyBlogLog also allows you to search not only for other communities of interest to you, but also other community members. So, even if I wouldn’t have any readers coming to my weblog I would still be able to build up a good social network by searching for other communities whose topics may be worth while following up on or find out about other members who I can find out just by looking them up.

That way, you get to build up your own social network making it as big and relevant as you may see fit for your own purposes. That is why mine keeps growing further and further …

9. And, finally, although I am not using that capability myself at the moment, the ability to keep track of some stats. I am actually making use of GoStats, but the fact that MyBlogLog allows you to keep track of some of those stats is probably also a good thing. Perhaps whenever I get tired of GoStats I will give it a try. Worth while remembering that the option is there.

And that would be it, folks. I thought I would be creating a weblog entry with five different benefits from making extensive use of MyBlogLog and in the end I came up with nine. And I bet that there would be other interesting uses of such a fine offering as this one. And I would surely be glad to hear about them. How do you actually make use of MyBlogLog? Does it meet your needs? If not, why not?

Tags: Social Media Collective, Social Media Today, SMC, SMT, Jerry Bowles, Enterprise Web 2, Blogtronix, Maggie Fox, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Networking, Social Software, Podcasting, Enterprise 2.0 OPML

If you are actually reading this particular weblog post through the RSS feed you may not have noticed it, but I have just done another update to the weblog template where I have added a new badge or logo from a group of folks that I have recently joined thanks to the kind invitation from Jerry Bowles, the always entertaining and enlightening weblogger behind Enterprise Web 2.

Yes, that is right, folks, the badge I have just added into this weblog template is the one from the Social Media Collective. As you would be able to see, it is a group that has got a defined purpose around the world of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. Here you have got a quick excerpt of who we are and what we are up to:

"Social Media Today is a collection of the best writing from the Social Media Collective, a diverse group of bloggers, consultants, investors, journalists, and analysts who represent the web’s best thinking on social media, marketing and Web 2.0. For information, contact Jerry Bowles."

We have got a Web site set up already using the fine service of Blogtronix (Perhaps I will get to write a follow up weblog post on the different capabilities from this Enterprise 2.0 offering), where you would be able to see all of the content related to social computing for the Enterprise that have been sharing thus far.

At the same time, Maggie Fox has actually created a podcasting service where every week there will be an episode with an interview from each of the members from the Social Media Collective. You can check it out and have a listen on the main homepage or you can subscribe to it over here (First episode with Jerry Bowles is up and running already!). There are also a number of conference call events hosted on different social software tools, thus stay tuned for upcoming weblog posts where I would be sharing some thoughts on the ones I have been able to attend thus far.

As you would also be able to see in the Social Media Collective site, you would be able to subscribe to a number of different sections of the Web site, including all of the different weblog posts, comments, news items, events and wiki. And at the same time you would be able to see the list of members of the group who are actually weblogging away and engaging in the different conversations. So if you are thinking about building up on your Enterprise 2.0 feeds index I would strongly encourage you to have a look at that list of contributors because you would be able to find some really good stuff already shared and ready to digest. And, of course, build up your own OPML file of Enterprise 2.0 webloggers. Yes, I know there are plenty more, but this particular group can certainly be a good start to get things going, don’t you think?

And, of course, so much more, but I will actually be detailing some of them as time goes by. For the time being, just a heads up to encourage all those folks interested in Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Social Computing to check out Social Media Collective, because there is a great chance you may find what you were looking for over there! Stay tuned for some more to come !