Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Lotusphere2007, Rob Boccadoro, Yellow is the new black, Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, Activities, Activity Centric Computing, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, folksonomy, Me First, James Snell, Elias Torres, Roller, Roller Weblogger, Social Bookmarking, Dogear, BlinkList

As you may recall, I mentioned in the past a couple of times that over the course of the next few months I will actually be sharing some information details about one of the latest IBM offerings on the space of Social Computing: IBM Lotus Connections. There have been lots of different conversations around this very same during the course of Lotusphere 2007 and beyond, and while I am getting to digest some of those I am thinking as well about sharing with you folks those weblog entries that I have found particularly interesting.

Like, for instance, the one that one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Rob Boccadoro, shared not long ago over at Yellow is the new black: Lotus Connections - What is it? In that particular weblog post you would be able to get some further details on what Lotus Connections is actually going to be based on. Five different components: Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear (Social Bookmarking) and Activities:

I am sure that by now you may have heard about the different components themselves. Perhaps even checked out some of the screen shots of what they would look like (Rob shared some of them over there as well) during the course of 2007. However, I thought I would share a couple of quick comments on why I feel that each of the different components would eventually be making plenty of sense as part of the overall offering, because if there is anything really interesting about this particular Enterprise 2.0 application is the fact that we find a whole bunch of social computing areas put together under a single focal point of entry to make the final product: Lotus Connections.

Profiles -  This particular component puts together the best of both worlds: the enterprise employee directory data from every single knowledge worker picked up from the system itself plus some nifty social software features like tagging. So people would have the opportunity to tag themselves and associate themselves with the different annotations that would probably help others find and identify those different subject matter experts. In short, both a fixed taxonomy in combination with a powerful folksonomy.

Communities - This is actually going to be one of the components that I am actually going to find myself very interesting and enlightening, because in the era of the Me First (I am not sure I would agree with that particular concept, actually, but more on that at a later time) this particular component is actually going to show how to get the most of social networks from a community perspective, instead of just being Me First.

Blogs - I don’t think I would need to speak much more on this one, since all along I have been talking about how IBM has been embracing blogging, both internally and externally since as early as 2003, and some other folks like Elias Torres or James Snell, two other IBM colleagues who have been working really hard on this particular component, have given some further details indicating how this particular component would be running Roller Weblogger. Thus if you are interested in checking out how things develop from there I would suggest you keep an eye on their weblogs, too!

Dogear - This is actually one other component that I have mentioned in the past and, perhaps, one of my favourites: social bookmarking within the enterprise. As you may already know, I am actually a big fan of BlinkList as my default social bookmarking tool for Internet Web sites, but for those Web sites where content may be a bit too sensitive to share it with wider audiences I am actually making heavy use of Dogear: a protected and secured environment where I can share with other colleagues my favourite social bookmarks knowing that it is a safe place to share whatever I feel I need to bookmark behind the firewall.

I know there are other different social bookmarking tools available out there and, perhaps, one of these days I will detail why I am sticking with BlinkList and Dogear, despite some other really powerful offerings. We shall see.

Activities - And, finally, one of the most unknown new components that Lotus Connections will put together: Activities. I could tell a whole bunch of different things about this really cool social computing initiative within Lotus Connections, but I think that for the time being I am just going to point out to you a paper, that Rob also mentioned in his weblog post: Activity Explorer: Activity-centric collaboration from research to product. And from there I am going to venture that this is potentially one of those social software components that will make you walk away from e-mail and just collaborate and share knowledge much closer with your colleagues, as opposed to just exchanging e-mail messages. Yes, that is right. Activities will take you away from e-mail and will help you collaborate with others in exactly the same way as collaboration was conceived in the first place: sharing information and knowledge with others in an open environment where everyone has got the same level of visibility and involvement.

Thus, as you can see, a good bunch of different components from the social computing space put together under the same single focal point of entry, something that not many other social software tools are currently providing. As time goes forward, and as I get to digest some other interesting weblog posts from Lotusphere 2007, I will actually be creating different weblog entries regarding each of the different components so that you have got the opportunity to discover much more as we come closer to the availability of the offering some time soon! Thus stay tuned for some more to come!

Tags: Social Computing, Web 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Michael Wesch, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities, World Wide Web, Deus

Remember when not too long ago I mentioned how I was actually quite content with having, once and for all, my blogroll updated over here and how I said we are all what we read? Well, I am really glad that I have made that statement, because in the last few days I have been reading from quite a few of the folks that I get to read on a daily basis an incredible video clip of under five minutes that tries to explain, and succeeds big time!, what Web 2.0 or social computing is all about.

Yes, I am talking about the fascinating YouTube video that Michael Wesch, from Kansas State University, shared under the title Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us. Goodness! If all along most of us have been struggling all over the place about explaining key concepts related to Web 2.0 or social computing, Michael has just managed to do that in under five minutes. Fan - tas - tic !

I know that plenty of people have been linking to this video from all over the place. And I guess some folks may be starting to get tired of it,  so reading through this again over here may not be the best use of your time, nor mine. However, there is a reason why I wanted to share it over here. Yes, that reason is that you can never link too little to such incredibly helpful resources as Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us. That is right. There may be over 55 million weblogs out there, but the number of Internet users is way higher than that, so we all need to keep spreading the message. The faster, the better.

The more Web end-users get exposed to key enlightening resources like Michael’s video on social computing the easier it would be for us all to take things into the next level: empowering knowledge workers to share their knowledge and collaborate with their peers in much more meaningful ways, even if that means we need to rethink "copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, family, love …". In short, "ourselves".

And if on top of that you put together as well some really nice tunes to go along with it I guess "there’s nothing impossible", is it? So let’s keep spreading the message:

If the World Wide Web was ever meant to be something, I guess it will not be getting any better than this. That is for sure.

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

Tags: Giveaway of the Day, Software, Freeware, Open Source, Licensed Software, Productivity Tools, Metablogging, Post2Blog, Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, Performancing, w.bloggar, Flock, WordPress, Roller Rollerweblogger, ITtoolbox, Flickr

I am not really sure any longer where I actually got the link from, but I am surely glad I actually bumped into it in the last couple of weeks. I guess that plenty of other folks have already been working their way through it because, according to Technorati, it has been creating a massive buzz over the last few weeks already. So I am thinking that this may be something that most of you probably already know about. But just in case here we go.

As most people who know me would tell you, I have always been very much in favour of free software. Everything that is Open Source I am up for it. Thus when I ended up bumping into Giveaway of the Day I just had to check it out. It is a completely new, and different, approach towards everything that is not free software.

The way it works is every day, and for a limited period of time, you get a chance to try out fully a piece of software that in any other circumstance would have cost you some money. You can then download the software, install it and play around with it. That way, at a later time, you would have a much better, and informed, opinion as whether you would want to purchase future upgrades or not.

And that would be it! The rest is down to you to see how much more involved you would want to get with the folks over at Giveway of the Day, because at their Web site you can rate the software download, you can share your opinions about it (Whether you liked it or not) and you can even place a banner in your Web site showing that you are currently playing around with that tool. Pretty nifty !

I must say that every day I get to pop over and check out what they have got to offer. Well, I don’t pop over. I am just subscribed to the feed, but I have been observing how the community of folks has been forming around such initiative and it is actually quite impressive, to say the least. Very engaging and lots of candid feedback on each of the tools shared over there thus far. Worth while a look, indeed!

That is, how, for instance, I have been finding out and, of course, testing out, tools like the one that was shared a couple of days ago: Post2Blog. It is actually another offline weblogging tool, pretty much along the same line as Qumana, Performancing for FireFox, w.bloggar, or Flock’s weblogging component. Except that, for this one, you actually have got to pay for it.

Since I am always looking for ways to improve my own weblogging efforts I decided to actually give it a try and download it. I know that if I would have to pay for this piece of software I wouldn’t have probably done it, but now that I have been given the chance to test it out I guess it is of no harm to test it out and see if it would be worth while the money.

So I got it installed, setup and ready to go within minutes. Really good! Pretty much the same experience as with Qumana. It works really well with two of the main weblogging platforms that I get to use on a daily basis: WordPress and Roller Weblogger. I wish it would work as well with ITtoolbox, but apparently it doesn’t. Sigh. But the setup is actually quite nice and intuitive.

From there onwards you actually get to experience some really nifty features, like WYSIWYG editor capabilities, Flickr integration, integration as well with other tools like Word, RSS Bandit or Sharp Reader, built-in smileys, live spellchecking and a whole bunch of other capabilities you would be able to read about on its homepage. Impressive.

So the next thing is to actually go ahead and create a weblog post, which is what I am doing at the moment with this particular entry. I must say that the experience is not as easy as I thought it would be. It takes a little while to get used to the different menus and options and somehow some of the keyboard shortcuts do not seem to be responding very nicely. Go figure.

I can see how pro-bloggers would want to explore this particular tool and perhaps use it. I bet that after a few weblog entries it would be very easy to share content, but I must say that if I have to compare Post2Blog with my current default offline weblogging tool, Qumana, I am not totally convinced. Qumana still remains as my default offline weblogging software. Perhaps if the software would be made available for free I would think about it. But the way things are at the moment, 39$, is just a bit too much. At least, for me.

You see? That is one of the great things about Giveaway of the Day. The fact that they give you the chance to find some interesting licensed software out there, try it out for yourself and see if it would be relevant for your needs or not. And if yes, you can then proceed further with the purchase of future upgrades. And if not, at least, you have tried it out and can move on.

So, off to the next one!

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

Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus Quickr, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Quickr Blog, Stuart McIntyre, Satwik Seshasai, Lotusphere2007, Lotusphere, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, IBM Lotus Sametime, Lotus Sametime, Sametime 7.5

Some time ago I mentioned over here how over the course of the next few weeks / months I was actually going to be sharing my two cents worth of comments on some of the stuff that is going on around IBM and its push for social computing within the enterprise with the recent announcements over at Lotusphere 2007 from IBM Lotus Connections and IBM Lotus Quickr. Lots of really good and interesting stuff in there, I am sure, for folks who would want to check out how such a large corporation as IBM is actually bringing all of these social software tools into the workplace.

So you can expect that as time goes by I will actually be sharing some further insights on some of the stuff I have been exposed to, both internally (Since I have been using most of those components for years, specially for IBM Lotus Connections) and externally. However, and in order to help provide a much better overview of where things are heading, I am also going to recommend in this particular entry a couple of weblogs that have just got things going recently and which will be dealing with everything there is to know about one of the main offerings announced at Lotusphere 2007: Lotus Quickr.

Yes, indeed, check out The Quickr Blog by Stuart McIntyre and Satwik Seshasai’s Blog On Lotus Quickr. They have just started sharing content about IBM Lotus Quickr and it would be interesting to follow them up as more and more details start to emerge on how this particular offering would work for businesses and how different knowledge workers can benefit the most from it all.

To get things going, check out the PDF file that Satwik already shared over at that weblog where you would be able to see some of the key features that IBM Lotus Quickr will be putting together, including a number of different screen shots of what it looks like. Over there you would be able to see as well how one of the key most powerful features that it will offer is the integration capabilities with other services. Services that most knowledge workers are already familiar with: Microsoft Office and IBM Productivity Editors (Which I will talk about at a later time, perhaps), Lotus Notes, Windows Explorer / My Documents and IBM Lotus Sametime.

Thus somehow it looks like IBM Lotus Quickr is going to help shake the ground as to what knowledge sharing and collaboration within teams and communities have been so far and how they could potentially change, for the better. And somehow I feel that The Quickr Blog and Satwik Seshasai’s Blog On Lotus Quickr are actually going to help out quite a bit in providing that really helpful set of insights on how IBM Lotus Quickr will move forward, so I guess that if you haven’t subscribed to those weblogs just yet, I would strongly suggest you do, if you want to keep ahead of what is happening out there in this particular space.

The conversations have already started and as time goes by I will continue to share some more stuff around this very same subject and, of course, IBM Lotus Connections, but for now go ahead and check out those other weblogs and find out what other people are thinking about such IBM social computing offering. It is bound to get more and more interesting. No doubt! And I will be sharing some further thoughts on it as time goes by. Thus stay tuned !

(As previously shared over in elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Unicom, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Web 3.0, Lee Bryant, Suw Charman, Euan Semple, Phil Bradley, Ian McNairn, Roo Reynolds, Ian Hughes, Virtual Worlds, Second Life, IBM

Phew! I am back ! Last week was one of those weird weeks that I guess I have been having in the last few months. It surely was a very busy at work, trying to figure out where I am with my team as far as activities are concerned for the remaining of the year. Lots of great stuff, indeed, that I am hoping to be able to share with you all as time goes by as some of it has got an external exposure as well.

However, what nearly knocked me down completely was a nasty stomach bug that didn’t leave me with much more energy after work and the usual catchup with everything. So I have been neglecting this weblog a bit since I first needed to get that out of my body, get back in shape and back in full force! Which is what I am actually going to be doing with this new weblog entry.

A big thanks to the few folks who have been contacting me offline asking me what was happening. It is greatly appreciated to find out that there are some folks out there who keep reading off this weblog, who take an interest when I disappear for a few days without no apparent reason. So thanks much, folks! As I said, very appreciated and touching!

Ok, so, back to business. Lots of stuff have been happening all along around the area of Knowledge Management and I am hoping to continue sharing some of that as we move along, but one of the things that I am actually trying to figure out, specially now that we just got started with a new year, is to actually find out which conference events I would want to go this year that would be really worth while attending. And then from there onwards follow up on other events that although I cannot make it to them I am still interested in finding out some more about their outcome and what people thought about.

One of the latter conferences mentioned above that I am surely going to be checking out every so often is one that the folks over at Unicom are organising this very same month in London, February 21st to 22nd. It is titled Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture and you would be able to find more information about it over here. As I said, this is one of those conference events that I would have loved to make it, but that, alas, I will not be able to.

Reason why I would be very interested in attending, and if you are in the area during that time, I strongly suggest you try to make it, too, is because the agenda put together for it is rather impressive. There are a few folks whose pitches look very interesting since it is all around the subject of social software and Web 2.0. Like Lee Bryant’s on "Enterprise 2.0 - towards a social infrastructure for collaboration and collective intelligence" or Suw Charman on "Fostering Adoption: A strategy for encouraging use of social software in business" or John Davies on "Combining Wikis and the Semantic Web: moving towards Web3.0".

But then again, there are also some other folks who I have been following up on for a number of years, some of them I have already met in person and some others I am hoping to be able to meet them in real life pretty soon ! Like, for instance, Euan Semple who will be talking on the opening keynote on "What will "businesslike" mean when business isn’t like business anymore?" or Phil Bradley who will be talking about "Practical Uses of Web 2.0 Technologies in a business environment".

At the same time it would have been a great opportunity to be able to meet up with two IBM fellow colleagues: Ian McNairn and Roo Reynolds who will also be presenting at the event. Ian will actually be putting together a case study on "An Inside View On How IBM Uses Social Networking to manage its own precious knowledge." I am sure that this one is going to be really interesting for everyone, but I for sure would love to see that one and catch up with Ian once again ! Last time we saw each other was way back in 2003 ! Too long, I am afraid!

Roo’s session, on the other hand, is about "Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds" and I am sure that is another must-attend session. Why? Well, not only because Roo is actually quite a fun guy who knows lots of stuff on lots of different subjects, but also because he, along with Ian Hughes (Over at Eightbar), were the first couple of folks who brought the world of the metaverse, yes, indeed, Second Life, into IBM and from there onwards it has been an incredible experience! I would suggest you subscribe to Eightbar if you haven’t done so already to check out what is going on in IBM around this very same area of virtual worlds.

So as you can see from the above text Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture would have been an incredible event that I would have loved making it in the end. Plus it would have given me the opportunity to catch up with one of my favourite world cities: London. I guess it cannot get any better than this, so I am looking forward to catching up with it all virtually as I am sure that quite a few of those folks would be telling the whole world what it was all about and how it went, but one thing for sure is that if you are going to be in London during that time I would suggest you try to make an extra effort and try to attend the event, because I know for sure that it would be really worth while all the money!

(Sigh, I guess I will have to wait for the next one…)

Tags: 2000 Bloggers, Metablogging, Tino Buntic, Jeremiah Owyang, Zoli Erdos, Megite, Techmeme, Ian Kallen, Link Love, Blog Traffic, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Weblogs, Web2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Collaboration, Community Building

Links? Links ? Links? And worrying about it? Perhaps just a bit too much? Is that what weblogging is all about, folks? I am not sure if you have been following the huge uproar of commentary that has been going on every since Tino Buntic launched the 2000 Bloggers initiative. A lot has been written about the whole effect, not to take into account the good amount of link love that has taken place thus far, but perhaps two of the folks, whose comments have been rather insightful and definitely the kick-off to do something about it, were Jemeriah Owyang’s take in I don’t deserve this Technorati rank (and the other 1,999 of you don’t either) and Zoli Erdos‘ 2000 Bloggers Gaming Technorati and Google.

You can read some more about the whole affair if you check out Megite’s and Techmeme’s take on it. And also worth while visiting and checking out is Technorati’s reaction through Ian Kallen’s weblog post on Breaking the Chains. WOW! Isn’t that enough buzz already about the whole thing? Isn’t that creating many more links and conversation on the topic than the 2000 bloggers initiative on itself? I think I will leave that to you to make the final judgement.

So why am I writing this weblog post you may be wondering, right? Well, I am actually one of those 2000 bloggers who, a couple of weeks back, decided to submit his own weblog as an experiment and see how it would help me increase my discovery of different weblogs that may be of interest to me and which do not necessarily have got to do with the Top 100 or A-List webloggers. After all, a good chunk of the best stuff on the blogosphere is on lesser known weblogs. We all know that. I knew right away as well that people would start linking to it (Come on, we all knew that, didn’t we?! That is what people do in weblogs. They link to each other whenever the opportunity arises) and therefore Technorati would be affected by it at some point.

I was, too! I had several dozens of folks linking to me, perhaps only as an indication of being part of the whole initiative, but not the entire 2000 bloggers. In fact, I am 100% positive that will never happen. People enjoyed the novelty, tried it out for a bit and then moved on. Like we are doing now. However, some folks did comment on it and that is when the uproar came up with plenty of people no longer sure it was actually going to be a good thing after all. Errr, what happened? Why all the fuss now and not right at the very beginning when people started jumping into it? Well, probably because we all thought it was a great idea (Still is!) and even to the point where plenty of us thought about the social networking aspect of gaining more visibility with other lesser known weblogs and perhaps discover the odd one you would want to check out and subscribe to them further. And from there onwards start building up your own relationship(s).

I actually found about 5 of those weblogs that I subscribed to them thanks to this initiative. I am sure I would not have been able to meet up in any other way, so just for that I am glad I am part of such initiative. Even if it has been shut down eventually. To me it has actually succeeded in bringing down to me more visibility on some other weblogs that I may want to visit, or not. And continue building up from there. At least, I am given the choice. Try now to get noticed by the most popular weblogs. That is also another good exercise, I tell you. But is it really worth it? Yes, that is the whole point I am trying to get to with this particular weblog post. Yes, plenty of webloggers get started with their weblogs because they want to be popular, they want to stand out, they want everyone to be noticed and everything. In short, they want links. For them 2000 bloggers has actually been a menace from the very beginning, specially if they were not part of it because they might not have seen it coming.

However, for the rest of us, at least, that is how I see it, it was just a fun exercise to increase our awareness from other weblogs out there that I may want to check out and potentially subscribe to. Yes, that social networking thing kicking in once again. Because after all, I am not too fussed about links. I don’t want to be a popular weblog because everyone is linking to me. On the contrary, I want to be a popular weblog, if ever, because people find that my content is compelling enough to be shared across the blogosphere. They have enjoyed reading whatever article and then decide that it is worth while sharing it with their friends and their own readers. Again, all this not because of the link itself, but because of my content. Myself. That is what weblogging is all about. People engaging in conversations.

And like with any conversation, weblogging is a long time investment. It is something you work your way through during the course of many months, or many years because you know that it will pay off big time for you to keep it going. To enrich the way you view things and, much more importantly, the way others interact with you. Link love is just circumstantial and something that, unfortunately, we all have to live with. And perhaps 2000 Bloggers just managed, and succeeded!, to shake the ground once again and remind us why we all wanted to create our own weblog in the first place. Food for some thought, I guess, as to where you would want to take your weblogging, don’t you think? Would you rather have it as a long-term investment (5 to 10 years) or just go with the link love month by month till you get bored or you move into the next thing? Your choice. You decide.