Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Sametime 7.5.1, Sametime 7.5.1, Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes 8, Notes 8, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Content Management, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Quickr Personal Edition, Quickr Standard Edition, Quickr Templates, Windows Explorer, Microsoft Office, Screencasts, Demos, Weblogs, Wikis, Syndication, Newsfeeds, Innovation

There have been a number of different weblog posts that I have been sharing over here and which have been dealing with some of IBM’s latest offerings in the space of social computing for the enterprise. So thus far I have been talking a few times about the upcoming Lotus Connections, Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 or even the upcoming Lotus Notes 8, which also introduces some more social software components that I may be able to detail some more as time goes by. However, it looks like lately I am actually sharing some further details based on different screencasts that are coming out and which I think are a whole lot more compelling than myself detailing how they actually work.

That was the case with the recent weblog entry I shared about the latest IBM Lotus Connections screencast a few days ago and which, to date, has been one of the most popular weblog entries in here in the last few weeks. So I guess there is an interest in finding out some more. Well, it gets better, folks. Because today I am actually going to talk about another screencast that has just been published, but this time around not about Connections any longer, but about one of the most powerful collaboration, knowledge sharing and content management tools that may be out there available to knowledge workers. Yes, I am talking about IBM Lotus Quickr.

Why am I am saying that this particular offering could well be the next killer app.? Well, because, amongst many other things, it is an offering that tries to combine both the best from traditional content management with some of the latest emerging technologies, like wikis, weblogs, content syndication, etc. etc. And all of that taking place from a single point of entry: your Quickr space.

Let’s have a look into it with this particular screencast I mentioned above and which has now become available for everyone to play directly from the Web or downloading it to your own machine for later viewing. There is also an additional script you can download if you wish to.

In that particular screencast, that lasts for a bit under five minutes, you would be able to check how Lotus Quickr is actually going to provide a Personal Edition for managing your own content, your own knowledge, in a seamless way and empowering you to share that same content (Or not), including rich media, with other knowledge workers through a wide range of options.

On top of that, and perhaps one of the most interesting features that Lotus Quickr is going to put together is actually what has been called Connectors. Connectors would allow you seamless access to content from other popular business applications:

• Windows Explorer: by right clicking on a file and selecting Check Out and / or Dogear options
• Microsoft Office applications: i.e. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, through the Actions Menu and where the Check Out option is also readily available.
• IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.1: Through the usage of a plugin that connects with the Quickr content libraries and which you can interact with by collaborating with other knowledge workers in a real-time fashion discussing specific files that have been shared across along with the original invite to chat. Pretty impressive if you would want to discuss a document straight up front without having to go ahead and send it across.
• And, finally, IBM Lotus Notes 8: Through that popular sidebar we have seen in the past and with which you can drag and drop attachments in new e-mails or just send the links to keep your mail box under control, but still having access to the documents right when you need it. Oh, and here is another cool thing. Lotus Quickr would also allow you to detach attachments from your Notes mails into the Quickr content library space so you can keep your mail box under control as well with not so much clutter. A huge time saver if you are one of those who needs to keep things as tidy as possible within your e-mail.

In this particular screencast you would be able to see as well how the Standard Edition is actually going to provide an additional set of Templates that people can work with further. In this demo you would be able to listen to the customising of the Innovation Place template where it is showing some of the social computing elements that I mentioned earlier on, and which makes Quickr rather attractive as it puts together wikis under the Idea Development area or Team Blog that would help team members share information faster and much more effectively and, finally, the Innovation News to receive newsfeeds from other external resources related to whatever has been discussed in that particular space.

And that is just an example of one single template. There are many more, depending on the needs of the tasks at hand. So that is also going to make it a rather interesting option on its own, i.e. the fact that you can work with multiple different templates based on what you are trying to achieve. Yes, that is right, power to the knowledge worker, as they would be able to define how they would want to work and what kind of customisation you would be going ahead for your team or for your community. Not bad at all!

Thus, if you would want to have a quick look at what IBM is doing around the area of merging both traditional content management capabilities with a richer end-user experience putting together some other popular social software components I would strongly encourage you to watch this under five minute screencast, because there is a great chance that it may well be just what you were looking for. I, for sure, would be looking forward to the Personal Edition becoming available later on this year as I bet it will probably become my latest Personal Knowledge Management tool and perhaps the one I will be sticking around with for a while. But that would be the time for another series of weblog posts, I am sure, thus stay tuned!

Tags: IBM, Technical Leadership Exchange, TLE, PLTE, Paris, France, David Singer, Knowledge Management, KM, KM Events, Knowledge Sharing, Learning, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Communities, Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Virtual Networks, Social Networks, APQC, Houston, Innovation, Anaheim

If you would remember, a few days ago I created a weblog entry over here mentioning how by the end of May, about a month from now, actually, I will be speaking at IBM’s 2007 Professional Technical Leadership Exchange around the subject of social computing, communities and the adoption of some of IBM’s top social software tools within the enterprise. While I am in the final process of finishing off the presentation, I thought I would share over here a particular quote that I thought was just wonderful and which clearly explains why I am really excited to be able to make it to the event later in May.

That particular quote comes from one of the various different weblog entries that have been shared both inside and outside of the firewall from IBM’s TLE Europe sister event for Americas and Asia Pacific: The TLE in Anaheim and which took place last week already. 4.000 of IBM’s best technical leaders jamming away certainly puts things into perspective as to what I am looking forward to when I head to Paris, where another 3.000 people are expected to be there for a few days.

So, like I have just mentioned, over the course of last week I have actually been avidly following the different weblog entries that people have been putting together and sharing across about what they thought about the TLE event in Anaheim and of the several dozens of them there was one particular entry, which actually comes from a good friend and fellow weblogger who has been weblogging for over seven years and who, perhaps, is one of the main guilty parties that got me started with blogging about 5 years ago!, that I thought would be really worth while sharing across.

His name is David Singer and the actual weblog article is this one: 24 amazing hours. It is a must-read for anyone who would want to find out why, despite all of the technology and tools available to us all out there, it is still very much worth while attending live face to face conference events as something that can be, if anything, special.

Here is the quote from that particular post that makes all the travel, all the hassle with the bookings, the expenses, and whatever else, very much worth while and why I am seriously looking forward not only to IBM’s TLE event in Paris by end of May, but also the APQC KM & Innovation event in Houston in just a couple of weeks from now:

"[…] There were many good technical sessions at the TLE; I suspect most people concentrated on those sessions, because they were immediately job-relevant. Although I did attend one or two such sessions (and even got some job-relevant information on structuring presentations at one of them), I don’t think they’re the real value of a conference like TLE, any more than the programming courses I took at RPI were the real value of my education there. Technical skills are short-lived; what’s important is learning how to learn, and how to make the world a better place. This TLE offered much in those areas, and I’m very glad I was able to take advantage."

Yes, indeed, *that* is what live face to face conference events are all about and whoever says otherwise should just read David’s entire article to see if their thoughts would still stand as is after having gone through it, because I bet they wouldn’t. You can probably tell why I just can’t wait for those events to kick off, right? Yes, indeed, one single word to explain it all: special.

Tags: Earth Day, Dia de la Tierra, Earth, Tierra, Macaco, Mama Tierra, Cuatro, Small Things, Life

Si el viernes pasado había comentado como lo que realmente importa son las cosas pequeñas, aquí os dejo un par de vídeos para celebrar el Día de la Madre Tierra (Happy Earth Day!) y demostrar cómo tampoco hay que hacer grandes alardes de nada para mantener el respeto con aquella madre que nos mantiene y que nos hace seguir adelante día a día sin pedir mucho a cambio. Quizá un poco de respeto y afecto para con ella. Tampoco es tanto, ¿verdad?

Pues aquí os dejo unos vídeos que, como veréis, tienen mucho que ver con las celebraciones de hoy sobre el Día de la Tierra. Los tres basados en una misma canción de Macaco que, seguro, a estas alturas, habréis escuchado en varias ocasiones y que se titula Mama Tierra. La canción no está nada pero que nada mal, bastante pegadiza, pero el mensaje que trata de dar no tiene ningún desperdicio tampoco y ¡ojalá! que cada uno de nosotros nos diéramos cuenta realmente de que tratarla bien es algo que está a nuestro propio alcance y si no escuchad la canción, disfrutad de los vídeos y ya me contaréis:

Versión corta de Cuatro:

Versión original en acústico:

Y, por último, ¿quién dijo que los jóvenes de hoy en día no están utilizando las nuevas tecnologías para compartir sus vídeos con mensajes tan claros, sencillos y a la vez tan contundentes como éste:

En fin, lo dicho, Feliz Día de la Tierra, Mama Tierra!

Tags: Friday, Inspiration, Inspirational, YouTube, RocketBoom, Innovation, Change, Life, Small Things, Video

Here we are again, folks. Friday! YAY!!! And, like every Friday for the last few weeks, here I am again, going to share a couple of rather inspirational videos that I thought would fit in quite nicely with the theme inspire on a Friday! One of them is coming from a commercial and the other one is coming from one of this week’s episodes from RocketBoom. There is a logic in both videos put together one after the other, so you will first have to watch the one from the commercial, which is stored in YouTube and then straight after go and watch that episode from RocketBoom. Yes, all in that order. And you will see what I mean with inspirational. Here we go:

And now here is the link to the RocketBoom video. After I have watched both of them there would be just one single thing that is left for me to say for the day: whatever people tell you, no matter what, it is the small things that matter. Always!

Have a good one everyone and join today the crazy crowd that will continue to make a difference and change our world!

Tags: Emmanuele Quintarelly, InfoSpaces, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Trust, Rawsugar, Respect

The last couple of days have actually been incredibly busy at work so have been spending little time catching up with RSS feeds. However, there has been one particular weblog post, that I just couldn’t ignore, from a good friend of mine, and that I have found incredibly surprising and … shocking. Yes, indeed, this is a weblog article coming from Emanuele Quintarelli and it is titled Social media is respecting your customers.

In it he gets to detail how a good number of years of his own work in the area of social computing has just vanished with Rawsugar’s web site now been sold. All of a sudden, and without an apparent reason, vanished! All lost! Nothing! Nada! Zero! … Ouch! Indeed! That hurts! I can imagine how frustrated Emanuele must be at the moment, specially after all of these years not only producing and sharing that content in Rawsugar, but also after all of the help and advice he has been providing to them thus far. Yes, one word that keeps coming up to my mind is just that: frustrating.

I am not sure how it is all going to end up and everything, but I do seriously hope that they can restore his content without losing any major chunks of his data and, perhaps, apologise for the mix up; but one thing for sure that I have been thinking about is that it is going to take a whole lot more effort, energy, involvement and commitment for Rawsugar to reinstate people’s trust in the service. At least, for Emanuele, and, for sure, for myself..

Yes, I know and I realise that I have never been an end-user of this particular offering, but one thing for sure is that if they treat their long-committed, and fully engaged, customers like that, it is certainly not a space that I would even consider trying out, no matter how good their offering may well be. The last thing you would want to do, when getting your application widely adopted by knowledge workers out there, who are willing to spend their time, their energy, their efforts and so forth, is just betray that trust those same knowledge workers have put on you in the first place. Things just don’t work like that.

If there is anything that should be crystal clear for any social computing offering out there is that the last thing you would want to do to your end-users is misuse the trust they have put not only on your offering, but also on yourself, as an organisation, pushing for that social computing adoption beyond the consumer market.

There is also a lesson to be learned in here. And for everyone: to try to establish how much you actually trust the offerings you are actually making use of in the social computing space. This is a commitment that works in both ways. The same way that you trust that knowledge workers will make wise use of your social computing offering, the same way you should expect that those same knowledge workers would be trusting you as well to do the right stuff: not lose all of their own data. Specially when in most cases they are just promoting and evangelising your own offering. And in this particular case it looks like the trust from Rawsugar was just working one way, as opposed to both ways. Yes, indeed, not the way you conduct things if you would want people to trust you and what you do.

As I said, I am not sure how everything is going to be resolved in this matter, but I do sincerely hope that all this has just been a mistake that will be fixable as soon as possible, because the way things stand at the moment is sending a very discouraging message to all of those social computing advocates and evangelists out there who are using extensively social software tools. And that is the last thing we all need to have at the moment. There are much better things that we should be concentrating our efforts on than stuff such as this.

For the time being, and in my own case, at least (And I would suggest for you folks out there as well!), starting backing up all of the data that you have stored in other social computing tools just in case that trust fails to deliver both ways. Just in case. You never know.

(Emanuele, I hope you get your all data back and as soon as possible! Best of luck!!)

Update (April 20th 2007): Good news, folks, for those interested in the subject and those who would want to follow this up. Over at Emanuele’s original weblog entry, Raj Setty, President of the company called Suggestica, just confirmed that everything is back to normal and Emanuele has recovered all of his data safe and sound. Very good news, indeed! And a clear sign, and I agree with Emanule and his readers about that, that Customer Service still exists. Good stuff!

(Previously, on elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox. And now with 45 links and growing!)

Tags: Lucas McDonnell, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Essential KM Resources, KM Resources, Uncommon Knowledge

In the past, a number of readers from the different weblogs I maintain on a regular basis have kept asking me to share with them the different Web sites that I get to check for my daily consumption of  Knowledge Management resources. To help accommodate those needs, some time ago I updated my public blogroll in Bloglines and anyone now can check out them out over here. There is an entire folder dedicated to Knowledge Management related feeds.

However, not long ago I actually bumped into another helpful and rather useful resource that I thought I would go ahead and share it over here as well so that folks would have the opportunity to check out what other KMers are actually reading. Check out 44 essential knowledge management sites and blogs by Lucas McDonnell. It is actually a follow up weblog entry from a previous one (35 essential knowledge management sites) where he has been sharing a number of different resources around the subject of Knowledge Management. And anyone out there wanting to get some essential reading could surely make use of such a handy set of resources put together.

What I really like about that particular weblog entry that Lucas has put together is not the fact of listing both regular Web sites and weblogs alike, trying to combine the best of both worlds, but more the fact that from the weblogs he has put together there is a strong presence around the subject of the next generation of Knowledge Sharing by diving into the world of social computing. Yes, that is right, over there you will be able to find a whole bunch of weblogs that deal with traditional KM, but at the same time they get to talk quite heavily as well about how social computing is impacting the way knowledge workers get to share their knowledge and collaborate with others.

And I am not sure about you, but I find that quite refreshing, specially as social networking is starting to make its way much more heavily into the corporate world. And as such, a new wave of interactions are taking place as a result of which Knowledge Management seems to be coming back into the spotlight it once had. And Lucas’ recommended reading is just a good starting point to check how some KM webloggers are viewing this renaissance of knowledge sharing and collaboration thanks to social computing.

I am already subscribed to most of the different resources listed in Lucas’ list, but I am surely glad to see that there are many other KMers paying attention to the impact social networking is having in the way we share our knowledge with others and collaborate with them. And I bet, as time goes through, that list of essential KM sites and blogs is just going to keep growing at a healthy pace. And I am surely glad I am subscribed to it, because we are bound to find plenty of other gems to subscribe to that would be worth while keeping an eye on.

So, from here, a special thanks! to Lucas for having put together such a fine list, and, much more importantly, for sharing it with us all! Well done!