Tags: IBM, TLE, PLTE, TLE-2007, Technical Leadership Exchange, Innovation, IBM Technical Community, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Euro Disney, Paris, N95, Twitter, Free Wireless, Roo Reynolds, Michael Coleman, Andrew Webb, Flickr, Pictures, Work Life Balance, WLB, Social Networks, Connections, Conversations
Oh dear, where did that week go again? Goodness, I cannot believe that today is my first day back at work after having spent a fantastic week attending IBM‘s Technical Leadership Exchange conference event in Euro Disney, Paris, and then enjoying four wonderful days in lovely Paris doing a bit of sightseeing here and there! I know that I mentioned back then, before starting my trip, that I would be doing some more weblogging about the APQC KM & Innovation event and also about some of the stuff I have been exposed to during the course of the IBM event last week. But alas my network connectivity had other plans for me, errr, I mean, for us.
Euro Disney is probably not the best place to try to get 2,200 IBM folks connecting to the Internet through free wireless at the same time with their Thinkpads while getting started with the event itself. Of course, it crashed the network. And for four days! Ouch! That hurt! And quite a lot! So what I was planning on doing , i.e. weblogging a few times during the course of that week, actually never happened. It just wasn’t doable.
And, what is worse, the paid wireless fees were not the cheapest I have seen in a long while! So I didn’t get connected at all. I have been happily making use of my N95 for the very basic Internet stuff (a.k.a. twittering away all along!), but for weblogging further thoughts and insights on what was going on in my mind back then it was not what I expected / wanted. Thus my regular weblogging activities went dead for a few days to the point where I didn’t even get a chance to reply to most of the comments that folks have been sharing all along with some very interesting thoughts altogether! Yes, that is right! Very disappointed!
And then Thursday afternoon, I went downtown to Paris (Close to Rue de Rivoli) to enjoy a lovely long weekend till Monday evening when I got back. And that time around the everlasting battle between the work – life balance was actually won by life, of course! It is Paris, after all, don’t you think? I just couldn’t get down to weblogging when there were so many cool things to check out since last time I was there about five years ago!
That is why I didn’t get a chance to weblog much while I was enjoying that long weekend break in Paris. There is always something to do, something to check, something to see, someone to meet up with, lots and lots of interesting food to try out (I went out every single day for lunch and dinner and throughout all those times I only had French food once! The rest was Thai, Indian -twice-, Chinese -DIM SUM-, Tibetan, and so on. Loved it!) and the list goes on and on and on! Phew! I met a whole bunch of people with whom I have been connecting already on the Web through our social networks, so it was really nice to be able to put a face to a name, a voice, a blog post, you name it. As the time goes by, I will certainly share some further thoughts about this, because, as usual, it was one of the major highlights from the entire week!
Yes, that is right. I am now back, for the first time in years my mail inbox is now empty! Yeah, sorry, had to say it … EMPTY! and I am now on a massive catch up mode with the several thousand RSS feeds waiting for me to scan through and check out what most of you have been doing while I have been away. The fun continues, indeed, but I think I am going to cut this weblog entry short right here and just point out to you some of the different Flickr pictures I have already started uploading into my Flickr account. Some of which you can already see through this post to give you a sense of what I went through in that lovely long holiday break !
Oh, and if you are looking for pictures of the IBM TLE event I must say that I didn’t take any since I thought that plenty of other folks would. And, indeed, Roo Reynolds, who I finally got to talk to after hanging out together in Web 2.0 for probably too long!, Michael Coleman, another fellow IBMer who is all into KM, collaboration, community building, innovation and social computing, and Andrew Webb, who I have been in contact with quite a lot as well as we also seem to be sharing a bunch of common interests around the world of social computing, have been sharing a whole bunch of them to get you going.
For the rest, let me finish off this post sharing with you folks that my regular weblogging activities will resume shortly… It is good to be back!
