Tags: Hearbeats, YouTube, Jose Gonzalez, Unplugged, Live, Chill out Tunes

It has been a hard week, I know. Too long, perhaps. For me, too. I just cannot wait for the weekend to get started, I tell you. Specially, on a week like this one where things haven’t stopped for just a few minutes to chill out a bit, relax and get back on top of it. Phew! Yes, one of those weeks… Sigh.

Well, what a better way then to start celebrating the weekend than keeping this weblog entry short, enjoying some fine tunes with some incredible lyrics and get slowly in the right mood. It has been a little while since I have last shared a video clip in here so without much further ado, here is one of those songs that helps stop everything, relax, chill out and … move on!

(You would probably remember the song as it was used for a very popular commercial, but this version is just … priceless!)

Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Ziki, Flickr, Blogs, BlinkList, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Tagging, Tags, Tagclouds, Syndication, Groups, Communities, OPML, LinkedIn, XING, MyBlogLog, Frappr, Ex.plode.us, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, e-Card

While most of the folks I get to read in my feeds on a daily basis have been trying out Facebook for the last few weeks, where it has exploded incredibly, I have actually been kind of busy with something else. Also while some of those folks have been pushing me to give up and join them, I have been busy watching how one of my favourite social computing tools from all time has been getting a facelift, and a lovely one, I must admit. Yes, that is right, I am still resisting entering the Facebook world. Most of my Twitter friends know why, mainly privacy issues of getting asked some nasty questions that I am not sure a social network tool should be asking, after all. But anyway, I am still resisting.

So while all of that has been going on, I have been quietly watching how one of the social networking tools I have been using for a good number of months has gone through a superb upgrade and now, more than ever, I have been enjoying most of the original features, plus a whole bunch more of the different additions put together. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Ziki, to me, one of the most interesting and powerful people portals out there!

In the past, I have been talking about Ziki a few times already, and during all this time, one of the things that I have realised about is that, as time goes by, I keep using it more and more, to the point where it is part of my daily online interactions along with some other social software tools. I heart Ziki, indeed, and from the very first moment that I got exposed to it. To me, it is one of the most elegant, simple, effective and straight to the point social networking tools that helps you aggregate all of your online content with a single point of contact and at the same time connect with other folks who may share similar interests, knowledge and experiences.

You may be wondering what is so special about Ziki at this point in time, right? Well, check out my Ziki profile to find out why. And if that is not enough, here you have got five quick reasons why you should look into Ziki yourself, if you are looking for a tool to syndicate all of your online content and build up your own unified online persona, like I have been able to do myself. So here you have got those different reasons:

1. Aggregation all of your online content in a single space: Yes, that is right. If you check out my own Ziki, as an example, you would be able to see online content from my Flickr account, my twitterings, all of my Internet blogs, my BlinkList bookmarks, my Feedburner and Technorati profiles, and the list goes on and on and on. If anyone would want to know the different places I have been sharing stuff people would just need to check my Ziki and off you go.

2. Addition of different basic social networking features: Apart from what I have just mentioned above, you would also be able tag your profile, your own content, other people, connect with them, join different interest groups, syndicate your content with the different feeds, group your list of friends and fans, watch out over different types of tagclouds of key terms, etc. etc. Yes, I know, all the bells and whistles we have all learned to love from various other social software tools. Pretty nifty.

3. Ability to create groups with common interests: This is one of the features that I like the most, although we may not have seen its full potential just yet. It may not have reached the critical mass you would expect of having multiple groups, i.e. multiple communities coming around to meet the needs of most users, but having the ability of setting up your own groups and stay in touch with them directly inside of the tool itself is quite handy, as you would be able to combine both the individual aspects of Ziki next to the group ones. I just wish more folks would be on it to provide many more relevant groups to connect with.

4. Ability to share your reading interests by importing your own OPML: This is perhaps one of my favourite reasons / features why I heart Ziki so much. And that is the fact that I can share my OPML file with everyone that may be interested in my feeds and when displaying the different categories you can down a customised OPML file and just add that one. Beautiful! That way people can subscribe to my KM or Social Computing or Learning feeds without even having to ask me for the OPML file. Incredibly helpful, to be honest.

5. A single URL address as your own e-Card: And, finally, on other of my favourite reasons. The fact that my Ziki profile, for the last few months, has become my online e-Card that I keep sharing all over the place. Examples, like my e-mail closing information (I no longer have lengthy details all over the place, just a single URL and that would be it!), or my LinkedIn or XING profiles, then MyBlogLog, Twitter Id, Frappr, Ex.plode.us, and my basic contact details like e-mail address, IM and VoIP clients, location, etc. etc. are now part of a single, very easy to remember, URL address that I can place anywhere else I would want to. Just brilliant!

And that would be it, folks, five reasons, five different key features, why, after the latest upgrade, you may want to check out Ziki as one of the best options out there to help create and maintain, rather easily, your own online persona, your own people portal! I know there are plenty more features you would be able to take advantage of, but those would be the ones that still keep me busy with it and away from entering other social networking tools like Facebook. Now we just need to have Ziki providing us with the opportunity to build up a business card with some of that data that we can print out and we are ready to do some business! Ziki rules!

Tags: IBM, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Innovation, iPhone, Gizmodo, Nokia, N95, Ed Brill, Stuart McIntyre, WJS, William Bulkeley, Blog Central, Dogear, Profiles

Oh my … what a day! Again, one of those where you wake up in the morning, freshen up a bit, make a nice cup of coffee, get down to work and your agenda is completely packed with text from various different meetings and conference calls that you cannot see anything else at all! Goodness! How did that happen? I am glad that tomorrow I have got an easier day than today, to be honest, because otherwise it would be a killer. Anyway, here I am again, writing this weblog post, where I want to share with you some incredibly good news on a couple of announcements from several various offerings that I have been following up for a while and which I would want to share with you.

In the past you have seen how I have been covering both IBM’s Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr several times, right? How all along I have been talking about them sharing some further thoughts on what they are, how they work and what they are trying to achieve within the social computing space for the enterprise; and how IBM has been making use of some of its components for several years. You would remember as well how I have been commenting that both products would be seeing the light of a gold release very shortly out there in the market as fully available offerings for customers to check out further, right?

Well, wait no more! The time has arrived! Today! Two days earlier than expected, and way before the entire blogosphere is taken down by storm with one of the major announcements ever! - which, after watching the last 30 seconds of this review and also the extensive, and very educational, review from Gizmodo on what it doesn’t have and known problems, is something that I will be seeing passing along not worrying too much about not having it. After all, I am still pretty ecstatic about the N95 which keeps exceeding my expectations amazingly day in day out!

Anyway, let’s not get distracted and move on. Right, like I was saying, the waiting time is now over! Both Ed Brill and Stuart McIntyre have mentioned earlier on their weblogs how both Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr are now gold! Fantastic! The time has come where these particular social computing offerings would have to prove their own value in the real business world, like a whole bunch of other social software tools available out there are already doing at the moment. What a bunch of interesting times ahead of us, indeed! I am surely looking forward to them, for certain!

Why am I so excited about the availability of such tools in the social computing realm? Well, amongst many other things, because I will be looking forward to checking out how they would start to finally pave out their own bumpy roads and find their own space within the social software for the enterprise space. See if they would be up to for the competition or not. See if they would meet the requirements and needs from the resourceful and insightful knowledge worker 2.0 in the current workplace and how they may be able to shake the collaboration space both for large and small businesses. Or not. Yes, indeed, interesting times!

I have been looking forward to this for a while now, since I would be able to share with you all some further insights on how IBM has been using some of the different components from each of these offerings behind the firewall to help shake the ground of how other fellow colleagues share their knowledge and collaborate with others. As I have mentioned in the past, some of the different components from applications like Connections have been available inside IBM for years, so it would be intriguing to see how other folks get to make use of such components and perhaps check if there would be substantial differences in the way they would be adopted outside the firewall. I bet there would be plenty of things we could all be able to learn.

Take, for instance, the recent article from the WSJ titled Playing Well With Others - How IBM’s employees have taken social networking to an unusual level by William Bulkeley where you would be able to read and get a glimpse of how IBM has been making use of these social software tools for a while and how they have been impacting the workplace of such a large corporation. Lots of different details in there that would help you figure out how some of us have been able to make use of some of those Lotus Connections components, like Blog Central (To maintain our blogs), Dogear (To store our social bookmarks behind the firewall), Profiles (As a powerful expertise locator), etc. etc. Perhaps one of the most representative articles available out there, in my opinion. No doubt.

Finally, you may be wondering if I am going to continue sharing some further insights about Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr, and perhaps some other social software tools that IBM is putting together, right? Well, the quick and short answer is that Yes! I surely will. But with a twist. In a week where a whole bunch of announcements have been made on various different subjects, I have got one of my own that I am very very excited about, although I cannot comment much on it at the moment. In its due time, I will be sharing a weblog post on it over here and I am sure that a few of you would be finding it as exciting as I am at the moment. But more on that at a later time…

It is now time to go and do some extensive reading on what is happening around all of these announcements and as time goes by I will surely be sharing some more insights on those articles that I may bump into and which I feel would be worth while sharing with you. So … let’s get the fun going!

Tags: APQC, APQC2007, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, KM Events, Innovation, KM Training, KM Learning, Communities, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, KM 2.0, Houston, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Bob Buckman, Buckman Laboratories, Values, Code of Ethics, IBM, Social Capital, Dave Snowden

After the couple of breaks that I have taken, posting on different other subjects, I am going to continue with the reviews of the APQC KM & Innovation event I attended in Houston beginning of May with one of my favourite sessions from the entire event. Perhaps one of the best, but definitely one of those that makes you think about things quite a bit, specially if you are passionate about Knowledge Management. It was actually a last minute change in the overall agenda as one of the presenters from one of the elective sessions could not make it in time and therefore thanks to that last minute change we had the incredible opportunity to listen to Bob Buckman talk to us about Knowledge Management.

Yes, indeed, I am saying incredible opportunity, because not every day do you have the chance to go sit and listen to one of the most revered, and knowledgeable, KM leaders and thinkers for several decades. Bob Buckman is one of those folks that you could listen to forever, if you would ever want to know the basics of what KM is all about and no fuss about it. No complications, no attachments, just plain and pure KM flowing all the way. That is exactly how it felt like!

I must say though that while Bob and his daughter were getting things ready for the session I was actually a bit disappointed that there were not plenty of people in the room waiting for the session to start. I bet that all of the other elective sessions were probably rather busy, and I am really happy for them, but I was expecting to see a whole bunch more of folks willing to listen to one of those folks who established what KM was all about by the time most of us were playing ball at highschool!

I took a whole bunch of notes from the hour we were with Bob Buckman and his daughter while they were discussing how they have been applying Knowledge Management to Buckman Laboratories over the course of the years. So I guess that this is going to be a longer weblog post than the average weblog articles, so you may want to go and grab a cup of coffee or tea and read on. Lots of gems in here to go and digest little by little, thus let’s get down to business.

In order to get things going Bob actually started setting up some of the background on how Buckman Laboratories has been applying KM all along and, believe it or not, it is all down to three basic items. Nothing more, nothing less. And here you have got them:

1. Values: Having a core set of values would help you establish a knowledge sharing culture. This set of values will help you fix the issues of working with islands or silos. With them you would be able to go cross boundaries, geographies, cultures, languages, etc. etc. In short, you would just be setting up the perfect ground for KM to grow healthy and strong.

If you take a look into it, this is actually something quite a few companies has been putting together over the course of the years (Including IBM as well, why not?, as part of the WorldJam that got conducted in 2004). But the interesting thing in here is that Buckman Laboratories has actually mastered the idea of making those values very public to everyone, not just its own employees, but also everyone else out there heading to their Web site. Check out the section The Buckman Fundamentals and in that section have a look into The Buckman Code of Ethics and read carefully. Yes, I know it may sound as pretty much common sense, but aren’t they revealing enough of some of the strongest KM principles from all along? … You bet!

2. Collaboration: This is one of the items that I just couldn’t help nodding a few times in agreement about the different things that Bob mentioned throughout the session. Simple, yet very effective, things with gems like starting with sharing something small, i.e. social capital and then build further up from there, so that when sharing critical stuff your values are actually determined by the people who you already know based on those social capital skills you have been putting into practice with tools like, amongst others, social software tools.

Bob mentioned how there are different methods of collaboration, but most of them would be based on the critical needs of the organisation, i.e. addressing and fixing customer’s problems. This is basically one of the areas as to where collaboration will always flourish and perhaps where things should have gotten started: collaboration between knowledge workers from that particular business and the customers and clients they would be closely working with.

3. Innovation: I am sure you will all love this particular item that Bob mentioned during the course of the breakout session. Innovation is all about connecting research to work on customers’ problems where speed of innovation against the competition is going to be a critical success factor.

At this point in time Bob shared one of the best quotes I have heard, read, seen ever on what Knowledge Sharing is all about: "Don’t be afraid to share what you know, because you know it better than anyone else!" WOW! This is just *so* true! I wish people would understand that and realise something I have been saying over here for a while now: "Knowledge shared *is* power!".

From here onwards, Bob mentioned how a successful KM strategy is that one that helps improve the way knowledge workers share information internally so that we can then start collaborating and sharing our knowledge with customers:

- Defining expectations from the customer
- Defining how customers would measure you
- And asking ourselves, are we capable? (Understanding the value of reputation!)

Here is another gem that was discussed right afterwards. The differences between Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Management, where years ago businesses would scare people away thinking that they would be taking their heads apart, when all they were dealing with were just people. Bob mentioned how one of the key issues / barriers regarding the adoption of a knowledge sharing culture is down to middle management for whom knowledge is power. however, knowledge flows quicker than they would be able to control.

From here onwards Bob mentioned a number of different tips on how to break the barriers within a particular business by incorporating a knowledge sharing culture:

1. If you would want to be a source of knowledge, share!
2. If you would want to be a source of expertise on how others see you: share!

One other issue that was addressed during the course of the session was how Bob was very supportive of empowering organisations to share knowledge across languages. Be willing to adapt to your situation by providing tools to collaborate in mother tongues and translate the critical material into English, so that it would be re-used. All of this, finished off with a priceless quote: "Don’t be afraid to steal stuff … Reuse!"

Oh, and talking about another priceless quote that Bob mentioned towards the end of the discussion, taken from an IBM conference in 1967!!:

"In the future we will spend more money in the transfer of knowledge than in hardware and software!"

Goodness! That is one heck of an interesting quote and said 40 years ago!!! And I couldn’t have agreed more with it. I have tried to look for it and see who was the person who mentioned it back then, but alas I haven’t found it just yet. So if anyone out there would know some more about it I would appreciate if you could share it with us. Amazing that someone would say something like that 40 years ago, and that nowadays, in 2007, it would be more relevant than ever! Fantastic!

From here onwards and towards the end of the breakout session he also mentioned how crucial the role of librarians is for Knowledge Management, specially for a case of small businesses fighting with much larger corporations. These librarians would be in charge of full text knowledge-bases that will capture all of the critical knowledge that other knowledge workers would be sharing.

Now, towards the end of the session Bob mentioned how crucial communities would become in helping spread that knowledge and empower knowledge workers to collaborate with one another. The more cross-enterprise the community, the more innovation that will be taking place, and all of that by creating a global culture using technology, as an enabler!, to help foster that global reach!

From here onwards, the conversation got a bit more lively and there were some additional comments (Some of them coming from Dave Snowden) about how in a successful KM program fragmentation and serendipitous knowledge accidents would be critical for its own success. And right here we go back to where the session started: The Buckman Code of Ethics where Dave mentioned that one of the reasons why these very same values have been so successful is because they were created socially bottom up! And I couldn’t have agreed more with it, because, after all, we need to be "culture agnostic in the setup of (those) values" that would help build up and sustain that successfully KM strategy that Buckman Laboratories has been demonstrating all along, and still going rather strong.

(And that was it, folks. I do realise that this has been a rather long weblog post, but I am hoping you have found it just as interesting and exciting as I did while I got to listen to Bob who was fiddling around every now and then with what he feels is the next wave of collaboration tools: his mobile phone! Who would have thought about that, eh?)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Debate, Tom Davenport, Andrew McAfee, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Software, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Learning, Fringe, Axel Magard, People, IBM, Corporate Blogging, Enterprise Blogging, Definitions

Today was one of those busy days that starts very very quiet and then it keeps piling up throughout the whole day and just about midday you realised that you are just as busy as any other Monday. Sigh. In between meetings and conference calls (And declaring some more expenses from recent trips, too!) I thought about, finally, creating a weblog post around the subject of the so-called Enterprise 2.0 debate between Tom Davenport and Andrew McAfee, that I have mentioned in the past, but alas here we are, towards the end of my day and not a single chance to listen to it properly and read some of the buzz that has been going about it. I guess it will have to wait.

However, I did want to share with you today something that when I bumped into it on Friday I thought it was just so good that I had to share it. So I did in my behind-the-firewall blog, but just this afternoon I got the heads up from the person I am going to talk about to share it publicly, out there, with everyone. Yes, that is right, I am just going to quote one of my fellow IBM colleagues on a weblog post he created on Friday and which resonated in me quite a bit for various multiple reasons.

But first, let’s go on with the credit where it is due. His name is Axel Magard and he is currently working as a Project Manager in IBM Germany and apart from being a very active weblogger, behind the firewall, he is just like you and me: a passionate knowledge worker who realises the true potential of social computing within the Enterprise.

Right, well, on Friday, there was another colleague from IBM Systems and Technology (The hardware division) who was wondering what all of the fuss around Web 2.0 was and if it would be worth while diving into it, specially in the area where he was. And while I was on my way to share a thought or two about it on why he should be paying attention to it, no matter in which business you would work for, Axel went ahead of us all and share a fantastic weblog post with a trackback to his own internal weblog with a final quote that is just *so* good that I took it and weblogged about it myself internally and also added as part of my Fringe profile.

And I still enjoy it so much that I have decided to ask for permission to him earlier on today and see if I could share it over here. He kindly agreed to it and I am really glad to see that he is ok with it, because this is, perhaps, just one of the best quotes that explains Web 2.0 (And Enterprise 2.0 for that matter!) and I doubt I would ever be able to come up with something better than that, so simple, yet so effective in its meaning. And if not judge for yourself:

"Web 2.0 is good for all of us, it doesn’t matter whether we do sales, consultancy, support, development, project management, design or manufacturing. No matter what we do - we all need information for our work - and the greatest source of information is: people. Empowering people to deliver information and giving them the right tools to create, organize, find and use information is the best we can do to improve all aspects of our business" (Emphasis mine) - by Axel Magard, someone just like you and me!

And if you exchange "information" for "knowledge", then it is probably as well one of the best Knowledge Management definitions I have seen lately. Simple, effective, straight to the point … beautiful!

Thanks ever so much, Axel, for such inspirational quote! Just brilliant!

Tags: Metablogging, MetaWeblog API, w.bloggar, Performancing for FireFox, ScribeFire, Flock, Qumana, Blogging, Blogs, Weblogs, Atom Publishing Protocol, APP, Productivity Tools, Offline Blogging Clients, Roller

I was actually going to continue weblogging about some of the stuff I have been sharing in the last couple of weeks. However, earlier on this week, I have been advised about something that is surely going to change my own weblogging habits. And I thought that, before getting into any further trouble, I may as well address it over here hoping that folks out there reading this post would be able to help or, at least, provide some pointers. As most of you already know, specially those folks who have been reading this weblog for a while, I mostly get to weblog through different offline weblogging clients.

Initially I got started with w.bloggar, which I got to use for a few months. Then I moved into both Performancing for Firefox (Now ScribeFire) and Flock’s weblogging component, both of which I got to play around with for a couple of months as well and in the very end I settled in with what I thought was one of the best offline weblogging clients available out there: Qumana. For a good number of months, I have been an extremely content with the results that Qumana has brought into my weblogging efforts. I sill continue to make use of it, as I am doing right now while I am putting together this particular weblog post. But something came up earlier on this week that is probably going to make me stop making use of it.

For one of the weblogs that I maintain, I am actually using Qumana with the MetaWeblog API in order to publish content to it. In the last few days not only have I found out that it is an insecure weblogging tool (Since apparently it does not encrypt the user id and password from my weblog when I get to post the entries), but also I have found out that particular blogging platform is not going to support such API for offline blogging. Instead they will support the Atom Publishing Protocol one.

Now, I am not quite familiar with the technicalities, but one thing that I know for sure, is that none of the offline weblogging clients that I mentioned above supports APP. At least, Qumana doesn’t, which brings me into the situation where I need to start looking for another offline client that would support such protocol. Well, so far, I have failed to find one. I have been using Google and several other search engines and haven’t been able to find anything on the subject. At least, a client that I could take a look into.

So that is the purpose of this weblog post. A kind request for anyone out there, having faced this very same situation, who would be willing to share some further details on offline blogging tools they may have been exposed to and which would support that APP. If you have been using one of those clients successfully I am surely keen on finding out some more about it as I think I am ready to move away from all of the different clients I have mentioned above till they would start supporting APP, something that doesn’t look like it is going to happen any time soon.

As time goes by, and as I may have some further updates on the subject, I will go ahead and share them over here. For now, it would be time for me to get started with the weekend after having heard today some incredible piece of news that I may be able to share with you all very shortly. Those of you who I have been talking to offline would probably know what I am referring to, but for all the others, not to worry, I shall talk about it whenever things would be ready. Stay tuned! And thanks for any tips you can provide in helping me find my next and, hopefully, definitive offline weblogging client. Time to move on…