Tags: Ayagaures, Presa de Ayagaures, Dams, Gran Canaria, Flickr, Photography, Photos, WhatItOnceWas, Nature, Healing, Life, Fires, Incendio, Manu Moreno, GranCanariaPhotos

As I have mentioned in the first weblog post of the series, every week I am planning on creating an entry over here under the heading What It Once Was … to share with you folks some of the different pictures that I have taken over the course of the years from some of the different areas affected by the recent fires here in Gran Canaria, as a way to help remember what it once was and what will be again over the next few months / years. It may be a slow process, it will take plenty of healing, but I am pretty sure that we would eventually get there.

Over the last few days, I have been getting lots of positive feedback comments on this series of posts, specially from folks who keep reading of my weblog(s) and who live in the island, as a way to help  us remember the immense beauty that most of these places used to have and which I am sure will blossom again very soon! So while I understand that this series may not have much to do with the main theme from this weblog, at least, for the time being, I hope you can understand how I am planning to continue with it as a way to help me release some of the pain that we have all gone through, specially for those of us who feel those burnt areas had a special place in our hearts.

One of those places is the area known as Ayagaures, specially the upper part of the area, where you would be able to find a couple of dams and some stunning views! In the past, I have been sharing a couple of weblog posts to detail some of that beauty, but over the weekend I have been uploading some more pictures into my Flickr account from the last time I was there. To me, it is one of those special places from the South of the island, where in less than 15 to 20 minutes you are in the countryside enjoying lots of green, the mountains, the dams, a wide range of different birds stopping by here and there. Ideal for long and extensive walks. And if not judge for yourselves. Here you have got a couple of the pictures I have shared just yesterday:

I am surely going to miss this place for those eternal and peaceful walks, while it starts its slow and lengthy recovery, but one thing for sure is that I am planning to come back, perhaps this very same winter with the first drops of rain, and check how nature has started its healing process, hoping that everyone out there would have become by now much more conscious of the serious damage that just a single match can create in a matter of hours!

Oh, and if you would want to find out some more about the catastrophe that this has been for us all, check out the following YouTube video that Manu Moreno has put together (Perfect combination of tunes and pictures to reflect how most of us feel at the moment) and which I am sure will make people think of the fatal consequences of provoked fires.

Don’t forget as well to check out his photo and video Web site over at GranCanariaFotos, where you would be able to find lots of other pictures and videos about the fires at the same time that you would get to see some other stunning pictures of the island itself with all of its beauty.

Speechless! Yes, that is right, that is the only word that comes to mind at the moment… Thanks, Manu!

That is exactly what I had earlier on this week when, thanks to Kellypuffs, I bumped into this particular video clip from YouTube:

There is just not much more than I can say about it, is it?, other than it is these little things we keep bumping into every now and then that make it all very worth while, don’t you think?

Very touching, moving, adorable. Priceless!

——

Plus it is now Friday, getting ready for the weekend and just found out earlier on today that I am about to exceed the monthly bandwidth from elsua.net, so need to take care of it as we speak. You may expect a few hours of down time while I get it all sorted out. But I guess that is what it takes to be popular, right?, although nothing to compare with Conny and her over 7 million hits and counting!

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: Conny, YouTube, Video, Life, Wizard of Oz, Somewhere over the Rainbow, Precious Moments, Talent, Kellypuffs, Goose Bumps

How many times have you tried to convince people about the business value of social software in the enterprise and failed in the attempt? How many times have you tried to describe different social computing terms to different folks and never managed to get the message across successfully? How many times did you wish you had an elevator pitch ready to explain different social networking concepts? Too many, I am sure, like most of us.

Well, here is something for you that you may find interesting and very very relevant to your job of evangelising on social software. I surely do find it incredibly re-energising! It is actually coming from Sachi and Lee LeFever, from Commoncraft, and it is a super fine series of very short video clips with some compelling messages describing some key concepts of social computing itself.

There are four videos put together not lasting for more than five minutes each and if there is anything that I can say about them all is that they are very educational and enlightening at the same time that they are really good fun to watch. What else could you expect from Commoncraft than getting to know about these important Web 2.0 terms and have plenty of  good fun in the process. And taking just a few minutes, which would make them perfect candidates for your elevator pitch!

I am surely going to be re-using these video clips all over the place hoping to continue spreading the message all over, so that even those folks who may not be that technical would have the perfect opportunity to get to know about some of these concepts. I just wished the clips would have come out a lot earlier, as I am certain they would have saved us all plenty of time explaining some of the basics and get everyone on board right away. That is just how *good* they all are!

I am not planning on expanding further much more on this, so I think we better get going with them. That way you would have an opportunity to enjoy them just as much as I did. They are just terrific and if not check out as well the different links I will be sharing below from different folks who have been promoting these very same videos. Excellent stuff!

- RSS in Plain English (3′ 43” and referenced already by other folks such as Social Media Club, Nancy White, Jack Vinson, Anol Bhattacharya, Joitske Hulsebosch, Miguel Cornejo Castro, Chris Collison, Dan Keldsen, George Siemens, etc.):

- Wikis in Plain English (3′ 52” and referenced by George Siemens, Anol Bhattacharya, Beth Kanter, Shel Holtz, Rex Lee, Joitske Hulsebosch, Rich Hoeg, Chris Collison, Dan Keldsen -Highly recommended reading, by the way, from Dan on the topic of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and some of the basics):

- Social Networking in Plain English (1′47” and referenced by George Siemens, Chris Collison, Chris Fletcher, Joitske Hulsebosch):

- Social Bookmarking in Plain English - demonstrating del.icio.us (3′25” and referenced by a whole bunch of people. Amongst others: George Siemens, Chris Fletcher, Beth Kanter, Techmeme, Nancy White, Mashable, Jeremiah Owyang, Shel Holtz, Anol Bhattacharya, Craig Cmehil, Martin Koser and Robin Good with a superb overview over here):

Thus there you have it. Four gems that will get re-visited over and over and over again in order to provide a clear guidance on how to learn quickly and effectively four different key concepts around the subject of social computing and social software. Thanks ever so much, Sachi and Lee, for putting together these fine video clips and for making our lives a whole lot easier after sharing them! Well done!

(Oh and if you are having difficulties trying to differentiate blogs from message boards here is a bonus link from Commoncraft as well that explains the main differences quite nicely! Good stuff!)

Tags: Social Software, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Commoncraft, RSS, Syndication, Social Bookmarking, Social Media Club, Nancy White, Jack Vinson, Anol Bhattacharya, Joitske Hulsebosch, Miguel Cornejo Castro, Chris Collison, George Siemens, Beth Kanter, Shel Holtz, Rex Lee, Joitske Hulsebosch, Rich Hoeg, Dan Keldsen, Chris Fletcher, Techmeme, Mashable, Jeremiah Owyang, Craig Cmehil, Martin Koser, Robin Good, Wikis, Plain English, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities

Tags: Robert Scoble, ScobleShow, Videocasts, Interviews, IBM, Drew Clark, Mike Moran, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, OmniFind, Marketing, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Second Life, Virtual Worlds, Guidelines, RedMonk, RedMonk.TV, Ali Arsanjani, Robert LeBlanc, Sandy Carter, James Governor, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities

If you would remember, a few days ago I created a weblog post where I was pointing to a recent video cast that Robert Scoble did with one of my fellow IBM colleagues: Drew Clark where Drew got to talk about some of the awesome stuff that is going on inside IBM and which would certainly help provide an awareness to outside folks on what is going on there. If you have listened to the interview, you probably heard the "We are not your father’s IBM!" statement and therefore I am going to go back for some more, since it looks like plenty of folks who think that IBM is still the same of what it used to be. Well, think again.

Yes, that is right. It looks like Scoble has been a bit busy at the IBM house lately, because he has put together a couple of interviews with two other IBMers that I can certainly recommend, to help you get an idea of what is going on in other areas from this 370,000 employee large enterprise.

The first interview I would want to point out to you is the one he did with Mike Moran, an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Product Manager of IBM’s OmniFind search software, who gets to talk over the course of nearly 15 minutes about Marketing and how social media has changed the way we share information out there in the public along with some of what IBM is doing on the subject. Pretty good for a distinguished engineer, don’t you think? I mean, who would have thought about that, right? Well, listen to it.

The second interview that I would want to point out to you is another one he did recently with Irving Wladawsky-Berger, with Larry Magid, from CBS News, chiming in as well, in which Irving (Recently retired after 37 years of service! WOW! I wasn’t even born when he joined IBM!!) gets to talk about the huge impact that virtual worlds, in general, are going to have beyond the immediate impact we are seeing in the gaming world.

Irving gets to talk about how those virtual worlds (Second Life amongst many others) will help shape up the way we interact with other knowledge workers to conduct business and drive revenue out of it. In fact, he also touches base, roughly, on the recently published IBM Virtual World Guidelines that Roo Reynolds gets to describe superbly further so well over at Eightbar. I tell you. An interview worth while the nearly 22 minutes that it lasts! Lots of good stuff in there and I just wished they would have continue talking some more. It was just starting to get really good when they had to go. Sigh

Oh, and if you didn’t have enough with that, and want to find out some more as to why this IBM is not your father’s IBM any longer, check out the super fine job that the folks at Redmonk.TV have done interviewing several other IBMers on various different topics:

"Its not exactly live TV, but the content is online now- interviews with Ali Arsanjani (IBMs approach to business / IT service modeling and “World is Flat?”, Robert LeBlanc (turning IGS into an automated services company rather than a body shop) and Sandy Carter (using the latest cool media tactics and tools to educate people on SOA. T-shape people, technologists taking up the cross?)" (Excerpt taken directly from James Governor’s Monkchips blog)

Disclosure: I work in *that* company

Tags: MacBook Pro, Mac, Apple, Windows, Lenovo 3000 N100, Lenovo Notebooks, Andy Piper, Twitter

Last week was one of those weeks that I could have certainly done without, and for several various reasons. From the disastrous fires that created a massive havoc in both Gran Canaria to Tenerife (And a bit in La Gomera) to the fact that my shiny Lenovo 3000 N100 notebook decided to die on me after just one year and three weeks of usage. Well, the LCD display, that is.

I am not sure if there was an issue with it because of the extreme heat we went through for a few days or what (Hard Drive Inspector indicated my notebook’s hard drive reached a whopping 50 degrees C!), but the fact is that last Thursday the LCD display decided to play funny with purple colours and vertical lines making it almost impossible to use. Goodness, I thought. This is the last thing I need now, for sure. A broken LCD display just three weeks after the one year guarantee expired! Ha! It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Things are no longer built today  like they used to be a few years ago, I tell you!

Anyway, I decided to play along with it and called the customer service centre to arrange an appointment to bring it along and have it fixed. I talked to the folks who would be fixing it and they told me that it would probably take between a couple of hours to a full week, depending on the damage of the LCD display. Ouch! I am not sure I can afford another week of forced vacation after the recent problems I have been having with my Internet connection (Been running just fine for the last few days though).

I love the Lenovo 3000 N100! It really is a good machine and has served me very well all along. However, for a long while now, I have been thinking that one day I would be switching to the Mac. Not a chance that I would move on to Vista any time soon. So I decided to play safe and prepare my way towards having a backup machine, that by the looks of it, it is now turning itself into becoming my main primary machine.

Yes, indeed, I am now a proud owner of a brand-new shiny MacBook Pro 15”4! YAY! Finally! I made it to the other side! The Mac side! heh. I am not going to share any pictures with you, since I am sure you have seen it all over the place, but, boy, do I like this machine or what? I thought it would be my backup machine while I am getting the Lenovo 3000 N100 repaired, but in the last couple of days it has become my main machine and do I feel ever so much more productive?!?! You bet!

I know plenty of you folks out there are feeling the exact same way. So I will spare you any further comments on that. At this very moment though I am continuing to have a number of different applications installed in it that I am using in the Windows environment and which I consider essential for me to be able to do my job and stay connected with everyone, an everything, so probably in an upcoming weblog post I will mention which ones those applications are and see how it goes from there.

For the time being, I have been reading with great and avid interest the good number of posts that the one and only, Andy Piper, one of my fellow IBM colleagues and a good friend of mine, has put together beautifully in his own external weblog and which I am going to find incredibly helpful as I suspect I would be finding there plenty of Mac gems to enjoy.

It surely is going to be quite an experience, while I am getting the Lenovo notebook fixed, to continue playing around with the MacBook Pro and even more when I will be testing it out very shortly as my work machine while the repairs take place. If it makes it successfully, I bet that the Windows notebook would become then the back up machine and not the MBP one. We shall see. Although I bet you already know the answer, right?

Ahhh, it is good to be on the Mac side. I must confess though that there is a little bit of a learning curve, but quite enjoyable at most times, which is not what I can say from the various Windows OS I have been using thus far. Yes, if you ask me, it was a very expensive move, but so far, and from what I have seen till now, very worth while! And I will be sharing some more insights in that respect as time goes by. You bet!

(Special thanks to all of my Twitter friends and to my fellow colleague, Andy Piper, for the initial help provided thus far. You have all certainly made that learning curve a lot less steep and quite an enjoyable journey! Looking forward to some more soon!)

Tags: Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Fires, Incendio, Fire Extinction, Flickr, Pictures, Photos, Photography, WhatItOnceWas, Palmitos Park, Flora, Fauna, Zoo, Theme Park, Reconstruction

As the fires from Gran Canaria and Tenerife continue towards making really good progress and be completely extinguished, still with some minor, completely isolated and under control patches here and there, I thought I would go ahead over here and start something that I have been thinking quite a lot about during the course of the weekend and most of last week as well. During the last few days, there have been a number of folks sharing their thoughts and opinions on the outcome of the fires. And a lot has been said about it whether the catastrophe could have been avoided or not, but instead of just following that thread I am going to take another approach to it all. At least, for the time being. Perhaps at a later time I would share as well my two cents and what I have learned myself from this tragic experience.

However, this new approach is going to be a lot closer to me than whatever I could have ever anticipated. While doing a recap of the recent events, over the course of the weekend, talking to some friends on the outcome of the fires, I realised that quite a few of the emblematic places from the South of the island of Gran Canaria have suffered tremendously from the fires. I get to visit those different places quite often and have got tons of pictures from what they used to look like, but not what they look like today with the devastation.

So what a better way to pay tribute to those special places from Gran Canaria that got burnt than to create a weblog post every now and then over here, and share a bunch of pictures that I have been taking before last week’s disastrous set of events and which I will be uploading into my Flickr account as well as time goes by. I think it would be really nice to share with you why those different places are special, at least, to me, and why I am really looking forward to when things would go back to normal, like a whole bunch of us have been sharing thus far, and see those stunning places come back to an re-energising life, the same one they have always had.

So to get things started here is the first of a serious of weblog posts that I am going to tag as "What It Once Was …", where I will be sharing with you a couple of comments about the particular space and then share some pictures of what they used to look like and, I am hoping, that when the right time comes, I will be able to share with you all the dramatic change, for the better, I am sure, that they would go through over the next few weeks, months, years, etc.

Without much further ado, the first place I will be talking to you about is one of the most emblematic tourist attractions from the island: Palmitos Park. Half zoo, half theme park that used to host an incredible amount of flora and fauna and which, unfortunately, has been so severely affected that it would be about a year before it would open up to the public again. Most of the animals survived the fires, but the different buildings and the flora have been very badly damaged. So this is one of the wonderful places I will be looking forward to when they re-open again. I am sure it would be much better, much bigger, much more impressive and just basically focusing on what matters, the flora and the fauna of not only the island of Gran Canaria, but from all over the world!

Here are the promised pictures…

You can find more pictures from the series related to Palmitos Park and What It Once Was… at the following URL, or look also at a previous weblog post that I have shared some time ago.

So, will you join me when they re-open the place to check out most of the beauty that has been left behind? … And so much more? I surely hope so…

One year goes by lightning fast. I just can’t wait for it!