E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Want to Continue Wasting Your Money? – Keep on Blocking Social Software behind the Firewall!

Tags: Andy Piper, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Stop Blocking!, Campaigns, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Innovation, Remote Collaboration, Dave Snowden, Facebook, Emerging Technologies, Social Software Adoption

After a couple of days of excitement coming from all over the place, here is something that I am going to be following rather closely from here onwards. And for a good cause. Through one of my fellow IBM colleagues, and good friend, Andy Piper, I have been checking out the new campaign that Shel Holtz has launched to help fight the blocking of a balanced and responsible use of social software in general within the corporate world.

As I said, Andy comments on his blog post about what Neville Hobson has also been mentioning and supporting quite closely: Stop Blocking! If you would notice, this is a campaign that tries to help stop businesses from blocking the usage of social software within the enterprise; call it, Facebook, call it RSS feeds, call it blogs, whatever. Not long ago, I created a weblog post, where I was reflecting on the kind of impact that not making use of social software was having within the corporate world. And for a good number of years!

Yet, and, as I am sure you have been able to read all over the place, it looks like plenty of businesses out there are still very weary of letting go that command and control attitude and start to thoroughly trust their employees much more than ever before to do the right thing, i.e. getting the job done using all of the resources at their immediate reach, including social computing tools in a responsible manner.

I can certainly understand some of the skepticism, specially when a balanced and guiding approach is not being used, but from that to say you ban the usage of social software in the workplace altogether is going a bit too far. What happened to experimenting with technology? What happened to trying out new collaborative tools and see if they would help knowledge workers improve the way they share their knowledge and collaborate? What happen to inspiring employees to continue innovating at a rampant pace? Are businesses letting the consumer market lead the way?

Somehow it looks like things are heading that way, unfortunately. And this is why I feel initiatives like Stop Blocking! are the right move forward. A powerful way of not just showing, but also demonstrating the kind of impact social computing can have within the corporate world and, much more importantly, the kind of negative impact it would have if we keep seeing more and more businesses closing down the social networking door.

It will be up to us now then to decide where we stand. I am not sure about you, but I have got it very clear. I am fully supporting the Stop Blocking! initiative!  I have already signed the petition and the badge I have included at the beginning of the blog post is very shortly going to be an integral part of this particular blog template.

I strongly believe this is our right to be more productive at work, getting the job done connecting and collaborating with the right group of knowledge workers and, above all, have the choice of deciding the tools we would want to make use of to share our knowledge, collaborate and innovate with other fellow knowledge workers (Remember "Knowledge will only ever be volunteered it can not be conscripted."?). So where do you stand?

Announcements … Finally!

Tags: IBM, Announcements, Luis Suarez, elsua, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software Evangelist, Collaboration, Communities, Community Building, Innovation, Dale Rebhorn, Gina Poole, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, IBM Software, IBM SWG, Technical Sales, Tech Sales

I know I mentioned last week that I had an important announcement to make and, throughout all of the different social networking tools I use on a regular basis, I have been leaving status messages counting the hours to release the great news to the world. Alas, things needed to spread around internally first, before I could make them well known to everyone else. Yesterday was kind of hectic, so didn’t have the time to make it either. But today is the day.

The big announcement I have to make is at as of the 1st of November 2007 (It will mark as well 8 years since I joined IBM as full time employee) I will be moving into a new job. Yes! That is right, I will be leaving my current project within the IBM Global Business Services, Learning & Knowledge – Community Building Team, and join IBM’s Software Global Technical Sales team with Dale Rebhorn and working very closely as well with Gina Poole (IBM Software Group, Marketing VP, Social Software Programs and Enablement) and her team.

I am incredibly excited about this particular job move, because it would allow me to do on a full time basis what I have been doing, for most of the time, out of my own private time, which is basically help knowledge workers, whether they are part of my immediate teams or not, or elsewhere, including business partners and customers, embrace and adopt social software in order to collaborate much more effectively with other knowledge workers.

I guess my new title would probably not change much from the one I have at the moment: Knowledge Manager, Community Builder and Social Computing Evangelist. Except that perhaps this time around the focus would be more on evangelising on social computing and helping a bunch of teams and communities out there embrace social software.

As you may well have guessed, I am now in transition mode for the next few weeks, from my former job into the new one. Incredibly excited nevertheless! I just can’t wait to get started! That transition is also to reflect on some changes here in my blog, although I am still not sure how they would be paving out. I will be updating my About page in its due time as more and more details become available, once I am done with that transition, but, as you can imagine, this new job I am about to start shortly is all what I have always dreamt for all along! (At least, ever since I got involved with social software 5 years ago!)

Not only will I be able to continue working with some really cool people, but at the same time I will be doing on a full time basis what I have been doing here and there, and everywhere else in between: share my own passion about social software with other knowledge workers.

Will that mean that things will change drastically from my own blogging and voice styles? I don’t think so. I suspect that things would be pretty much the same, except that this time around my focus is probably going to be a bit stronger than what it has been so far around the subject of social computing, Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0.

Exciting times ahead, I know, and I am incredibly jazzed up about it. Hope you will, too, because, believe it or not, this new job comes to me thanks to you all, specially for giving me the opportunity to build up further on my own excitement about social computing, Knowledge Management, Collaboration and Communities, and sharing it with everyone else!

So let’s get things moving! The word is out! And I am ready for it, baby! Let’s do it!

Reflecting on the Impact of Social Computing in Education and Learning

Tags: Learning, Education, Youngsters, Kids, Generations, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Neworking, Web 2.0, Learning 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Emerging Technologies, Technology, Dennis Howlett, Profesor Luis, Webcasts, Vodcasting, Emilio Calatayud Pérez, Granada, Judge of Minors

Most people who know me in real life for quite a while now would probably tell you how my background has got more to do with Learning than with IT itself. Funny enough, even though I have been working in IT for over 10 years! So it would not come to anyone’s surprise my keen interest in Education and Learning, specially the impact that social computing is having in the field. So much so that from here onwards I plan to share a number of different thoughts that have been in my mind over the last few months and which I will be sharing from now on.

To get things started I thought I would go ahead and share with you a couple of video links that I am sure you would find them rather interesting, if not thought-provoking altogether. The first one is actually a YouTube vodcast from Dennis Howlett who, over the course of 5 minutes, gets to share some details on the kind of impact that social software is having with the younger generation and how more and more businesses should start paying attention to how they get to use most of social software tools, instead of trying to prohibit its use behind the corporate firewall.

Here is a genius quote from Dennis before you get to watch the embedded vodcast link:

"If you are not understanding the kids of today are the leaders of business tomorrow, [...] then you got problems" (Oh, and his final reflection is one of those that would make you think, but you better watch it for yourself and you will see what I mean)

The second video Web link that I would want to share with you folks, is actually something that I wish I would have an English version for. It is roughly a 16 minute webcast in Spanish from a judge of minors from Granada, called Emilio Calatayud Pérez, where he gets to talk about some of the roles and responsibilities from kids, the not so young kids, parents, teachers and the rest of society (Yes, I know, the whole lot!), which does a superb introduction as what are the things that don’t work now and how they could potentially work, so that those youngsters of today would become the leaders in society we would all hope for in the near future.

If Dennis’ 5 minute vodcast is really worth while your time, this second video link is just as inspirational, if not more. It would make you think about things twice, and best of all, it would help you set things in a way which you may not think was possible. And that is all I will be detailing here. For the good stuff, just watch the webcast. I am certain you would enjoy it just as much as I did. I am sure. So here is the direct link to it and here is the embedded version:

(From here onwards, just give a special thanks to Professor Luis for sharing the webcast link with us and for the great find… And, like I said, just wished there would be an English version … Hope you would get to understand some of it in Spanish. It is a must-watch reflection on how things are going with our younger generations)