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

IBM Lotusphere 2008 – Highlights from Third Day – Tuesday 22nd

And here we go with another blog post around the IBM Lotusphere event I attended last week. This time around sharing with you folks a few of the highlights from the third day of the conference, well, the second, really, if you skip the pre-event taking place on Sunday. Now if I dedicated the second day to attend the main tent session, some booth duty and then some more speaker sessions in the afternoon, this time around I took a different approach which in the end seemed to be the most productive way for me to enjoy another superb day at Lotusphere.

IBM Adoption of Social Software Booth

I spent most of the morning, till around lunch time, doing my booth duty hanging out at the IBM Village and talking to various folks around the subject of social computing and how IBM has been adopting different social software tools under the Technology Adoption Program, a.k.a. TAP, in order to improve their collaboration skills with other knowledge workers.

What was nice in this particular case how in between talking with various customers around social networking, I had a whole bunch of folks from my various social networks coming over and saying "Hi!" and I just couldn’t help thinking how nice of them to come over and put a face behind all of the different online interactions we have been having for years! Of course, I had to take the opportunity and took a whole bunch of pictures I have already shared in my Flickr stream and some of which I will be sharing over here in this blog post all over the place.

Some of those folks I have finally been able to meet up face to face were actually members from one IBM internal community I am co-leading with one of my team colleagues that is formed by a bunch of social computing evangelists, or ambassadors (As we call them inside IBM) and which has grown in just a couple of months from zero members to over 170!! So after hanging around at the booth for a little while with them, it was time to go for lunch with them and carry on (Yes, carry on, as opposed to start the conversation… See? That’s what social computing does to you! ) with some of the stuff we have been discussing on how we are planning to drive further the social networking adoption inside IBM and beyond. Not to worry, I am sure there will be a chance for folks out there to get some exposure on what this community is actually doing internally, and perhaps at a later time I may be able to share some further insights on their goals & mission (Which happens to be mine as well!)

Innovation, User Experience & Meet the Developers Labs

It was after that particular lunch I had with my peeps that I decided to change the approach on how to get the most of attending Lotusphere 2008. As you may well know, I am one of those folks who values the most from any conference the actual connecting with people, the knowledge sharing and collaborating going on with them, in short, the learning aspects of meeting folks who you may have known already for a while or, on the contrary, those you have just met. So I decided that instead of attending different breakout sessions for the rest of the afternoon I would be hanging out all over the place meeting people I knew were there or letting serendipity work its magic. And boy, did it do an incredible job or what?!?!

To get things going, I decided to hang out for a few hours at three of the places I knew were going to be a massive success. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the various Labs. I mainly visited the User Experience Lab and the Innovation Lab, and a later time the Meet the Developers Lab. Whooooaaahhhh!! What an exhilarating experience, to say the least!!

To me, all of the Labs were actually quite an amazing experience! Because not only would you be able to hang out with the guys who are driving the hot action in the social computing space at IBM, but you could also share your thoughts and ideas on how those very same tools could be improved further. What a lovely bunch of peeps wanting to listen and learn from their end-users how to get the most out of the tools they are developing! Loved it!

It also gave me the opportunity to meet up some of the people I have been working with remotely for a number of years using rather heavily their social software tools and providing lots of feedback on my overall experience. There is nothing like face to face to do that!!

I am glad as well that with the Innovation Lab being available out there for folks to digest some of the content and tools, I can now share with you folks some more extensive information on the various IBM social software tools I have been using for the last few years. Examples like Beehive (Flagged as IBM’s Corporate Facebook!), Cattail (File-sharing a la Slideshare.net but on steroids!), The Dogear Game & Tag-It! (Bringing gaming into the corporate world to help people understand through games the benefits of social tagging, both on a personal and corporate level), Bluegrass (Bringing virtual worlds into the developers’ world!), Coral (Which nicely integrates concurrent real-time collaboration on documents using Sametime and Lotus Quickr), Speech-to-Text plug-in for Lotus Sametime (Meeting the accessibility needs, but also ideal for generating text transcripts from podcasts which use VoIP), Spectacular! (One of the most impressive approaches towards making online feed reading work rather nicely behind the corporate firewall and now part of my feed reading habits, too!), Atlas (To help visualise your social networks and how they relate to you and how you can tap into their knowledge and expertise to get the job done!), Fringe (And its awesome new release, picking up a few things from Beehive, Spectacular! and Facebook!, along with SONAR) and a whole bunch of other really cool technologies within the space of social computing.

Yes, over the course of the next few days and weeks, and in between here and there, I am actually going to be sharing a number of different blog posts where I will share some further insights on those various social software tools, plus a whole bunch more! That way you would be able to find out where I hang out on a daily basis, at the same time that I will be sharing my experiences on how I am benefiting from social computing @ IBM. Lots to talk about in that area! For sure!

Real – Life Social Networking at its best, team dinner and party at my junior suite room, to avoid all the loud music

Yes, not to worry, it is not the title of one of the speaker sessions, although it could well be. In between hanging out at the different labs meeting all of those people I have been working with for a while, I also got a chance to get together with a bunch of folks (Through Twitter, SMS, phone calls, etc. etc.) who I have been really looking forward to meet up for quite a while!

So, and in no particular order, I got to briefly talk to Bruce Elgort, father of the superbly and nicely done IdeaJam (Whose code, by the way, is now available on its own to be used for other purposes, and not just Lotus products. Nifty!!); Paul Wescott (Vice President Business Development from SocialText); Neil Burston (Technical consultant from Avnet Parner Solutions – whom I incidentally share a good chunk of social networking & KM connections, like Stuart McIntyre and David Gurteen. And we never heard about each other! Doh! … Wish Stuart would have been there, too! heh); Maureen Grey (Who I already met last year in July, but it surely was nice catching up with her again!), Steve Cogan (Who I have met through our internal blogosphere and who I was really looking forward to meeting all along for some time now!); a whole bunch of my new team members (Which you would also be able to find on my Flickr account) and extended social networks from the various business units inside IBM.

However, during that afternoon, there were three major highlights I just cannot ignore and which had a special meaning to me and here is why: The first one was when I had the opportunity to have a couple of beers with Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky and Ross Mayfield (From SocialText) and have a lovely conversation with a bunch of folks who I felt like I knew forever! Yes, indeed, I have been following all three people with their respective blogs for a number of years and I was incredibly jazzed up that I was finally able to meet them up in person! Oh and they are even nicer when you meet them face to face!!

Then a little while later that same afternoon I also got to meet one of the folks I have been following for quite a while  and from whom I have learned quite a bit around the subject of technology, the Internet and social computing (As in Enterprise 2.0) in general. We both knew we were going to be there, so we had to fiddle around with our schedules and from there we actually met up a couple of times and engaged in some really refreshing and enlightening conversations on all the fuss & hype on social software. Quite fascinating! Yes, I finally met David Tebutt!! That was just awesome! One of the major highlights for me for the entire event. Without a doubt! I am now looking up for the opportunity to go to London some time this year to meet up with him, and a whole bunch of other folks I have been promising one of these days I’ll get there! (So many things to do, yet so little time!)

Oh, oh, and talking about another major highlight from the Lotusphere event and where serendipity did another magical job! On Wednesday afternoon and while a super interesting BOFs session on blogging was going on (Hosted by Alan Lepofsky, by the way) I finally got the opportunity to meet up one of what I consider my KM virtual mentors for a good number of years: Jack Vinson. What an amazing human being!!! We had some really good conversations on KM, social computing, his new job, my new job, how we both were on the same city, attending different conferences and being able to meet up in the end, and so on so forth. Incredibly short time together, or it seemed like it, but I think we both felt like we knew each other forever, so it was, again, just like picking up the conversation just from where we left it!!

From there onwards and way into the early evening already, I actually had a scheduled dinner with my new team at a good restaurant nearby where we could just talk with peace and quiet and build further up our social capital skills with one another! That was just fantastic as well! Specially, when a couple of them suggested to continue with team building activities, heh, at my junior suite hotel room with a couple of bottles of wine, a few beers and some snacks. Music playing in the background, up on the 9th floor, with an amazing view, and just enjoying what we all enjoy doing the most: enjoying the conversations! Just pure awesomeness!!

And with that we come to the end of another wonderful day @ Lotusphere. Here you have got some random pictures I took that day as well …

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Communities, Flickr, Photos, Team Building, IBM Software, Twitter, Blogging, Metablogging, Learning, Socialising, Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Enterprise 2.0, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Emerging Technologies, Technology Adoption, Social Computing Ambassadors, Social Computing Evangelists, Innovation, User Experience, Meet the Developers, Labs, Serendipity, Beehive, Cattail, Slideshare, Dogear Game, Dogear, Tag-It!, Bluegrass, Coral, Sametime, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Spectacular!, Atlas, Social Network Analysis, SNA, Social Networks, Fringe, SONAR, Facebook, Bruce Elgort, IdeaJam, Paul Wescott, Neil Burston, Stuart McIntyre, David Gurteen, Maureen Grey, Steve Cogan, Ross Mayfield, SocialText, David Tebutt, Jack Vinson

Oh, and before I forget, since I already knew that both the audio and the presentation materials would be made available for us to check them out at a later time, it also influenced my non-attendance to a number of  sessions, which over the course of the next few weeks I will be convering, hopefully, sharing the download link and some extended commentary. Thus stay tuned for that to come, too!

IBM Lotusphere 2008 – Highlights from Second Day – Monday 21st

I know I was initially supposed to provide some sort of semi-live con-blogging experience at Lotusphere while I was there, but I must say that with all of the excitement of meeting a bunch of the folks I have been hanging online with for a while and also trying to digest some of the super interesting announcements made there, it didn’t give me much  a chance other than to jot down a few thoughts, which I am then converting into highlights for each of the days from the event itself, hoping to expand further on it as time develops further. So here is the first of a long blog posts detailing some of the major highlights I went through and experience during this past week attending what, to me, has been one of the events of the year! No doubt!!

Here is how I saw it and experienced it …

And here we go with the Second Day highlights, well, Day 1, really, of the IBM Lotusphere event in Orlando that I’m attending this week. As you may have seen already, there have been plenty of different blog posts put together already around the different sessions people have been attending already, so I am just going to continue posting what, to me, have been the highlights of this second, well, first day of the event. I’m not going to provide as many detail as you would have expected, having read other blog posts, more than anything else, because yesterday I decided to share my thoughts directly through my twitterings, from the different sessions I attended, and I think it was good enough with that Twitter storm than just putting everything together.

So without much further ado, here you have got some of my highlights from yesterday’s event. I do realise that most of the presentations are going to be shared online already and will probably be coming back and forth to them and link to them accordingly, but here is how my day went yesterday…

LotuSalon session with Ze Frank, Jane McGonigan and Golan Levin

The day started with a new type of session held at Lotusphere for the first time called LotuSalon, where three panelists gave a little bit of an introduction on what they are doing and then time for some intensive Q&A on a wide range of various topics. As you may have seen from the heading the panelists this time where: the one and only, Ze Frank, where he shared some of superb stuff he has been doing over the course of the years. Of course, he talked about The Show and how the Internet is changing the way people participate and engage in different group activities as part of the various communities they associate themselves with.

Then Golan Levin where he was actually showing a number of the different visualisations he has been doing and which are shown at his own Web site. Some amazing stuff going on in there as well. Check out some of the stuff related to sounds, specially. Really worth while to be honest.

And, finally, the third panelist was Jane McGonigan, who was rather inspirational sharing her insights on how the gaming industry is taking over the corporate world in order to help knowledge workers improve the way they share their knowledge, collaborate and socialise. Some really good stuff in there! I twittered quite a bit about it with some really good quotes from her on how games are changing the workforce for the better. May be referring back to them as I get to blog some more, once I find out where the session will be posted online, if it gets posted.

From there onwards, lots of great questions and interactions from the audience, covering topics such as the role of gaming in helping our kids socialise with their peers, how art is being influenced by the Internet into making it much more participative, wonderfully chaotic and rather stimulating. Also commentary was shared on the lack of life from bloggers … heh I’ll let you figure that one out! And from there onwards we came to a close of the session, session that was incredibly energising and inspiring and that got us to a superb start of a busy day.

Main Tent Session with Mike Rhodin and Bob Costas

From there onwards, we got off to a quick break and ready for the main tent session. They were actually two main sessions, one after the other, to accommodate the high expectations from everyone attending and must confess that those expectations were met and big time!! Unbelievable show with a wonderful musical start and with plenty of announcements, demos and major news taking place. I’m going to keep it short on this one, since I have twittered extensively about the entire session, but I can honestly say that there have been some massive announcements that I will be touching base on over the next few days… For the time being check out the Twitter storm on the subject or have a look at Ed Brill‘s & Alan Lepofsky‘s takes on it. Oh, and if there is anything from those announcements that you would want me to cover first, by all means, feel free to drop a comment and will cover them as soon as I possibly can.

Stay tuned for plenty more to come up!! Yes, that is right. One of the things that I will be doing from here onwards is that I will be sharing with you folks some more extensive information details on plenty of the different announcements made. So very shortly you will see me talking about the joint partnership with RIM for the mobile workforce, also IBM and SAP’s joint product development called Atlantic, Notes 8.5 on the Mac (Which I am just about to install over the next few hours and something I have been looking forward to big time!), Notes 8 Composite Applications & the integration with Google gadgets, Lotus Symphony, Sametime 8.0 as we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Sametime IM client, Lotus Foundations, Lotus "Bluehouse", Lotus Mashups, Lotus Connections v2.x, Lotus Quickr, and the list goes on and on and on… Yes, I know, plenty of good stuff for me to talk about!

IBM Adoption of Social Software Booth

After the main tent session and with all of that excitement building up, it was time for me to actually do some work. One of the reasons why I was going to Lotusphere this year was to actually do some booth duty with the rest of my new team talking to various different folks about how IBM is adopting a number of different social software tools, in order to help drive collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation into a new level.

So for a few hours every day all of us spent some time hanging out on that booth sharing our experiences on how we have been using social software, how our teams and communities in the wider IBM are doing it at the moment. Throughout all of this booth time we actually met quite a few people who were not only interested in social software, but actually asking the right questions about it, which is something that I thought incredibly re-energising as it gives a clear message of how more and more companies are starting to embrace social software and, in quite a few examples, rather successfully as well!

This was actually one of the main highlights from the conference event as it gave me the unique opportunity to get to know my colleagues, who are all over at the other side of the pond, but at the same time it helped me get a good overview of where things are with the adoption of social computing in the corporate world. Looking good so far!

Introduction to Web 2.0: Trends in Collaboration, Innovation, and the Changing Workforce with Carol Jones & Christopher Paul

After my booth duty time was finished, and after having had a superb lunch with one of the most impressive, and fastest growing, social computing ambassadors communities, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon attending a couple of speaker sessions. Like I mentioned before, my plan was to attend any of those sessions where social computing and Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 would be part of the main theme. And at this time I had the chance to attend my first one.

And no other than by Carol Jones (IBM Fellow and e-goddess) & Christopher Paul on Web 2.0: Trends in Collaboration, Innovation, and the Changing Workforce. I couldn’t tweet about it quite a lot, since at the time we had a number of different network issues, but I can tell you that it surely was worth it. For those of you who have been reading this blog most of the stuff may have been something you were already familiar with, but for those folks who are still getting into Web 2.0 and try to figure out what the fuss & hype is on social computing it is one of those presentations that certainly helps knowledge workers find out what it’s all about and how to get the most out of it.

In it you would be able to see how popular concepts like blogs, wikis, syndication, social bookmarking, ratings, comments, etc., etc., get mixed with others which are starting to pick up inside of the corporate world, i.e. mashups. Like I said, if you are already familiar with Web 2.0, there may well be not much you would have learned, but if you were new to the whole area of social computing, their presentation was probably as good as it would get. Something like Enterprise 2.0 Basics!

I know that the presentation materials are available for download for those folks attending the event, so it is on a server where folks need to authenticate, so not sure whether I can share it online over here or in Slideshare, but will have a look and see if I can make it available there already. Nevertheless, it was worth it.

Enterprise 2.0: The Future of Enterprise Collaboration is Now with Mike Gotta & Karen Hobert

Right after Carol’s & Chris’ session, there was another one that I surely was looking forward to, way before the event would get started, as one of the speakers is someone I know for quite a while from our blogging activities and I surely took the opportunity to meet them face to face while in there. Yes, I am talking about Mike Gotta (And his colleague Karen Hobert). They did a superb job and as far as I am concerned, it was one of the best sessions from the entire event!

Their presentation was, perhaps, one of the most realistic and straight to the point decks I have seen in months around the subject of Enterprise 2.0 and how the corporate world can start adopting, effectively, social computing. You know, there are folks out there who are very much in favour of Enterprise 2.0, then you have got those others who don’t buy into Enterprise 2.0 as representative enough to change the way things are operating already and then you have got Mike’s & Karen’s session, where they actually tried, and succeeded!, in providing a link, a bridge, between both groups and show in a critical, but constructive manner, how realistic Enterprise 2.0 is and how most companies can get things going.

Like I said, one of my favourite sessions from the entire event and a session that I am surely going to talk about separately, as soon as I can get hold of the slide deck and can share it as well separately. I know that Mike was ok with me sharing the deck, so expect to have it over here shortly. Oh, one other thing you are going to enjoy from that slide deck is how Mike & Karen have provided a really good bunch of tips and techniques on how to adopt successfully within the corporate firewall a number of social software tools: blogs, social bookmarks, syndication feeds, wikis, social networking sites, etc.

At the same time they spent some time talking about the different challenges that Enterprise 2.0 faces and how you can overcome them with a good set of recommendations they shared with us all during the course of one hour. Like I said, indispensable and highly recommended, to say the least! And not to worry, you will get your hands on it shortly, too!

JAMfest

From there onwards we got ready to enjoy the rest of the evening taking part of JAMfest, one of those events that will surely get your feet going for quite a while and make jamming worth it all the way! As you may have noticed already, I took several pictures of the various sessions and events I attended today and some of the folks I got to know during the course of this day and in the spirit of sharing I have scattered around a number of them in this blog post with some of those highlights as well.

Finally, I guess if I were to mention a single highlight from that particular day I think it would have been the networking I surely engaged with from various folks I have been following for a while and whom I finally got the opportunity to meet up and share some more stuff in real life! I have said this many many more times, if there is anything that surely makes it worth while going to whatever event, it’s got to be the networking part of it. And in this particular case it does apply as well to myself and the wonderful day I spent hanging out with the usual suspects, yes, you know who you are. heh

Not going to mention any of them, just in case someone may get offended for not being mentioned! But suffice to say that in my Flickr stream for Lotusphere 2008 you will be able to see who they are. As time goes along I will be annotating each of the pictures and adding some tags. For the time being here you have got some more from that Monday 22nd! As you can see, a day not to forget not only because attending the first day of what it then became a wonderful event, but also because I had finally got the opportunity to meet up and hang out with some of the folks I’ve been wanting to learn some more from all along! Here is to another exciting day the morning afterwards …

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Communities, Flickr, Photos, Team Building, IBM Software, Ze Frank, Twitter, Blogging, Metablogging, Learning, Jane McGonigan, Golan Levin, Games, Visualisations, Gaming, Socialising, LotuSalon, Mike Rhodin, Bob Costas, Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, SAP, Atlantic, Notes 8.5, Lotus Notes, Mac, Apple, Beta, Lotus Symphony, Symphony, Lotus Foundations, Foundations, Lotus "Bluehouse", "Bluehouse", Lotus Mashups, Mashups, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Carol Jones, e-goddess, Christopher Paul, Innovation, Workforce, Mike Gotta, Karen Hobert, Enterprise 2.0, Adoption, Emerging Technologies, JAMfest

Back from IBM Lotusphere and Celebrating 11 Years at IBM!

After 27 hours in transit, I am, finally, home! Yes, that is right, after over a day of travelling I am now back, coming from one of the best conference events I have ever been to in my short career in the IT world: Lotusphere 2008!!! What a blast, indeed, folks! I mean, I had very very high expectations and everything about the whole event, after having talked to different people about it for quite a while, but this past week has been just incredible! So much so that on the way back I just couldn’t help thinking about the great time I had, the awesomeness from all of the folks I met while in there and the incredible amount of stuff I learnt all along. And all that probably helped me enjoy those 27 hours of travelling back since it didn’t feel like I would be too tired. Yes, I am sure, it was the excitement kicking in!

Anyway, you would remember how last blog post I put together over here was detailing a little bit on the highlights from the first day of Lotusphere, Sunday 19th. From there onwards things just went incredibly busy and massively hectic and just didn’t have much time to update the blog. Instead, as you would all imagine, I decided to dedicate my time to one of the activities I like the most about conferences: networking. And that’s what I did! And big time! Oh and plenty of twittering as well! Yes, I realise that I didn’t have a chance to say "Hi!" to a whole bunch of folks I would have wanted it to, but it surely was a good start to put together a face and a voice to those folks I have been reading or connecting virtually with for quite some time now! Priceless!! Hanging out with various different folks till the early hours of the morning, closing the bar brings back lots of good memories from previous conference events I may have attended.

Anyway, I am now back home already for a few hours and while I am trying to keep myself awake, since I don’t want to just get to bed too soon, I am starting to wade through various different blog posts I’ll be putting together about the Lotusphere event itself. Pretty much along the very same lines as the highlights entry I mentioned earlier on, so you can expect over the next day or so about four long blog posts on the subject. Then from there onwards, there is just so much I would want to talk about and mention over here from what I saw / talked about while in there, that I am probably going to spend a few days sharing further insights with regards to some of the incredibly exciting announcements that went live while in there! I am hoping that would be all right with you folks, if you see that over the next few days I may be talking a bit far too much on such IBM event, but I think it’s worth it.

Oh, and talking about announcements, I just realised that, while I was at Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando, I made one of those huge achievements that I never thought would have been possible. Yes, that is right. For someone who studied to become an English teacher it’s funny to think that earlier on this week, on the 20th of January 2008, I actually made 11 years working for IBM!! Wooohooo!! That is just huge!

That’s right! I started working for IBM in a contractor company back in 1997 and supporting the mainframe for the UK. Then from there onwards I managed to get into the training department from the overall project, and from there moving forward into Knowledge Management and Social Computing spaces. Till now. Quite an experience, I tell you! And fast forward to today, 11 years and still going strong!

With all of the stuff that was going on during the event I even forgot about my own IBM anniversary and didn’t blog about it. So, now that I have got a few minutes and in order to help me stay awake, here I am putting together these lines to wish me another 11 years of good and exciting work doing the stuff I have been enjoying for the last few years! KM, Collaboration, Communities, Learning and Social Computing!!

Of course, regular blogging activities will resume for this particular blog shortly, once I am done with my mail backlog, or, and stay tuned, because I’m also preparing an entry on how I am going to get rid of e-mail in 2008 to share my knowledge and collaborate with other folks using social software tools… But that’s a story for another blog post…

(It’s good to be back again!)

Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Events, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Networking, Twitter, Learning, Communities, Anniversary