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

Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on First Three Weeks

As most of you folks out there may already know by now, specially if you had a chance to read the blog post I created about this topic about two weeks ago, this has been my third week without e-mail at work! Well, not entirely accurate, people still keep sending me e-mails and everything, but instead of me going ahead and replying to each and everyone of them, I don’t. I go out there into IBM’s various social computing spaces and provide the answers over there to them (And to the wider IBM as well as a result of that!), with the final outcome that they know from there onwards where they can go to get a much faster response from me. And e-mail is not it!

To all this, you may remember that I only apply a single exception, which is when people send me an e-mail that may well be of a very sensitive nature, i.e. confidential material, or a private one-on-one conversation. The rest is going out elsewhere… i.e. on to social software tools!

I haven’t been blogging much over here on my actual progress report on how I am doing, whereas in my corporate blog I have been sharing, at least, one or two blog posts a week, so I thought I would break that over here and start sharing with you folks my progress. At least, with a weekly blog post, so that over time, and, over the course of the next few months, you would be able to find out how things are going.

Earlier on this week, I got contacted via IM at work by a couple of folks who thought I would not be able to pull it off together for so long and that eventually I would be giving in to it. And to that my answer has been that today is the end of the third week and I am still going strong. When I decided to take the plunge and make this bold move, I knew one thing for sure: there is no way back! Ever onwards!

Thus, on to the third week, and here is a screen shot with the progress report:

As you would be able to see what it once was 30 to 45 e-mails a day, now has turned into 39 e-mails a week!! And this just on the third week of trying it out! Over time I am expecting to keep this number going lower and lower and in the end try to re-purpose how I use e-mail at work, i.e. basically what it was first initially intended for: a one on one conversation / communication instrument. For the rest bring on the open, public conversation into whatever IBM’s social computing tool we both may be sharing!!

And you know the weirdest part of it all? Well, you are not going to believe it, but subconsciously I am starting to apply the same principles to my external e-mail in how I handle every single incoming e-mail and so far it is going great! I am starting to see a reduction in there as well. Not as drastic, but still very relevant and noteworthy. We shall see how it evolves further.

One thing for sure, is that I am getting a kick out of it, because by bringing the conversation out in the open and collaboratively work with my social networks to get the job done, I feel like I am contributing ever so much more to the overall social computing space and I guess that for a social software evangelist that is not a bad thing … is it?

Have a good one, everyone!!

(Oh, and now that I am done with various deadlines I had to finish off this week, and seeing what a long weekend I have got ahead of me as I am starting to prepare to go to Zürich on Sunday, I shall be getting back to the blog posts where a couple of folks have been sharing some further comments and will keep adding further into the overall conversation. See you there!)

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Progress Reports, Confidentiality, Privacy, Private Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0

A Conversation about Project Management and Social Media by Dennis McDonald

Are you a big fan of Project Management? Are you into Social Media / Computing? Do you have a keen interest to figure out some more the kind of impact that Social Media is having in the traditional Project Management area? Would you want to be very knowledgeable on how social computing is transforming as well the world of Project Management and with very little effort from your side? Then walk no further than this blog post.

A few days ago, just about as I went into hiding mode trying to finish off a number of slide decks that I will be using for upcoming conference events I will be attending in the next few weeks, my good friend, Dennis McDonald, contacted me through Facebook telling me about some the stuff that he has been doing lately on evaluating the impact that Social Media has been having, and still has, within Project Management.

Back then he asked me whether I knew if there would be any folks out there from within the PM world interested in some of the stuff he was doing, as he wanted to open up the conversations some more and get plenty more dialogue going from one area that has fascinated him for a quite a bit lately: Project Management & Social Media walking hand in hand.

Of course, I had to chime in and help him reach out further. I know that a few of my regular readers over here are rather state of the art Project Managers with a keen interest in exploring further what the role may well be from Social Computing within their area of expertise, so the least I could do was to act a little bit of a connector and get you folks on to some very interesting, enlightening and thought-provoking materials that Dennis has been putting together quite nicely in a single one page of summaries and links to in-depth articles.

So it is with great pleasure that I am putting together these words to point to some fascinating that Dennis has been working on for a while under A Conversation about Project Management and Social Media. In there you will be able to find 10 very resourceful links on multiple various topics touching in these two areas of PM and social computing. Like I said, you could surely get over there and find out some more on making the connection between these two. I am sure that titles like "There Is No One Project Management Tool to Rule Them All", "Re-Imagine Project Management", "Tools of Communication in Project Management" or even "What Do We Mean by "Social Media"?" will surely grab your attention and perhaps even get you going to reach out and establish a networking connection with Dennis.

By all means, go ahead and do that! That’s the whole point of this blog post. Spreading the message, get some more conversations going and help Dennis find out some more how social media is changing the way you are doing Project Management. I bet you would have a bunch of fascinating stories to share! So why not?

Tags: Project Management, PM, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Dennis McDonald, Conversations, Dialogue, Connector, PM 2.0, Project Management 2.0

Light Blogging Week Thus Far…

My goodness!! What a week! And it is just Wednesday!! I am surely looking forward to the weekend! Hummm, did I say that it is just Wednesday?!? Can’t wait for it soon enough!! As you may have noticed, over the last couple of days, I have been doing a little bit of light blogging here in my external blogs, more than anything else because of how incredibly busy I have been with multiple projects whose deadlines are coming to a close this week. Phew! (Now you know why I am looking forward to the weekend!).

Between preparing a bunch of presentations for other folks and for myself on social computing for upcoming events I will be doing in all over the place (check out my Dopplr account for more details on where I plan to be over the next few weeks), and also putting together a bunch of enablement materials on various IBM social software tools for the team I am working with, things have been rather hectic, to put it mildly. On top of that, more and more people keep asking me to come over and present for them on social computing and explain some of the stuff that is going on at IBM in that regard, so kind of ensuring that I don’t mix up with those various invitations. That’s also taking a bit of time, for sure. Phew!

But, but, … but … I am surely loving it! I am enjoying it quite a bit because for the first time in several years that I have been doing lots of stuff around the subject of social computing, this time around the focus, the commitment, the energy to share that passion on social software all over the place is finding its way around and people keep asking about it and how they can engage themselves with it! And that, folks, is way cool! I have been saying this for a little while now, but the expectations that I had for this new job have actually exceeded all what I had in mind four months ago and ever so much more!! It is just fascinating!! I mentioned back then I was coming into my dream job and so far it hasn’t fallen short from that perception!

I am not too worried about the fact that it is taking me more and more of my time along with it, since I am thoroughly enjoying it thus far and that is what I always wanted in the first place for the last five years! I know that my regular blogging activities will be coming back shortly, too!

Apart from that, I am also enjoying my fight against my work e-mail and making some really good progress there. Still going strong! I know that I owe you folks out there a couple of blog posts on how things are going, and those will be coming up shortly. But for now, I just thought I would share a couple of comments in here to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you . Just been a bit too hectic and that regular blogging will resume shortly with a whole bunch of stuff I want to share across not only from what I am getting exposed to, but also what I am seeing in the space of social computing in general and something major that will be happening to me in a couple of months that is going to change my life for good! Yes, it is that good! But you will have to wait till it becomes official … (Hint, hint, I already mentioned what it would be about a little while ago in Twitter). Yeah, I know, … a bit nasty! heh

But that will keep you busy trying to figure it out while I get back to normal over here and start putting together some more content on what drives my passion at the moment:

 Social Computing & Knowledge Sharing. Knowledge Sharing & Social Computing!

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Weblogging, Light Blogging, Dopplr, IBM, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Remote Collaboration, Dream Job, Progress Report, Life, Work, Hectic, Twitter, Passion, Commitment, Energy, Efforts, Focus