If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would remember how there have been a few times a couple of different conference events around the subject of social computing and knowledge sharing that always seem to have slipped through my fingers and in the end I couldn’t make it to either of them. Well, this year, it looks like the trend is changing a bit, at least, partially.

Yes, that is right. It looks like this year I am finally going to be able to make it to one of the conferences I have been looking forward to for a long while: The Enterprise 2.0 Conference - Lead the Evolution, In Boston June 2008. Finally!! As the time goes by, I’ll certainly be blogging a whole lot more about it. No doubt, since it is probably as good as it gets to talk and deal with various different topics around the subject of Enterprise 2.0.

However, there is one other conference event that I have been interested in attending for a little while ago and that time and time again, I never manage to be able to make it! And that is the one organised by the folks over at Unicom called Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business, which this year is going to be held in London - March 5th to 6th 2008.

Once again, the timing for me is the wrong one, but it surely is one of those interesting events that, if you are around, you cannot miss! You would be able to find some more details about it over here, as well as under the Programme & Schedule. In this particular occasion the topics are rather spot on on what I would love to talk about for hours and hours and hours (i.e. Social Tools Hit the Mainstream; Social Computing and the Knowledgepowered Enterprise; Facilitating Open Innovation in a Distributed Community Using Free Social Software Tools; Technology Brings Power to the People; How we got here with Web 2.0; KM goes Social: From KM 1.0 to KM2.0; Case Study: Deploying, Measuring, Succeeding with Social Software, etc.).

But if there would be anything that would be of interest to me as well, it would actually be the folks who are initially going there and who will be presenting. What a fine line-up! David Gurteen, Ian Hughes, Ian McNairn, Lee Bryant, John Davies, etc. are some of the folks who would be there and although I have been following most of them for quite a while, it would surely be rather nice to be able to make it and catch up with them in person!

Alas, I guess that will have to be at another time, because, like I said, the timing has been rather bad for me once again and I will not be able to make it, but if you are planning on going, don’t hesitate to let us all know about it and, much more importantly, share your insights with us through your blog(s)! I am sure we would be able to learn a thing or two from such a fantastic bunch of speakers! Sigh … Suppose it will be another time…

Are you going to be in London from the 5th to the 6th of March 2008 and don’t have any plans? Well, not to worry, here is a blog post where I am sharing the details from a very interesting conference happening during that time: "Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business". Wish I would be able to go …

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, KM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Communities, Learning, Unicom, London, KM Events, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, Boston, David Gurteen, Ian Hughes, Ian McNairn, Lee Bryant, John Davies

I am sure you would remember the lengthy (Hopefully insighful, too!) blog posts I put together with some of the highlights from the IBM Lotusphere 2008 I attended a couple of weeks back, right? Well, here is something for you that will make things shorter this time around… The IBM Lotusphere 2008 Opening General Session … in 60 Seconds (heh):

Ha! That puts to shame all of the twittering I did all along throughout that session!! Too funny! Next time I will save you all of that hassle and point you to the afterwards shorter video version of it

Tags: IBM, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Opening General Session, OGS, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Communities, Social Media, Learning, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Notes 8, Domino 8, iPhone, Apple, Mac, Notes 8.5 Beta, Atlantic, Lotus Sametime, Sametime Advanced, Lotus Symphony, Lotus Foundations, Lotus "Bluehouse", Lotus Mashups, WebSphere Portal, Atlas, Social Networks, Lotus Connections, Connections

For a good number of months I have always been a big fan from Stewart Mader, author of the fine Blog on Wiki Patterns, and who recently published Wikipatterns (A book I just managed to get my hands on and which I will start reading shortly - so review coming up soon as well!), where he gets to put together a how-to guide for growing wiki use in organisations with practical advice and plenty of helpful tips!! Now, I have never met Stewart face to face, and I am surely hoping to be able to do so at some point soon. However, having read through his blog for so long, I do feel like I know him for a little while now and realise that he has always been on to something really amazing: spreading the word on how you can make effective use of wikis within organisations in order to improve knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst knowledge workers.

And he is at it again, folks! If you head over to Blog on Wiki Patterns, he has just gotten started with a series of blog posts that are surely going to get plenty of attention, specially from those folks who may be wanting to know more on how they can deploy wikis within their businesses.

Yes, indeed, check out 21 Days of Wiki Adoption, where over the course of 21 days Stewart will get together a number of videocasts, where he would be sharing with us all plenty of helpful tips on how to deploy successfully wikis within the enterprise. Just brilliant!

I have always been a big fan of wikis, for a good number of years I have been contributing to various different online wiki spaces and even though I have been involved with them for a long while now, must say that he has already gotten himself into a very solid, helpful, educational and enlightening start, with an Intro episode on what the series would cover, along with what to expect and what you will learn out it. Very informative! From there onwards, the couple of videos he has shared already will grab your attention just as much, if not more! The one on Day 1: Grassroots is Best is just superb and so spot on!! Talking about the damage that command-and-control has been having throughout all of these years and how grassroots efforts and wiki evangelising will eventually get you there!

But it gets better. Check out Day 2: Wiki vs. Email! WOW! Did I enjoy that episode or what?!?! The entire episode reminded me quite strongly of the vodcast / screencast "Wikis in Plain Englis" by Sachi & Lee LeFever. Very simple, very effective, straight to the point on why e-mail may potentially be a good communication tool, but an incredibly lousy collaborative one! Worth while watching to say the least! And stay tuned because very shortly I am going to expand further myself on that one sharing with you my new approach to work related e-mail. Those who know me for a while now would love it… The other ones would probably want me to be fired!! Stay tuned…

So there you have it. If you don’t have anything better to do over the next 21 days stay tuned and check out Stewart Mader’s series on 21 Days of Wiki Adoption. I bet, I know, I am sure of it, that after watching through the entire show with the different episodes, you would be more than ready to start deploying those wikis within your organisation. And if not time will tell… Get ready to learn some more tips from Stewart on wiki adoption and let’s keep spreading the word around! Wikis are here to stay and whether people like it or not, knowledge workers do have a say on how they would want to collaborate and share their knowledge. And probably wikis are as good as it gets!

(Oh, and just like Martin Koser has been mentioning over at his blog post on the topic, over the next few days I am going to probably link to those videos that Stewart would be putting together where I can help contribute into the overall conversation, so this would not be the last time that I actually get to talk about it…)

Tags: Wikis, Wiki Adoption, Stewart Mader, Wiki Patterns, Wikipatterns, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Learning, Innovation, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Vodcasts, Videocasts, Screencasts, Grassroots, Wiki Evangelising, Early Adopters, Emerging Technologies, E-Mail, Communication, Plain English, Sachi LeFever, Lee LeFever, Martin Koser, Frogpond

Today has been one of those days where my regular social networking activities in general have been rather light and slow, more than anything else because of a rather hectic day with meetings and conference calls, along with one other special event I was invited to participate in and which I couldn’t ignore just like that. One of my fellow IBM colleagues came to me a few weeks back and asked me whether it would be possible for me to come and participate today in a special community event, as one of the speakers, where I could spend around 30 minutes talking about communities and the impact of social computing in helping improve collaboration and knowledge sharing to bring innovation into a new level. And all of that through those very same communities.

Like I said, I just couldn’t turned down such an offer and decided to block my calendar for a good chunk of the afternoon to ensure I was all prepared and ready to go. This was a special event on its own as we had a full agenda with various different topics and taking place not only in real life, through a standard audio conference, but also in one of the most popular virtual worlds around: Second Life.

Yes, that is right. To me, it was the first time I was ever on a Second Life virtual event at the same time that it was conducted through the traditional teleconference. More than anything else to try to accommodate the high demand from an extensive list of participants. And on top of that a few Instant Messaging chats going on. In short, multi-tasking took a new form for me today! And I loved it!

During the course of 30 minutes I actually shared with the audience some of the reasons as to why social computing is shifting the way we connect and collaborate in communities. We are no longer working with smaller teams in a same location. Quite the opposite. Most of us are all distributed not only within the same country, but also within the same geographies and timezones, which makes it a bit more difficult to connect and collaborate than ever before. This is one of the reasons why communities and their usage of social software is very important. If not crucial.

At the same time I mentioned how through the usage of social networking communities have got the opportunity to bring forward conversations that will help share informal knowledge, i.e. the know-how, the tacit knowledge most community members have, in such a way that knowledge that before was not being captured, now has got the perfect chance of being spread around and shared across the board. And all of that thanks to social software!

From there onwards I mention how perhaps one of the most key and fundamental success factors from the adoption of social software by communities is how they help knowledge workers build up their skills and trust levels in such a way that people get to share more with those who they trust (We have always been doing / saying that!), which means that one of the strongest selling points from social computing is actually its capability of helping you, and your community members, enrich and empower your social capital skills, perhaps one of the most neglected areas from Knowledge Management for the last 10 years!

And, finally, in the last few minutes of the conversation I shared a few tips on how to get started from a community perspective with the adoption of social software, going from starting small pilots, helping community members try and test out a number of different tools, after providing some training, education and facilitation, and getting a critical mass of early adopters figuring out which one(s) the community is going to stick around with for a while.

We did have the chance to go through some Q&A with some interesting comments, and from there onwards, now that the keynote speaker and speaker sessions were done, we all wandered off to a good number of poster sessions that were very much related to communities and community building activities in general.

And from there onwards, given the special occasion we were all celebrating the organisers of the event decided to throw together a lovely Mardi Grass party where we could all hang out, have a (Virtual) drink or two, with plenty of dancing with various types of music, and some lovely conversations. Just like in real life! What a better way of spending our time in improving our social capital skills than hanging out at the party!! Look at that, as a result of today’s event and the party afterwards, I am going to be involved with a couple of communities providing them with some extensively education and resources on various social computing tools.

Ha! And then they say there isn’t value in using social networking and virtual worlds in a business environment to help drive new revenue. Well, you may need to think again…

Either way, I just wanted to share with you now some some of the photos that were taken during the Mardi Grass party. There were plenty more, but I just couldn’t get the heads up to share them over here just yet. But from those that I could, I have already uploaded the pictures into my Flickr account:

I told you, I mentioned a little while ago I was going to become much more active this year around the virtual worlds space, mainly Second Life, and all along I knew there was a reason. Today I saw it. Today I saw the way community members can connect with one another much easier and establish the right level of conversations and get to know one another and trust each other to collaborate and share their knowledge more with one another. And all that thanks to virtual worlds, like Second Life! … Social computing at its best!

Tags: IBM, Communities, Learning, Collaboration, Social Computing, Social Learning, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Software, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Virtual Worlds, Second Life, Mardi Grass, Party, Social Capital, Trust, Flickr, Remote Collaboration, Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Know-How, Business Value

Over the last few days you would remember how I have been putting together a number of different blog posts to detail what have been some of the major highlights I have gone through while attending IBM’s Lotusphere 2008 event: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5. Overall the experience has been incredible, to say the least! Weeks before going there I had a huge amount of very high expectations from hearing and reading all over the place what kind of a special event it surely was, and as time got closer to the final date, my excitement grew likewise as well!

I attended some really good keynote and speaker sessions, hanged about at the Innovation, User Experience and Meet the Developers Labs, met a whole bunch of new folks and, much more importantly, I got to meet up with a whole bunch of good old friends with whom I have been spending a good amount of time nurturing our relationships within various social networking tools. And, of course, we had plenty of good fun with whatever other activities were planned throughout the entire event.

It was a remarkably wonderful experience to be able to connect with those folks, meet some new, brilliant and talented people very passionate about social computing in general and Enterprise 2.0, in particular, although most of them didn’t realise about it (Which is a good thing!) and also I had the unique opportunity to meet up on site my entire new team, where I am the only one working overseas. Just brilliant!!

However, as I got back and started to get immersed into reading more and more what actually happened throughout the event I realised that I should prepare better for next year’s, so that I have got the chance to improve the overall experience from the blast it’s been this year so far. Thus with that spirit, here you have got 10 things I would be working on differently over the next few months to help me prepare for Lotusphere 2009!

1. Plan ahead better which sessions I’d be attending: That basically means getting my hands on the super nifty Notes database put together by the Genii Software folks as soon as I possibly can, so that I can peek through those various presentations I’d be interested in ahead of time. There were so many great sessions put together that one had the constant feeling of having missed something! (Thank goodness, most of the decks are available online for download / replay!)

2. Ensure at all costs I got the hotel room booked at The Swan Hotel in Orlando: That worked out beautifully this year, so I need to ensure I am registered soon enough to book myself for the same hotel.

3. Perhaps go with some carry-on luggage instead of the regular suitcase: Yes, indeed, I am not ready to lose, yet again, my luggage just before getting there! It’s happened a couple of times already, not willing to let it go once more!

4. Get easy on late nights and alcohol: Yeah, I know, I said that! This year I basically missed all of the BOFs sessions in the morning, because there was no way I was going to get up at 6am to attend one of them at 7am. It’s just not going to happen! Perhaps they should move them towards the end of the day … hint, hint, and let us get some good night sleep!!

5. Be prepared to walk & take an extra pair of shoes: Stuart McIntyre, from Collaboration Matters, mentioned to me in a Skype conversation, before just heading to Lotusphere 2008, that I should go and listen to The Taking Notes Podcast’s episode #74, as I was bound to find everything I needed to enjoy the event as a first time attendee. Of course, I listened to the fine show put together and one of the comments was that every day we would be walking quite a bit in between hotels, sessions, Labs, evening activities, etc. etc. Well, that is just so true! I literally burnt out a pair of shoes just from walking!! (Thank goodness I always take a spare one with me!)

6. Hang out more at the bar(s): Like usual, and this is something I have learned over time myself, all of the best social networking is just happening right there, right then: The bar(s)!! And there are plenty of them, so I need to go to them much more often than what I already did this year! I know, hard to combine with #4!!

7. Trust the network more: IBM’s Lotusphere 2008 has probably been the first one, from all of the different IBM and non-IBM conferences,  I have attended where the wireless network has just been amazingly brilliant and reliable throughout the entire event, even when it was all finished and done with! I need to make a conscious effort to do some more live con-blogging, twittering, shooting photos / videos, etc. etc. The network will be just fine!!

8. Walk even more than this year: Not only would it prove to be a very very healthy activity, but it would also give me the opportunity to check out more extensively the fantastic Product Case area where lots of the hottest action was happening! Yeah, can you believe that I only returned with one (Not lousy!) t-shirt?!?!? Yes, I know. Sad

9. Talk to more people: Well, I guess I can’t have enough of it, can I? To me, it’s what makes every single event a great success!! Meeting new people who you may share a passion with for whatever the subject, introduce yourself to most of them (Even if you do not know them!), show off with one of your lovely MOO cards, and start talking! Believe me, in my experience this year, people are very willing to find out more about who you are, what you do and what brought you to Lotusphere … and bingo! A new connection has been born! Time then to nurture it!

10. And, finally, my favourite tip for next year; Let serendipity do its magic; Over and over again! Serendipity is a wonderful thing, we all know that, but you would be amazed at the huge volume of really stunning conversations I had throughout the conference event due to one or another of those serendipitous encounters. I am surely going to let it do its magic much more often than what actually happen this year?

How? Well, walk, walk, walk and walk all over the place!! That’s how I met the folks I wanted to meet up with in the first place. And I only got to see about half of them!! So next year I need to walk twice as much as this year so that I can keep bumping into several folks I would really want to meet up with, but also letting that magic work for those folks who I don’t know anything about just yet and who are just waiting to make that connection. Like I said, let serendipity do its magic. After all, it’s just the perfect place, don’t you think?

Well, that would be it, folks. That’s the final blog post from my reviews of one of the most superb events I have ever attended. Ever! I mean it. I am surely looking forward to next year’s and put into practice all of the tips I have mentioned above. But how about you? If you were there this year, what would be your tip(s) for next year? What would you do different next year to enjoy the overall experience ever so much more? Tell us … We are all ears!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Communities, Social Media, Learning, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, User Experience, Meet the Developers, Labs, Emerging-Technologies, Genii Software, Lotusphere2009, Tips, Orlando, The Swan Hotel, Luggage, Suitcase, Travelling, Stuart McIntyre, Collaboration Matters, The Taking Notes Podcast, Bars, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, BOFs, MOO Cards, MOO, Serendipity, Magic

Remember when not long ago I created a blog post where I was mentioning that one of the things I was really looking forward to from the IBM Lotusphere 2008 event was getting my hands on the new Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta for the Mac? Well, things have moved on from the time where I was mentioning I was having a couple of issues with it and over the weekend I have just managed to fix them by simply doing a replace of the mail file template with the latest release of the v8 mail file template. And now… it works!!

Actually, it rocks, because, as you would be able to see from the screen shot, I have reached Inbox zero on top of it and it surely looks rather nice being able to play with a very solid release, even though it is still beta, and getting rid of all of the e-mail that may have come over the weekend. Oh, and at the same time check out some of the nifty features that are coming along, like the embedded RSS / Atom feed reader client that, although simplistic, it sees to be the only one keeping up with the heavy update of Web sites like Twitter.

W00t!! Yes, indeed, can you imagine? My mail box running hand in hand next to my Twitter feed? How cool is that? And that is just the beginning, because I am surely going to enjoy this beta release before we move into the next one. First, time now to explore all of the different capabilities, like installing plugins, hacking the Welcome / Home page, etc. etc.

Who said that Mondays couldn’t be fun? Well, mine is so far…

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Notes, Notes 8, Notes 8.5, Notes 8.5 Beta, Mac, MacBook Pro, Apple, Notes Client, Productivity Tools, Performance, Eclipse, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Twitter, Syndication, Inbox Zero