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

Gran Canaria – Roque Bentaiga (Up in the Mountains) – Part II

Today has been one of those days where I should have probably taken the day off, seeing how busy things have been going from one meeting to the other and from one conference call to the next. Yuk!! Not the best way to spend what was starting, early in the morning, as a very productive day. And all of that because of me being a bit lenient with how I process meetings and conference calls for the last few months. That would teach me for the next time!! Perhaps now that I have been reporting on a weekly basis how I am processing work related e-mail I should go ahead as well and share with you folks how I eventually get to work with my weekly meetings. Quite an interesting approach, I can tell you, but that would be the subject for another upcoming blog post.

As you can imagine, my brain has got very few brain cells working properly after such an intensive day of meetings and the usual catchup afterwards (Thank goodness for e-mails not being one of the things to catch up with! heh), so I decided to create this entry with some light blogging to pick up the subject I initiated nearly a week ago, and which I mentioned I would eventually get to share with you every now and then. Yes, I am talking about the weekly blog post on Gran Canaria, the place where I have lived for the last four years, the place that keeps captivating me day in day out. No exceptions!

If last week I created a blog post where I shared some footage from a couple of recent video clips I recorded with my super fine Nokia N95 (Glad to know as well I am not the only one who thinks it is a really good experience!), here I am at it again, sharing the third video I recorded while nearly the very top of Roque Bentaiga, but this time around from the other side of the enclave. With quite a view, I can assure you!

If there would be one single word that I could make use of to describe such amazingly beautiful spot it would be humbling. And very much so! It’s just like time disappears, it is just you, up there, in the mountains, with hardly anybody around, facing the rock, your inner thoughts, your fears, your hopes, yourself and nature. Yes, I know, it probably cannot get better than that!

It is in days like today that I wish I had taken the day off and head over there to spend the day and disconnect from everything! It would have helped quite a bit get a new perspective on most things and I know that when coming back that sensation of peace and quiet is something that would make you feel fully re-energised and ready to go back at it! That kind of experience is Roque Bentaiga, folks. One of my favourite places in Gran Canaria to meditate, to forget about the world, to stop, breathe, relax, breathe again, and go back at it!

And you know, the best part of it all is that it is incredibly easy to reach out and access with very good roads all the way before you reach the bottom and start climbing up to the top. Yes, one of those special landmarks that even the lazy ones in all of us with our sedentary lives cannot deny going for …

So, yes, light blogging today, folks, but after watching the video (Yes, I still need to get the hangout of operating with the video camera! Not to worry, it will get better overtime!), you would understand why I put together this entry to help me escape the day that is just about to finish …

And with that, and without much further ado, here is the weekly video:

Roque Bentaiga – Part III

Technical and Strategic Insight on the Present and Future of the ibm.com Website

If a few days ago I was actually creating a blog post over here recommending folks to subscribe to the fine blog from Gia Lyons to get to find out some more about Lotus Connections and social computing for the enterprise (Amongst many other things!), here I am at it again, about to recommend a superb blog that has just made it outside of the IBM firewall and which I am sure would grab people’s attention, specially those folks interested in finding out some more about what IBM is doing with regards to social media experience on the ibm.com Web sites.

Remember the other blog post I put together as well not long ago on SMT’s IBM Case Study – From Employees to Members: IBM Connects With Social Media? Well, this particular blog I am going to be sharing over here next would go pretty much along the lines of some of the stuff you will see on that very same case study on how IBM is embracing social computing on the external ibm.com sites.

Yes, that is right! Check out Technical and Strategic Insight on the Present and Future of the ibm.com Website to get a glimpse of what I am talking about here. I am sure that the first thing you are going to say is "What a long long name for a blog! Goodness!" and you would be right. It is also a bit too long for my taste, but if you go beyond that and if you check out some of the already existing blog posts, you would agree with me that this is one of those blogs that you will be subscribed to, if you are into social media and what large enterprises like IBM are doing. Here is an excerpt of what the blog is about:

"Insights from the ibm.com team; a diverse group of people with a unique depth and breadth of experience in developing and managing a complex large enterprise site. The team will address many of the technical and managerial challenges associated with running such a large and complex website; focusing on the innovative solutions the team has or will be deploying. Topics covered will be diverse, ranging from asynchronous java and security to innovation in Agile and website accessibility."

With that introduction I bet a bunch of folks out there would be interested in syndicating its content. The good thing is that I know a couple of folks behind the actual blog and I can certainly share with you the kind of outstanding quality you are going to find there! Right now you will be able to find the names and positions held within IBM from each of the bloggers and a way to interact with them if you would want to add comments to their own blog posts.

Thus without much further ado, here is the first of many blog posts that I am sure you would find pretty interesting and engaging, to say the least: Test environments on the enterprise web. Drop by, say "Hi!" and get some dialogue going! It surely promises to be an interesting one! And me? What can I say? … Already subscribed!

Tags: IBM, Lotus Connections, Connections, Gia Lyons, ibm.com, SMT, Social Media Collective, Case Study, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, New Media, Metablogging, Blogging, Blogroll, Recommendations, Social Software Adoption, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Innovation

Vacation eMail Page

Last week, in a very interesting and enlightening blog post, Ross Mayfield, Chairman, President & Co-founder of Socialtext, and who I had the great pleasure of meeting up in person while in Lotusphere 2008, mentioned how he is taking a very provocative turn into expanding further with his adoption of wikis in the corporate world, not only to enhance the overall knowledge sharing and collaboration experiences, but also as a way to try to escape e-mail. And in so doing it by making use of his Out of Office (Or auto-responder) indicating folks how to best reach out to him, while he is away. And he does it via a wiki, of course!

What an AWESOME idea!!! Just brilliant! For someone like myself who is also trying to divert some of those different public conversations coming through e-mail, this is perhaps one of the best tips I can think of in my on-going fight against such work related e-mail. My immediate team is currently making use of a wiki, so you probably know where I am going to create my Vacation Message Page. I seriously think that this could be one amazing idea worth while exploring and I am surely going to try it out. Go into my team’s wiki, create a specific page for Vacation Messages and encourage everyone in my team and, through my Out of Office message, everyone else to come over and share what they would want to get my attention on when I am back.

No more e-mails. No more e-mail quotas exceeded. No more stress having to sort out hundreds of e-mails. No more having that feeling of wasting your first or second day of productivity. Just pure delight! Just productive on first day back, first thing in the morning! More than anything else, because there is a great chance that if someone updates that wiki page wanting my attention when coming back, perhaps one of my colleagues may be able to chime in between and help out, while I am away. Of course, it works both ways, when they are gone themselves, I will be chiming into that wiki page and try to help out sharing and providing the necessary info.

Yes, I know! Mind-blowing!!! I am *so* going to try this out next time I am away, which happens to be in mid-April, so will keep you all updated on it! For sure. What’s also interesting in Ross’ blog post is how he is also sharing how he is making use of external applications like Facebook, Twitter and wikis to close some deals during this quarter! Boy, and then they tell me that all of this social software cannot be used to conduct business as productively as you can, if not more, than with e-mail! Ha! Well done, Ross!! Thanks for sharing and showing us the way as well!!

However, one other item I found interesting was his auto-responder message, which clearly points out something I have been doing myself over the last few weeks: Don’t send me an e-mail while I am away, because it’s the last thing I am going to check, if at all. Find me in social software spaces instead!

So for the sake of sharing the one I have been using myself lately, here is my current auto-responder that gets sent out to every single person who sends me an e-mail while I am away:

"I will be out of the office till the 25th of March

During that time, I will have very limited access to both e-mail and voicemails, so would only be able to check them once a day, at the end of the day, and only for urgent, private or IBM confidential messages.

In order to help avoid running into mail jail while I am away, every single e-mail larger than 300kb will be deleted without even looking at it! Please resend again on the week of the 24th of March. Thanks!

And if you have been reading my "Giving up on e-mail" new mantra, LINK HERE, you will know by now that e-mail is the last thing I check & respond to. Find me instead in IBM’s top social software tools… (Sametime, Connections, WikiCentral, Beehive, BlueTwit, Cattail, etc.) for a faster response while I am away.

If you have any questions regarding SUCH & SUCH please do contact JOE DOE

Alternatively, if you have got questions regarding the SUCH & SUCH team please do contact JOE DOE

Regards
Luis Suarez"

Yes, I know. It is a long read for an auto-responder message, but you would agree with me that it gets straight to the point of how people can reach me faster while I am away, while keeping them informed of how they can get to the rest of my teams and the one and only exception while I still check e-mail for. And you know what the greatest thing about this whole thing is? Well, that little by little, I am starting to see some of my work colleagues using similar Out of Office messages, if not much more drastic altogether. And, that, folks, is a good thing!

The word is getting out. People are reacting and challenging their work related e-mails and finding better ways of reaching out and connecting with other knowledge workers. And all of that through social software and not through e-mail!

(I just cannot help smiling, while putting together this blog post, how I have been away celebrating Easter and having a well deserved long weekend break, including today, Easter Monday, and the count of e-mails so far is on 5 e-mails! It is working, slowly, but steadily! Finally beating work related e-mail to suit my needs and not vice versa! Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll be productive once again!) 

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, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Easter, Ross Mayfield, Lotusphere2008, Socialtext, Wikis, Vacation Message Page, Facebook, Twitter, Auto-responder, Out of Office, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Lotus Connections, Connections, WikiCentral, Beehive, BlueTwit, Cattail, Easter Monday, Holiday, Vacation