And like every Friday, here I am again, folks, putting together this particular blog post to detail what my week has been like, trying to escape work related e-mail and divert, accordingly, most of the conversations into the social computing world. This week would be the sixth in a row since I got started with this new experiment and so far it has been one of the most interesting, more than anything else because for the first time in all of those weeks, I have now found out what may be the one and only reason why I might give up on this initiative and go back to good old e-mail! Here is a screen shot of this week’s report that I have uploaded into my Flickr account and which will you a hint or two on what happened:

I bet you have seen already what has happened during this week. Yes, indeed, my weekly intake of e-mails has gone sky high to a whopping 41 e-mails a week! Coming from 35, lowest number so far, from last week! Yes, I know that for most folks 41 e-mails a week would be something like paradise, but to me it is actually quite a substantial change, specially since I hit the lowest number of incoming e-mails last week with 35. And the funny thing is that up until today I just couldn’t figure it out why that was, till I was putting together an internal blog post on something completely different and it hit me big time!

So here it goes, here is the main reason why the number of e-mails has gone rather high this week, compared to other weeks: social software!!! Yes, that is right! The same social software tools that I have been using all along are the ones that have increased my weekly intake of e-mails! Can you imagine that? How did that happen? Well, because of something that is just so simple, that everyone takes it for granted: performance & availability!

As you can imagine, inside IBM we have got a rather robust corporate e-mail infrastructure that has been going strong for a good number of years. In fact, I cannot remember the last time when my Lotus Notes e-mail was down! However, I cannot say the same thing about some of the social software tools we use. Yes, that is a right. A good number of those various social tools are actually still running in pilot servers, while we test them and take them to the extreme, and with very limited support. Yes, the everlasting flavour of beta! And this week it has incredibly difficult for some of these tools because they have been more down than up, and when up rather slow! Yes, I know, one of those weeks that I am sure you folks could relate to as well.

So, the immediate consequence from that is that when people needed to get across through to me, they would be making use of whatever the social software tool we regularly use and instead of sharing the info they would not be able to because of those performance issues and they all diverted to what they know works consistently: e-mail! OUCH!!!

Yes, that is right, that is how I felt!! So it looks like from all of the different hurdles that I thought I would be confronted with, i.e. learning curve, user adoption, facilitation, cultural changes, open / public vs. private interactions, confidentiality, etc., it seems that it would be social software after all the one that may force me to give up in the end… Too funny, eh? Well, I hope that this was just a bad week for the infrastructure of those social software tools, because if it continues to be like this repeatedly, then I need to come up with a backup plan!

Oh, you were expecting me to say that I would eventually give up? NO WAY!!! I have seen the light and I will not back out from it. Yes, this was a rough week, but I got through it still eventually with a zero inbox and hardly any effort. Yes, I had to be a bit extra patient, but I am good at that, or so I am told. I understand that folks may contact me again through e-mail first, but then again, as soon as they see that those social software tools are up and running again, we would be going back to where we left it last week, i.e. the lowest number of incoming e-mails I received ever!

So, not a chance I will give up. I will still keep pushing for it, the pros clearly outnumber the cons and I am surely looking forward to seeing what happens next week, when I will be having Monday off and will surely be a rather busy week with the end of the first quarter of 2008 coming up! What do you think? Will the pilot servers and infrastructure hold up or will it just go down from here onwards and will have to implement that backup plan, which, by the way, will have to do quite a bit with living outside of the firewall, heh … What do you think? Were all of those weeks a dream and all of a sudden I got a painful wake-up call or will things go back to normal and that incoming number of e-mails will go down? We shall see…

Happy Easter to everyone who is celebrating and have a GREAT weekend!

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, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Performance, Availability, Beta, Easter

And it looks like I may be continuing with some more blogging on IBM and its adoption of social software within the corporate environment, because a couple of days ago Jack Vinson pointed me to another superb article where one of my fellow IBM colleagues, and good friend, Scott Smith, describes the kind of disruption that social computing is causing to the enterprise world! Check out the article over at IBM Drives Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks with New Enterprise Adaptability Practice!

I know it is a rather lengthy blog post over at The Global Human Capital Journal, so I am going to keep things short and perhaps just point you folks to some of the most interesting quotes from the entire entry so that you can get a glimpse of what you will find in there, plus some more additional commentary from my side.

Oh, another good thing from the article that you should not miss is the description of a couple of technologies that IBM has been putting together and which, in my own personal experience, have become essential in my escaping and fighting work related e-mail. Yes, I am talking about SmallBlue, a.k.a. IBM Atlas and IBM’s Lotus Sametime family products. Very helpful tools not only capable of enhancing your real-time collaboration experience, but also with great potential to help you find the experts right when you need them and when they can collaborate and share their knowledge with you. Amazing stuff that, as I get to uncover the tools suite I am currently using to escape e-mail, you will be able to find out some more on it in upcoming blog posts.

So here is one of the various different quotes that I thought would be worth while mentioning over here:

"As organizations have already gone global (and become more complex), they want to drive innovation, and innovation comes down to people and collaboration. They have to connect those people and make the world small. They need to find the right people at the right time"

Indeed! Scott is right on the money with that statement and for those folks who may have been reading this blog for a little while now, this particular may resonate as very similar what some of the various topics I have been discussing over all along on the kind of impact social computing is having behind the corporate firewall. Amongst many other things it is helping business realise they have got an incredibly amount of great talent with various knowledge workers that in the past was just plainly hidden and not available. Now, all of a sudden, that focus that used to be on tools and processes is slowly, but steadily, leaving its place to a focus on people, i.e. the knowledge workers, as the main drivers of the different interactions and knowledge sharing activities. Something that in the past wasn’t having the same kind of impact as it is having nowadays, something that may well be *the* main success factor for those companies that would want to thrive in the current Knowledge Economy of the 21st century.

From there onwards you would get to read some more on how some of those various social networking technologies have been helping out different businesses address, and perhaps fix, one of the main issues that knowledge sharing and social computing have been having all along: finding experts, right when you need them!, to start sharing their knowledge and collaborating with other knowledge workers.

As the article continues to dive into the impact of these emerging technologies behind the corporate firewall, there was one particular quote that I thought was very relevant as well for the overall discussion and it is this one:

"People who don’t trust each other will not collaborate because collaboration is about sharing and collective risk taking. Innovation is a practical approach to channeling creativity, and the most efficient innovation entails cross-boundary collaboration. You’re stalking surprise and taking risks and making mistakes. That won’t happen if the enterprise culture doesn’t prize trust and discontinuous risk-taking"

I am not sure how many times I have been saying this already, but that trust is one of the main key success factors from any social networking tool available out there. People hang out in these social software tools on a regular basis, because they want to improve very much their social capital skills so that they can help improve their trust levels with others, specially in the corporate world, to such extent that they would be much more participative and engaging when they know someone they can trust, than when they don’t know a specific person they would need to collaborate with.

And that is one of the reasons why social software is key to any business, because if there is one thing that social software is good at is helping knowledge workers work through building those trust skills by sharing knowledge snippets that could be work related or not, but still provide value that would be helpful to others. Yes, that is right, interactions through communities making use of social software is going to bring many many benefits, but perhaps the most significant is the huge push on improving your own social capital skills, something that all along most corporations have been missing, as they thought it was not that important in the recent past. Well, think again, not only is it important, but crucial to any business to boost such set of skills to help bring knowledge sharing and collaboration into the next level.

And from there onwards you will be heading towards the end of the article where you would be able to find this other interesting gem which I think summarises pretty well why business cannot longer afford ignoring social computing, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall, and how if they don’t pay attention and react to it soon, they would probably be the businesses of the 21st century that would be struggling the most to the point where they may no longer exist in the medium / long term:

"Web 2.0 is the age of collaboration; people pay more attention when companies solicit and act on their input. Brand value will be increasingly driven by how well the brand inspires and participates in customer relationships and experience. Too many companies still see themselves as producers and customers as consumers. Of course, this is literally true, but the value of the underlying good continues to drop, and Web 2.0 enables people to create value via scalable digital relationships"

Thus still think that Enterprise 2.0 hasn’t got its place within the corporate world? Not sure what you would think, but something tells me it has, and a lovely spot, too, I must admit!

Tags: IBM, Jack Vinson, Scott Smith, Human Capital Management, Enterprise Adoption, Technology Adoption, Global Human Capital Journal, SmallBlue, IBM Atlas, Atlas, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Social Network Analysis, SNA, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Innovation, Expertise Location, Trust, Social Capital, Skills, Knowledge Economy

After being rather hectic the last couple of days, working on a couple of presentations for more upcoming conference events, plus my regular work duties, including meetings galore all over the place, here I am back again at the blog. This time around with something that I had the intention of blogging already beginning of the week but that Jerry Bowles‘ SMT Blogger of the Week - Luis Suarez, the Blogger from Paradise displaced till I could find a better time for it. And that time is today!

As you may well remember, this past Monday, 17th of March, St. Patrick’s Day, I was actually celebrating the fact that I have now been living and working remotely from one of the places I fell in love many many years ago and which I knew at some point I would be coming back. Yes, last Monday was my fourth anniversary of having moved to Gran Canaria! I guess that time flies when you are having fun, right?

Anyway, plenty of folks who have gotten to know me over the years, both in real life and virtually through the various social networks we share in common, have been wondering why I am just so crazy about this island. After all it is just plenty of sunshine and beaches all over the place, eh? Well, not exactly, there is just so much more!, that people don’t know about that, after being four years over here, I thought it would be a good time to change that perception a bit.

Yes, I know, what I am just about to announce over here in this blog may not have much to do, probably nothing, with the regular blogging activities I have been carrying out over here on topics like Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing or Enterprise 2.0 over the last few months. But I thought that after four years of having contemplated the idea, I guess it is just about time to announce that from now onwards, and, on a more or less regular basis, I am planning to share over here the odd blog post with various different references to some of the most emblematic natural spots that Gran Canaria has got to offer.

That way, you would have the opportunity to find out for yourselves why I have fallen in love with this island for its variety, amongst many many other things; after all, you don’t name such a tiny island a mini-continent for nothing, right? If you would remember, that is, if you have been a long time reader from this blog you would know how for a good number of weeks this new initiative I am trying to re-introduce again was an integral part of this blog and after a little while I stopped it for a few months. Well, now it is the time to bring it back. As a way to celebrate the four years I have been living over here and also as a way to show you what keeps me going and enjoying every minute of it.

So whenever the odd blog post on this subject would come up, I will be sharing rather a bunch of photos, probably from my Flickr stream, and / or some video footage with short clips of no longer than 2 minutes, 3 tops!, that I would be recording with my Nokia N95 and uploading it into my DailyMotion account from various different places that have captivated my heart all along and which over the course of the last few years have made me understand and comprehend some of the most impressive beauty of this island of Gran Canaria. Yes, I know, so much more than just sun & beaches!

And to get things started, here are a couple of short video clips I shoot a couple of months back, on a splendid sunny and warm day, where I decided to go to the countryside and up into the mountains to check out some of the stunning scenery you can ever imagine. The name of this place from the video clips is Roque Bentaiga, one of the most emblematic, beautiful and stunning natural spots from the entire island and one that as you come closer to it you can sense how magical the place is on its own! Just as I get to write this down I get goose bumps all over the place from thinking that a few weeks back I was nearly at the very top! And here is why:

Thus I hope you enjoy this new section, here in my blog, I am planning on updating every now and then sharing with you all some of the reasons why I may have been living over here for over four years, but I still love every minute of it and as time goes by, and I get a chance to share some more pictures and video clips, I am hoping to be sharing some of the charms that this island of Gran Canaria has got to offer!

Are you ready?

(No, not to worry, I am not abandoning the creation of blog posts on the major themes from this blog that you folks have been familiar with all along. I am just sharing with you all some of the reasons of why I am where I am and enjoying it a great deal!, so that, hey, you never know, whenever you may be coming this way you know some of the cool places you could check out! Consider me as your virtual touring guide from this precious mini-continent island!)

Tags: Gran Canaria, Roque Bentaiga, Bentaiga, Landscapes, Mountains, Sunshine, St. Patrick’s Day, Travelling, Photography, Video, Flickr, DailyMotion, Nokia N95, N95, Mini-Continent, Beaches, Sun, Life, Life Work Balance

Social networks are very powerful, aren’t they? Every single day that goes by it amazes me the incredible potential social networking has got both inside and outside of the corporate world and just beats me why not more and more knowledge workers are making extensive use of them to be able to share their knowledge amongst themselves and collaborate with others in a much more efficient and effective way. Here is the latest example I have bumped into in the last couple of days: Into the big blue yonder - IBM gambles on a shift from the KM model.

Yes, indeed, over the last week or so, a couple of good friends from various social networks, where we all hang out,  kindly pointed me to this very good and enlightening article from Rob Lewis, from KnowledgeBoard, titled "Into the big blue yonder", where you would be able to read how IBM is shifting away from the traditional Knowledge Management space and moving into an area that is starting to flag as Knowledge Sharing and where the focus is not only that traditional KM, but a blend with the next generation of knowledge sharing tools, i.e. social software tools and social computing, in general.

Like I said, the article makes for an interesting reading and thought I would just mentioned a couple of quotes that I feel would be relevant for the different discussions held in this blog in the not so distant past. After all, Rob mentions several quotes from yours truly that I have shared in various blog posts in the recent past, so why not, right?

"IBM now sees organic and unimposed sharing as the biggest agent in the circulation of knowledge. Its stated strategy is to facilitate that sharing, not through any vertically integrated structure but through the empowerment of its many communities and individuals to network as openly and efficiently as possible."

Does it ring a bell? For someone like myself who got started with traditional Knowledge Management when it was at its prime time many many moons ago, I am finding it quite fascinating the shift that corporations have started to make to such new model where (online) communities help drive the adoption and embracing of social software within the corporate world and beyond. It’s actually thanks to those communities that things are changing rather rapidly. Innovation is thriving and it is rather encouraging to see how traditional KM is starting to let knowledge workers take advantage of these emerging social software technologies in order to perhaps be more productive, be more in control of the knowledge and collaboration flows and manage their own knowledge and experiences, where for the first time, they themselves are in control vs. the corresponding organisation(s). Refreshing is the word that comes to mind!

But there is more:

"“If we can build sufficient maturity in our internal communities, they can take on that role,” Cooper says. “They will start to become actively responsible for the education of their members and for the identification and generation of new intellectual assets.”"

I am sure that for those folks who have been doing community building all along the above paragraph will sound as something they would say it is pretty much common sense, but I am thinking that such involvement from communities into the workplace is actually helping them have a paramount role in helping knowledge workers engage closer with one another, sharing their knowledge, collaborate and innovate as a result of that process, and all of that in an environment where communities allow for plenty of free form type of interactions to take place and in a protected space at the same time, i.e. that one of the community itself, thus breaking the hierarchies, traditional structures and organisations to empower, once again, knowledge workers to be in control of the knowledge they  try to manage.

From there onwards the article covers a number of the different IBM social software tools that have been fully operational for a good couple of years already. Examples like BlogCentral, which is currently going over the 200,000 blog entries & comments, or WikiCentral, with over 200,000 IBMers collaborating in it on a regular basis. From there onwards Dogear, along with QEDWiki, Jams, BluePages (IBM’s corporate employee directory) and several other technologies get a mention and although some of the statistics would probably need to be updated, it is still worth while a read.

But if there would be a quote with which I feel rather identified from the article article, apart from those other ones that were extracted from various other blog posts I have put together in the past, this would be the one that clearly represents where we are and where we are moving:

"“It’s a social cultural thing,” says McNairn. “If you’re a company with something to hide, you’ll stay away from social networking. But IBM wants to embrace those tools, and then take them to the extreme to see how valuable they’ll be from a business perspective.”"

That, to me, folks is what Enterprise 2.0 is all about and why I am surely looking forward to keep pushing the limits, because after all, are there any in the social computing space? I doubt it… It will be down to us all to decide whether we would want them or not… and somehow I feel that we already got the answer to that one!

Tags: IBM, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, KM Model, KM 1.0, KM 2.0, KM 0.0, Rob Lewis, KnowledgeBoard, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Online Communities, Virtual Communities, Community Building, Learning, Social Software Adoption, Social Computing Adoption, Control, Trust, Command-and-Control, Command and Control, BlogCentral, WikiCentral, Dogear, QEDWiki, Jams, BluePages, Ian McNairn

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!, to all of those folks who may be celebrating it today! I know that for plenty of the people who get to read this blog, today is a special day with plenty of things to celebrate and enjoy throughout. Well, you are not alone. I am, too! A day like today, 17th of March, back in 2004, my life, both on a work and personal levels, changed drastically! I came to live and work remotely to Gran Canaria, the place I once fell in love with about 12 years ago! Yes, that is right! Today is my fourth anniversary enjoying quite a unique situation: The Blogger from Paradise.

It is funny! Earlier on this morning, I had the intention of sharing with you folks something new I was going to re-introduce into this blog, as a way to celebrate these four years I have been living over here fully engaging with social software both inside and outside of the corporate firewall, and lo and behold, there I was having to postpone it for a few more hours, as I got alerted about something that I thought would be worth while sharing as well as part of such important celebration as today’s.

Yesterday late afternoon, I got contacted, through Skype, by Jerry Bowles, Co-founder and CEO from the Social Media Today collective, and he kindly asked me whether I would want to do an IM interview with him detailing some more about my role within IBM as a social computing evangelist as well as sharing some further thoughts on the impact that social software is having not only within IBM, but also with its various employees, like myself. Of course, I just couldn’t resist such an interesting offer and the result of it is SMT Blogger of the Week - Luis Suarez, The Blogger in Paradise.

In that particular article you would be able to read our Skype IM conversation on what kind of impact social networking has been having with myself and my various interactions with other knowledge workers, including my own boss, Gina Poole, who still keeps actively engaged with the internal blogosphere. Quite an interesting read, which clearly indicates how things are shifting within the corporate world, where employees may not longer be stranded in a fixed office in a traditional work location. On the contrary, with today’s pervasiveness of social computing along with the high penetration levels of broadband Internet connectivity, knowledge workers may be having the unique opportunity to decide where they would like to be working as their most motivating space to deliver on the job day in day out for an extended period of time!

Now, I am sure that everyone would understand that there are various different circumstances on how various knowledge workers get to interact with other colleagues, customers or business partners, but it is also very accurate to think that the traditional restrictions we once had about having to work from a fixed office work location may no longer be relevant in today’s distributed world. Such is the impact that social software is having amongst our current workforce where over 42% of the total population is now mobile; and I am surely glad to be one of those very very lucky guys who has got his dream job within such a large enterprise. And in Paradise.

Many people keep asking me what is the main business value from social software, and all along I have been saying something that certainly resonates with plenty of other folks out there as well. I am sure. In my own case, the main business value I am getting through social computing is the fact that the last three jobs I have had, have actually been given to me because of my corporate blogging activities, amongst several other tasks related to social networking. So, for those folks out there who may be thinking that that there isn’t value in social software, they ma need to think about it, because throughout my own experiences you can see that the impact can be tremendous, to say the least!!

What a great way to celebrate four years of coming to the place where I feel like home. Always have. Always will. And get to work on what I am really passionate about at the same time: Social Computing, Community Building and Knowledge Sharing! The picture shared below is just one of the thousands and thousands of reasons why I fell in love with the island four years ago and still am, just like in the first day …

Roque Bentaiga

Tags: St. Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick, Patrick, Gran Canaria, Paradise, Jerry Bowles, Social Media Today, SMT, IBM, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Gina Poole, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Blogs, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Workplace, Virtual Teams, Online Communities, Skype, Mobile Workforce, Mobility, Flexibility, Work Life Balance, WLB, Working At Home, WAH, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Gran Canaria, Roque Bentaiga, Bentaiga, Mountains

As you may well remember, last Friday I was in Madrid hosting a workshop on IBM Lotus Enterprise 2.0 and I must say that it was such a hectic and incredibly inspiring day overall that I didn’t get a chance to create the weekly blog post detailing what my progress report has been for the entire week last week as I was getting done with week 5 without work related e-mail. So I thought I would spend a few minutes today to share with you what has happened last week, specially for those who may have been following this experiment I have been having for the last few weeks.

To get things started here is a screen shot of the weekly report, week by week, and entering already the sixth week:

As you may have noticed, last week was a remarkable one! For the fifth time in a row the number of incoming e-mails has gone down again from the previous week, and this time around quite significantly, going from 39 to 35!! Yes, that’s 35 you are reading here!! That means an average of 7 e-mails a day vs. the 30 to 45 I used to get way before I got things going. Pretty impressive!!

I am actually starting to enjoy it more and more, as diverting most of the conversations to online social software spaces where I get to hang out has helped me get rid of that stress factor that e-mail is, specially when you come back from a trip, a vacation, a customer visit, a conference, a workshop, you name it. It has helped me to just carry out all of those social software interactions, while away, with the exact same outcome than e-mail, but a much faster response, too!

At the same time, and this is the part I am enjoying the most, I have finally given up on that famous cliche I used to go with: "Catching up with e-mail after a few days gone!". Well, that is no longer there. It’s just getting to work in the morning and be productive from the very first moment. Priceless!

Finally, one of the major highlights from last week’s escaping e-mail has been the fact that more and more people keep talking about it, so much so that during the course of this week I’ll be doing a couple of interviews with journalists as well, that I confirmed last week, and with whom I am going to be sharing my experiences on how the experiment is going and what I am trying to achieve with it, i.e. moving away from e-mail for public conversations into the social software space. And at the same time get folks to question and challenge the validity of the various e-mails they receive on a daily basis. Thus stay tuned for those, as I am hoping to be able to link to them very soon!

And this coming Friday I’ll be sharing another blog post with this week’s report. So far starting really good! … 7 mails today!

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, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, e-mail Backlog, email Backlog, Stress