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

Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 13

As you would remember, today I am travelling to Hamburg, Germany, to spend the rest of the week in there, waiting for the 15th of May where I will be presenting at the Next 08 conference early in the afternoon and on the topic of "Thinking out of the Inbox – More Collaboration through less e-mail" (I am hoping to be able to share the slide deck shortly, by the way, in Slideshare, thus stay tuned!). And here I am on the plane, flying high up in the sky, getting ready to share with you my weekly progress report on my giving up on e-mail, i.e. work related e-mail. But before I go ahead with it allow me to spend a couple of minutes thinking out loud about something that has been in my mind for the last few days.

I twittered about it yesterday and got into a fascinating discussion, probably too short due to lack of time while I was getting everything ready for this trip, with a bunch of others who were sharing similar experiences. Just recently I keep getting this odd feeling of having neglected, and still neglecting somehow, this particular blog since my regular blogging activities are not as regular as I thought they would be nowadays. Yes, way at the beginning of having started this blog, I decided that I was going to keep things going for a long while trying to post daily sharing my thoughts on interesting conversations or initiatives I was getting involved with around the areas of Knowledge Management, Communities, Collaboration, Social Computing, amongst several others.

That motivation to keep posting and sharing those thoughts is still as intact as it was many years ago, and will continue to be so for many moons to come, however the lack of physical time to do it, due to all of this travelling, conference events, their corresponding presentations (And having to put them together, of course!), customer workshops / engagements, etc. etc. is starting to slow me down with my overall blogging activities. At least, that is the impression I am getting at the moment. And I don’t seem to be the only one…

I seem to recall how Tara Hunt, a.k.a. missrogue, mentioned at some point in time in her Twitter stream, how she was feeling along the same lines saying something like people were having all of the fun, while she was on a constant massive burst of conference events and meetings, and whatever other engagements, with customers talking about Social Computing that kept her busy to no end and without the opportunity to jam where all the fun was happening. Well, that’s how I feel at the moment myself after all of this travelling and everything. No, I am not getting tired of it, everyone who knows me well enough would tell you how fond I am of travelling, but from that to say almost every week you are going to be on the road it is quite a bit, I am sure! Yes, I am missing all of the good fun! Got lots of stuff to talk about and share, yet, very little time to do it properly, at least, in a way that I would feel comfortable with it.

So one of the suggestions from yesterday’s conversations in Twitter (Coming from Steve Matthews) was to actually continue blogging at that very same pace, but perhaps keeping things shorter, meaning that there would be less time spent in blogging and perhaps more focused towards just that particular idea shared thus far, specially while I am away. Yes, I am sure you all know how bad I am at keeping things short, this blog post is another good example, but I think Steve’s idea surely is worth while pursuing, why not? I think it would probably be better to actually create a shorter blog post with an idea or two than none at all, right? Thus I am going to give it a try and see if I can come back to all the fun!

But for now, and like I was saying at the beginning of the entry, and as a way of getting back into the fun, here you have got the details from the weekly progress report from my giving up on e-mail new reality. Already on week 13! Yesterday I had problems trying to upload the screen shot of the report into Flickr, but I am hoping that today things would work out all right. Here it is:

As you would be able to see the number of e-mails has gone up a little bit, but still within the target of between 30 to 40 e-mails a week. In this case 35 e-mails!, which I think is very very doable and still within what I was aiming for. However, one of the things that I am noticing is how over the last couple of weeks and, after seeing how the experiment has consolidated into a total success, I keep getting a number of e-mails with which I am not feeling very comfortable, because I don’t seem to be having a way to get rid of them for good. At least, just yet.

Yes, indeed, I am talking about e-mails that are related to scheduling, setting up and participating in conference events, customer meetings / workshops, specially when it is to show my own experiences on this new reality itself. I am thinking that if I would be able to find a way to reduce those I would be getting my number of incoming e-mails down to 15 to 20 a week. If not less! Yes! As massive as that!!!

So that got me started into thinking about a way of getting rid of those e-mails and divert them elsewhere. And it wasn’t easy, to be honest. John Tropea (One of my favourite bloggers in the Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing & Librarian 2.0 spaces and surely one of those bloggers to add to your blogroll in case you haven’t done so already!) put together, not long ago, a pretty impressive blog post under "Examples of re-purposing e-mail" and he already provides some hints as to what I could be doing, but I will comment more on that blog post as time goes by. Too good to just mention it over here and definitely one that would be worth while exploring further into building a wiki space, putting together all of those different examples as a way of showing everyone else how they can start doing it in small, but steady steps.

John seems to be inclined to make use of Lotus Connections‘ Activities for the calendaring and scheduling coming through e-mails and I must confess that I have thought about it, too, myself, as well as a couple of other options. I have been thinking as well that a forum, with a discussion group (i.e. Newsgroup) may be another option, but kind of walked away from that idea since the IBM Forums I am exposed to cannot protect entries that may be of a sensitive nature. Then I thought that a wiki, with protected access where needed / required, may be another option to go by, but perhaps too difficult for other folks to engage with.

However, Connections’ Activities seems like it is an ideal way out for me. More than anything else because they can host both public and private events discussions. Also the fact that they are fully integrated into Lotus Notes 8 and Sametime 8 allowing everyone I may be working with to set up one of them and then send it over across to me, so that I can chime in and share a thought or two on the topic. And right there we could consolidate all e-mails exchanged thus far, IM chats involved as well as well as attaching the corresponding files as the final output of the event, and if there are any feedback forms collected after the event they could also be shared over there.

Thus here we go. I think that I am going to settle down for Connections’ Activities and start making use of them to walk away from e-mail one step further, as a way to arrange all of these different events and see if I got it right as to how further more I could reduce my weekly incoming e-mail count.

Oh, did I mention how you could collaboratively work together with other folks on the same activity? Let’s see how it goes from here… Stay tuned for further updates and see what happens in upcoming weeks! In future progress reports I am sure I will have an opportunity to share with you my experiences on them.

Now, off we go, on to shorter blog posts while I am away travelling and see if I can keep up with a nice pace of those regular blogging activities that were once part of this specific blog. Although perhaps Darren Rowse may be right altogether. I may not need to blog on a daily basis any longer… What do you think?

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, Communication, Conference Events, Hamburg, Germany, Next08, Next 08, Slideshare, Twitter, Blogging 101, Blogging Tips, Tara Hunt, missrogue, Steve Matthews, Flickr, John Tropea, Re-purposing e-mail, Lotus Connections, Connections, Activities, Forums, Newsgroups, Wikis, Calendar Events, Calendar, Lotus Notes, Notes, Notes 8, Lotus Notes 8, Sametime, Lotus Sametime, Sametime 8, Lotus Sametime 8, Real-time Collaboration, Darren Rowse, Travelling, Blog Frequency

Walking Like a Minister – Innovation at IBM

Over the last three months a few folks have been contacting me, through various different methods, including e-mail, of course, to ask whether I am getting into any kind of trouble with my management line for the blunt move I have made on moving away from work related e-mail and use social computing tools instead for the last few weeks. Trouble? Well, initially I can imagine that for some folks out there it may well have been the perception that I would be getting some kind of negative feedback with such bold move, but then again things haven’t been that way. At all. On the contrary.

Because of my role as a social computing evangelist at IBM, some other folks have always wondered whether this new reality I am experiencing of giving up on e-mail, i.e. work related e-mail, was something that was inspired by someone above me in the management line and therefore having the necessary support for it for the rest of us to execute it further. However, that hasn’t been the case. This whole thing was basically started by myself thinking that I needed to change the way I was working because it was not productive enough. At least, it wasn’t giving me that feeling and over three months now down the road I knew I was into something completely different that would change the way I work now and will always do.

Yes, initially there were a bunch of skeptics who came over to me mentioning how I would rather be getting fired for it, or just give up on it altogether since there is no way that you can carry out your work without e-mail. And to them all along I have been telling them that if there is a way to make it happen, it will be happening. One of the groups of people that  has been my inspiration all along has been the younger generation of the workforce who is coming up really strong with plenty of energy and very keen on collaborating making use of everything, but e-mail. I am sure that those folks who may have been exposed to such generation already know exactly what I am talking about, so if they have been able to do it, why can’t we do it ourselves as well, right? … Yes, that is what I thought.

However, one of the commonest comments that I have been getting from various different people from almost the very beginning is more along the lines of how lucky I am of working for the company I work for that allows me to have a good exposure to a respectable number of knowledge sharing, collaborative and social software tools that perhaps other folks may not have been exposed to. And in the end this is certainly making it possible for me to make it work.

Too funny, eh? When most people out there think that IBM is actually a boring, old and typewriter related company (Thanks much, Gia, for passing that interesting link along!) I cannot but smile about the whole thing, because that may have been the case of our father’s IBM, but it certainly is not the IBM of the 21st century that I started working for some years ago. Quite the opposite! And, as an example, take a look into the superb blog post that one fellow IBMer, and very good friend, Matt Simpson, put together under this particular title: "Walk like a Minister".

In that particular blog post you would be able to see how he is describing the IBM of the 21st century where innovation plays a key role and where knowledge workers are being provided with a whole bunch of different tools to keep that same innovation as rampant as ever. And if not, check out these gems that Matt has put together and which clearly define, pretty nicely, some of the background of where I am coming from as far as my new mantra of giving up on e-mail is concerned:

"The world’s 14-year leader in number of patents didn’t get that way by NOT engaging in everything new. There are lots of things behind the firewall with which early adopters are having a blast: blogs, wikis, podcasts, broadcasts, micro-blogging, tagging, social photo sharing, social video sharing, social file sharing, IM for over a decade now, online communities, 3D Internet / virtual reality, online friends & connections, rating & reputation systems… there are over 100 innovations available within our early adoption program. The list goes on. We don’t gate our innovations. We promote them!" (Emphasis mine)

Or this other one:

"And guess what… We need these tools. The workforce has changed. The standard for the online social interaction experience is set across the Internet. The corporation that doesn’t embrace this functionality will be the corporation that doesn’t stand the test of time. In case you haven’t noticed, IBM is Built to Last".

After reading those quotes from Matt, I guess there is very very little I can add. Perhaps only that it is thanks to that boring and old company that I have been able to finally come to terms with the fact that being productive and walking from e-mail is something that is not only possible, but a reality. My reality. And everything that a company from the 21st century would want to keep trying and promoting, if they would want to keep pushing innovation into a higher level. And I am really glad to be part of one that allows me to just do that: … Innovate with a capital I!

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, Communication, Brand Tags, Gia Lyons, Matt Simpson, Communities, Learning