Football – Made in Spain – June 2008 (Never Forget!)
After a superb and rather relaxing weekend back at home, now that I am done with most of the travelling and having finished catching up my breath with multiple things, both in my personal and work lives, there isn’t probably a better way of finishing the weekend than putting together this blog post celebrating a single event that hasn’t got anything to do with the topics I normally get to talk about over here, but which has kept me busy for most of the day today, and specially most of the evening, too! And still going on with the celebrations!!!
With all of that said, and almost ready for another great and eventful week, where regular blogging will resume once again, I can only think of one single sentence:
Football – Made in Spain!
Well done, boys!!! That’s just how you play super fine football throughout the entire championships! … Very proud! 
Tags: Football, European Championship, UEFA, Soccer, Europe, Spain, Champions, History, Celebrations
Trip to Varese to Present at International Enterprise 2.0 Forum
Posted on Jun 23, 2008 | Categories: Collaboration | 7 Comments
One of the main disadvantages from travelling sprees is that, at one point in time or another, your body will tell you you have gone too far that time around, and that is when you know that things need to slow down a bit. For your own good! Well, that’s just what has happened to me in the last couple of days. I came back from another business trip to Lucerne, Switzerland, then Madrid, Spain, and by end of last week I got home to rest for a day or two before my next one; and I knew things weren’t just right when my left wrist started to ache quite a bit with some lacerating pain for an extended period of time!
At the very beginning, I got worried it might have got to do with RSI (By the way, here you have got three superb video links with some great tips on how to avoid & prevent it from happening at any given point in time!), so right away I went to the doctor on Friday to have my left wrist checked out and I just couldn’t believe the diagnosis while I was there: I have now officially got a slight tendinitis due to all of the intensive travelling and carrying my laptop bag and suitcase all over the place ignoring their weight!!! Goodness! Who would have thought about that, right?
Well, as you can imagine, first thing the doctor said to me was, rest, rest, rest, get that left wrist back in shape with some cold / hot baths, some drugs, some anti-inflammatory cream and some physio sessions to go through over the next couple of weeks! And so I began with my recovery period where the pain is now almost gone, I can move my left wrist just as good as I was able to, thus I am almost back in shape. Still, things are going to run a bit slow with regards to my online presence. I first need to get everything sorted out, go through those physio sessions over the next few days and then get back in full force. Yes, you guess it right! I am not going to take any risks on this one!
After all, I just got one left wrist. I better take care of it. That’s why things have been quiet over here and elsewhere during the entire weekend! There is nothing like enjoying some peace and quiet recovering from some painful condition knowing you need to stay away from everything computer related! And so I have managed to stay away for nearly four days getting things back to almost normal. Today, I have been in a couple of conference calls, meetings, some online interactions, but still taking it easy as much as I possibly can. And it seems to be working…
Thus you would have to excuse my erratic presence over here and elsewhere where I get to hang out as elsua. No, I am not going away, I am just trying to fully recover and learn a lesson or two on why being a popular figure sometimes has got its toll to pay for 
I just want to thank everyone who has been calling me, e-mailing me (:-P ), IMing, twittering, and whatever other online interactions for their kind words for a speedy recovery! It is greatly appreciated and not to worry, we are slowly, but steadily, getting there! Thus thanks much for those kind comments! They are greatly appreciated!
You may be wondering by now what I am up to this week, right? Well, of course, I am travelling again! But this time around very very light and having learnt my lesson! At the same time I have got a lovely surprise I am hoping you folks would enjoy very shortly, as I have been thinking about it and feel it is about time, too! More than anything else because you have been asking about it as well! Stay tuned!
Where am I going to travel this week? Well, to Italy (For the first time in my life!), to Varese, to be more precise, where I will be participating in one of those special Enterprise 2.0 events organised by a good bunch of really good friends where you know that things will just be outstanding!
Yes, that is right. I am flying out tomorrow morning to participate on Wednesday at the first Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Varese, Italy, and organised, amongst many other folks (i.e. Open Knowledge and the Università dell’Insubria (University of Varese)), by my good friend Emanuele Quintarelli (One of the most impressive Thought Leaders in the Enterprise 2.0 in Europe, and probably worldwide, too, and who I can seriously recommend subscribing to his blog if you would want to get exposed to some really helpful, insightful and thought-provoking articles on Social Computing within the Enterprise in general).
As you would be able to see from the main homepage of the event, the agenda for the one day event, which is FREE, by the way, is rather impressive to say the least, with a very high profile of International speakers from the Enterprise 2.0 world, like Thomas van der Wal, David Terrar, Stewart Mader, Laurence Lock Lee or Ran Shribman. Worth while getting there, while you can, to tap into all of those folks’ expertise and knowledge on the subject of Social Computing. Excellent stuff!
Yours truly will be there as well, speaking just after lunch, on the topic that has kept him busy for the last few months and which he is hoping to continue doing some more blogging about, once this travelling madness finishes up for a while. Yes, that is right. I will be speaking again about my favourite topic nowadays: See the Light – Thinking out of the Inbox!
I am not sure whether the sessions will be recorded and everything. I hope so. I know there will be a simultaneous translator, English to Italian and vice versa, I guess, to help out with getting the message across, but if the sessions are recorded I am looking forward to sharing some further links, whenever they would become available.
For now, suffice to say this is one of those events that is going to make history for the Enterprise 2.0 world in Europe, since it there are plenty of folks coming over from all over Europe (And the rest of the world!) to catch up further with a superb event, and I would be one of those lucky people who will get to mix and mingle with some incredibly smart talent from all over the place!
I will be arriving in Varese tomorrow afternoon and will stay there till Thursday early noon, so if you would want to get together, while in there, to enjoy a drink or two, give me a shout and we will get together. For sure! After all, do you have anything better to do on June 25th for something of such great quality with such a bunch of great speakers (No, not to worry, I don’t include myself on that bunch! 
) and AT NO CHARGE? …
I doubt it… (See you there, then!)
Tags: Lucerne, Switzerland, Madrid, Spain, Travelling, RSI, VideoJug, Tendinitis, Work Life Balance, Health, Wrists, Varese, Italy, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 Forum, Open Knowledge, Università dell’Insubria, University of Varese, Emanuele Quintarelli, InfoSpaces, Thomas van der Wal, David Terrar, Stewart Mader, Laurence Lock Lee, Ran Shribman, See the Light, , Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Web 2.0
Trip to Madrid to Present at Lotus General Business Sales Academy for Business Partners
Posted on Jun 17, 2008 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Conference Events, Enterprise2.0, IBM, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Learning, Personal KM, Productivity Tools, Social Enterprise, Travelling | 2 Comments
And here we go on the road again! After a superb IBM Symposium 2008 event in Lucerne, Switzerland, from where, very shortly, I hope to be able to share with you folks, both the slide deck I used as well as a recording of both video and audio (Thus stay tuned for more details to become available whenever I get my hands on a copy of it!), I am now back in Spain, in Madrid, to be more precise, where tomorrow I will be spending the whole day long participating at the Lotus General Business Sales Academy for Business Partners.
This is an special event that till take place during the course of the entire day and where a bunch of IBM fellow colleagues will spend a fully packed agenda talking about everything IBM Lotus related world with Business Partners, going from what the market is like here in Spain for IBM Lotus, to good and thorough overviews of Lotus offerings like Lotus Foundations, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Unified Communications & Collaboration, Portals, Social Computing in general and a whole lot more with roundtable discussions and next steps!
Yes, indeed, like I said, a fully packed day starting at 9.30am till 6.00pm CET, non stop, except for a couple of breaks, along with lunch! Just brilliant! And you may be wondering whether I will be speaking at the event or not and would have to say the answer is "Yes!"
Continuing further with my travelling spree helping spread the message out about giving up on e-mail, i.e. corporate e-mail, I will be giving another presentation from the "See the Light – Thinking out of the Inbox" theme. Just before lunch and for about 30 minutes. I must say that I keep getting asked whether my original slide deck has changed, as I keep going from one event to the other one and I must say that it hasn’t. It is still the same one I talked about over here and which I shared over at Slideshare: Thinking out of the Inbox – More Collaboration through less e-Mail. Only thing that has changed is the size of it. I have reduced the number of slides to around 10 of them and during the course of this week I will be able to re-share the final deck I keep using for sessions under 30 minutes.
What keeps coming up as very different from each of the various sessions is my own pitch. I have been able to listen to a couple of the recordings done so far (Which I will be sharing over here as well shortly, too!) and time and time again the entire speech comes out different, very different in most cases, according to the target audience and the overall theme of each event, which keeps bringing in very interesting aspects of what I have been trying to do over the last few months already!
So much so that since I won’t be travelling much during the course of summer time, I have decided to get started putting together the next generation of the main presentation where I will be providing some more background of where I am coming from, how I got started with it, why I am doing it, and, perhaps the most important part so far, putting together a whole bunch of different tips that I have been using myself and which I would want to share with you folks so that you, too, can join me in this new reality of giving up corporate e-mail. Why? Well, more than anything else, because everyone out there that I keep bumping into seems to think that I got started with this because of e-mail overload or not doing very good myself with time management while handling e-mail.
Funny, eh? How can you have e-mail overload when you get 30 to 40 e-mails a day (Which is what I used to get before getting started with this new reality)? That’s not what I would call e-mail overload or time management issues, don’t you think so? To me, it is all about re-purposing e-mail and make use of it for what it was intended in the first place: a one-on-one private conversation discussing a sensitive matter. The rest should go out there in the open, public and ready for everyone to contribute into the overall effort of knowledge sharing and collaboration with other knowledge workers. Yes, I know, still plenty of work ahead of us, but we are getting there, slowly, but steadily!
Tags: IBM, IBM Symposium, Symposium, Lucerne, Switzerland, Events, Madrid, Spain, Lotus, Lotus Foundations, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Unified Communications, UC2, Portals, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, e-mail, No-email, Innovation, Communities, Learning, Social Networks, See the Light, Openness, Public, Conversations, Slideshare, E-mail Overload, Time Management, Repurposing e-mail
