If you would remember, a couple of months ago I was invited to go to Germany and participate in a road show through various IBM sites scattered all over the country where a bunch of fellow colleagues, and good friends, and myself spend a number of hours providing an extensive overview of what Social Computing within the Enterprise was all about, then we touched based on some of the various Enterprise social software tools available out there and we rounded it all up with a session touching base on my new mantra of giving up on e-mail.

Yes, I am talking about the See the Light - Thinking Outside the Inbox road show I did with folks like Martti Garden, Matthias Zastrow, Swantje Schulze, Rene Werth and my good friend Ralph Demuth. Well, after some time I have now finally been able to put together something very much related to that road show that I thought most folks over here would find interesting and relevant, specially if you have been following my new reality of not using corporate e-mail over the last few months.

Back then I mentioned how we would eventually try to record one of the presentations I did on the topic of "Thinking Outside the Inbox" and then share it with everyone else. Well, we did! We managed to successfully record it in Düsseldorf and it was probably one of the best presentations I have delivered on the topic, at least, till then. It was recorded from my Nokia N95 (Boy, do I love that device or what? The quality of the recording audio and video is just outstanding!!) by Martti Garden and so far it has been one of the most extensive sessions I have done as well on the topic.

So, in it you will see me covering the background of why I got started with this, what it has been like, the kind of implications I have been exposed to on a daily basis, what social software tools I use on a regular basis to escape e-mail, and, most importantly, how you yourself can get things going as well to re-purpose the way you process work related e-mails. In short, I cover all of the stuff I have written about over here, but perhaps a bit more from the perspective on how it is all down to changing one’s habits as far as sharing knowledge and collaboration is concerned.

The video lasts for a little bit over 40 minutes, so I better stop right now and point you to it. It took me a while to find a video sharing site that would host such a large file, but in the end Vimeo seems to be doing the job quite nicely. So here it is:

See the Light - Thinking Outside the Inbox from Luis Suarez on Vimeo.

Hope you enjoy watching it, just as much as we did putting it together and making it available to everyone out there! And from here just a BIG and special THANKS!!! to Martti (Who patiently recorded the whole thing without a single glitch. I can imagine his arm & hand must have hurt for quite a bit after it was all done!), Matthias, Swanje, Rene and Ralph for all of the hard work they went through to put together such an amazing road show and for inviting me to take part of it as your special guest! You made me feel that way! Thanks much!!!

Tags: Germany, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, Innovation, IBM, Software, Tech Sales, Sales, See The Light, SeeTheLight, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, Düsseldorf, Road Show, Tour of Germany, Re-purposing E-mail, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Martti Garden, Matthias Zastrow, Swantje Schulze, Rene Werth, Ralph Demuth, Nokia, N95, Video, Video Sharing, Vimeo, Presentations, Events

And we keep moving on! As you may have noticed already, over at Sweettt.com, Matt Simpson, co-host along with myself of The Sweettt Show, has just created a blog post a few hours ago, where he is sharing the next episode from our podcasting series on the topic of "How to Make a Great Podcast". But before moving on further on sharing a few thoughts about it, I thought I would go and clarify a couple of items that may need further explanations.

As you may have read in a previous blog post, we are not on episode #2 of the series, but on #5. It was, indeed, the second episode I co-hosted the podcast with Matt, but he has been working already on Sweettt.com for a little while and in reality we would be talking about that #5 I just mentioned. Thus we haven’t chewed on three consecutive instances of the podcast. I just caught up myself with the total amount of episodes available for tuning in! And yes, we are on #5!

Second item that I would want to touch base on is that if you have listened to that last episode shared you would be able to find out how we are still searching for the identity of the podcast and we may have reached it already! We are probably getting very close and we are going this time around with "The Sweettt Tertulia". We both like the term & the concept quite a bit and may stick with it for a little while more, as we explore some more options, but so far, it does seem to resemble that whole purpose of what we envisioned for the podcasting series from the very beginning: A Tertulia of a couple of friends with some other friends coming along and engaging in conversations on topics we all feel very passionate about!

Thus with all of that said, you can go ahead and check out "Sweettt.com - Episode 5 - How to Make a Great Podcast", from where you can listen to the podcast episode directly from there or, alternatively, you could go ahead and download the .mp3 audio directly from here. As usual, Matt put together a few show notes, which will give you an idea of what we talked over the course of roughly over 30 minutes. And at the same time, he included the lovely Wordle (From Jonathan Feinberg), which I am also going to include over here, so that you can get a bit more of a visual image of what we talked about:

Oh, and if you would want to have some more text, apart from all of what I have already mentioned over here, check out my show notes from the episode, where I have also tried to keep that informal flavour from previous chapters:

Show Notes #5:

- Still recovering from the SMACK found from episode #4. Boy, *that* was hilarious! Tummy still hurts!!
- Ahhh, those good old times while at high school. Remember them?
- Sweettt Tertulia is born! And with a special 2.0 flavour!
- Yeah, I like it … "The Sweettt Tertulia Show". Think we just nailed it!
- Moving on with the topic of Conversations (Yeah, we know, our favourite subject!)
- Finding the identity of a podcasting series is not as easy as you would think! Specially striking for the magic formula!
- What makes a good podcast? Yes, that’s what was in our mind and we think we are getting pretty close …
- Whooops! 113 downloads, not episodes, Mr! What were you thinking?!?!?
- Doug Cornelius, one of our favourite KM bloggers gets a mention, while discussing podcast consumption, while commuting.
- Time flies when you are having fun and you completely forget you are recording!
- 30 minutes of goodness! Is that the right length?
- 30 minutes may be a good measure, but why cut off the conversation when it is really engaging? Keep it rolling, baby!!
- Slicing it all may well be the final solution, while learning from others how they do it. Why re-invent the wheel, right?
- Matt Moore gets another mention for how he manages the podcasts he produces and distributes them in multiple parts of the same long episode. Nifty!
- Fun, fun, fun! The power of Show Notes! It isn’t your typical TOC, eh?
- Want to engage with us on the conversations? Get involved, drop a comment, whether it is text or audio! We’ll grab it from there and bring it on!
- At the end of the day… a podcast is still a podcast! Regardless what people may say!
- Oh la la, as a result of this episode http://sweettt.com has gone through a major re-design. SWEETTT!!!

Hope you enjoy this episode, just as much as we did recording it! And stay tuned, because there are plenty more to come!

Tags: The Sweettt Show, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Series, New Media, IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Identity, Tertulia, Wordle, Jonathan Feinberg, Doug Cornelius, Matt Moore, Innotecture, Engineers without Fears

Continuing further with the weekly progress reports on my giving up on e-mail new mantra, I am back at it again, and this time around with a wonderful link from one of my favourite bloggers and KM thought leaders, if I may say so, whose article I am surprised is not getting much more attention that what it truly deserves. And you will see what I mean very very soon. For now though I am going to share a couple of comments on what actually happen on week 27, where things seem to be keeping up the pace with the latest downwards trends. I still have got to blog on week 28, but I can tell you how after having gone through the seventh month of giving up on corporate e-mail, I am just as excited as I was on the first day when I got things started.

But let’s have a look into the progress report for week 27:

As you would be able to see, the number of incoming e-mails went down and quite a bit, I must admit, to the point where over the last couple of weeks that count seems to fluctuate between 22 and 30, which puts me in the right position for my next challenge, which is lower down that number under 20, i.e. between 10 to 15 e-mails a week! I know, a nice challenge to have! We shall see if we can keep up with it! One thing you may have noticed is how increasingly the number of e-mails seems to decline both at the beginning and end of the week, so if I can tame those Wednesdays & Thursdays I think I would be able to go well under that new challenge. Either way, let’s see how it goes from there…

And now, let’s just cover briefly the link I mentioned at the beginning of the blog post from one of my favourite KM thought leaders, and good friend (And amazing blogger, too!), who, not long ago, put together a blog post where he referenced a presentation he recently did at a specific event and which had very nice and thought-provoking title: "Easing e-mail Pain with Social Software".

Yes, I am talking about Matt Moore, author of Engineers without Fears, who a few days ago put together "Enterprise 2.0 Presentation". In the past, I have been blogging about some of the stunning work Matt has been doing exploring new, and innovative, ways of collaborating and sharing knowledge with other knowledge workers and this blog post is no exception! For sure.

In fact, that article references a presentation I also referenced over here not long ago and which clear puts together some compelling reasons on our need to continue re-purposing e-mail as our preferred collaborative and knowledge sharing tool. Well, that presentation got even better and, if not, judge for yourselves checking out the direct link over here, or the embedded version below:

As a teaser, and before you dive into the excellent presentation that Matt put together, I thought I would share with you a couple of the notes that Matt shared over at the original blog post and which would resonate with you, rather strongly, on several of the reasons I have discussed over here on why, seven months ago, I wanted to stop using e-mail and re-purpose it altogether:

"The five steps are:

i. ban attachments & instead link to files sitting in a more permanent location;
ii. if an email conversation involves more than 5 people then shift it elsewhere,
iii. make your tools as simple to use as possible,
iv. encourage role modeling of good behaviours by senior staff,
v. begin with a small step in the right direction rather than trying to change the world in one go." (Emphasis mine)

I told you the presentation was amazingly good, right? Well, it gets better! If not check out the five issues to consider now:

"i. security. email is insecure anyway but you need to clearly establish access guidelines for each location where documents are stored,
ii. privacy with new tools is important - e.g. staff need to understand how public their discussions will be,
iii. develop an archiving / retention policy for your documentation,
iv. do not hit staff members with too many tools, they could be overwhelmed with choice,
v. consider different IP options for ownership of content esp. if consumers are involved."

I am sure that after you watch Matt’s presentation, and if you have been following my new reality of giving up on e-mail for a little while, it will resonate quite strongly, and, much more importantly, will give you plenty of ammo you could re-use for your own re-purposing of incoming e-mails you receive! And including plenty of practical tips, too! You see? It’s not as difficult as it may well seem… So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and join us!

(Many thanks for the lovely piece of work, Matt! And, above all, special thanks for sharing the presentation and its notes through your blog! Great work! Well done!)

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, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Matt Moore, Innotecture, Slideshare, Re-purposing E-mail, Attachments, Simplicity, Simple, Role Modeling, Leadership, Security, Privacy, E-mail Tips

If you have been following this blog in the last few days, you would remember how not long ago, both Matt Simpson, from Sweetttt.com, and myself, launched a podcasting series together called The Sweettt Show where we dived into some really good and fun discussions. After that first episode Matt went on vacation to a place I could very much call paradise and he just got back! Which means, we are both back into the game and have ventured into recording our second episode of The now Sweettt ELSUA Show: On Finding an Identity.

Yes, that’s right! In this, our second episode, we actually discuss, pretty much like in every beginning, plenty of stuff with regards to the identity of the podcast, its own branding and where we would both want to take things with it. Rather some interesting discussion that folks new to podcasting may find rather revealing on the trials and tribulations from getting things going at the initial stages.

This time around the episode is a lot shorter than the introductory one, lasting for a little bit over 20 minutes and I can guarantee you that if after listening to that episode you haven’t laughed your b**t off, you won’t ever! We had a very unexpected guest who decided to become the star of the show. Towards the end of it, actually.

Just like in the first episode, I thought I would go ahead as well and share with you over here the different annotations that both Matt and myself put together while listening to the episode and describe the train of thoughts that went through our minds all along:

"00:30 Welcome & Introduction - “The Age of Conversation”

01:50 Silly Baboons - Matt sends Luis a photo of the two of them with a caption “Silly Baboons” Who said that podcasting is not fun?

02:30 We’ve not far from the apes

03:10 Great Photos - Chris Brogan getting a mention for his incredibly good photography skills, amongst many other things! heh

04:00 Our Name & Brand - What should be our name? Should we include Elsua in the brand? Finding an identity for The Sweettt ELSUA podcast? Excuse me? (hey! “Sweettt Elsua” hmmmm) Branding? Podcasting? Is there such a thing? Excuse me?

Surprise, surprise!?! We can’t comment on that one yet! (But stay tuned!)

04:45 A future Elsua Podcast, in the making… ELSUA going solo podcasting! YAY!!! About time, too!

05:00 Interviews & Conversations in the Enterprise 2.0 podcast space - On the importance of Enterprise 2.0 interviews… We can’t get enough of them? Fancy being one of our guests?!? Let us know!

Sebastian Thomschke getting a mention, too!

06:50 Getting ready to bring more discussants on board

07:00 Mark Masterson - is interested in joining the discussion (actually, Matt broached this with Mark back in Boston)

07:00 Jon Mell - is interested in joining the discusion

08:00 Mention of Dogear Nation and their dynamic fast-paced style of conversations. Wooohooo! Dogear-Nation getting another mention! (We highly recommend subscribing to that podcasting series, if you haven’’ done so already!)

10:00 In depth discussion is the goal, just like a decent long chat over coffee. Entering the Age of Conversation and on the power of coffee! What’s the right length of time in a podcast? The one who figures it out gets the big prize!

12:13 Tertulia - Luis teaches Matt a new word. And then “Tertulia 2.0″ was born!

12:50 A loud SLAP is heard

13:15 An intellectual gathering… Babbelfish translates “tertulia” into ‘Social Gathering’… It’s like a Salon. Now really getting into the “Social Gathering” thing. Boy, did we have some good fun or what?

14:11 What is a Salon?

14:30 Tertulia definitely has a strong intellectual component, highly social, intense discussion, very intellectually stimulating

15:30 A cocktail party among the cogniscenti. This is a Salon. Tom Short, former IBMer and good friend of ours, gets a mention when talking about the concept of “Salons”. Yes, we are still in search of that identity for the podcast!

16:50 The kind of discussion that Mark Twain would be found within. Oh, oh, we are now about to get in trouble. Mark Twain coming up on the show, too!

17:40 Agreement, disagreement… Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Maybe we just nailed the identity of The Sweettt ELSUA Show: Tertulia 2.0!

18:20 Luis attacks a poor defenseless creature.

18:40 And THAT’s how you share knowledge!! BAP!!!

19:15 Finish"

Oh, and if that is not enough, we have put together as well something that we know is getting more and more popular by the day and which we both love dearly: a Wordle (Thanks much, Jonathan! Remind us to invite you for drinks whenever we would meet up face to face, please!). Yes, that is right, if you are more into the visual side of things, that same set of annotations will transform into this:

Thus, without much further ado, here is the link where you can play the file directly, or, alternatively, you can download the .mp3 audio file from here: The Sweettt ELSUA Show - Episode 2 - On Finding an Identity.

We hope you enjoy listening to it, just as much as we did recording it, and, I tell you, like I said above, if this episode does not make you laugh, nothing will! … (Wait till the end!)

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: The Sweettt Show, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt ELSUA Show, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Series, New Media, IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, E-mail Abuse, Visibility, Awareness, Think, Re-purposing E-Mail, Dogear-Nation, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Enterprise2conf, E2.0, Mark Masterson, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Paradise, Identity, Conversations, Sebastian Thomschke, Jon Mell, Tertulia, Tertulia 2.0, Salon, Mark Twain, Wordle, Jonathan Feinberg

A couple of days back, you would remember how I created a blog post where I was mentioning a short video-conference interview I participated in where I briefly talked, along with William Pulleyblank, on the topic of The Future of Work and the implications for the corporate world and the workplace, specially from the perspective of the impact of Enterprise 2.0 within the business environment and how it is changing the way knowledge workers interact with one another to collaborate and share knowledge together.

Well, I am back at it again! First, to let those folks who may not have been able to see the video just yet that they can now watch it through YouTube (See embedded video below as well):

And, secondly, that, as I have mentioned on the original blog post, there is a second video conference clip, much longer than the one mentioned above, and where I have touched on various different topics very much related to that topic of "The Future of Work". The direct link to the video can be found over here and I have also taken the liberty of embedding it below, so that you can start playing it back if you would want to right from this blog post:

The Future of Work by Luis Suarez from Luis Suarez on Vimeo.

It lasts for about 30 minutes and, like I was saying above once more, I talked about several different topics all of them related to the impact of Enterprise 2.0 and Social Computing within the corporate workplace and how it is changing the way we all work inside and outside the firewall.

But instead of me just letting you know some more of the specifics behind the actual topics I covered, I am actually going to do something new I haven’t done before in this blog, which is basically use the über cool application that one of my fellow IBM colleagues, and good friend, Jonathan Feinberg (Father of other IBM fantastic social software applications like Dogear and Cattail), put together out there available to everyone. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Wordle, the wonderfully crafted & amazing tool that generates very suggestive "word clouds" which can keep you busy looking at them for hours and hours to no end!

Thus without much further ado, here is the Wordle from The Future of Work by Luis Suarez:

(From here a BIG and special THANKS MUCH! to all of the folks who made the whole video-conferencing interview possible; from the logistics, to the recording, to the final post-production and availability of the video interview itself, I want to take this opportunity to thank Avi Drucker, Courtney Shelton, George Faulkner, Jeremy Hodge and Mareike Politycki.

Yes, folks, *that* is the younger generation that’s about to enter the workplace, if they haven’t done so already! (Ok, ok, George is a little bit older to be entering the workplace now! heh))

Tags: IBM, Future of Work, Office2.0, Workplace, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Online Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Networks, Networks, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Generation Y, Gen Y, Twitter, YouTube, New Hires, William Pulleyblank, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Conversations, Vimeo, Jonathan Feinberg, Dogear, Cattail, Wordle, Word Clouds, Avi Drucker, Courtney Shelton, George Faulkner, Jeremy Hodge, Mareike Politycki, Life@Home, Work Life Balance, Balance, Hierarchies, Organisations, Baby Boomers, Boomers, Risk, Risk Management, Control, Training, Expertise, Skills, Trust, Flexibility, Ownership, Responsibility, Openness, Virtual Teams, Transparency, Dialogue, Talent Management, Careers, Smarter, Relationships, Friendships

Given today’s tragic events occurred in Madrid, Spain, which I am sure most of you have heard or read about already, there will not be, over here, the corresponding daily blog post. Our prayers, deepest condolences and further comforting thoughts go to all of the victims and their families …

R.I.P.

Tags: Madrid, Spain, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Plane, Crash, Plane Crash, Tragedy, Accident, Spanair, Accidente, Avión, Siniestro, Accidente, Pasajeros, Listado, Tragedia