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 37 (Thinking Outside the Inbox – Extended Version)

First day back at work at the home office and you can imagine that things have been incredibly hectic throughout the whole day! After a superb week at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, it is now time to reflect further on what I have learned during the event, what folks I have met during that time (Including some really good and inspirational conversations!) and comment further sharing some of the highlights of what happened during the event itself. One of the best weeks I have had in a long time ever since I got started with this travelling spree, over nine months ago!

This is going to be the first of a series of blog posts, perhaps this one being the shortest one, where I will be sharing with you all some of those highlights of what happened every day while I was attending the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. The rest of the series would be much more in detail, thus a bit longer, sharing with you some additional thoughts apart from the live tweeting I did all along.

However, to get things started, I am going to begin where I left things back at the beginning of last week and I will continue with the weekly progress report of my new reality of giving up e-mail at work and then share with you some interesting tidbits that I am sure will help provide some further insights on detailing what the experiment has been like.

But, let’s get started first with the weekly report itself. This time around for week 37 and with this result you can see below:

As you would be able to see, and even though I was gone for most of the week and without the opportunity to be connected to the IBM internal network (More on that later on!), the results are back again to normal. Going down again for a total of 24 incoming e-mails! (Getting closer, once again, to the under 20 new challenge!).

For the rest, there isn’t much more that I would need to share on. Just the usual week where things have gone back to normal. However, the interesting thing is that, while I was in Berlin I had the opportunity to get a couple of interviews done detailing some more what my experiences have been around the topic of "Thinking Outside the Inbox".

Most of you folks already know how I was one of the keynote speakers on Thursday 23rd, where I explained, during the course of 14 minutes, what it is like living without corporate e-mail. I know, quite an experience! Well, while I am trying to get my hands on the recording of the session I thought I would let you know about one of the interviews, which is already up and running, and which is an extensive version of the 14 minutes I did at the keynote.

It was actually a video interview with the folks behind WE_Magazine: Ulrike Reinhard, Björn Bauer & Dominic Wind. Initially planned for about 30 minutes, we went a bit over that and recorded a 43 minute interview where Ulrike and Dominic asked some very interesting questions about why I got started with this new motto of mine of no more corporate e-mail, what the end-results have been, and, finally, detailing some of the overall experiences behind it as well as finding out some of my main sources of inspiration.

I must say that it was one of the most comfortable interviews I have ever done. Very relaxed, informal, engaging, thoughtful as well as insightful and the final production of that interview is this one:

At the same time, I am going to keep it short on this one, since the interview is rather lengthy on its own, but, just in case you may not have noticed, Ulrike, Björn & Dominic have been doing some really good work over at We_Magazine and you could check out the lovely interviews they did as well, while at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, to Suw Charman-Anderson (The burden of e-mail) and Stowe Boyd (Stowe Boyd and "WE"). Lots and lots of meat and plenty of food for thought in both of them!

Finally, I just wouldn’t want to finish up this blog post without giving a special thanks! to Tina Kulow for helping arrange this particular interview as well as the other two which I hope to be able to blog about as well some time during the course of this week, as they become available online.

Hope you enjoy watching through it, just as much as I did talking to incredibly smart folks like Ulrike, Björn and Dominic! Thanks ever so much, folks! Till next time!

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, e-mail, email, Productivity, Communication, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0, Berlin, Germany, Web 2.0 Expo Europe, web2europe, web2expoeu, web2expoeu08, w2eb, Highlights, Travelling, Business Trips, Twitter, Live Tweeting, We Magazine, Ulrike Reinhard, Björn Bauer, Dominic Wind, Suw Charman-Anderson, Stowe Boyd, Tina Kulow, Kulow-Kommunikation

Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 36 (Nine Months without E-Mail!)

As I am about to head over to the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, where a number of workshops have already started the show, I thought it would be a good moment to reflect on another milestone I have crossed in the last few days on my quest to giving up e-mail at work. Yes, indeed, it is that time again where I will be showing over the next few minutes the weekly progress report from last week: week 36! That is right! Last week marked the ninth consecutive month that I am no longer using corporate e-mail to communicate, collaborate and share knowledge with other knowledge workers! Wooohooo! 9 months! Who would have thought, eh?

I am not sure whether I would be having a chance to (live) blog the Web 2.0 Expo itself (It would pretty much depend on who would win the everlasting battle: online vs. face to face interactions, the latter being the purest form of social networking, if you would ask me!), although when I get back there will be highlights blog posts coming up sharing my overall experiences. Thus I thought I would go ahead and set the stage for my upcoming talk on Thursday with this entry.

It’s been nine months since I decided to give up on e-mail and it looks like things are back to normal. Here is the report:

As you would be able to see the incoming count of e-mails went down again to roughly above 30: 31, which ha been consistently what I have been working through over the last few months, with the odd exception of that new challenge I set up for myself of getting that number even lower: below 20! But we shall see how that goes.

I must say that last week’s count of e-mails was relatively higher than I expected and more than anything else, because of something that has happened that I am sure has hit plenty of other businesses. As we are coming closer to the end of the year, things are getting rather tight with budgets, specially for business trips, so a good number of the e-mails I have been getting last week were dealing with cancellation of events I was planning on going to, or other businesses trips, where we needed to do a couple of tweaks here and there, including the Web 2.0 Expo here in Berlin.

So I am glad that’s now over. I still have got one or two more business trips for the rest of the year and would definitely be keeping everyone updated about them, but from there onwards I am done with travelling for this year. And that can only mean that I expect the e-mail count to even go lower than ever from here onwards! Already seeing that this week while I am away!

To now wrap up this particular blog post I thought I would share with you a couple of very interesting, rather helpful and insightful links I have bumped into in the last few days on the topic of e-mail. One of them doesn’t have much to do with last week, since it got published yesterday, but I just couldn’t resist and you will see what I mean, when I get to mention it.

There have been plenty more relevant and interesting links to other fruitful discussions on the topic and will be tapping into them as time goes by, but for now I just wanted to touch base on these two, and in this particular blog post, since they complement each other rather well.

The first one comes from my good friend Ross Mayfield, Chairman, President & Co-founder of Socialtext, who not long ago published this stunning article in Forbes, as well as his own blog, under the title "E-Mail Hell". That’s just one of those essential articles that everybody who may be struggling with e-mail at work should have a look and read on. In it you would be able to find some really sound and helpful advice on how you can diversify your incoming e-mail count to the point that you can specialise it just as much as I did by having only 1:1 conversations of a sensitive / confidential nature. Everything else should go outside the Inbox and into much more open, public and transparent collaborative spaces! Take a look at what Ross thinks is the mail culprit of why we get so much e-mail: broken processes! (Spot on!)

From there onwards, he gets to detail a number of tactics on how you, too, can reduce your e-mail count to the point where it may be almost non existent! (Remember how I have been able to reduce mine by nearly 85% in the last few months!). I am not going to mention all of the various different tactics, since I think you should all head over to his article, or blog post, and read them all of them in there, but I guess I could as well tease you a bit with their headings to give you an idea of what you would be able to find there. So here it goes:

- "Establish Internal E-Mail Practices
- Move Group E-mail to Collaborative Workspaces
- Establish Public Protocols When Possible
- Reply to E-mail by Blog
- Leverage Special-Purpose Social Software" (Where yours truly gets a lovely mentioned on how I have fragmented & specialised those e-mail interactions)

Thus, as you would be able to see plenty of food for thought and lots and lots of helpful tips, very easy to follow, on how you can get things going and start challenging your Inbox, which, at the end of the day is what we should all be doing, if we feel we are not getting the most out of it. Yes, I know you are going to say that people will keep sending you e-mails. Yes, I go through that every day, but here is the thing, show them there is a different way, show them there is a better way for them (And for you!) to be more productive. Challenge them to re-think next time they send an e-mail and very soon you will be moving into the next wave of 2.0 interactions! Yes, indeed, the waters are lovely! Come and join us!

Oh, and for the second link, and for all of those folks who would want to go the route of the traditional way: i.e. still living inside your Inbox, check out this particular link, just published yesterday at the IBM.com under the title "Welcome to the age of Information Overload", which, after I read through it and listened to the nearly seven minutes podcast, I just couldn’t help thinking … what a lost opportunity! [Anyone heard of Social Computing and Social Software, please? Am I alone on this? Oh well... *sigh* -I would probably have another opportunity to comment on it at a later time and in much more detail...]

Why? Because whether we like it or not, what we are going through nowadays is not "Information Overload" folks, but "Filter Failure", like Clay Shirky would say… And here is the thing, it is up to You! to set up the right filters and there is nothing better and much more effective than relying on your (social) networks to work through that social filtering to get you where you need to be. Tools won’t just cut it anymore! They never did, they never will! It’s up to you! You are the one who has got to challenge your Inbox. No-one else.

Tags: Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Berlin, Germany, Networking, Social Networks, Web 2.0 Expo Europe, web2europe, web2expoeu, web2expoeu08, w2eb, Social Networks, Networking, Face to Face, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, Highlights, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Productivity, Communication, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Travelling, Business Trips, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Confidentiality, Sensitive, Ross Mayfield, Forbes, Clay Shirky, Filtering, Social Filtering, Information Overload, Milestones, E-mail Hell, Group Workspaces, Team Spaces

The Numerati – Reducing Your Employees to Numbers

A few weeks back Dave Snowden, as well as a couple of other folks I respect and admire, put together a blog post where he was questioning the ethical validity of the contents of a new book called The Numerati, which tries to pin down how the knowledge workers of the 21st century might be operating on the corporate world, based on some research that seemed to be taking place inside IBM of capturing end-users’ behaviours while working on the computer to then try to find the right experts / information for later engagements.

Funny enough this is a conversation I have been having internally already with a whole bunch of folks on an internal blog post started by Harriet Pearson, IBM’s VP Regulatory Policy & Chief Privacy Officer (On a blog post!! Who would have thought about that, huh?). Of course, I am not going to be sharing those comments over here, since they are taking place on a private environment where I feel I just need to respect that: its own privacy.

Needless to say though some of my comments were not very positive from the perspective where I feel the author of the book, Steve Baker, clearly seems to be missing the core driving values that drive IBM & IBMers to do their job in a professional manner. As an example of those values there is one in particular that will summarise my sentiments on, at least, the BusinessWeek excerpt of Baker’s book, and which, I thought, was worth while sharing over here as well:

Trust and Personal Responsibility in All Relationships

The premise of the book excerpt I read seems to contradict rather heavily that third core value from the IBM corporation as well as that one from IBMers, so I thought I would go ahead and put together this blog post where I will try to share with folks out there what’s IBM’s standpoint, which also happens to be my own, and I am sure that of plenty of other fellow colleagues.

For those folks who would want to know plenty more about it, specially IBMers, please go ahead and check out Harriet’s internal blog post on the topic where you can see where IBM stands. For the rest of you who may be interested, I got in touch with Harriet as well various folks within Corporate Communications and this is the statement they are sharing with anyone out there who may be asking for IBM’s position on the book’s contents:

• ""The Numerati" appears to confuse what might be technically possible, speculation concerning theoretical technological breakthroughs and what IBM actually is doing now.
• IBM is not routinely analyzing employees e-mail, calendars and chats without employees’ permission or knowledge
• Efforts have been underway for several years throughout IBM to better identify and determine the availability of persons with specific skills to be utilized on behalf of our clients.
• Employees themselves provide information via online database tools concerning their skills.
• That information can then be matched to client requirements, and also can be used to help determine IBM hiring and training requirements.
• Any impression that IBM creates employee behavioral profiles through monitoring of employee communications or schedules is erroneous."

As you may have noticed, I have taken the liberty to highlight some of the statements mentioned above, and grabbed from an e-mail exchange, and placed some emphasis on them as I feel rather identified with them as being one of those IBM employees.

Perhaps the most compelling items that certainly contradict some of The Numerati’s claims, are the second and last bullets, which I think clearly state how not only IBM, but also many of us IBMers, feel about some of the arguments the book excerpt tries to make.

As you may have guessed as well, this is going to be the first and last post I will be putting together on this subject on this blog, since I feel there was a need to put things down, perhaps, from a much clearer perspective, and share my two cents worth of comments on how I feel about the whole subject. Needless to say that I surely am glad IBM takes very seriously these matters and clearly understands concepts that nowadays are becoming more and more important, specially in the current Enterprise 2.0 world: like trust, privacy, responsibility, ownership, openness and transparency.

And I guess that now is where I will be putting together a short disclaimer that will be accompanying this entry:

Yes, indeed, as most of you already know, I have been working for IBM for nearly 12 years now and I am very proud of it! Why? Because amongst many other things, the company respects my privacy and treats me like a professional & responsible knowledge worker. The way it should be.

Tags: Dave Snowden, Cognitive-Edge, Numerati, IBM, Harriet Pearson, Chief Privacy Officer, CPO, Steve Baker, Personal Responsibility, Privacy, Openness, Trust, Transparency, Ownership, Responsibility, BusinessWeek, Corporate Media Relations, Respect, Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR, Knowledge Workers, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Professional