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

Evento Blog 2008 – Highlights (Cough, Cough)

As I have mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I was planning to put together a number of different entries with the highlights from the superb EventoBlog 2008 that I attended in Seville, over the weekend, to then let you folks know some more of what the experience was like, my impressions, what I learned, some of the folks I have met, the outcome from my talk and some overall feedback, but alas, I think I am eventually going to start with something rather unusual. At least, first time that it happens to me after coming back from an event:

COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!

Yes, that’s right, as a consequence of having the air-conditioning of the venue, Hotel Barceló, really blown up, I have now returned back home and a couple of days later, I am almost knocked out by a nasty cold I am going through that’s not even helping me think very clearly either for that matter! Ouch!!!

And it looks like I haven’t been the only one either! A few of the folks I have connected with through Twitter after the event have also been commenting on the same thing. So it looks like the airco managed to knock us all out while at the venue! Double ouch!

What’s the immediate result of that, you may be wondering, right? Well, for me, that this is going to be the first blog post with some of the highlights from EventoBlog: a cold! And a nasty one, too! So you may need to excuse me for a couple of days while I try to recover with some hot chicken soup, hot milk & honey, some drugs (hehe, not that kind!) and see if in a couple of days I can come back up in full force with those reviews and on to my usual regular blogging.

So if you see this blog going dormant for a couple of days or so, you know why. The lovely, and apparently, very powerful air-conditioning from the venue event. And you know the worst part, that I mentioned it throughout the entire event how we needed to do something about it, and nothing happened, eventually. Oh, well … Next time, I guess…

Off now into recovery mode for the next day or so without blogging, probably. But fear not, I will be back! I will be back with those highlights entries and share with you some of the great stuff I experienced throughout those couple of days. This is just going to remain as an anecdote I am going to remember for a little while, since it’s been a few years since I had such a nasty cold hanging around!

Thus see you all in a couple of days …

Tags: Cold, Flu, Sick, Ill, Blogging, Metablogging, EventoBlog, EBE, EBE08, Highlights, Barcelo, Hotel Barcelo, Conference Events, Events, Seville, Spain

Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 39 (Calendaring Mess!)

After a day and a half of a massive catchup; after a wonderful week on holidays, which ended up with yours truly attending (And presenting) at EventoBlog 2008 in Seville last weekend, it is now time to resume my regular blogging activities on my second day back at work! Goodness! What a fantastic few days! For the first time in a few months I have been about 99% of the time totally disconnected from everything Internet related and it felt great! I now know I should be doing this a whole lot more often! It was just too good to be ignored again!

But if those vacation days were not good enough, over the course of last weekend I have actually been attending one of the most impressive, and wonderful, social computing events I have attended in the last few months: EventoBlog 2008 in Seville, Spain. Two full days packed with some stunning presentations, round tables and panels around the world of blogging that would be difficult to forget! And the networking throughout the event was just an amazing experience I am hoping to be sharing with you folks shortly.

So much so that after attending the event, two days onwards and I am still jazzed up about it! So much that I have decided that from now onwards there will be a number of changes happening with my blogging habits, one of them being that very shortly I will be starting to blog as well in Spanish, as well as English, so that I would be able to reach out to those folks as well who asked plenty of questions and commented quite a bit around the subject of my giving up on e-mail at work new reality, which was the main subject of my talk at Sunday noon.

But that would be the subject for a number of upcoming blog posts as part of the series of highlights articles I will be sharing over here shortly detailing what the event was all about. Thus stay tuned …  For now, though, I thought I would pick things up where I left them and continue further with another weekly progress report on how things have been going with not using corporate e-mail any longer.

I am already on week 39 and by the end of it I was a little bit worried about it, specially after seeing the final number of incoming e-mails, which, so far, has been one of the highest since I started this whole thing. However, when examining the actual numbers and what happened during that week I knew exactly I didn’t have to worry about it. At all. And I will explain why.

But without any further delay here you have got the weekly report, so that you folks can have a look and find out some more on what happened:

As you would be able to see, 49 e-mails is not something that I have been receiving every week and, checking out the previous weeks, I was starting to get worried, like I mentioned above, that things may be going even further along and increase further up. But then again, I was just getting worried for nothing. Why? Because most of those incoming e-mails were actually provoked by myself! And no one else!

Yes, that is right! I was the main guilty party of receiving such a high number! And I am sure you may be wondering why, by now, right? Well, thanks to the ever lovely (Not!!) calendaring & scheduling options embedded in our e-mail systems, as well as the ever confusing Daylight Savings Time (That happened over that weekend in the US), which caused me much more harm than I could ever anticipate!

As you all know by now, I co-lead a community of social computing evangelists at IBM (BlueIQ Ambassadors) and right now there are over 500 of us and every now and then we eventually get together on a conference call to share some further news with the community and comment on the various activities we are engaging with as a community.

Well, on this week, week 39, it was the time where we were going to get together again and, as one of the co-leads, I had to send out the calendar invite to everyone, so that they could all make it. And, of course, since we don’t have much choice, all of us, in this aspect, I had to use e-mail for that. And, guess what?, things messed up and pretty badly!

Apparently, when I sent out the calendar invite, the timezones got mixed up and people had the details of the call on the right date, but at a different time. So there I go with my attempt to fix the whole mess and it took me not just one more try, but two!, to eventually fixed it all up! And that meant first three days of that week a complete mess with multiple e-mails arriving asking what happened! Or even some folks who were questioning my usage of e-mail, or my lack of effectiveness with it altogether, since I no longer use it! Yes, I know, too funny & ironic! hehe (Tell me about it!)

And the rest of the week I spent it recovering from the whole total mess! Goodness, never thought that a calendaring event could cause so much harm when combined with the DST changes that happened at the time in the US. I tell you something… I have learned a big lesson on this one for next time around, I will NOT mess up with the timezones and DST changes on the same week where they are taking place! Not going to run into the same embarrassing situation anymore. I had enough with this one!

Even more so, when last week I was gone the entire week on vacation and when I got back I counted the number of e-mails and things have gone back to normal again. And this week things seem to be going even better! Phew!

I don’t know what you folks think, but I just cannot wait for the day where Calendaring & Scheduling will separate itself from e-mail and have its own identity, so I can ditch e-mail for good! It is still the main reason for which I keep getting the most e-mails: just to arrange meetings, conference calls, events, etc. etc.

I long for the day where I can come to work and schedule a meeting and somehow I just wouldn’t need to use e-mail. It would just show up right there, ready to action, and without sending a single notice. Just like out of magic! Oh, yes, wishful thinking, I know, but wouldn’t it be wonderful? Wouldn’t it be an interesting challenge for calendaring & scheduling and e-mail innovators out there? … Any takers?

Anyway, that would be it, folks, for week 39. Within the next few hours I will be sharing what happened on my 10th month anniversary since I have given up on corporate e-mail, which promises to be rather interesting since it is going to be very much tight up with the event I attended over the weekend: The mind-blowing EventoBlog 2008!! Stay tuned for more to come!

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, Holidays, Vacation, Seville, Spain, EventoBlog, EBE, EBE08, Blogging, Metablogging, Conference Events, Events, Calendaring and Scheduling, Calendaring, Scheduling, Daylight Savings Time, DST, Timezones

On Holidays!

I was on my way to put together a new blog post over here on this blog, one of the various drafts I have got piled from the plenty of stuff that happened this week, and to comment on a few others I have bumped into in the last couple of days, yet my brain has not been very co-operative for the last couple of hours. Main reason being that as of now I am officially on holidays! Yay!

Yes, indeed, I am going to take a short break, from the moment I get to post this entry and till November 17th when I would be back again to work! One full week of doing nothing else than enjoy the lovely sunshine, get a very much needed rest (Specially for my heavily overused wrists!), enjoy the lovely food & friendly people around me and catch up with some very much needed work / life balance! And then back on to my favourite activity: face to face social networking! Not bad, eh? Yes, I know! Not bad at all! heh

Leo Babauta, over at the fine Zen Habits, put together just recently a wonderful blog post on the topic of striking a good balance between life and work under the title "How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life". Plenty of really good and helpful tips shared over there and worth while reading the article. For sure.

For me, it is now my own turn to find and enjoy that balance for the next few days and here you have got a couple of snapshots of how I am planning to let life win this everlasting battle of work vs. life:

Thus, if you don’t see me in the various social networking spaces where I usually hang out, you know exactly where I will be, at least, for the next few days. Because, just like Leo finished that blog post on striking a good life / work balance:

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." – Albert Einstein

Have a good everyone and see you all soon!

Tags: Holidays, Vacation, Gran Canaria, Beach, Sun, Mountains, Hiking, Fun, Balance, Work Life Balance, Rest, Life, Work, Leo Babauta, Zen Habits, Maspalomas Dunes, Maspalomas, Dunes, Landscapes, Sunsets, Spain, Photos, Albert Einstein, Wisdom