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

¡¡¡Feliz Navidad 2009!!!

Yes, indeed, it’s that time of the year, once again, and whether you are out there about to celebrate such time, or not, I thought I would drop by to share a couple of quick words (Just in case I may not be able to later on today, seeing how things are starting to get busier than ever … hehe) to wish everyone out there a Merry Christmas and, specially, a very Healthy, Happy and Prospeous New Year!!

Hope you all have a rather peaceful and enjoyable time with your loved ones, treasuring those precious little moments that make it all worth it, all the way! And now instead of me sharing a bunch of words that will probably distract you from what you are about to embark on… how about if I just share over here a link to a short video clip that stars one of those 2009 characters difficult to forget and which has meant so much for a bunch of us not only on how to tell a good story, but also how to relate to it all the way from what we have been doing over the last few years …

Of course, I’m talking about "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections" (From Jean Francois Chenier) who wouldn’t leave us in such a special time just like that. After all, "sometimes, Web 2.0 is about being social"…

¡¡¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!!!

Tags: Navidad, Feliz Navidad, Christmas, Merry Christmas, Life, Work, Jean Francois Chenier, Lotus Connections, Connections, Best Wishes, Happy New Year, Health, Prosperity, Happiness, Bliss, Things That Matter, Special Moments, Joy, Fun, Stories, Storytelling

Twitter Study – On the Power of Your Network

In a recent blog post, if you would remember, I mentioned how, at the moment, I am enjoying a love / hate relationship (More the latter, to be honest…) with what, to date, has been one of my favourite social networking tools available out there, outside of the firewall. Yes, of course, why not? Once again, I am talking about Twitter.

In that article I mentioned how I was going through the stage where its behaviour was more erratic than anything else, forcing me to miss entire conversations with updates coming through on my timeline over a good bunch of minutes. The discussions with Twitter Support have been making progress and feel we are almost there, since the timeline updates have gone down from every 50 minutes to round about 8 to 10 minutes. However, not quite there just yet…

I’m probably not any longer on that stage where I was just on the brink of giving up on it altogether and move on to something else though. Somehow, like it has happened in the past already a few times (And for whatever the reason), the network / community of people I follow there keep dragging me back into it. Regardless of what I would do or say. And I eventually stick around once again…

Yes, it has happened again! This time around coming from a good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Steve Street, who earlier on today pointed me to a recent study that has been conducted by the fine folks behind faberNovel and L’Atelier around the topic of Twitter, that is, micro-blogging / micro-sharing, and the kind of impact it’s having on every single field, industry or aspect of who we are on the Web. Including our (Virtual / Physical) relationships, of course.

Check out "Twitter Study by faberNovel & l’Atelier" over in Slideshare and prepare yourself to go through over 50 great slides with some very powerful messages on why Twitter is worth it. There are plenty of slides I could mention over here that would be really worthwhile reading in plenty more detail, but then again that won’t make, probably, justice to the rest of the presentation and I can certainly assure you it’s one of those decks that once you show it to any Twitter-like skeptic you won’t have to convince them any longer. They will be sold by the time they hit the last slide …

That’s how relevant, straight to the point, insightful and witty this Twitter study is. And funny enough, again my own network playing a big role in here, now I realise that was one of the reasons why on that article I referenced above I mentioned how I didn’t want to abandon Twitter itself. Back then I didn’t know it. It was all sitting inside my subconscious self based on the network of folks I keep following over the last few months. Yes, this great Twitter study has turned those subconscious thoughts into concrete ideas I will be referencing over and over again, whenever someone asks me why I’m still using Twitter on a regular basis.

I try to give up on it a few times, as I am sure you may recall already, but, like I said before, it’s got something that keeps me coming back; that drags me without remedy clearly reminding me enough of that non-sense of wanting to give up on it altogether, hang in there for a little while longer while the issues get fixed and then back to business once again! Like usual, like it’s been over the last two years already … and counting …

So, enough of it all. I will stick around. I will hang around for a little while longer, while these issues get ironed out and in the mean time I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to have a look into the embedded version of the deck below and watch through it till the end… Then you will understand plenty more why I may be eating my words from that blog entry I shared a few days back… Isn’t that good fun?!?! hehe

A big and special thanks! to Steve for passing it along and for sharing it through Twitter! Next time I bump into him face to face I’ll have to buy him a drink or two … And with pleasure, don’t you think? Sometimes you need other people to come across and help you open your eyes about what you may be missing, because in some cases it’s just so obvious that you will miss out! Just like that! And you wouldn’t right? Are you on Twitter yet?

Tags: Studies, Twitter, Micro-Blogging, Micro-Sharing, Steve Street, faberNovel, L’Atelier, Research, Slideshare, Power of the Network, 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, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity

The Evolution of the Web: Past, Present, Future by Nova Spivack

And continuing further with that series of blog posts with highlights from 2009, here is another one that I thought I would share with you folks today. It’s not going to be the only one touching on this specific topic, but I guess I had to start somewhere. Yes, that’s right! I’m talking about some of the most amazing presentations that I have been able to attend live, or rather, get exposed to them from services like Slideshare that some of the folks I have been following for a while have been sharing across in there.

One of those presentations that I have certainly found really inspiring, as well as very much thought-provoking, is the one put together by Nova Spivack under the title "The Evolution of the Web: Past, Present, Future" and which he gets to describe briefly over at his blog. If you are looking for one of those presentations that would make you think for a while where we are in terms of our own usage and exposure to the Web, and its true potential, and, much more interestingly, where we are heading, this is one presentation to go through!

When I was first exposed to it a couple of days back, I just couldn’t help pondering about what my own Web user experience has been throughout the last 13 years. You would think that it’s been one of those that some would consider mature, specially when I realised it’s been almost 10 years since my first exposure to social software. However, if you check Nova’s deck you will realise how it’s actually something more to do with baby steps. Right at the infancy of what the Web will offer not just today, but in the next upcoming decades.

Plenty of people seem to think that Enterprise 2.0, or Social Computing, whatever term you would want to refer to, is the final destination that will help change the way we work within the enterprise,  fundamentally transforming not only the business itself, but us all as knowledge workers who are constantly depending more and more on the flow of information and knowledge at our fingertips. Well, for all of those folks I can certainly recommend you check out Nova’s deck, because it surely isn’t the case…

Somehow, after going through his deck, that growing sense that Enterprise 2.0 is just the beginning, having just gotten started with its initial infancy stages, would become stronger than ever. Yes, we are at the beginning, or going through the initial stages rather, of a new (r)evolutionary way of conducting business, of having more information than ever before at out immediate reach and having to make plenty of informed / learned decisions that may well not only change, but also influence tremendously, the corporate world as well as knowledge workers. I know that some of you may be thinking out loud we are witnessing a rebirth of Knowledge Management, perhaps. In fact, some of the main principles, defined over 15 years ago, are still the same.

However, in my opinion, there is a big fundamental change taking place and Nova nails it quite nicely on that presentation shared above by using a specific term I have grown to become rather fond of over the last few months… Yes, I’m talking about the Intelligent Web. The last frontier for the World Wide Web, where, finally, we are starting to see how it will connect everything, bringing into reality the concept of Semantics, for which Nova describes five different approaches that combine some of the main key elements that long time ago KM tried to put together, but never succeeded, at least, completely: Tagging, Statistics, Linguistics, Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence.

That’s where Social Computing kicks in; it’s just the beginning, the first initial baby steps for us all to realise there is something larger out there on the Web that we will eventually end up with. It may take us another decade or two, but eventually the move towards it is inevitable. So I guess the mission for us all is to keep growing along with it; don’t think that Social Computing is the end of it all, but rather… just the beginning. And if you would need further inspiration of what may lay ahead I’m just going to leave things over here as is and embed Nova’s Slideshare deck below for you to watch and ponder about it some more … It will be worth it, I can assure you of that. If not, judge for yourselves …