Changes, Changes, Changes – Part III
Continuing further with the series of blog posts on the recent blog template changes that have taken place over at elsua.net (Parts I & II can be found here & here, respectively), I thought I would continue with one more blog post, which perhaps is going to have the highest impact on my overall blogging style and which I thought was a good time now (With the upgrade and everything) to go for it.
For a good number of months I am sure you may have noticed how all of the blogs I maintain at the moment have become a whole lot more focused and specific on a couple of topics which have dominated most of my blogging for 2008: first, the initial experiment, now reality, of giving up e-mail at work and divert most of the conversations into social software spaces and, secondly, the huge amount of travelling I have done in the last twelve months.
Well, now that the experiment has consolidated itself over time and there is no way back for me, and also seeing how this year seems to be paving out a lot easier on my travelling schedule I think it is time for me to go back to basics. Yes, indeed, I am going back to where I started with blogging! And about time, I think, too!
Ok, I know you may be wondering what my blogging style used to be at the beginning, right? After all, I am talking about five and a half years ago that I first starting blogging at my corporate blog behind the firewall. Well, to start with, I am going back to the main topics that sparked the creation of this blog: Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities & Community Building, Learning and Social Computing (Social Software or Enterprise 2.0, whichever term you would prefer). Yes, I will still continue to write the weekly progress reports on giving up on e-mail and also highlights from the reduced travelling I will be doing, but at the same time, it is a good time to go back to where I started, which is still what drives my passion in the corporate world: Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration and The Future of the Workplace with Enterprise 2.0.
Thus expect to see more blog posts around KM, around Collaboration & Communities and the blend of Learning and Knowledge, specially within the corporate world. But expect as well to have shorter blog posts, too! Yes, that is right! You know this one already! A couple of times I have mentioned in the past how I wanted to keep my verbosity on the short side and time and time again, I failed! Like in this very blog post I am putting together! 
Well, I think it is time for me to re-focus on my blogging style; to start writing shorter blog posts. to link more to other interesting bloggers on what’s in their minds; to share some further insights and my two cents on plenty of the stuff that’s going on in the areas I have just mentioned above; to comment back on previous blog posts I have put together and comment as well on other articles I bump into; in short, to be elsua again! Yes, the same elsua that over five years ago decided to take the plunge and join the blogosphere, and for that matter, the world of social software altogether! And let his passion about those topics drive his blogging…
Like I said, this is probably going to be the last blog post on the long side that I will be putting together, unless the odd one sneaks in here and there (Probably the ones related to highlights of particular events that I may have attended or plan to), but for the rest things are going to be a lot more dynamic, a lot faster for your folks to digest and dive into the conversation, but, hopefully, still keeping the same quality you are all used to. At least, I am going to try my hardest in making it happen and somehow I sense the new blog template upgrade is going to help with that! heh (Talking about an incentive, eh?)
As a result of that my other two blogs are going to be impact in pretty much the same way as well. So expect to see shorter blog posts, but perhaps much more frequent. Oh, and since I know that I am running into the dangerous road of perhaps sharing far too many entries in a single day (Back when I got started I used to blog 4 to 6 blog daily posts! -Oh, the good old times! heh), this is when the Lifestream of elsua.net will kick in, because I am about to start using a couple of other social networking tools to share some of those different insights and all of that content is going to come through that particular section.
Of course, I will write about it whenever I am ready with the launch of those couple of social tools. They are not new, they have been there for a while now, but I feel it is now time for me to start making use of them. One of which is one you know already: ma.gnolia. My favourite social bookmarking tool out there on the Internet (Dogear, of course, is my favourite one behind the firewall 
).
In it you would be able to see all of the links I have been sharing all along and, just recently, I restarted again to tag those articles, blog posts, interesting references where I have dropped a comment under a specific tag: commented, and since I have configured Lifestream to grab those shared links from ma.gnolia you would be able to keep up with where I have been (Oh, this particular section also includes my twitterings). Mainly, because there may be the odd day where I may not have a chance to put together a blog post, but that doesn’t mean I have been quiet that day. Head over to Lifestream and see what’s going on.
Oh, and when the second social software tool kicks in, things are about to get even much more interesting … But that would be the post for another day. For now, I think I have taken enough of your time for one last time and from here onwards it is all down to me to see where I can keep up with this new challenge for 2009: going back to basics! Yay!
Let’s do it!
Tags: Metablogging, Blogging, elsua, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Blog, Changes, Design Changes, Template Changes, Twitter, Lifestream, Blogging Style, Blogging Voice, Thinking Outside the Inbox, No-Email, Travelling, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Community Building, Learning, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Future of Workplace, Blogging 101, Ma.gnolia, Dogear, Basics
Changes, Changes, Changes – Part II
Posted on Jan 6, 2009 | Categories: General Interest, In the News, Metablogging, Productivity Tools | 6 Comments
Oh the excitement! It looks like the new upgrade of the blog template over at http://www.elsua.net has been a total hit! Plenty of folks have dropped by the launch entry, as well as through Twitter, to comment on how much better the new design is, compared to the old one, and although I am sure the other two blogs I maintain will keep the same flavour they have been having I can surely guarantee you it is quite a rush receiving all of the positive commentary and quite motivating to keep things going with some more regular blogging. And since we are starting another year, why not, right?
Well, here I am again then, putting together a follow up blog post to the one from yesterday where I will be commenting further on some of the various different changes that will be taking place over at elsua.net and which, in a way, will also affect to some extent how I will keep things going with all of the blogs I currently look after.
Thus without much further ado, here is a short list of the new things you will be able to find at my main person / business blog:
- About: This is where folks can find a recent photo of what I look like (Ideal when meeting up face to face!), but also a description of who I am, what I do, what I like and what people can expect from the blog. And, finally the opportunity now to leave comments with whatever you may have in mind that you feel would need / require my attention. Whenever people may not be able to reach out to me through IM, Twitter, Facebook or whatever other social networking site, this would be the area to drop by and leave a comment. You see? I didn’t mention email
- Archives: One of the sections I am most excited about and which I was really looking forward to finally have it as part of the blog. A lovely, and nifty, index of the over 866 blog posts I have put together in elsua.net, so if you are looking for something I may have blogged about in the past you will be able to find it through there much easier! Oh, and the Search function now works, too!
- Links: For a good number of months I was using a blogroll injected directly from BlogLines, where folks could check out some of the current reading I was doing. But then things got messy and I eventually had to take it down. However, since plenty of folks have been asking me about it again in the recent weeks I thought it would be nice to recover it and that’s why under Links you will find my current blogroll of over 270 feeds, because, yes, indeed, I still read feeds (As well as Twitter!). Don’t you?
- Photos: Definitely, this was one of the sections I was really looking forward to, but never thought I would have a chance of implementing it. But, again, thanks to the lovely piece of work from Laura Whitehead, under Photos you would now be able to get a glimpse of all of the photos that I get to share in my Flickr account, without you having to go anywhere else. Over there you will be able to find pictures from all of my travelling (Getting started with 2009′s in just a few days from now, by the way!) as well as from the place where I have lived for the last five years: Gran Canaria.
You may have noticed how I haven’t been sharing as many photos as I once used to and all along there has been a reason for it: not having a good enough photo editing / processing software on the Mac. But now that Picasa for the Mac is there (Which, along with Camtasia, was the only piece of software I really missed from Windows. Now, not anymore!), be certain that I will start sharing plenty more of the pictures I have taken during the course of 2008 and beyond!
- Lifestream: Finally, another section which I was really looking forward to implementing in elsua.net, was the one called Lifestream, which happens to be a super nifty WordPress plugin, put together by David Cramer, and which is going to prove incredibly useful as I start to diversify my online presence in more and more social spaces. Yes, that’s right, I won’t say much about it for now, but things are going to change slightly with my own blogging style and how I get to use other social software tools and Lifestream is the one that is going to put them all together in a single place. Thus stay tuned for more to come…
And that would be it, folks! Some of the most striking, and new, changes that you would be able to notice on my main personal / business blog on the Internet. The rest you would notice how it is much cleaner, a lot less clutter, plenty less widgets (I have only kept there MyBlogLog, since I still make use of it to a certain degree) as I was fully aware how much noise they added to the template as well as slowing down the overall Web site itself. So I decided to take them all down!
Finally, you would also see how for each of the blog posts I will be putting together you will have an opportunity to weigh in your thoughts not just with comments, but also with ratings (Thanks to the GD Star Rating WordPress plugin put together by Milan Petrovic), as well as share across that specific article in various social bookmarking and social networking sites, thanks to another really nice WordPress plugin called Sociable, put together by Joost de Valk.
Like I said, quite a thrill having gone through such a massive upgrade of the blog template, which in reality has also managed to introduce a few new things which I am hoping you would get to enjoy them quite a bit more, but, most importantly, a much more significant change, which is going to be detailed in Part III of this series and which will relate to describe some more the new blogging style I will be adopting (Adapting to) from here onwards. But that would be another day…
(For now, if you are reading this article directly from elsua.net, hope you will be enjoying this new ride, and remember if you find something is broken or whatever other issue or bug, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We will be more than happy to amend things right away!)
Tags: Metablogging, Blogging, elsua, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Blog, WordPress, WordPress.org, Changes, Design Changes, Template Changes, Twitter, Feedback, Laura Whitehead, Web Design, Archives, Links, About, Photos, Flickr, Lifestream, BlogLines, Gran Canaria, Travelling, Picasa, Mac, Google, Photography, Camtasia, Lifestream, Plugins, WordPress Plugins, David Cramer, MyBlogLog, GD Star Rating, Milan Petrovic, Sociable, Joost de Walk, Blogging Style
Changes, Changes, Changes …
If you are reading this blog post from the syndicated feed, or from my other external blog over at ITtoolbox, or even from my IBM internal blog, you may want to stop right there and head over to my main blog site http://www.elsua.net, as I am really excited to announce the first of a good bunch of changes that I will be going through in my fourth year blogging out there on the Internet. Yes, that’s right, back in October 2008 I made already my third bloggiversary and although I couldn’t blog about it at the time with all of the travelling I was involved with, for a good number of weeks I have been thinking about going through a major change of my main Web site, elsua.net, and it is with great pleasure that I am now ready to share with you a new massive change taking place right as we speak!
Yes, that is right, if you head over to my main blog you will be able to see a massive change in the design of the site, still using WordPress.org though (Currently upgraded to v2.7), but with plenty of major updates all over the place. A lot cleaner, a lot easier in the eye, a lot less cluttered with widgets, gizmos, scripts and whatever else, and, hopefully, much easier to read and digest its content. Finally, friendly to those folks still on Internet Explorer or using whatever the mobile device (On the iPhone / iPod it looks fantastic! - must confess).
Overall, not as busy as what it used to be, which means that it would probably help folks navigate through the content much easier. The interesting thing is that if you stop over the site and browse through the changes you will also get to notice a good number of updates that will be happening to the overall content itself. Yes, indeed, this update of the template will provoke as well a good number of changes of my own blogging style on all of the three blogs and I am hoping that over the next couple of blog posts I would be able to share some further insights on where I will be taking next my own blogging style.
For now, just wanted to give folks out there reading elsua.net the heads up that the change has now been completed! You are more than welcome to click and check every single aspect of the site and if you find that something is broken or is giving you unexpected results please do get in touch and let me know, through a comment on this blog post itself, or through Twitter itself. I will be collecting all of that feedback and amend bugs, issues, etc. accordingly.
Finally, I would want to let everyone know that this whole facelift of my main blogging site wouldn’t have taken place if it weren’t for the superb piece of work put together by Laura Whitehead (@LittleLaura in Twitter) who over the course of time has managed to put together a wonderful job and has been incredibly patient listening to my needs and wants and what you see right in front of you is all her work! Well done, Laura! Thanks ever so much for that fresh change! … Very much needed 
Tags: Metablogging, Blogging, ITtoolbox, elsua, Bloggiversary, Anniversary, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Blog, WordPress, WordPress.org, Changes, Design Changes, Template Changes, Twitter, Feedback, Laura Whitehead, LittleLaura, Web Design
