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

2009 Intranet Innovation Awards Now Live!

A couple of days back my good friend Alex Manchester blogged about something that I think would be really exciting for folks out there working in a corporate environment and enjoying the many advantages of having a state of the art and innovative Intranet. And if they have been involved with developing, maintaining or improving existing ones, even better! Yes, as you may have seen it already, I am talking about Step Two Designs‘ 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards! … They are now LIVE!

Even though you would be able to find plenty of good details about the awards themselves on the main homepage (Or in this particular information pack) I thought I would share over here a short excerpt of what their main goal is. More than anything else to give you an idea of what to expect (Something really cool to say the least!):

"The Intranet Innovation Awards are open to any professional or team that works directly on a company intranet site, whether a global corporation or small business. Previous winners have included brokerage firms to national non-profits, pharmaceutical subsidiaries to insurance and financial services organisations.

Their winning entries have ranged from small, web-like applications and carefully crafted persona packs, to competitor intelligence wikis, "Team sites in a box", workflow tools, enhanced staff directories, location tools, community forms and speaking intranet news."

Thus why did I mention that this is something really exciting for those folks involved with Intranets? Well, because more than anything else, it could well be one very handy and powerful way to demonstrate those skeptics out there it is possible to put together a good amount of work to produce some stunning Intranet user experiences where knowledge workers can benefit the most not only from traditional methods of reaching out, connect, collaborate, learn and share your knowledge across, but also to show off how some of those corporate Intranets have entered the 21st century by adopting some of the most compelling emerging technologies within the social computing space: such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking and social tagging tools, etc. etc.

I am not sure what you would think, but I feel that initiatives like the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards are incredibly helpful to help recognise the really hard, and most of the times hidden, piece of work of those folks heavily involved with building up the next generation of the Intranet user experience. So why not recognise their work and place a submission for your own Intranet? I am sure there would be plenty of candidates out there that could well make the next round of winners. So why not have your own Intranet as part of the long, and rather prestigious, existing list of winners. Does your Intranet have what’s needed to receive such an award? If yes, what are you waiting for?

Go for it!

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, Communication, Connections, Productivity, Intranets, Intranet, Corporate Intranet, Alex Manchester, Step Two Designs, Intranet Innovation Awards, IIA, 2009, Social Innovation, Winners, State of the Art

Mac Tip #3: TextExpander – Mac Typing Shortcut Utility Saves You Time!

Continuing further with the blog post series of Mac Tips I have been putting together over here on the good number of (social software) tools I get to use on a regular basis to help me be more productive, I thought I would cover today what, to me, is perhaps the biggest productivity tool I have bumped into on the Mac for the nearly two years I have been using my MacBook Pro as my main work machine.

It’s one of those tools that I would not classify per se as a social software tool, yet, it surely is helping me engage further in the social networking space much easier, and faster (As well as healthier!) than whatever I could have imagined so far. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the superb TextExpander, your next best friend on the Mac!

TextExpander "saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images" and although initially it may not say much more about it, once you start watching your behaviour of how you interact with your computer you immediately get hit by the numerous ways you could make use this application itself. And from there onwards, there is no way back! However, I thought I would expand further on the topic and perhaps share with you five different reasons as to why you would want to consider this tool to, at least, give it a try at some point. Thus here we go:

1. Saving keystrokes: If you are one of those people that gets to type quite a lot of text all over the place, and if that text string happens to be rather repetitive sometimes, why should you type it again, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of keystrokes and off you go, it will add that text for you automatically, whether just plain text or rich text! Even images!! Amazingly easy!
2. Spell check: With TextExpander you will no longer need to use a spell check; the application itself will become your default spell checker for everything! And all of that thanks to the AutoCorrect group of snippets. A huge database of strings that will correct on the fly almost every single spelling mistake you make. Try it! I know you will thank me later! Yes, it is *that* good!
3. Filling out forms: How many times have you had to fill in an Internet form or a specific document, presentation, spreadsheet, regular text file, whatever, with the same information details over and over again? Far too many, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of characters and voilá! Your forms instantly filled in and ready to go! Priceless!
4. Wealth of macros: One of favourite reasons. While you get to educate TextExpander to include the regular (rich) text strings you will want to avoid typing again, there is already a wealth of group snippets that you can import right away and start seeing the benefits of using this tool. Right from the Snippets user preference you can rather go ahead and create your own or import those already existing ones! That way you don’t have to start from scratch! Nice, don’t you think?
5. Watching over your health: Repetitive Strain Injury anyone? In the past I have talked about RSI a couple of times and have shared a number of tips on how to help prevent it. Well, perhaps one of the most compelling reasons I can mention for TextExpander is how it helps you save time by not having to constantly be typing away the same text strings, which means that with a couple of keystrokes you are off to insert the text you need without having to type it and therefore freeing up your hands from your keyboard. To that extent one of the nifty features is providing you some statistics on how many characters you have saved, but most importantly how many hours you have saved in the end as well!

   And I can only say that in my case it has been plenty of them, so you can imagine how grateful both of my wrists are about the extended breaks I am enjoying from that all of that typing away! W00t!

I am sure there would be plenty of other reasons why you would want to make extensive use of the fantastic TextExpander application, so I encourage you all to perhaps share through comments what your favourite ones are. Yes, I do realise that there is a price tag for this tool, and, to be honest, considering the amount of time I have been saving already; considering as well how much less I get to type on a daily basis, I can certainly state that $30 is not that expensive. Quite the contrary! I consider it quite an investment not only for my time saved, but, most importantly, for my own health! And that’s what really matters, don’t you think?

Oh, to wrap this Mac Tip #3 blog post, I thought I would give a special thanks as well to Euan Semple, who first introduced me to TextExpander through Twitter and encouraged me to give it a try and from there onwards I haven’t been back and more and more by the day it’s becoming that essential tool for my Mac I cannot longer live without! So, thanks much, Euan!

Tags: Mac, Apple, MacBook Pro, MBP, Tips, Hints, Productivity, Productivity-Tips, Tools, Images, Text, Rich Text, Text Strings, Twitter, TextExpander, Smile on My Mac, Spell Check, Macros, Forms, Repetitive Strain Injury, RSI, Euan Semple

Learning and Knowledge – Partners in Learning

For a good number of years, both Knowledge Management and Learning have always been associated with one another and overlapping quite a bit. Plenty of organisations are eventually using terms like Learning & Knowledge to refer to that process of knowledge sharing and collaborating; and, in a way, with the emergence of social software within the corporate environment, I am sure we will be seeing both disciplines come together even more!

To that extent, and in order to spark further conversations on the topic, while I get to finalise my thoughts on that very same subject, I thought I would share with you folks a couple of interesting links over here, rather quick, to perhaps come back to it at a later time. Basically, some more food for thought on the re-emergent theme of Learning & Knowledge; how Informal Learning is changing the game from traditional Learning itself; and how social computing is provoking a paradigm shift with regards to how we share our knowledge and collaborate with other knowledge workers both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.

To start with, here you have got a 3 and a half minute video clip from Jay Cross, titled "No more "learners"", where he clearly sets the stage as to where corporate learning needs to go, if it would want to survive in the current business environment where learning just happens while on the job, where people are people, not just "learners"; in short, where people are just "partners in learning":

The second subject that has been in my mind for a little while now comes from another thought-provoking resource. A recent article published by Matt Moore over at Innotecture‘s Learning + Knowledge = ? where he explores the merging of both Knowledge Management and Learning & Development into Learning and Knowledge. A really fascinating read that I wanted to share with you folks in this blog post, along with Jay’s video clip, while I keep thinking about it some more before I can share some further thoughts on both topics, because both of them do deserve plenty more to talk about! Don’t you think?

I mean, who would have thought that Learning & Knowledge Management could walk hand in hand within a corporate environment being as effective as ever, if not more!, thanks to the impact that social software is having within the enterprise? Who would have thought that social computing is helping shape the next generation of both learning and knowledge sharing as well as collaboration? Well, like I said, plenty of food for thought in that one, I tell you!

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Learning and Knowledge, Informal Learning, Informl, Jay Cross, Learners, Partners in Learning, Matt Moore, Innotecture, Learning and Development