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

Identity Management on Facebook by Josh Scribner

I guess it is inevitable, right? I suppose there is no way to stop it, either; perhaps it shouldn’t be after all. Who knows… We all probably realise though that the usage of Facebook as one of the most powerful social networking environments out there will continue to soar even more rapidly than right now, where it was just mentioned a couple of weeks back how it reached over 200 million users, as months go by and more and more people get exposed to social software in general. Yes, like I said, it is probably inevitable.

However, what most folks can do, but may not have realised about it just yet, is the fact you can establish, and control, how you would want to interact with it, specially if you are in the need of separating both your personal and your business interactions, because, as we all know, sometimes some things should remain just that: private.

So what can you do to tailor your own Facebook interactions to suit the various different groups you connect with in that social network, so that not only you can make sense out it, but also those personal and business connections you have in such powerful networking environment? I know that plenty of times folks have been talking about how you can protect your own privacy while using Facebook extensively. I could go ahead and share with you all some tips on how you can get things going, and start protecting some of those conversations, if you haven’t done so thus far.

Nonetheless, I am actually going to do something much better than that. If you need to take a closer look again in how you manage your identity in such social network so that you can split up interactions and define multiple levels of visibility, walk no further than a recent presentation that one of my team colleagues has put together and shared across in Slideshare.

Check out Identity Management for IBMers on Facebook by Josh Scribner. This is a slide deck that provides plenty of great tips on how you manage, and still make sense, of your identity in Facebook. It provides plenty of background on why we, end-users, need to watch out for what we share, how we share and with whom we share it. Because you never know how and where those interactions will turn up. Pretty much common sense, I can assure you all, but still plenty of sound advice on how you can improve your overall exposure to such social networking tool. Thus without much further ado, here you have got the embedded version, so you can take a look and judge whether it may be a good time now, or not, to re-evaluate how you are making good use of Facebook, both from a personal and business perspective. Worth while taking a look into Josh’s deck to get things going, for sure.

(A special thanks to Josh for sharing that lovely slide deck outside of the company’s firewall, so that other folks out there would be able to benefit as well from such nifty, and useful, presentation! Well done, Josh! And thanks for sharing!)

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, Conversations, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Facebook, Privacy, Identity, Identity 2.0, Identity Management, Business Relationships, Personal Relationships, Josh Scribner, Slideshare, Presentations, Stream, Life Stream, Declarative Living

Open Enterprise 2009 – Dion Hinchcliffe Interviewed by Stowe Boyd

I tell you, it is starting to become some sort of an unstoppable addiction checking out all of these wonderful various interviews that both Oliver Marks and Stowe Boyd continue to carry out for their on-going Open Enterprise 2.0 initiative whose results and final outcome(s) they will be presenting at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston in June 2009.

Latest one that I have been enjoying quite a bit has been the one that Stowe Boyd did just a few hours ago with the always engaging Dion Hinchcliffe where they get to discuss a number of various topics around Enterprise 2.0, social software adoption, case studies (Dion actually mentions quite a few examples to check out further!), Return On Investment, the impact of the current econolypse we are going through, etc. etc. Some really good and insightful stuff! For sure.

However, there are a number of other relevant topics that I thought I would share over here as well, since I feel rather identified with them. I have been sharing very similar thoughts all along since I started getting involved with the area of Social Computing a few years back. So here you have a few other interesting nuggets both Dion and Stowe covered under Open Enterprise 2009: Dion Hinchcliffe Interview:

• The role of Success Stories: … in the adoption of social software, that is; something that a few of us have been saying all along; sometimes it is much more powerful and compelling to collect anecdotal evidence through storytelling or narrative than trying to figure out hard, tangible metrics of the intangible to try establish the ROI of social software. Putting Stories to Work anyone?
• Best Practices: This was one of my favourite parts from the entire interview! How many times have you been asked “Do you have any best practices for social software for my business?”; or, better, “I love this Enterprise 2.0 stuff; how do I get on with it? What are the best practices for social software adoption?” It sounds all too familiar, right? Well, Dion’s answer to those questions would be the same one I have been advocating for time and time again: there aren’t ANY best practices on social software adoption! Main reason being? “Organizations are unique, and operate in very different ways” and therefore what may work for one business may not work for another. So next time someone comes to you and asks you about Best Practices for social software point them to this interview. Priceless!
• Tearing down the firewall: This is something that most companies haven’t event started to comprehend, yet, it is happening more and more often as time goes by. This is a thought I have started to grow very fond of a little while ago, perhaps over two years ago, when I first heard Dave Snowden saying something along the lines the the firewall has got its days numbered with more and more knowledge workers wanting to “go outside” and taste the lovely waters of ad-hoc collaboration, knowledge sharing and co-creation with their own customers and business partners and other thought leaders from the industry. Yes, I know, those hard assets, Intellectual Capital, IP Law and Copyrighted materials would still need to be stored in a protected environment behind the firewall, but the rest of the interactions and conversations will be happening elsewhere. Eventually they already are! Even between employees of the same company outside of the boundaries of that original firewall!
• Changing to a culture of sharing: This specific topic of the conversation between both of them was also amongst my favourites, because it surely touches on a subject that has been around for a long long while, way before Social Computing entered the enterprise. It is a subject very much related to the well known motto “Knowledge is power” where knowledge workers, for a good number of years have been hoarding their knowledge, because that gives them a (false) sense of becoming indispensable, when eventually we are all starting to come to terms with the fact that it is actually quite the opposite: “Knowledge SHARED is power“.

  How long can you remain the gatekeeper of the knowledge you have, before it is widely spread throughout your networks? Do you still think you are in control? Do you think you have always been in control of your knowledge?

Those are some of the rather thought-provoking and enlightening conversations that transpire throughout the entire interview on what are some of the remaining challenges left for Enterprise 2.0 to take over. And, much more importantly, what are some of the tremendous opportunities awaiting out there those businesses who are willing to dive into a new world of interactions amongst knowledge workers to help them increase their own productivity and, as a result of that, become smarter at what they do: share their knowledge and collaborate.

Like I said, if you have a bit over 17 minutes to spare, this would be one interview you would not want to miss out! So much to learn, absorb, apply … and enjoy. I surely did!

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, Productivity, Oliver Marks, Open Enterprise 2.0, oe20, oe2.0, Stowe Boyd, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, E2.0, E20conf, Social Software Adoption, Business Value, Benefits, Enterprise 2.0 Blog, Knowledge Workers, Econolypse, Return on Investment, ROI, Change Management, Culture, Social Web, Dion Hinchcliffe, Success Stories, Case Studies, Business Cases, Anecdote, Storytelling, Narrative, Firewall, Dave Snowden, Ad-hoc Collaboration, Culture of Sharing, Knowledge Is Power, Knowledge Shared Is Power, Hoarding Knowledge, Work Smarter

A World Without Email – Year 2, Week 10 (Is Email Really Dead?)

You may remember my last blog post on the topic of the weekly progress reports of living “A World Without Email“, where I mentioned how I was in the process of putting together an article where I would be able to share with folks how they could kill over 85% of the incoming emails they get on a daily basis. Well, it is proving to be a little bit of a challenge to eventually share it out there, because there is just so much that I want to include in that current draft (#3 at the moment) that I doubt it would fit in within a single entry. So I keep re-editing it, hoping it would see the light one of these days… Hang in there though, I am sure it will eventually be available for everyone to read very soon!

So, what happened last week then, you may be wondering, with regards to my weekly progress report on giving up email at work, right? Well, it looks like things are becoming steadier by the week and may have settled down around the barrier of the 25 emails received per week thus far. From my follow up challenge for this year of 20 or less a week. Getting there, I suppose; slowly, but steadily. Here is the snapshot from Week 10:

As you would be able to see, it looks like there wasn’t a single day last week where there was a substantial increase, for whatever the reason, like it happened in previous weeks, which I guess is a good sign of things going back to normal. Like I mentioned, my new mission is to eventually get under 20 emails a week and so far seeing how close I am from that target already is, for sure, some really good news!

Talking about good news … Over the last few hours I have been getting lots of offline interactions from various folks who took the time to listen to Episode 11 from The Sweettt Podcast and make some interesting comments, specially around the subject of my conversation with Matt Simpson on re-purposing the way I interact with email and how for the first time a couple of folks hinted what I have been trying to achieve all along: that is, how I am not very much in favour of killing email per se altogether, but more on fragmenting the number of interactions, or, even better, diversifying the conversations I have coming through my Inbox and make a much more appropriate use of other collaborative, knowledge sharing and social software tools that could fit in a better purpose than an email.

Yes, indeed! That’s all I am trying to do with this living “A World Without Email“. I have never said that email is dead nor that it will disappear any time soon. In fact, I still see plenty of benefits for email, specifically for 1:1 interactions. However, email is perhaps not the best of knowledge sharing and collaborative tools. Quite the opposite!

And that’s just what that upcoming article I mentioned above will be about. Not how to kill email, nor how to make it disappear from your daily routine, but certainly how to reduce over the 85% to 90% of noise that is currently coming through it. What I am trying to show everyone is how we need to think before we send that next email, because there is a great chance there may be a better tool to share that information / knowledge than through an email. In most cases there usually is!

So there you have it. The prelude of the upcoming article I hope to be sharing with you all pretty soon that will probably help you change or adapt some of your daily habits in how to get in touch and connect with your peers to share what you know. And in most cases avoiding the tool we all know doesn’t always fit the right purpose all the time. Email.

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, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, The Sweettt Podcast, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, Modern Salon, Tertulia 2.0, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Think!, Think, Fragmentation, Diversifying, Re-purposing Email