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

The Sweettt Podcast – Episode 11 – Information Flow (Part II)

I haven’t been very successful today trying to join the superb 24 hour online event from Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation on “Conversations about Learning in Organisations” that I blogged about yesterday. It looks like Elluminate doesn’t get along well with my Mac apparently, since it keeps crashing consistently ever single time I try to access the online event (And I don’t seem to be the only one either!); so I guess I will have to try again tomorrow and, if that doesn’t work still, I suppose I will be catching up with the various recordings that will be made available at a later time.

Moving onwards then!

Yes, folks, it is that time again! The Sweettt Podcast moves on further along and I am happy to bring you over here our next episode (Episode 11), where both Matt Simpson, my good friend and co-host, and yours truly spent a few minutes talking some more around the topic of Information Flow (Part II). You can download or play the podcasting episode from this location. And here are some show notes of what you may expect from listening to it that Matt already mentioned in the corresponding blog post:

• “What is more important, quality or quantity?
• Who you are in your blog is very different than who you are in a microblog.
• What constitutes a valid blog? Can a blog be trivial?
• When does your Twitter become a village? – See Laura Fitton
• How do you enter a online social village and navigate its streets?
• To achieve flow in the information space, how do you sample information?
• What is the alternative to managing content within the information space?
• How do you choose which new technology to use in the information sharing space?
• What kind of people try technology first? What does a bleeding edge early adopter look like? See Chris Miller
• How do you keep track of your new technology?
• What’s the ideal amount of technology for the majority of us?
• Which is the predominant future trend, increased technology fragmentation with more tools, or consolidation of technology into fewer tools?
• If services become specialized and exploited in other contexts (other web sites), what will be the incentive for the service to be provided, especially if people are not going to the homepage?“

And, of course, you will notice as well how we spent some time as well talking about living “A World Without Email” and our growing need to diversify our email inboxes; to fragment them so that it does fit a specific purpose versus all purposes, which is what is happening at the moment. Some fascinating conversations, indeed, which developed into other areas we will be exploring in future podcasting episodes.

Oh, yes, it is good to be back! Hope you enjoy the episode, just as much as we did

Tags: The Sweettt Podcast, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, Modern Salon, Tertulia 2.0, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Series, New Media, IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Tertulia, Conversations, Dialogue, Communities, Learning, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Information Flow, Learning Trends, Learntrends, Elluminate, Micro Blogging, Micro Sharing, Quality, Quantity, Blogging, Blogs, Metablogging, Laura Fitton, Pistachio, Pistachio Consulting, Twitville, Chris Miller, Idonotes, Technology, Web

Corporate Learning Trends – Conversations about Learning in Organisations

In the last few days excitement has been building up around here, because in the next few hours there is going to be a 24 hour online event kicking off talking about one of my favourite topics that I keep covering over here every now and then: Learning, specially Informal Learning. Yes, that’s right, Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation is happy to announce Conversations about Learning in Organisations!

An event that will take place round the clock for 24 hours, as I have just mentioned, and which so far has got an outstanding agenda and a terrific line-up of incredibly talented and very knowledgeable speakers (Check Tony Karrer’s blog post to get more details on both of those topics!). But just in case, here is a little bit of a teaser of what the event is going to be like as well:

"For 24 hours starting April 21 at 9:00 am Pacific time, Learntrends will host a series of online conversations on boosting the performance of organizations through learning. [...]

Our goal is honest dialog. No commercials. No presentations. Few or no slides. Often, we expect to throw three or four great people into an online fishbowl and let the conversation go where it will. At other times, participants will simply talk about whatever is on their minds, with a host and time cop occasionally nudging the conversation back to the theme of improving the process of learning in organizations. Here is more of our vision for the event"

There have been a few folks (Jay Cross -here and over here as well, Harold Jarche, George Siemens, Tony Karrer, Clark Quinn, etc.) who have also spent a few minutes putting together various blog posts talking about the event itself and sharing some further insights about their own expectations from what promises to be one of those massive online happenings difficult to forget.

The best part of this round-the-clock online event is that it is free to sign up for it; you can come and go as you may please (You can drop by and drop off at any given point in time of the event!); and on top of it all, you yourself can contribute as well on those conversations! Perhaps a glimpse of the future of conference events? Who knows, but you can see where my excitement comes from, right? Well, that’s not all of it just yet!

There are plenty of ways of getting involved with the event. You can suggest a topic for discussion ("You don’t need to be an expert to start a conversation here. What do you want to discuss?"); or you can check out the Learntrends Twitter handle and the Learntrends Twitter search feed, as well as the URL for the live event (Remember as well though that, if you miss the event, "conversations will be recorded and made available on the web to foster reflection and continuing discussion") and so forth.

Part of my excitement as well comes from what George Siemens has already blogged about last week under "Leveraging the human network" and that is the fact that both him and yours truly will be discussing "Learning in an era of networked intelligence". Yes, indeed, I will be one of those privileged folks who will be sharing the stage with George and participate from the event as well sharing my two cents on how I feel Learning is getting impacted by the emergence of social software, and other collaborative and knowledge sharing tools, in the workplace. Going to be plenty of good fun, I am sure! I just can’t wait for it to get started!

Will you be there?

Tags: Learning, Learning 2.0, Informal Learning, Informl, Emergence, Conference Events, Events, Learning Events, Learning Activities, Learning Trends, Corporate Learning Trends, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Learntrends, Tony Karrer, Jay Cross, Harold Jarche, George Siemens, Clark Quinn, Free, Discussions, Human Networks, Networked Intelligence

The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt (a.k.a. missrogue)

Have you ever heard about the concept of social capital? In other words … have you ever heard about the Whuffie Factor? Probably yes. Or perhaps may be not. Thing is that if you have been working around for a while in the field of Knowledge Management, I bet you have. Why? Well, because for quite some time now it was one of those areas that traditional KM neglected on a very regular basis as being far too trivial; too much chit-chat; plenty of wasted time talking about nothing substantial (to the business) from knowledge workers, preventing them from doing some more work. The perfect space to goof around … Remember that?

Well, fast forward to today’s corporate environment. Specially for those businesses that have been paying attention to the whole movement of social computing within the enterprise. Why? Because that old perception of how useless and trivial social capital could well be has drastically changed into perhaps being the main engine that keeps the corporate world running. Yes, indeed, it is amazing how things change if you give them a little bit of time.

You may be wondering why I am putting together this blog post, right? Amongst many various reasons, because I wanted to share with you folks a link to a presentation that Tara Hunt did just recently (And the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, to be more precise) where she talks about that same topic: how crucial social capital has become nowadays with the emergence of social software.

She calls it the Whuffie Factor. In fact she has got an upcoming book on that very same topic that I just can’t wait to get my hands on it to start reading it. For now though I will need to content myself with that video link I would want to share with you folks over here. So why would I want to suggest to you all to have a look and listen to what Tara has got to say?

For various different reasons, to be honest, but most of them having to deal with the concept of social capital. And, more specifically how important and key it’s becoming within the corporate world to help improve both personal and business relationships; increase trust levels; build up stronger ties amongst knowledge workers (And their customers!); help accelerate innovation by empowering employees make connections with one another by just chit-chatting, but that will eventually resolve in people “becoming trustworthy friends” (Introducing the concept of loyalty with their peers); getting the message across that having fun at work is a healthy activity (And very much encouraged, too!); that building communities, both inside and outside of the firewall, with a specific purpose (business related or not!) helps employees have a stronger sense of belonging and ownership, therefore influencing the attrition rates every business is exposed to; and the list goes on and on and on …

I could keep talking further about this topic plenty more, but I think with that introduction it is probably sufficient for now. Social Capital is here to stay; it will change the way we connect, collaborate and share our knowledge with our peers and, interestingly enough, the biggest push (and driver) of social capital adoption within a business environment is eventually social computing. Whether we like it or not, it’s here to stay; it is here to help us survive and become smarter at what we do. So why stop it, right? You may as well want to get the most out of it and embrace it. That’s just exactly what Tara talks about during her presentation and here is the video from that inspiring talk. You can also watch it below with the embedded version:

The Whuffie Factor: The 5 Keys for Maxing Social Capital and Winning with Online Communities (Tara Hunt) from Steffan Antonas on Vimeo.

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, Social Capital, Whuffie Factor, Chit Chat, Chit-Chat, Tara Hunt, missrogue, Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, w2e, w2e09, Trust, Business Relationships, Personal Relationships, Knowledge Workers, Fun @ Work, fun@work, Adoption, Ownership, Sense of Belonging, Loyalty, Customers, Clients, Online Communities