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

Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges with Mark Hennessy

Earlier on today, a fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, John Rooney, shared in various microsharing Web sites (Both internal and external) a link to a recent interview I thought would be rather interesting for folks out there who would be keen on reading further on IBM’s efforts exploring the world of social software and using its 400.000 + employee workforce as testbed for many of the social tools most of us have been exposed to for a while already and some of which eventually make it into IBM products in the area of Enterprise Social Software.

The interview itself was hosted over at Forbes’ CIO Network, where I hoped the embedded options would be a rather pleasant user experience to go through overall, but I guess I was asking for a bit too much. Yuk! So I am afraid you will have to head over there and watch Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges.

The interviewee is one of the folks I have been admiring and respecting for a long while now, ever since he came into his current job, and not because of the job title he has (IBM’s vice president and Chief Information Officer), but eventually because he is one of those executives who walks the talk; blogs (Internally) on a very regular basis and everyone is more than welcome to reach out to him with any question / comment / concern / query they may have and that would need his help. In fact, just recently he did an internal podcast of about 13 minutes with another of my favourite high level executives, Bob Moffat Jr. where they both talked about social software and the business value they are both getting from making use of these social tools. Won’t say much more on that topic, since I’m working on whether I can share that podcasting episode outside of the firewall some time soon! Thus stay tuned for a potential new update coming up soon…

So, of course, I am talking about Mark Hennessy, IBM’s vice president and CIO, who spends a little bit over five minutes sharing several stories on how IBM is making use of social networking tools to reach new levels of productivity. The link to the interview can be found over here, like I mentioned above already, but here are also some other tidbits you may be interested in as well that he talks about for a few minutes:

• IBM Lotus Sametime: with over 10 million instant messages shared across every day (Yes, 10 million!!); and highlighting the fact it’s the biggest productivity boost for real-time collaboration and interactions available out there to us, IBMers, and certainly my number #1 tool to keep living "A World Without Email"
• WikiCentral: our internal wiki platform from which Mark shares plenty of business & uses cases on how wikis can be used inside the corporate firewall to help improve collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams and communities to take innovation into new levels. Quite a story on this one! I tell you.
• Business Value of social software: Mark shares how IBM’s focus on measuring the business value of social software is based on measuring the output, not the social tools themselves; i.e. how many folks are using them; how many new ideas are being created; and so forth. And for that a key role has been played all along by the Technology Adoption Program (a.k.a. TAP), where early adopters and innovators / developers work together on pushing the limits on innovation by co-creating the next wave of social tools and interactions.
• And, finally, Cloud Computing: in this fragment he gets to talk about a couple of mature cloud environments, one of them being TAP itself, with over 120.000 IBMers participating on a regular basis following a self-service provisioning model; you will also find out plenty more about his thoughts on what cloud computing is, where it is heading and how IBM is benefiting from it, both internally and externally. Very enlightening, for sure, specially for those folks who may want to know more about what IBM is doing in that space…

And, that’s it. Those are some of the major areas that Mark Hennessy gets to cover in this five minute interview at Forbes’ CIO Network ("Big Blue’s Collaboration Challenges") and which I hope it would have last for a lot longer as he always has got plenty of really good insights and stories on how he engages himself with the rest of the IBM population to help shape up the next generation of the collaboration, knowledge sharing and social computing tools we will use tomorrow.

Yes, I know you would agree with me on this one. It was just far too short and would have wanted to watch plenty more! Don’t you think? … Wonderful stuff though!

Tags: John Rooney, Rooney, Forbes, Forbes CIO Network, CIO Network, CIO, Chief Information Officer, Vice Presidents, Executives, Challenges, Opportunities, Walking the Talk, Drinking Our Own Champagne, Bob Moffat Jr, Mark Hennessy, Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Real Time, Real Time Collaboration, IM, Instant Messaging, Productivity Boosts, WikiCentral, Wikis, Business Value, Use Cases, Business Cases, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Early Adopters, Innovators, Developers, Cloud Computing, Cloud, Computing, 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, A World Without Email

Do You Suffer from Information Overload Syndrome?

Ok, ok, I know, it’s Friday. Almost time for the weekend! Almost nearly ready to disconnect and unwind from everything! And this time around after one of those long weeks that would surely make you look forward to an extended break to enjoy the lovely summer just around the corner and everything, right?

So, to such extent, I thought I would go to for a lighter blog post today, one that will inject a smile or two, a giggle or two, perhaps, or, just simply, a good laugh to help you get going with what’s left of this working week… And, of course, it is going to make you think a little bit as well on a problem that plenty of folks seem to have been advocating for since forever, although I have got other opinions on this very same topic…

Not going to say much more and spoil the theme of the YouTube video, so, without much further ado, here is the direct link and the embedded version of it:

Hilariously funny, don’t you think? With a rather thought-provoking question underlying throughout the entire video clip: but can you relate to it? Can you identify yourself in the video? … Hold it, don’t try to answer that one just yet… Enjoy the rest of the weekend and then come back next week and share a comment or two on whether you need some help … Or not

And, in the mean time, if you would want to watch another very short video clip that has got a good number of knowledge nuggets to ponder and think about for a while, as well as learn plenty from each and everyone of them, may I suggest you check out  as well this YouTube vido interview with one of my favourite, and good friend, Enterprise 2.0, KM, Social Computing people: Euan Semple (Yes, in case you may not have noticed just recently, his blog has changed address! So go and update your essential bookmarks, too!):

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Information Overload, Xerox, YouTube, Bad Filtering, Euan Semple, Words of Wisdom, Communications

KMOL Interview – Luis Suarez on Knowledge Management and Social Computing

While still recovering from a rather intense day at work, yesterday, that is, where even cloning would not have helped me address multiple conflicts with the various meetings I had to attend throughout the day, I thought I would drop by again and share a few comments on a rather interesting interview I carried out through email, a little while ago (How ironic, eh? heh – although the first initial contact was through Twitter, heh but you know how it goes; there is a limit as to how much you can say in 140 characters …); with the always insightful Ana Neves around the topic of Knowledge Management and how it has been currently influenced by the emergence of Social Computing within the enterprise.

What a pleasure it was, to say the least! A true honour and a privilege, indeed, since the interview was made for the super fine KMOL online resource on Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning. We covered a good number of different questions and all of them pretty relevant to some of the work I have been doing myself for a while in the area of KM, Collaboration, Communities and Social Computing. Yes, certainly, I know, my sweet spots. We even talked a little bit about what it is like living a "A World Without Email". So, as you can see, I just couldn’t resist the offer to share my two cents on a good number of the topics I am passionate about.

Now, I am not going to reproduce the entire interview over here, but would certainly love to point you to it. There is an English and a Portuguese version of it and, instead, what I will do, as a teaser, of course, is share the questions we tried to address during the interview. That way it will give you an idea of what to expect. So here you have them:

• "There is a lot of theory around Organisational Knowledge Management and not much is shared about how it gets done. How is the Knowledge Management theory being translated inside organisations?
• In your view, what are the main challenges organisations face when investing on Knowledge Management?
• Are organisations currently more or less committed to KM?
• What are the KM “elements” that can help organisations the most during the current economic scenario?
• Some practitioners feel that organisations need the right culture in place before they can start a KM programme. Others defend that a KM programme can help create that “right” culture. Where do you stand?
• How is it to live and work in a world without email?
• Can organisations realistically aspire to release their staff from their inboxes?"

You may be wondering what I enjoyed the most out of the interview, right? Well, amongst several other things, the fact that Ana disagreed with some of my views, specially around the culture of sharing and whether it is a requirement or not for a successful deployment of a Knowledge Management programme. Fascinating, and very enjoyable, discussion that she has brought forward in a follow blog post under the title: "The Right Organisational Culture: A Requirement?"

And thus the debate is ON! Over the next couple of days I will be sharing my counter arguments hoping to keep adding further on into the discussion, but that would be the topic for another blog post. For now I leave you with Ana’s thought-provoking statement: "The Right Organisational Culture: A Requirement?"

What do you think? Is it a requirement? Is it not? Stay tuned for my follow up blog post on this very same topic …

(From here I just want to give a special thanks to Ana for her patience and support in hosting the email interview and for giving me the opportunity to share some further insights on a topic that I hope folks out there doing KM and Social Computing would be interested in reading & engaging with further … Thanks ever so much, Ana!)

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, KMOL, Email Interviews, Interviews, A World Without Email, Organisational Learning, Ana Neves, Twitter, Culture of Sharing, Organisational Culture, Requirements