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

Work The Web

How many times have you heard already, and over the last few months specially, how Social Computing (And social software along with social networking for that matter!) is still very much in its infancy. After all, a relatively close term like Enterprise 2.0 was just eventually coined by Andy McAfee in 2006. So you would think that all of this hype going around Social Computing is something we have just gotten started with and perhaps we are going to see plenty of it still. Well, maybe not…

Last week I bumped into a YouTube video, which is actually a commercial, that I thought was rather shocking! Why? Because more than anything else most of the key core principles from everything related to the 2.0 movement were detailed in there quite nicely. Yes, I know, that’s not much of a shock in there, is it? I mean, there are thousands of YouTube related videos on this topic. But what would happen if that clip was eventually from 1998? Yes, you are reading it right: 1998!

Would that change your opinion? Would that make you think that perhaps we haven’t been as innovative in this 2.0 space as we thought we would be with the current state of things? Would you believe that back them a bunch of people already got to understand some of those various principles that regulate our 2.0 experiences today… 11 years later!?!?!

Whoah! Yeah, I know! That’s exactly how I felt when I went through that commercial video clip. Even more when it came from the company that employs me, IBM, and just about a year after I joined its workforce, where I was doing customer support for the Mainframe (Yes, the good old VM Mainframe). As if I didn’t have enough already to add to that shock! Mind you, when I first started thinking about social software and how I would use it at work it was probably around 2002 or thereabouts and it still took me a while to engage (December 2003).

So nearly five years early it looks like it was all thought about in this space of social software and even more when all along I have been saying that social networking is all about everything but the tools. It’s a social and transformational phenomenon to humanise and personalise the corporate environment, so that we would have an opportunity to foster and boost our own personal business relationships in order to help us collaborate closer and share our knowledge with other knowledge workers in much more powerful ways. In short, work smarter, not necessarily harder.

And then I bumped into Work the Web. A two and a half minute video with some very very powerful messages that I bet we could all relate to, specially if you have been involved with social software for a little while. You would need to do a little exercise though. Strip out the Blank! from the video and that’s when it would become much more shocking and revealing altogether. And if you don’t believe me, here is the embedded version of it, so you can judge for yourself:

I told you! Amazing, wasn’t it? All of our efforts from the last few years it looks like they were already out there as far back as 1998. And I am not just talking about the consumer space. That clip was perceived under a business context and, even better, the byline that permeates throughout the video, which, I think, transmits a very clear challenge of what we still face, 11 years down the line, as our main key challenge for Enterprise 2.0 to change the corporate world as we know it:

"Enabling Many to Act as One!"

Exciting and fun times ahead, don’t you think? It just feels like it is 1998 once again!

Tags: Andy McAfee, YouTube, Videos, Commercials, Ads, IBM, Mainframe, VM, Virtual Machine, Work the Web, Blank!, Web 2.0, Transformation, Change Management, Social Enterprise, Personal Enterprise, 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, IBM Lotus, Lotus, Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, Domino, Internet, Technology

The Second Coming of Blogging

At a time where a good number of folks have been validly questioning the future of blogging as we know it, and perhaps venture into what that future may hold for such an important aspect of social computing as the Act of Blogging itself, both Internet and Corporate Blogging, or at a time where most of the knowledge workers out there are starting to move into social networking sites a la Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. etc. trying to keep up with the various different lifestreams that keep coming out of nowhere, it’s always refreshing to know that what you have been doing all along still holds… And rather strongly!

Intriguing start of a blog post, right? Yes, indeed! I know. Done on purpose. For a good couple of years I have always been very certain that blogging, both corporate and Internet blogging alike, would always keep an important and relevant place within the social computing realm, despite the ever increasing trend of moving into other, more popular, social networking or lifestreaming sites. That’s probably why it keeps surprising folks that I still get to blog on a more or less regular basis on stuff I am really interested in and that I would want to come back to at some point.

My good friend Bill Ives calls it Personal Knowledge Management, a term I tend to come pretty close to in describing how I perceive my own blogging all along (Coming close to nearly six years now!). Harold Jarche calls it "Where’s your data?", a very thought-provoking article where he details the dangers of lifestraming through social networking sites you don’t have full access to, because they are all sitting up in the cloud.

I rather prefer to call it "The Second Coming of Blogging". I may be wrong about it. Maybe not. We shall see. But with the recent instances of how poor our data, effort and energy are being managed by applications like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc. I am starting to sense (From a few months back already!), how all of this lifestreaming up on the cloud is going to backslash as soon as people start getting exposed to more and more deteriorating experiences from those social networking sites. And how, as a consequence of that, they would want to still keep using social software to share knowledge, ideas, and collaborate with others in an environment where they have full control of it. With no regrets.

And that’s why very soon I am sensing we will be seeing what I have called that "Second Coming of Blogging". And the funny part is that the one and only, Seth Godin, also hints this very same trend, in a recent event whose video was recorded and distributed through YouTube not long ago. My good friend Jon Husband blogged about it already over the weekend under the title "Blogging – Still Good for You and for Organisations" and just this morning I bumped into it, as I was catching up with Twitter from over the weekend and David Gurteen tweeted about it.

Since my good friend David always shares plenty of really interesting golden nuggets, of course, I had to check it out. And that’s when it hit me. Pretty much the same way it will hit you, if you have been blogging in the past and perhaps may be thinking about quitting altogether. Well, maybe not.

Take a look and spend the next one minute and thirty-seven seconds watching this video clip in YouTube with Tom Peters and Seth Godin, and be tremendously inspired by Seth’s words. Yes, I know and I realise he doesn’t call it "The Second Coming of Blogging", but I do, because after watching that video, and after experiencing more and more frequently constant hiccups on our overall social networking sites experiences, there is something that tells me we will be back to blogging. And pretty soon! Perhaps in a new and evolved form. But it will be back nevertheless.

We need to have that personal space, where we reflect on ideas not completed yet; where we engage in much more meaningful and lasting conversations that most of the times are even better than the original article!; where going along with the flow of the lifestream every now and then we still enjoy pausing for a bit, ponder things around, come up with something really cool and move on; finally, a place where the act of writing online for yourself (And perhaps others, too!) becomes an art through your own blog. And at long last an online 2.0 space that you manage and that helps you, day in day out, improve not only your social capital skills, but also your own personal brand.

Yes, I realise this is an incomplete thought (Still thinking about it some more…), but judge for yourselves. Have a look into "Seth Godin and Tom Peters on blogging" and get ready to be wowed, because you will …

And just as I am writing this blog post in my own personal business blog, here I am as well starting to play this week some more with a rather interesting new social software tool that has caught my attention last couple of weeks and which I am going to be exploring plenty more this week and see how it may transform the act of blogging and lifestreaming (Altogether!) as we speak. Yes, welcome to Posterous!

Oh, yes, my Posterous site is over here, but guess what? I realise I haven’t started yet to share content in there, but it looks like at the time I am putting together this post, it’s down. Can’t access it. I have yet to remember when it was the last time any of my blogs were down for a period of time … Still think that blogging doesn’t have a bright future amongst us, knowledge workers, as our preferred Personal Knowledge Management tool of choice?

Think again!

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Weblogging, Corporate Blogging, Internet Blogging, Blogosphere, Act of Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Lifestream, Lifestreaming, Bill Ives, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Harold Jarche, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Ownership, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Social Networking Sites, Second Coming of Blogging, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Jon Husband, Wirearchy, David Gurteen, Gurteen, Branding, Personal Branding, Brands, Posterous, 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, Knowledge Workers, Social Capital, Social Capital Skills

Imagine Leadership

Earlier on today I bumped into quite an interesting, and very thought-provoking, article put together by Bill Cohen around the subject of "The Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership". It’s one of those articles that picks up from the wise teachings of Peter Drucker and it surely is an essential reading put together by Bill that every leader should go through. I am not going to quote much from the article itself over here, since I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you (Yes, it is *that* good!), so head over there and enjoy the read.

Then after you have finished reading through it I would encourage you to have a look into a YouTube video clip I bumped into earlier on in the week which complements quite nicely Bill’s article above. It’s titled Imagine Leadership and here is the description from the video itself:

"Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative collaborated with XPLANE to create this video in order to generate a discussion of the value and importance of leadership to address some of society’s most pressing problems.

"It is my desire to inspire people of all ages and social demographics to think about leadership on a broad level, contemplate what it means to them and what individual impact they can have when it comes to leading," says Nohria"

Quite an interesting introduction, don’t you think? Well, the video is way better. And since it is already Friday I think I am going to stop here now and just embed the video clip itself so you can play it. There will be very very little I would need to add before, during and after, but perhaps suffice to say that if Enterprise 2.0 Leaders should be looking up for role models this would be *the* video to play in front of them. Six minutes of pure genius and inspiration permeating all over the place, to say the least!

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, Bill Cohen, IQPC, Peter Drucker, Deadly Sins, Leaders, Leadership, Leaders 2.0, Leadership 2.0, Imagine Leadership, Harvard Business School, XPLANE, Nitin Nohria, Amanda Pepper, Inspiration, Inspiring