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

Getting Real about Enterprise 2.0 by Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson

My goodness! Where has the time gone to his week? Geez, I can not believe that it’s already Friday afternoon and here I am again, after a short absence, hoping to go back into my regular blogging activities. What an amazing week! As you remember, in my last blog, post I mentioned how this week I was going to go to on a business trip to Seville, where I was going to meet up with a customer to talk to them about social software and the impact that it’s having within the corporate world.

Well, I’m now back and, after a couple of days of catch up, in between meetings and various other conference calls, here I am again putting together this blog post. The customer meeting went really well, perhaps one of the best sessions I have held so far in my mother tongue, Spanish. I think I will need to start recording some of these so I can then share some further insights in upcoming blog posts, but somehow it is always a tricky situation, isn’t it? So many things to think about, including whether customers would be OK, or not, with these recordings.

Hummm, I need to find a way to address that. For instance, the conversations with this customer were incredibly powerful, and engaging, talking about the impact of Enterprise 2.0 in various key areas, such as privacy, security, time management, executive buy-in, etc etc. I need to find a way, indeed, to share some of these insights in future blog entries…

Anyway, Friday afternoon already and what a better way of resuming my blogging activities than to point you folks to one of the best presentations on Social Computing within the Enterprise that I have seen in a long while! Yes, indeed, I will be sharing with you a link to a slide deck that surely captures, quite nicely, plenty of the spirit of what is happening within the enterprise 2.0 scene all along.

It is one of those presentations that when I first went through it I couldn’t help nodding, slide after slide, about how many key valuable points it brings forward. Now, I realise how for a good number of people it may be seeing as some kind of fluffy feel-good kind of presentation, but, I tell you, if you have been involved with social computing for a while this goes beyond the fluffiness, and it’s just too good to miss out!

No, I’m not denying that fact that it may well be perceived as too benevolent in describing the many changes that enterprise 2.0 is helping provoke within the corporate world; the interesting thing though, at least the one I’ve found that most striking, is the one that details quite nicely a good number of the problems that businesses face today, and all of that, without providing a single statistical metric to prove it. It doesn’t need it! You will need to watch it to see what I mean…

The presentation was put together by both Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson, from Acando, and it is titled "Getting Real about Enterprise 2.0". It has already been shared in Slideshare (Oscar blogged about it over here as well) and you can view it directly from this link. It has got 50 pages loaded with plenty of golden nuggets and precious little gems…

Like slides #5 (People as the platform); #7 (With a powerful quote from Jakob Nielsen on what social software is all about); #9 (One of my favourite slides which depicts, quite nicely, our own human basic needs…); #21 (On social capital, which we still haven’t dived in good and well enough, in my opinion as one of the various key success factors with the adoption of social software); #22 (Something I have been saying for years with regards to "hidden talent"); #30 & #31 (On knowledge and what makes us share it across with other knowledge workers); #33 (Ahhh, no comment on that one… you will see what I mean, when you see it hehe … but spot on!); #45 & #46 (With some practical lessons for both business and IT); and so forth.

I tell you, far too many insightful and thought provoking ideas worthwhile sharing across. "Getting real about enterprise 2.0" is one of those presentations that surely highlights what are some of the various different challenges facing the enterprise, right as we speak, as well as providing plenty of hints on various paths of addressing each and every one of those different challenges.

Yes, I realise, like I said above already, you may consider it’s all fluffy stuff. Maybe. I, however, would prefer to flag it as "getting down to business and provoke the change", if we would want to go through that transformation we all know needs to happen within the corporate world to survive in the 21st-century knowledge economy. And this presentation sets, quite nicely, a number of the directions we can all follow… but only if we would want to. It’s like I have been mentioning all along, is our choice to make a change. It’s our choice to make a difference. It’s just a matter of whether we would want to make it happen or continue with things as is…

(I refuse to think that’s where we would want to be in the next few years… How about you? Are you ready to leave behind your own comfort zone?)

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, Knowledge Workers, Social Capital, Knowledge Economy, Slideshare, Presentations, Oscar Berg, Henrik Gustafsson, Acando, Reality Check, Jakob Nielsen, Executing Enterprise 2.0, Provoking the Change, Making a Difference

IBM’s Smart Work Jam Under Way Already – Are You Jamming?

Goodness! Today is going to be one of those days where I could surely do with a day of 36 hours, if not more!, in order to be able to participate in a number of really cool things that will be happening throughout inside and outside IBM. Apart from finishing up a customer presentation on social software adoption for a face to face event in Seville next week, as well as a couple of deadlines from my project team, I plan to attend a virtual (Internal only) conference from IBM’s Academy of Technology on the Future of Collaboration, specially thinking along the lines of "Beyond the Firewall" with quite an impressive agenda put together so far.

However, the rest of my online social interactions will probably very much disappear today as I am starting to get more and more involved with the Smart Work Jam that kicked off last night (On my local time) and which will continue to run for another 55 hours (At the time of writing this blog post). A couple of weeks back, you would remember, I put together a blog post where I was talking about that upcoming Jam. Well, here we are today. Fully immersed in it and with some amazing conversations happening already! Phew, I tell you, I need more physical time today to be everywhere! It’s getting crazy!

Here is a quick recap on the major themes that you would be able to find on the Smart Work Jam and where you may be able to see me here and there, specially on the ones I am marking on bold just below:

• "Government That Works Smarter (Encouraging citizen participation and supporting economic growth)
• Collaborative Business Process Management (Optimizing business processes through collaborative approaches)
• The Future of Team Work (Maximizing possibilities with global, virtual, dynamic teams)
• Work Without Boundaries (Exploring new opportunities made possible by mobile, distributed people inside and outside our organizations)
• Healthcare that Works Smarter (Accessible, affordable, personalized healthcare in an interconnected world)
• Working Smarter with the Next Generation (Maximizing the talents of the next generation workforce)
• Smart Work 2020 (Exploring the future of work)"

Not bad for a provocative, and engaging!, 72 hours of jamming, don’t you think? I have already been navigating through some of the various discussions taking place and I must say that the quality of the ideas shared so far, and the various contributions to each and everyone of them, have been quite an amazing experience! So much hidden talent out there!

And I am only just touching the surface!, as I get to dive in even deeper during the course of this morning. But, goodness! (Again!) there is just so much to go through, learn, share, collaborate and participate that I think I am just going to point you to a couple of additional resources that will give you a very nice background on the purpose of the Smart Work Jam and what it tries to achieve and then leave things there and head over to it right away! No time to waste! heh

One of them is a YouTube video clip and the other one a wonderful presentation put together by a fellow IBMer, and good friend, Sacha Chua, which she blogged about under Brainstorming around Smart Work and that I am sure most of you folks out there doing social software adoption would be able to relate to quite a bit, to say the least!

So without much further ado, here you have got both of them, so that you have an opportunity to get exposed to the themes that the Jam is starting to surface all over the place. The first one. This YouTube video clip under the title "How It Works: The Way We Work", which I think would be rather self explanatory in describing not just the future of the workplace, but also the opportunities and potential we all have, as knowledge workers, in leveraging social software to change the way we work, i.e. of course, towards a smarter work:

It lasts for nearly six minutes, but I can surely tell you it would be worth while watching it through all the way. If you have been involved with Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Learning, Communities, Networks, Social Computing and Enterprise 2.0 in the recent past you will see how all of them can be combined together into helping a workforce work smarter, and not necessarily harder.

The second resource I wanted to touch base on is that one slide deck from Sacha I just mentioned above. A wonderfully inspiring presentation she put together in Slideshare under "Smarter Work: Why Social Networks Matter ". If you haven’t seen Sacha’s Slideshare stream of presentations, I would suggest you take some extra time to go through them as well, because they are completely different to anything you may have been exposed to in the past. Not just from her approach to deliver powerful and engaging messages, but also from the perspective of the tools she uses to deliver those messages. Believe me, amazing will fall short!

Either way, in the context of the Smart Work Jam, here you have got her deck I think you would be able to relate to, like I said, if you are one of those folks who is trying to accelerate the adoption rate of social software within your organisation… Major key learning… you are not alone! So get out there and CONNECT!!

Pretty amazing, eh? Like I said, today is going to be one of those days where there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to engage with the various activities happening at work. The good thing is that you, too, can participate in the Smart Work Jam by going over here and registering for it. Still plenty of time to chime in, share your two cents in the multiple conversations and help define, and shape!, the corporate world of the 21st century. Quite an interesting and exciting challenge, don’t you think? … Are you jamming yet?

Come and join us! TODAY!

Tags: IBM, Jams, Jamming, Smart Work Global Jam, Smart Work, SmartWork, Smart Work Jam, Work Smarter, Knowledge Workers, Government, Healthcare, Future of the Workplace, Mobility, Flexibility, Social Networks, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Future of the Enterprise, Academy of Technology, Future of Collaboration, Beyond the Firewall, YouTube, Slideshare, Sacha Chua, Future of the Workplace, Adoption, Enablement, Connecting, Connect, Making a Difference, Things That Matter

Did You Know? On Convergence and Technology

I am sure you would still remember that blog post I put together not long ago where I mentioned an interesting YouTube video that was making the rounds under the title Social Media Revolution (See "Welcome to the World of Socialnomics") and which I thought was coming pretty close to that series of Did You Know? videos that I mentioned over here as well a couple of times already. Well, it looks like there are some good news out there on this very same topic.

Yesterday, while I was immersing myself back into my Twitville, now that I have found a method on how I can continue using Twitter as one of my Personal Knowledge Management tools, I bumped into what seems to be the latest take from the Did You Know? series of videos. Already on version #4. You can go and check it out by clicking on the direct link over here, or, alternatively, see the embedded version below:

As ever, this updated episode, from just a couple of days ago, is as provocative as you can imagine, with regards to our own use of social software tools out there on the Internet. The video clip lasts for 4:45 minutes and I can certainly recommend you to take a look and go through it. Lots and lots of new, fresh data, that will help confirm, once again, how there is no way back; how we are far too much immersed in our overall efforts of embracing this new set of social tools that make up the Social Web. Our Web.

The main overall theme from the Did You Know 4.0 video is eventually convergence. And what I really enjoyed this time around was how all of the new data presented has got a context, a success story, that rather we can relate to, or we may have been exposed to all over the place. This time around, there are plenty of snippets, and golden nuggets, throughout the video that will not only make you just go WOW!, but also go more along the lines of "Yeah, I was there!" Or, "Yeah, I saw / experienced that! Did you?" Just brilliant!

Like I said, if you have got 4:45 minutes don’t let it pass by just like that. Watch the video and enjoy going through a new reality. A reality we are all part of. A reality that, whether we like it or not, is starting to shape, in a big way, the way the world operates. And social software is right in the center of it! Yes, this is the kind of video clip that we can show to all of those skeptics who still think that Web 2.0 and Social Computing is a fad… Really? Well, maybe not … Judge for yourself.

Tags: Did You Know, Convergence, Social Web, Success Stories, Context, Making a Difference, Changing the World, YouTube, Learning, Connected, Connections, Technology, Shift Happens, Conversations, Exponential Times, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Social Media Revolution, Twitter, Socialnomics, Social Computing Impact, Social Software Impact, Reality 2.0