A Century of Progress
Posted on Nov 5, 2009 | Categories: Enterprise2.0, Fun Stuff and Musings, General Interest, IBM, Innovation, Learning, Life, Work Life Integration | 2 Comments
I am sure you may have noticed how the last couple of days this blog has been a bit quiet. If you have been following me recently on twitter, you would know that I have been away on what promised to be the last business trip for me for what is left of this year. It was a trip to Madrid to meet up with a customer and conduct a workshop on social software adoption, especially sharing further insights on what my team has been doing in that area over the last couple of years.
Lots and lots of great discussion, as well as very thoughtful and straight to the point questions from the participants that made it very very interactive, helping me realise I would have never thought I could talk for that long around this topic, but I guess that 6 1/2 hours can give you plenty of time to talk about lots and lots of different things. Specially, if you’re passionate about them!
Anyway, I won’t be able to share the slides that I used with you folks (Although if I sanitise them enough I may be able to, so I would need to look into that! Will keep you posted…). However, I am already working on another draft post where I will be sharing some thoughts around another slide deck from one of my team colleagues (Josh Scribner) who recently presented on this very same topic of social software adoption at a conference event in the US. Thus stay tuned for more information details to come through …
For now, and in order to resume back my regular blogging activities, I thought I would share with you today a rather short video clip under the heading "A Century of Progress" that I think you would be interested in. Intriguing title, I’m sure, you may be wondering, right? Well, not really so.
At a time when most of us can’t probably imagine any longer working for extended periods of time for the same company (Yes, a lifetime career is what I was thinking about … hehe), due to the new reality of the corporate world and our society as well, I suppose, here comes this video that portraits IBM, the company that I currently work for, celebrating its near 100th anniversary. Yes, I know! Nearly 100 years "working for the world"… Amazing!!
Well, it gets much more astonishing! At a time when, according to the latest statistics, knowledge workers hardly ever, anymore anyway, work for a company more than five years in a row, here I am pointing you folks to this video about IBM, where, doing some quick math, I just realised I have been working for this company for nearly 10% of those 100 years. Whoahhh! Who would have thought about that, right? Someone who, nearly 13 years ago, started working for that company while he was on vacation in the Netherlands for just two weeks before heading back home …
I know, I know, it is just unbelievable! Here I am putting together this post highlighting this rather interesting video clip as I just went through my 10th year anniversary with IBM as a full time regular employee (November 1, 1999), and in a couple of months I will be celebrating again the fact that on January 1997 I will be celebrating 13 years that I first started working for IBM in the first place.
WOW!!! I guess time does fly when you’re having plenty of good fun! It surely has been quite a journey, one I am rather proud to have experienced it to the fullest so far and one that I would have plenty of people all around to be grateful for, mainly, for helping shape up who I’m today. To all of you out there, you know who you are, don’t hide away!, a big special Thanks! for being there and for making that journey ever so much more enjoyable! Quite a learning experience! And still going strong …
Time and time again I get told I’m lucky for working at the place where I work, and do the job that I do, and mix and mingle with an incredibly amazing pool of talented people who are not just passionate about what they do, but they also make it contagious, which is probably why I really enjoyed the rather inspiring ending quote from that YouTube video as well: "When people think, the world wins".
Yes, maybe lucky, or privileged, or both! So here’s hoping I will make it for another 10 years, Why not? After all, it’s IBM, right? 
Happy 10th anniversary to yours truly! And Happy nearly 100th anniversary, IBM! Thanks a lot for allowing me to share this wonderful journey with you all along…
Tags: IBM, Anniversary, 100 Years, Century, Innovation, Think, Changes, 10 Years, Progress, Josh Scribner, Social Software Adoption, Loyalty, Grateful, Achievements, Work, Life, Work Life Integration, Benefits, YouTube, Videos, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management
What Are You Doing with That Duck?
Posted on Nov 2, 2009 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise2.0, Fun Stuff and Musings, General Interest, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Learning, Life, Social Enterprise, Work Life Integration | 1 Comment
Last week one of the folks, Matthew Fairtlough, I have been working and collaborating with on something really cool, that involves as well the talented and natural storyteller Jemima Gibbons, and which I am sure I would be able to talk about very very soon, since it is just starting to come to life, shared with me one of those video clips that can certainly change your perspective in multiple ways and without remedy. For the better.
It’s an interview. A delightful short interview of a bit over 8 minutes done by Melissa Pierce with one of those guests you know you need to be ready with something to write down in fear you may lose it along the way. You can sense all of those golden nuggets you are about to witness, learn and enlighten yourself with. Yes, of course, never a disappointment, I am talking about the one and only: Seth Godin.
Like I said, it is a video interview, and an old one since it was first published in December 2008, yet, nearly a year later, it’s just as fresh and relevant as ever! Check out an have a look into "Seth Godin Wants to Know What You Are Doing With That Duck". It will be worth while every second of it, and I am sure it will not leave you standstill. Quite the opposite!
Oh my, I bet you may be wondering what the video is all about and whether it would be worth while for you to go through or not, right? Well, let me help you with a couple of teasers and see if they would help change your mind and watch through it…
The video starts with an introduction from Seth himself on what he does, what he has been up to and what he thinks are some really good principles to operate in this world… To name:
- Treat people with respect
- Customers have more power than ever
- Great ideas spread
From there onwards, and based on those principles, he comes to state how Leadership is the new marketing; how leading people, connecting people, mixing all those three elements will get us all a new kind of leadership, that one of the 21st century leaders, where we no longer take or accept average products from average ideas. Quite the opposite!
Right afterwards he shares some wonderful stories as references to the concept of the Long Tail by Chris Anderson, where the main message from this excerpt that wasn’t there before in past years is one of my favourite ones: choices.
Choices that will help continue provoking that revolution with lots and lots of components, one of them connecting people with each other, where the cost of transfer of an idea is nearly down to zero; pay attention to this part of the video where Seth gets to share a story that is very descriptive of the whole movement and which has got to deal with something as relatively simple as a T-shirt and how to sell it. Just brilliant!
Not bad so far, eh? Well, it gets better. Way better! I know that plenty of people out there don’t buy into the generations argument within the workplace, but I would encourage you to check out this video with Seth, because in it he reflects on some beautiful insights on that very same generational divide, specially, on how basically the different generations see each other. Striking would be a mild word to describe how powerful these messages are, mainly because of their accuracy. And not just the youngest generations, but all of them in equal terms. I tell you, you would need to watch it…
Finally, I thought I would move on from there into another one of my favourite parts from the video interview, which I am sure you are going to enjoy quite a bit, specially this particular quote that I feel is rather descriptive of who we are as social beings trying to conduct Social Business:
"Life becomes a series of interactions to get you better at creating ideas, spreading ideas, engaging with people with respect, so they wanna help you next time; understanding how to use new tools, so that when further new tools come along they would not be afraid of them [...]"
Whoahhh, indeed! It’s all about building a set of experiences that could help you advance further; that could help you build up that brick wall that will become your life… And what a brilliant way of ending up the video other than asking you what you are doing with that duck?
(I will stop here now, hoping those very few insights will give you a better chance to judge whether you would be spending those 8 minutes of your time going through it and see whether you could answer the question to that last comment from Seth himself… )
Here is the embedded version of the video:
Tags: Matthew Fairlough, Jemima Gibbons, Monkeys with Typewriters, Books, Melissa Pierce, Seth Godin, Duck, Respect, Trust, Customers, Ideas, Great Ideas, Leadership, Leaders, Management, Managers, Management 2.0, Managers 2.0, Leaders 2.0, Chris Anderson, Long Tail, Stories, Anecdotes, Choices, Revolution, Social Business, Life, Interactions, Innovation, Pushing the Limits, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity
