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

The Smart Work Company — What We Do And Why

There are times when you bump into YouTube videos that surely give you shivers of excitement from some of the superb ideas that permeate throughout the video clip altogether. There are times when you bump into one of those short videos you just can’t stop playing them back and forth, trying to absorb every single nugget that comes out of them! There are times when you watch one of those and, after going through it, you never expect you would be so energised about the stuff that really matters to you, even if it comes from the most unexpected places. Well, What We Do And Why is one of those video clips.

It features a quick introduction by Anne Marie McEwan (Who I started following in Twitter a little while ago and from whom I have learned quite a bit so far), and in it she spends a little bit less than 5 minutes describing what her company, The Smart Work Company (Gotta love that name, too!), is all about and what their main mission is: help people, and their businesses!, become smarter at what they already doing through better ways of learning and managing.

If you care about Web work, about the next generation of knowledge workers, about the impact that social technologies are having in the current business world, about how meaningful the concept of networks is in helping shape the next wave of our leaders, this would be one video you would want to watch! Yes, indeed, it’s that­ inspiring and surely a treat to watch!

And you know the best part of it all for me? The narrative! It’s so beautifully told and with such a nice pace that it surely makes you stick around till the very end and when you are done you keep wondering where you could get more! Well, I guess that would be The Smart Work Company. I am sure that Anne Marie and her team would be incredibly successful with such important mission and if you ever wonder how it is all about working smarter, but not necessarily harder this video clip and its various messages clearly show, and lead!, the way!

Hope you enjoy it, just as much as I did …

Very very nice piece of work, don’t you think?

Tags: Anne Marie McEwan, The Smart Work Company, TheSmartWorkCompany, Smart Work, Working Smart, Learning, Managing, Management, Leaders, Innovation, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Productivity, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Work, Narrative, Stories, Storytelling

7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication

I can’t remember the exact date when I first took part in a backchannel chat while participating in a virtual event; I guess it must have been a few years back when I first started making use of Lotus Sametime for group chats while at work, back in the early 2000s. The thing is that nowadays (Whether using IM tools, Twitter, Meeting Rooms, whatever) I just can’t live without those backchannel chats, whether I’m attending a team conference call, a virtual event (Seminars, webinars, workshops, presentations, conference events, lectures, etc. etc.) or whatever else. They have remained, over the course of time, an indispensable collaborative tool I just couldn’t do without.

Yes, I know, and I fully understand it, since I experienced it myself in the past, I realise that for plenty of folks out there, it may not work out all right altogether, more than anything because of that ever increasing sense of being overwhelmed by the event itself AND the backchannel. Where do you place your attention, right? Can you focus on both tasks at the same time? I mean, paying attention to the event and then the backchannel as well? Quite challenging, indeed!

It’s not easy, I agree with that, but in my experience that’s just at the beginning; just till you get the hang out of it; till you have attended a good number of them to make them feel second nature to you. It’s only then when you would be able to see how powerful such backchannel conversations can be to enhance the overall experience of what’s been shared across, and when you are soliciting input with a bunch of team / community members, that’s probably as good as it gets, too! Having everyone on the same page listening to that specific media and giving them an opportunity to expand that user experience by chatting with others is just priceless. And those who may have tried it out already could probably vouch for that last statement as well…

However, how do you get started? How do you overcome the initial hurdle(s) of starting to incorporate backchannel chats into both virtual and face to face events? Are there any good resources out there you could leverage to get things going? Yes, there are!

Here is one of my favourites: check out the short blog post from iLibrarian on this very same topic: "7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication", which references a whitepaper put together by the good folks behind Educause that provides a very clear, insightful, very helpful and thorough overview of the main key benefits behind backchannels (Link to .PDF here)

In that specific article the folks at Educause start setting up the stage by putting together an scenario of how it could well work out for one of those virtual events I mentioned above: a lecture and using Twitter as the backchannel. From there onwards, there are seven different sections that cover, very nicely, the overall content of why these kinds of online events do matter, more and more by the day, in helping facilitate a much richer, endurable and engaging overall experience. And I can tell you, after having participated in hundreds, if not thousands!, of them over the course of the last few years, they have now become an indispensable and integral part of how I enjoy these kinds of events myself.

Here you have got the seven questions put together that the whitepaper covers, so you can have a glimpse of what you may expect on that two pager .PDF article:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

I realise the article has got an embedded flavour for a learning / education background, but if you scratch that out and change it for business it still does make perfect sense, which makes a rather interesting resource for those folks out there interested in wanting to spice their (virtual) events even more and continue introducing some more of those 2.0 elements that everyone keeps talking about while attending those virtual events.

Then perhaps in a later blog post I will share with you folks my Top 10 reasons on why I do benefit the most from backchannels for events not just as a communication tool, but also as a powerful real-time collaboration environment that is, by far, superior to any other kind of collaborative tool. But for now, how are you benefiting from backchannels yourself? Do you still find them an overwhelming experience? Can you live with or without them? What do you think? Do they make sense in today’s interconnected world?

Tags: iLibrarian, Educause, Whitepapers, Education, Learning, Backchannel, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Micro-Sharing, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Business Value, Communication, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Resources, Virtual Events, Conference Events

Finding Experts in Your Company … While You Are on the Road!

If you would remember, last week I posted a blog entry around the topic of "Finding Experts in Your Company … Through Micro-Sharing" where I mentioned how perhaps one of the most powerful expertise location tools available out there within the corporate world would probably be Enterprise Micro-sharing/-blogging. But what happens when you are on the road, when you are constantly travelling away from your office into customer sites, or when you are stuck in an airport, for instance, and you are just looking for that expert that you know is out there and who may be the right person to help out? What happens then? Well, that’s when Collaboration In Your Pocket Is Here!

Yes, that’s right! As more and more mobile devices, mainly smartphones, are starting to look with much more detail into the mobile Enterprise 2.0 world, we are beginning to see how plenty of our favourite social software tools for business are making it through and rather successfully. So eventually finding an expert, while you are on the road, or working remotely, is probably no longer the big issue it used to be.

Check out the recent blog post that my good friend, Dennis McDonald put together on this very same subject and which I have referenced above already under Collaboration In Your Pocket Is Here! In that article Dennis states very clearly what are some of the biggest challenges that Mobile 2.0 has got ahead, if it would want to make it through successfully. To quote:

"[...] We see in the demo nothing but the basic elements of enterprise expertise management — access to individuals and groups and the ability to locate and obtain access to needed expertise.

These functions incorporate the essence of expertise management that I wrote about here and here back in 2006. Now, though, the tools and functionality have become more accessible, more streamlined, more user friendly, and much more mobile. Hopefully all smartphone interfaces will be able to access such apps in the future"

He is actually referring to this demo shared in YouTube that shows IBMs Lotus Connections on an Apple iPhone (Wish it would contain sound as well; it would be have so much more effective! Oh well…), where the main focus is eventually on keeping things as simple as possible: i.e. finding the experts at your fingerprints with as few steps as you possibly can, without much clutter, so you can connect with them right away to help you answer those questions that came up while you are on the road and without access to your computer or a reliable network.

Of course, the response should be fast, almost in real-time, more than anything else, because that’s what you will need right there, right then, but still keeping yourself on task, without any other distraction than just getting the job done! I couldn’t have agreed more with Dennis on this important point, where bloated features are left behind to help speed up the process of the task at hand; somehow I sense that’ll become incredibly empowering when your connectivity is seriously challenged. That way you can make the right connections right away and if you would need to come back for more complex interactions you can do so from the comfort of your own computer, whenever you are back connected online.

That YouTube demo is a good showcase of how that simplicity should work out for everyone out there exploring their extensive use of smartphones as their mobile computers. It surely is the right step forward into making it a reality at some point in time in the near future:

But does that necessarily mean that 2010 will be the Year of Mobile? Both Peter Kim and Bill Ives have put together some very compelling blog posts on the topic stating that would be the case. Yet, somehow, I remain skeptic, rather skeptic, to be honest, on this one. And mainly, for two single reasons that I see as big barriers of entry to make that dream of Mobile 2.0 become a reality:

• Your company mobile phone: I do realise that this may well be a rather localised barrier, specially if you are reading this from the US or some European countries, like Germany or the UK, but my current company mobile phone, in 2010!, doesn’t allow for anything else than voice and SMS / text messages. No data transfer in place, no plans to incorporate it any time soon! How does that put me in a position to state that 2010 will be the year of Mobile? Well, may be not so fast, at least, in my country, Spain.
• The carrier: of course, you would say I could buy my own smartphone and use it for work, which I do, I own an iPhone 3G, yet the problem arises with the carrier: always the carrier (Amongst several other huge issues I’m skipping for now, like battery life, to name one…). The current contract with my provider (Movistar) is less than desirable; rather expensive and the two most frequently used / seen words in such device are two I never thought I would be seeing so often: No Service, which, I think, speaks for itself, don’t you think?

So, while social software tools are starting to make good progress into entering, successfully, the realm of the mobile world, making that social business experience much more endurable allowing you to carry it on with you, wherever you may well be, there are still some more fundamental challenges, showstoppers, that we should probably not ignore, nor neglect. In fact, I would start believing it would be the N Year of Mobile, whenever those two issues are fixed, universally. Till then, I will remain skeptic, no matter how cool a mobile social software application demo would look like, even if it is about one of my favourite Enterprise Social Software tools ever!

Tags: Finding Experts, Expertise Location, Expertise Locators, Web 2.0, Experts, Subject Matter Experts, Enterprise Micro-Sharing, Enterprise Micro-Blogging, Micro-Blogging, Micro-Sharing, Lotus Connections, Connections, Real-Time, Business Cases, Use Cases, 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, Dennis McDonald, iPhone, Apple, Demo, Mobile, Mobility, Mobile 2.0, Smartphones, YouTube, Peter Kim, Bill Ives, Text Messaging, Data Transfer, Movistar, No Service, Universal Mobility