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

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day – ¡Gracias, Mamá!

It’s that time of the year again, folks! Time to go and celebrate Ada Lovelace Day: “an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science". If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would remember how last year I also contributed into this wonderful initiative proposed by Suw Charman-Anderson by putting together a blog post that I still remember and treasure quite a bit, because of the impact its protagonist has had in my career at IBM, my current employer.

So I just couldn’t escape this year either and here I am again, once more, putting together a few words to celebrate such a special day. And you may be wondering who, out of those amazingly talented women in technology and science that have influenced me so much over the course of the years, I would love to blog about, right? Well, this year I thought I would go back to basics and celebrate the person who’s been the most influential for me into becoming what I am today and what I do with a passion day in day out: my mum!

Yes, indeed, today I am going to celebrate this special Ada Lovelace Day in a different way; in a very different way. My mum has never worked with technology, she hasn’t been much around it either!; quite the opposite! She has never been on the Internet; she doesn’t own any other kind of technology related gadget other than a standard, classic mobile phone; she doesn’t do email (Yay!), nor Facebook, nor Twitter;  she would probably freak out if she finds out the kinds of social software activities one of her sons has been involved with over the course of the years; she probably even can’t be bothered about everything Internet related!

In fact, if you Google her name it won’t show up. At all! Nothing. Zipped. Nada. So I’m going to keep respecting her treasured privacy and just celebrate her achievement in helping me become what I’m today; she gave me birth a few years ago; she has always been quite an inspiration when things have gotten tough to keep moving along; to fight the good fights; to understand that life is a continuous learning process that one cannot ignore, nor neglect, but, instead, embrace and enjoy every single minute of it! There is no way back! It’s not a choice, it’s a given!

She is the one who, back when I was at high school (When BASIC was en vogue), taught me how just because I hated pretty badly such a subject as Computing (Back then I just couldn’t stand computers! Who would have thought about that today, right?), I shouldn’t ignore coming around it, study harder to pass it, which I barely did, so it wouldn’t stop me from moving further on, and persevere, because there’s a great chance that it may come around at some point…

That may come around at some point was 10 years later, after having graduated as an English teacher, having lived abroad in multiple European countries, worked in several interim jobs, having landed in The Netherlands for a two week holiday and lo and behold I started working for IBM. Back in January 1997. Till today!

Goodness! She was just so right! It was her perseverance, her stubbornness to keep me going with that troublesome subject, her enduring patience for me to keep learning and progress further that I do still treasure today, because, just like back then, whenever I confront a similar situation I seem to have developed those skills to fight the good fight and get something out of it, including my dream job!

Funny part is that for her, 13 years later, nothing much has changed. She knows I work for IBM, and she knows I do stuff with computers and maybe the Internet, I don’t know. Actually, every time that we talk on the phone, or see each other face to face, we keep talking about everything else but technology, which I find quite amazing, specially in today’s world. She keeps me real, very much down to earth, trying to explain to her what I do in my day to day job without using any kind of jargon that would make things more complex. Quite the opposite, but that probably deserves a blog post on its own at some point.

To me, my Ada Lovelace Day will be my dear mum, the one who planted the seed many years ago to be curious about things, to explore, to always want to learn more, to challenge things that don’t make sense, to healthily challenge people always looking for the best in them and their conversations, to keep getting up when knocked down, to move on with our lives in the best possible way making use of the tools we may have at our disposal. And, to me, that’s technology; that’s what she has taught me throughout the years and why I knew how at some point in time I would be creating a blog entry on the subject and I am surely glad it’s today.

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day! ¡Gracias, mamá!

Tags: Finding Ada, Ada Lovelace, Ada Lovelace Day, Women in Technology, Women in Science, Women, Mum, Technology, Internet, Perseverance, Stubbornness, Learning, Patience, People, Life, Work, Balance, Mamá, Celebration, Happy Ada Lovelace Day, Things That Matter, The Smallest Things

Blogging for Knowledge Workers by Lilia Efimova

Those people, who know me rather well, would probably tell you folks how if I were to single out a specific and unique social software tool that has always been my all time favourite, and still is!, that would be… no, not Twitter, I don’t mean that one! … It’d actually blogging! Indeed, the fact I have been blogging for almost seven years has surely made me understand how much appreciate sharing a few lines here and there about the stuff that I’m passionate and use my own personal business blog(s) as my own voice to the world.

So you can imagine how excited I was when my good friend Lilia Efimova (a.k.a. Mathemagenic) invited me to participate in her recent PhD Research around the topic of blogging; with this particular title "Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers" I just couldn’t say "No!". Thus we got together and did a Skype interview where I shared plenty of my views on what blogging is all about and what it means for knowledge workers today: to have a space where you can dump thoughts / ideas, develop them further with others, have meaningful conversations, build a network, or a community, around your blogging activities; in short, how blogging can help nurture your already existing social networks as well as becoming a rather powerful Personal Knowledge Management tool (As my good friends Bill Ives and Harold Jarche have been saying all along…).

You can read Lilia’s dissertation with plenty more insights, as well as a good bunch of other prolific, insightful bloggers’ interviews, over here [Direct Download Link]; perhaps at some point in time I will create another blog post, where I will share some further thoughts on what I learned from such a fundamental piece of research on blogging. For now though I would want to take this opportunity to point you into something else that I am sure you would find rather interesting as well …

As you may well know, as part of my current work duties I co-lead (With fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, Josh Scribner) a community of social computing evangelists, called BlueIQ Ambassadors, with over 1,000 members already, across 50 countries and all business units, whose mission is that one of helping accelerate the adoption of social software at IBM by providing lots of guidance, education, support, coaching, mentoring and facilitation for fellow IBMers on how to make good use of social tools as their preferred business collaboration & knowledge sharing tools.

Every month we host a bunch of community related events with plenty of interesting topics related to social software and its wider adoption within the enterprise. We even have got virtual water cooler sessions with no specific, nor set, agendas where ambassadors just network with one another learning from each other about what they are doing with their own social software adoption efforts. Some pretty cool stuff, if you ask me …

Well, this year we decided to spice things up quite a bit and host virtual events with external speakers, more than anything else to help bring a nice mix of both internal and external topics to talk about and share further along. And yesterday was our first instance of bringing in such external speaker. And, indeed, that was Lilia Efimova. With the topic of Blogging for Knowledge Workers, Lilia spent a bit over an hour going through a wonderful set of slides where she covered some pretty comprehensive materials on some of the main key points of what blogging has got to offer in the business value space. Not just for organisations, but also for knowledge workers themselves; all around with some pretty powerful messages on why blogging is such a worth while social business activity, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.

You will be able to read further on about such event that we hosted yesterday if you go and check Lilia’s blog post on the topic under the title "Talk at IBM: Blogging for knowledge workers", where you will find plenty of interesting background links that will keep you busy reading some really good materials for a good while. In that post you would be able to find a link to the slides that she used for such virtual event and if you are interested in watching a replay, with both audio and video (As well as the chat transcript from the backchannel chatroom), we have managed to get that recording going and I am very pleased to share it with you folks…

You can go and grab it from here: Blogging for Knowledge Workers – Recording; it’s a 25MB download, but I can surely confirm it’s worth the time going through it; lots and lots of interesting insights on how blogging, despite the years gone by, despite that social networking sites are now more popular than ever (Much more than what blogs may well ever be), there’s still a place for blogs, like I have mentioned not too long ago when I talked about "The Second Coming of Blogging". Lilia’s talk surely makes plenty of great points of how blogging is now more relevant than ever before. And if not, go and watch through it, and judge for yourselves

From here onwards, I just want to take this opportunity to give a big thanks!! to Lilia for being with us and make such a wonderful virtual event yesterday and for sharing her inexhaustible passion about blogging and its real impact for knowledge workers and their social networks. Wherever those may well be… Thanks ever so much, Lilia! It was just wonderful!!

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Metablogging, Weblogging, Lilia Efimova, Mathemagenic, Dissertations, Passion at Work, Knowledge Workers, Ideas, Sharing Ideas, Bill Ives, Harold Jarche, PKM, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Personal Knowledge Management, BlueIQ, BlueIQ Ambassadors, Josh Scribner, Virtual Events, Community Events, Adoption, Social Software Enablement, 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, Productivity 2.0

The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections – Tag, You’re It!

Almost a week afterwards, it looks like it’s now a good time for me to resume my regular blogging activities over here in this blog once again more, as I just returned back from my latest business trip (To London, this time around, to participate in SOMESSO/Headshift’s Social Business Summit) and, where once again, getting connected throughout the entire time has been a bit of a challenge, to the point where very shortly I’m going to be blogging about another major resolution I will be adopting that I am sure is going to generate some discussion… But that would be at another time

For now, I just want to let you know folks that I’m already working my way through putting together a draft blog post, where I can summarise some of the major highlights from the Summit itself, which I have thoroughly enjoyed and from which I have learned tremendously a good amount of terrific insights shared by a good bunch of the attendees. As a taster, check out the fantastic reviews of the event from Anne McCrossan, Jemima Gibbons, Ton Zijlstra and David Terrar, amongst several others. All around a wonderful event that just marked, to me, the beginning, of a long lasting conversation…

Anyway, so what will I be talking about on this particular blog post, you may be wondering, right? Well, something I think I should have written about a long time ago, but that I kept neglecting time and time again. In a way, it was triggered again by some of the conversations I had during the break(s) at the Social Business Summit, so I thought it would be a good time to finally address it, at least, with this initial blog post.

Plenty of folks keep asking me, as they start diving into the world of social computing and social software as their preferred business social tools, where and how they should get started; what would be the best way for them to start off right away and already provide good value to the good number of social interactions they would be having over the course of the following months / years. And somehow time and time again I keep telling folks that in order to go off to a good start the best option is to start with their own profile(s): that one identity profile each individual has regardless of the social tool in place. There is always a profile! (In most cases, there’s even more than just one profile altogether!)

Yes, indeed, that specific online profile people can upload in a matter of seconds and find everything about you that you would think would be worth while knowing for others: a recent picture, your basic contact information, your default social software spaces (Your blog address, Twitter, whatever other profiling sites (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.), your reporting structure, your basic skills, your additional areas of interest, your social networks, etc. etc.). Well, to that list, which is the main topic of this blog entry, add up as well tagging! Yes, indeed, tagging, perhaps one of the least known and most un-used social objects within the social computing landscape, yet one of the most powerful ones!

If your company’s social software tools suite has got a profiling capability, and within that profile you have got an option to tag yourself (And others!) go and spend a few minutes tagging yourself (And others!), so that you make it incredibly easy for your fellow co-workers to find you and other experts in your area of expertise. That’s right, by doing a simple action like adding 3 to 5 tags about yourself and those who you work with closely, you are helping your business build a rather powerful expertise location tool across the board that would probably help you address one of the main key major pain points every single business has at the moment: finding (the right) experts (in a timeline manner)!

Here is the trick though that I keep sharing with folks all around; instead of just tagging yourself with tags related to your skills, your current job, etc. etc. (Which is a good thing as well, by the way, …) don’t stop there! Tag yourself where you passion takes you! Add tags (Over time as many as you would want to!) about what drives you to work every day, about your passion(s), about your keen interests, about what you would love to talk about, collaborate, share knowledge across with time and time again, without getting bored, for years to come! Make that tagging exercise as exciting and passion-driven as you could possibly could. After all, who would want to tag themselves with stuff they do every day, but they are not passionate about? Who could talk about such tags time and time again without going insane in the process at some point?

That’s why I keep telling folks, on a rather regular basis, if you would want to start diving into the world of social computing and wouldn’t know where to start, go right where you could provide good value: your individual profile … and tag it! Tag yourself with a passion; with those labels or keywords you are just dying to talk about over and over with your colleagues to make it contagious for them as well so they would want to learn plenty more from you!

Over time, the business will be continuing to build an essential expertise location tool that would be not just amazingly powerful, but also rather relevant to its knowledge workers’ capabilities: those skills they have been building over the course of time through knowledge sharing, collaborating and, in short, passionate learning.

Thus next time around that a knowledge worker asks you about how they can start diving into the world of social networking and social software tools, remind them to start small, i.e. with their own individual profile, build up from there slowly, but steadily, and encourage them to tag themselves with those keywords, or topic areas, they are truly passionate about, because there is a great chance that in its due time they would have plenty of great opportunities to share some of that passion with others who are looking for just that expert they couldn’t find before: you!

And now that I have shared with you folks how knowledge workers could get started with some powerful low hanging fruit as immediate benefits from a successful social software adoption, how about if we would go for a quick, short demonstration… My good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Jean Francois Chenier, has done it again and just recently he put together another episode from the series of “The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections“, and this time around the topic of Tagging and how helpful it can well be to help you find the right experts in a matter of minutes without having to struggle with traditional methods that may not work that well…

Go and have a look into “The man who should have used Lotus Connections 7 – Tag, you’re it!“; it’s a very short animated video clip that lasts for nearly three minutes (2:47) and which quite nicely touches base on the point of how beneficial tagging people can well be for any business to help build an essential expertise locator everyone can enjoy. Just priceless!

So, did you tag yourself already? Did you share your passion(s) across?) Have you tagged others? What are you waiting for? Go and tag, you’re it!

Tags: SOMESSO, Headshift, Social Business Summit, SBS2010, #sbs2010, Anne McCrossan, Jemima Gibbons, Ton Zijlstra, David Terrar, Profiles, Expertise Location, Expertise Locators, Experts, Finding Experts, Tagging, Social Tagging, Tags, Social Tags, Passion, Passionate, Skills, Jean Francois Chenier, Lotus Connections, Connections, 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, Productivity 2.0