Gamers – A New Breed of Knowledge Workers in the Making?
Posted on May 25, 2010 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise2.0, Fun Stuff and Musings, General Interest, Innovation, Learning, Life, Personal KM, Productivity Tools, Social Enterprise, Work Life Integration | 2 Comments
I love TED Talks. Really. I *do* love them. And not just because of some of the most impressive and stunning visualisations that some folks have been putting together about them, like this one, but mainly due to the fact that a good number of them are amazingly inspiring and a rather clear call to action that one cannot ignore, nor neglect, just like that! No matter what subject either! Even playing games! Have you checked out Jane McGonigal‘s Gaming can make a better world? You should!
It’s totally worth every single minute of it! Those precious 20 minutes will surely change your perception, for the better, about the entire gaming industry. If you are already a serious gamer it would help reinforce what you already knew: that playing games can surely have a huge impact not only on how we conduct business, but also how we live as a society, for the better. It surely has changed my point of view to a point where I’m going to start challenging the corporate world I have been exposed to so far about finally demolishing that assumption that games are a total waste of time; specially in a working environment. Because, clearly they are not. And if you don’t believe me, check out the following slide that Jane used at her TED Talk:
I mean, who wouldn’t want to have, as a business, an employee workforce with all of that amazing talent to perform while at work? Wouldn’t you want your knowledge workers to have such amazing qualities to make a difference in your day to day business operations? Well, I don’t know about you, but I *certainly* would! Any time!
In fact, if you take things further into the next level, these very same capabilities from gamers pretty much narrow down to some of the various different characteristics from knowledge workers who have been exposed to social computing for a long while. If you don’t believe me, go and have a 30 minute conversation with that social computing evangelist working in your team and you will see what I mean. They are blissfully productive with that special fabric that social networks permeate through all along, with an on-going and ever growing urgent optimism about wanting to make things better and with a strong sense of epic meaning, wanting to change the way the corporate world has been operating under over the last few decades!
It’s rather interesting, don’t you think? I mean, I don’t consider myself a serious gamer, although I do play games every so often (Mainly on my iPhone and iPod Touch so far…), yet, while watching Jane’s talk I just couldn’t help nodding how spot on she is on the impact of gaming on our overall capability to learn, adapt, react, apply, execute and grow. It’s tremendous how over the course of the last few decades we have kept neglecting such innate playful nature from our offspring (children and youngsters alike!) as an empowering method for upskilling and developing themselves with those continuous gaming efforts in our modern world.
Maybe it’s the time for us to stop and ponder some more about how gaming could help shape not just the corporate environment we would want to have in the 21st century, but also ourselves as part of a troubled society that clearly needs a reboot in order to get back in shape, not to the level of what we may have had in the past, but already advancing into the next one: the one where we feel we are making a difference for a better world, not just for us, but, specially, for our children as well, because, after all, I keep refusing to think that the game is over. Not for us, not for them either. So next time that someone frowns upon you when they see you playing games, go and show them Jane’s TED Talk and get them involved into playing games. Games that matter. We would all be much better off. I am sure.
Tags: TED, TED Talks, Jane McGonigal, Games, Gaming, Playing Games, Serious Games, Play, Fun, Workplace, Education, Better World, Things That Matter, The Smallest Things, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, Innovation, Leadership, Leaders, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Reboot, Game Is Over, Game Is Not Over
Reflections on Blogging and Real Life Distractions
Posted on May 25, 2010 | Categories: Fun Stuff and Musings, Gran Canaria, Life, Metablogging, Social Enterprise, Work Life Integration | 2 Comments
A good number of people have been asking me offline over the last 3 and a half weeks whether I have finally abandoned this blog for good and moved into something else, since I have gone rather quiet as of late and no new blog posts have been making it thus far for a little while now. Well, my answer: no further than the truth. There is no way I’m going to give up on blogging any time soon! Thus, from here onwards, my usual regular blogging will continue for many moons to come … What happened then?
Well, in the last few weeks things have been incredibly hectic at work for me working on multiple initiatives trying to help accelerate the adoption rate of social software inside IBM (I’m hoping to be able to share some of those insights pretty soon, too!), at the same time that I have been doing a fair bit of travelling (3 trips in a week!) presenting at various events, including the cancellation of another business trip to Madrid to conduct a workshop on Social Software Adoption, which I will be going for next Sunday for a couple of days…
That business travelling involved putting together a good bunch of presentation materials, which, in between meetings galore for most times, as well as presenting at those events, have taken most of the time, specially the time I’d normally dedicate to blogging. Of course, I will shortly be sharing with you folks what all of that travelling was about, since there is a lot to share on each and everyone of them, but, as a teaser, they all had to do with Día del Emprendedor (Day of the Entrepreneur), a face to face event that took place over the course of one week in all of the Canary Islands and which, overall, was a rather unique experience that left a mark on me I never expected to have… And very soon you will know why.
With all of that frenzy happening at work, you can imagine how there was very little energy left to, on top of that, continue blogging away, right? So I needed to take a break, unwind from everything, recharge my batteries again, get back into the full swing of things… and I did that on the weekends, which I guess that’s what they are meant for, right?, specially when you live where I live 
So for the last three weekends I have been out of the house enjoying some stunning spring weather over here in Gran Canaria, taking with me my camera trying to grab some breath-taking snapshots of very special moments: those that help you understand and treasure how powerful it can well be being disconnected from everything and focus on the little things that matter…
And, boy, was it worth it? Every minute of it! I have been sharing a good number of those snapshots on my Flickr account already, but I thought I would share a few of those pictures over here so you could have a look into the kind of wonders and diversity I have been exposed to in the last couple of weeks, and why, time and time again, enjoying real life seems to have won over my usual regular blogging over here. With the good fine effect that I’m now back in full force wanting to share a whole bunch of really cool stuff I have bumped into during the last few days and which will keep me buzzing away for a long while still.
Thus, like I said at the beginning … no, I haven’t given up on blogging; not even a remote chance of that happening any time soon! Quite the opposite! Why would I want to mute myself? Why would I want to quiet down my voice, when there is just so much to share and learn from? Why would I want to kill the very same reason why I got involved with social computing in the first place a few years back? Just doesn’t sound right, does it? Yes, there may have been a few days where I have gone dormant but for a good reason. A chance for me to step back, relax, unwind, refocus and get ready for some more! And try to continue providing some good quality blogging that other folks out there may be able to enjoy reading, just as much as I do putting those articles together in the first place … And certainly visiting some of the places like the ones you are going to see on the pictures shared below helps… And a lot!
Yes, I agree, it’s good to be back! 
Oh, of course, another year has gone by and, as you can imagine, I couldn’t miss it and let it go by just like that … Yummy!! What do you think? Fancy joining me again next year for one of these? Around mid-May? Get in touch!
Tags: Gran Canaria, Distractions, Real Life, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Travelling, Día del Emprendedor, Business Trips, Spain, IBM, Flickr, Maspalomas, Maspalomas Dunes, Dunes, Charca de Maspalomas, Dedo de Dios, God’s Finger, Mogán, El Tablero de Maspalomas, Paellas, Giant Paella, Fiesta, Work, Life Balance, Work Life Integration, Things That Matter, The Smallest Things, Unwinding, Relaxing, Refocusing, Refocus
