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

My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week – Week #1

A couple of days ago, in another blog post, I mentioned how, just recently, I, finally, managed to get my hands on an iPad. This time around the 3G 64GB model, which I have been hunting down for a while now. Right from the moment I saw it, I knew that device would change completely the way I would interact not only with the Web and various social networking sites I use on a regular basis, but also with a good bunch of different applications. So, with that spirit, I thought, why not share those favourite applications across, as perhaps other folks may be able to benefit from them just as much as I am doing myself. After all, there are just so many out there that it wouldn’t hurt the odd recommendation, don’t you think? Well, this is the purpose of this blog post: i.e. to share those recommentations. My favourite #elsuapps!

Actually, this is not something new! Back when I first got my 3G iPhone I used to share across in Twitter, on a daily basis, my favourite iPhone app under #elsuapps! Now, since we all know how wonderful (NOT!!) the Twitter Search engine is, since you can no longer track those recommendations, I thought this time around I would do a bit more of curation on such job and keep track of things slightly better. So now, I am, indeed, still sharing the Daily #iPad App, but instead of relying on the Twitter search, I actually subscribe to its own feed and have got those suggestions available in my feed reader.

So I thought what a better way of sharing those recommended iPad apps than using my own blog over here to store them on a weekly basis and open up, from today, a weekly series of blog posts where I will be talking, very briefly, about those various applications I have been enjoying on my iPad for a while now. No, I am not going to share them all in one single post. What I will do from today onwards is every week create a blog entry where I will be sharing my Top 5 iPad Apps of the week, based on those recommendations I may have made during the course of the week with the Daily #iPad App. That way, if you miss them, you can still find them over here. For good. Not like Twitter would do though, where if you would want to come back in time, it would not allow you to.

Now, the plan is to make this series of blog posts really straightforward and to the point; with single one liners as to why I’d like to recommend each and everyone of those iPad apps. For the moment, I don’t plan to put together full reviews of those applications, since there are, probably, tons of them available out there already. This is just one way for me to share with you folks some quick pointers on applications I think you should have a look into, based on my own experience with them. And see how it goes from there…

Also, you would notice how from those Top 5 Apps of the Week that I will be sharing, 4 of them are regular apps that help me do a bunch of things and the last one is the one I usually share on Fridays, and, as you may be able to imagine, that app is going to be a game. Because if there is anything that the iPad is also really good at is to provide us with plenty of stunning gaming experiences altogether that would keep you entertained for hours and hours making those long queues for doing stuff almost non-existent. Thus it wouldn’t harm getting to know what interesting games there are out there!

Ok, that’s it, folks! Without much further ado, here you have got the first blog entry of the series of “My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week“. Hope you enjoy them, just as much as I do! Let’s go! Let’s get started!

• Osfoora HD: Without any doubt, in my opinion, the best Twitter client for iPad by far available out there! I love it just as much as I do Nambu on the Mac or Twitter for iPhone. A must have!
• Reeder for iPad: If you are looking for an impressive RSS feed reader, fully packed with features and nicely integrated with Google Reader, this one is all your need! Another must have!
• Dropbox for iPad: If you are one of those folks who lives on the cloud with a huge need to move files around between computers and mobile devices
• iThoughts HD: For those folks who may be looking for a rather nice mindmap application for the iPad, you may be lucky! There are lots and lots of choices out there. iThoughts HD is one of my favourites and the one I use on a rather regular basis. There are a couple of others, but will be talking about them at a later time…
• Osmos: And, finally, the Game of the Week; in this case the one that surely has me hooked up to a unique experience of how involving a game can be from the very first moment that I bumped into it a few weeks back! Highly recommended! (If you would want to see what it is like, check out this YouTube video clip about it and you will see what I mean)

And, that’s it, folks! My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week that I have grown to enjoy quite a bit over the course of time and that I couldn’t live without at the moment. Hopefully, some of them will tick with you as well … Now the great thing about putting these recommendations over here in this blog is that you also have a good opportunity to share back in the comments those iPad apps you feel would be worth while sharing across with us, so that eventually, before we all know it, we may end up with an essential index of must-have-iPad-apps we couldn’t live without.

So, what are your top 5 favourite apps of the week? Go ahead and share them across in the comments! And, of course, thanks for doing that!

Have a good one everyone!

Technorati Tags: Apple, Collaboration, Games, iPad, Mac, Mindmapping, Mindmaps, Productivity, Tools, #elsuapps, Recommendations, Osfoora HD, Reeder for iPad, Dropbox for iPad, iThoughts HD, Osmos, Productivity Tools, Nambu, Twitter for iPhone, iPad Apps

CommunityBuilders – Building and Sustaining On-Line Communities by Steve Dale

Where is my chocolate cake? Do you have all the nice and fresh ingredients that would be needed to make a delicious one? You do? Now, do you also have the talent to make a mouthwatering one? You do? Excellent! Then you are ready to build and sustain an online community, because that’s what it takes, folks… It’s all about making delightful chocolate cakes!

Oh, oh, don’t worry; this blog is not going to turn itself into a food blog all of a sudden (Although it wouldn’t be that bad either!). It’s just that I thought I would take this opportunity to pick up on a superb analogy that my good friend, Steve Dale, put together earlier on in a blog post talking about online communities under the heading “Building and Nurturing On-Line Communities — Batteries Not Included“. And it was just *so* yummy that I couldn’t let it go by just like that!

In that blog post Steve actually gets to share plenty of insights on what it is like building and sustaining healthy online communities (of practice) by making a successful connection between building a community and making a delicious cake. You need to have all of the fresh ingredients to make it work! And that includes having perhaps one of the most important of those ingredients: your online community facilitator! Here is an interesting quote from his blog entry along these lines trying to portrait what would be the main skills and attributes from those successful facilitators:

“[...] It’s more about personality; enthusiasm; willingness to share; being sensitive to the community environment; and energy….lots and lots of energy. Not the sort of things you can learn or teach using a pedagogical approach“.

I am not sure what you would think, but I certainly agree with Steve 100% that a community facilitator (Or more! Depending on how large that community may well be…) would be essential for the well-being and further development of an online community. In fact, I also quite like the second analogy he shared where he states that having an online community without a facilitator is like having “a battery-driven toy without the batteries” and, boy, do we feel irritated when we open up the box on a Sunday morning and we eventually find out there are no batteries included for that lovely toy that we know is going to make our day! Ha! I bet you have been there a few times!

Again, I couldn’t have agreed more with Steve on this second analogy; in fact, I think he is on to something by making use of the wording community facilitator, when probably most folks out there are actually much more used to terms like community manager, community leader, community owner, community steward or whatever else. We shared that common view once again on talking about facilitating online communities versus managing / mandating / owning communities. In my case, this is going back to the late 90s when I was first exposed to online communities and online facilitation (By the wonderful and always inspiring Nancy White) and I am rather happy to see that 10 years later that really inspiring concept of what managing a community is all about is still alive and kicking!

Right, so with that introduction how cool would it be to actually check out a few slides and a recording by Steve Dale himself on “Building and Sustaining On-Line Communities“? That wouldn’t be too bad, right? Well, here we go then! A couple of days ago I actually invited Steve to come and present on that very same topic to a good bunch of IBM community facilitators, all of whom are part of an online community, that’s been there for over 10 years already, called CommunityBuilders (How apropos, right?). Steve came along and presented to us, for nearly one hour, what communitybuilding should be all about, what traits, characteristics and skills would community facilitators need to help sustain healthy and mature communities and, finally, a nice and very helpful description of what makes a good online community, structure and activities wise.

Really inspiring! With lots of interactions, great questions and many exchanges of helpful tips on how to get things going with your own online community. And today I am very pleased to share with you folks that we have got it all readily available for you. So if you are into online communities, if you are an online community facilitator yourself, if you are part of a core team member or just a regular member of a community and would want to learn plenty more how you can engage with other community members, or if you would be interested in learning plenty of tips on how to re-energise your online community, read the following few lines, because I am sure you would find them very helpful.

Basically, I would just want to point you to the slides that Steve used and which he has kindly shared already over at his Slideshare space under the title “Building and Sustaining On-Line Communities” and from there onwards to the equally interesting recording of both video and audio of the session we did together for CommunityBuilders. So that way you would have an opportunity to listen to Dave himself as he walked us through the slide deck explaining it all and answering lots of great questions at the same time. Priceless!

I don’t want to expand myself much further on this, since I would strongly encourage all to have a look into the recording, download it from here, sit back, get a nice cup of coffee (Or tea, as usual!) for you, hit PLAY and watch through it. I am sure you would find it rather insightful and helpful with plenty of golden nuggets to learn from on how you, too, can help facilitate successfully your online community with a whole bunch of potential new tips!

From here onwards, I just want to take this opportunity to give a special Thanks! to Steve himself for being with us, CommunityBuilders, and spend a few minutes sharing his wonderful insights on facilitating online communities (of practice). I am sure there was plenty of helpful tricks for everyone out there! Thanks ever so much, Steve! It’s great appreciated! We hope to be able to have you again with us very soon!

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, Communities, Education, Enterprise 2.0, Events, IBM, Innovation, KM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Learning, Productivity, Recordings, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Software, Web 2.0, Webcasts, Steve Dale, CommunityBuilders, Communities101, #cmgr, CommunityBuilding, Facilitators, Online Facilitators, Online Facilitation, Online Communities, Community Managers, Community Leaders, Community Owners, Community Stewards, Nancy White, Facilitating Communities, CoPs, Communities of Practice