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

elsua.net Is Now Finally Back Up and Running! Welcome Back!

I am sure you may have noticed by now, how over the last 47 hours this blog has been unreachable, returning a nasty error indicating it’s been down throughout all of that time. There have been numerous folks out there, who have been wonderful and kind enough to ask around, through other means, what was happening with the blog itself and the reason why it’s been down for so long, and the short answer is that my hosting provider decided to go through a major hardware upgrade over the weekend that just completed earlier on this morning, after those 47 hours I mentioned above. The good news is that http://elsua.net is now back up and running, faster than ever! The bad news is that I am not sure whether I would be recovering from this one outage in a long while!

I have got plenty of mixed feelings at the moment, to be honest. I have been with HostPC Internet Services for over three years now and all along the customer support and the Internet services provided have been outstanding. Till the last couple of days, where they mentioned in the Support Forums, that they would be going through this hardware upgrade over the weekend to make things go even faster. And somehow it’s taken a whole lot more than what I think would be considered a necessary downtime.

The end result is that yes!, things are snappier than ever, with some amazing response times. But at the same time the traffic coming into the blog has almost disappeared! Gone! Vanished! Zipped! Nada! Nothing! Into thin air and probably won’t be returning back any time soon! Guess this is just what happens when your blog goes down for more than two days without any prior warning and, in this case, it is just really bad timing after the recent massive increase of blog traffic thanks to the Mashable & TWiT net@night effects.

All of that effort, all of that traffic, is now gone after my hosting provider decided to go through a hardware upgrade without telling its users it was going to happen; no notifications being sent out to prepare our audiences for the downtime; no notifications alerting us when the system would be back up to keep us all informed; no notifications shared across as to what would be the potential repercussions of such upgrade. Instead, we get to suffer from them right away! And hope for the best! Ouch!!

And that’s where the mixed feelings start kicking in once again. Right now, after that customer experience, and facing that huge sudden drop in blog traffic (From the several hundreds of visits to just a few dozen at the moment!), due to the site being unreachable, I feel like I need to find another hosting provider, more than anything else to show them how you need to treat your customers with a little bit more of respect, at least, how you need to prepare better for such downtimes, so that those very same customers can help their own “customers” prepare for that unavailability of their Web sites. But then again I don’t want to throw away overboard the wonderful support and customer service I have been having over the last three years till this past weekend. What to do? What to do?

A good friend of mine told me once, a few years back, when I was first starting to blog, both internally and externally, to actually avoid blogging whenever you would be upset or angry about something, because in most cases you very rarely know what is going to come along after that. The backlash. He also told me how it’s a good thing not to take any harsh decisions when you are upset, because you have a tendency to lose your focus, specially, when those decisions may have, or involve, a long term impact. So I think I’m going to cut them some slack for now and stick around with HostPC Internet Services for a little bit longer…

For how long, you may be wondering, right? Well, that pretty much depends on you, my dear readers of this blog. I am going to let it rest for a couple of days and see if blog traffic resumes to the healthy level it once was (A couple of days back!); that way it would give me a chance to chill out, cool things off a bit, think about it carefully and if within two or three days things haven’t picked up again, then I think it would be a good time for me to start looking for another hosting provider. Something like a new, fresh start, except that, this time around, somehow, it would feel that I have left behind a huge part of me: you, my faithful readers, who have kept coming back for more over the years.

Somehow, I strongly feel that things will never be the same anymore, after having experienced this 47 hour long outage. But we will have to wait and see whether you folks will be coming back and stick around or whether you may have moved elsewhere. You know, the Internet, sometimes, does these things to you. Fingers crossed things will go back to normal and to what they used to be before. For now regular blogging at http://elsua.net will resume from here onwards…

My sincere apologies to all of you folks out there, who may be reading this blog entry, for this unexpected and unprecedented downtime. Hope you will be forgiving the sudden and abrupt interruption of service and please do come back soon! We miss you…

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Communication, Enterprise 2.0, Metablogging, Perceived Risks, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Software, Web 2.0, Weblogging, elsua, HostPC Internet Services, Hosting Providers, Downtime, Customer Service, Customer Support, Outages, Recovery

Social Learning: Learning Never Ends…

Earlier on today I gave a presentation to a bunch of fellow colleagues on the topic of microblogging / microsharing, behind the firewall, trying to describe why people should embrace such social tools in order to help increase their efficiency and improve the way they communicate, collaborate and share their knowledge effectively. We talked as well about a good number of other business benefits of using social tools that I have been mentioning over here over the course of time; and one of those benefits is, without any doubt, that one of Learning, specially the concept of Informal (Social) Learning.

I am sure that, if you have been involved yourself with social software tools for a while, you would probably agree as well with the notion that one of the strongest key elements behind engaging in social tools is the actual learning that takes place all around. Whether it is due to serendipitous knowledge discoveries or just plain socialising there is always a good chance that there won’t be a single day where you don’t learn a single thing. Probably quite the opposite!

That’s why when I was providing that education session on microblogging I couldn’t help thinking about a recent YouTube video clip that I bumped into thanks to Jane Hart‘s recent blog post (under the heading “Social Learning : the video“), which she shared not long ago, and which talked, rather nicely, about this very same topic! In the same fashion as the Did You Know? series of video clips, the smart folks from LAB SSJ in Brazil put together this Social Learning clip that lasts for nearly three minutes and which I thought would make for a perfect fit to include it over here in this blog.

Now, I realise that I don’t get to talk many times around the topic of Learning, but it still remains one of my lifetime passions, given my education background where I graduated as an English teacher many moons ago. So it’s nice to, every so often, come back again to such topic and share some more of those golden nuggets, specially when they touch other areas that I am rather passionate about, like social networking and knowledge sharing.

If I were to describe the content of the video clip, I think I would do a pretty good job by just quoting a single sentence that was mentioned on the YouTube link, as part of the description itself, and which, I am sure, when you read it, it would click immediately with you on what you are going to expect from nearly three minutes of inspiring messages, quotes, and whatever other gems that permeate throughout the clip itself. Yes, it is that compelling and, if not, judge for yourselves:

“The message reinforces the social nature of learning, showing that even when mediated by technology, we essentially learn from our interaction with others.“

Yes, indeed, at the heart of the whole purpose behind what social networking is all about, don’t you think? What a perfect way to end up one of those weeks where I am leaving behind a bunch of meetings galore and a few fires here and there and where I truly needed to be reminded why we are all in here, after all: Learning never ends …

Now you know as well why I can’t wait to start reading The New Social Learning book by Tony Bingham and my good friend, the always insightful and inspirational, Marcia Conner. Yes, I have just received a copy of it and will start reading it shortly. I bet I’m off to learn plenty more about how social networking and social software tools are helping shape up, for good, how we learn in whatever the environment, switching the focus from the traditional curriculum kind of driven learning activities of formal learning  in to a more people driven (informal) learning environment where conversations are the curriculum.

Yes, indeed, have a good one everyone!

Technorati Tags: Learning, Social Learning, Blogging, Microblogging, Microsharing, Metablogging, Metaweblogging, Weblogging, Business Benefits, Business Value, Jane Hart, LAB SSJ, Formal Learning, Informal Learning, YouTube Videos, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Tony Bingham, Marcia Conner

IBM Aims at Reinventing Relationships with Northstar: We Better Watch…

Today has been one of those days where I had hoped I would have had plenty more time to tune in and participate in one of those live events that you know will surely be worth while engaging in, because it comes up right along the alley of interesting subjects you would want to know plenty more about over time! Alas, work had other plans reserved for me, trying to extinguish a couple of fires here and there, in between another day of meetings galore, and I am only now catching up with things, having digested plenty of the good and interesting online coverage that’s been going around IBM’s Reinventing Relationships event that took place earlier on today. Did you have a chance to look into the brand-new shiny IBM’s Northstar tool suite that is supposed to provide us with an opportunity to reinvent relationships? What do you think? Was it worth your time? I hope so. You know, one cannot get to reinvent relationships out of the blue and overnight, right?

If you have been reading this blog for a while you would remember how all along I’m the kind of blogger who really doesn’t talk much about business products nor business tools, in whatever the area; more than anything else because we all know how they all come and go; they evolve, they mature, they die off, eventually. What remains behind though is the overall user experience. In this case, our user experience, which has been, all along, what I have been really interested in for a good number of years. But today things are different. Northstar has managed to change such perception to a certain degree, not because of the tool suite itself, but more how it aims, in my opinion, rather successfully, to change the way we build relationships between customers, business partners and vendors through the Web. The New Web.

So you would have to excuse for today, while I keep talking a little bit more about what Northstar means, at least, to me, based on my overall user experience of having interacted for over 13 years with that thing we have called all along the World Wide Web: The Internet. Yes, that’s right, I first started making use of the Web in 1997, when I joined IBM and right then I knew it was going to be something totally different than whatever I had experienced in the past. Even more when during that time the company was encouraging everyone to go out there and explore the Web. So instead of blocking this huge resource of inexhaustible information and knowledge, like most other companies were doing at the time (And some of them even today!), IBM was telling us all to go and see what was happening, what people were publishing on their Web sites, what customers were doing, what competition was doing as they were getting ready themselves to embrace the world online.

And right then you knew that something special was just about to happen. Not only would you have an opportunity to access an unprecedented amount of information and resources, but also you also had the opportunity to reach out to places and people you never thought you would be able to! Welcome to the Web 1.0 experience!

During the course of three to four years I grew up online experiencing what I knew was probably at the reach of a few; yes, that’s the time where I felt I was privileged to work for the company that employs me today. I had access to resources and news items incredibly fast, and although I couldn’t interact much with it (Remember, I am not a technical person, at all!), I was still having that strong sense though that I was in the know. Fast forward to 2000 and 2001, and there I was already about to experience something totally new that, back then, I realised was going to change me forever: The Social Web!

Welcome to the Web 2.0 experience! I realise that this whole account has just been a rather simplified and simplistic view of the evolution that the Web has followed over the last 10 to 15 years till today. And I have done that on purpose, because if you would really want to have a much more detailed one, you would just have to pop over to Irving Wladawsky-Berger’s excellent blog post under the heading “Reinventing Relationships“, which talks about this very same trip down the memory lane, but making the right connections towards Northstar along the way.

So how does Northstar itself relate to all of this experiencing the Web, you may be wondering, right? Well, in my opinion, in a very special way, which my good friend Larry Hawes translated very nicely on the following live tweet: “Time to move #social discussion beyond features/functions to business value“. And, to me, that business value translates, quite clearly, into building stronger personal business relationships, where the Social Web becomes just the glue, the means, the connector that inspires and nurtures the cultivation of those experiences amongst customers, business partners and their vendors. Does that ring a bell?

It’s all about how systems will be getting instrumented and increasingly interconnected to provide us with an opportunity to increase the productivity, and efficiency, of knowledge workers through networked enterprises; what I have been blogging about for a little while now when talking about work and the future of work evolving around networks and communities, versus traditional hierarchies and organisations. Welcome to the Knowledge Economy of the 21st century!

It’s those exceptional Web experiences that we have been waiting for a while that would help knowledge Web workers become more empowered, engaged and inspired to drive their own workflows, to make them co-participate and co-create their own working experiences, right where it matters: with their customers! Something that we have been starting to witness already for a couple of years, but that I think is going to start consolidating itself, quite a bit, with new products like the Northstar tool suite, where context, content and social analytics will be paramount to improve, tremendously, the overall experience from those of us, customers.

Because, when was the last time you spent a few minutes online being WOWed by an extraordinary Web experience, that would certainly help you come back time and time again? In my case, if you take out some social networking sites, it’s been a while. A long while! That’s why I have got really high hopes and expectations (So I will be the very first one to look up to it!) for Northstar, and other similar initiatives, to start changing, dramatically, such overall Web user experience(s), because it is very much needed, in my opinion! Specially, as we are witnessing that successful transformation of the traditional Web into The Mobile Social Web! Mobile as in I’ll take it with me, where I may well go! Regardless of the device!

Isn’t that a change that we all expect to become a reality, sooner rather than later? I surely hope so! At least, I am expecting that change; in fact, I am demanding such change! And, by the looks of it, I am not alone, because judging by the guest speakers and panelists who attended and shared their experiences and customer stories at today’s launch event, it’s something that we are all looking forward to!

If you would want to get a glimpse of or catch up with what the event itself has been like, I would strongly encourage you all to have a look into IBM’s Reinventing Relationships Social Media Aggregator, where you can get a good chance to digest quickly through the social buzz that’s been generated over the last few hours. And if you would want to find out plenty more about what the Northstar tool suite is all about, I would suggest you have a look into this demo, to get things going; then go through the Northstar Homepage and don’t forget to stop over at the IBM Customer Experience Suite. And, finally, if you would want some rather extensive details about how this tool suite would work out for you, as a customer, check out this article by Barb Mosher, where the heading is rather self-explanatory of what you can expect: “IBM’s New Customer Experience Suite Mixes Analytics, Social Software and Commerce“. Then, you would realise why I am now so excited about today’s Northstar launch event!

Like I said, I am not the kind of person who likes to talk about business tools or give people one of those marketing pitches with boring and unsubstantial messages that don’t go through nor do they stick around. I would rather prefer to concentrate on the Web experience that has allowed me to grow as a knowledge Web worker, as well as a networked individual, on the unique opportunity that the Social Web has presented us all for the first time in history: where content (Information & Knowledge), context (Us, knowledge workers) and analytics (Specially, the emergent area of social analytics), come together, walking hand in hand, showing us the way towards our final destination as customers: business value = successful customer experiences!

Yes, dear Northstar, I will be watching you; I would want to experience you soon, to the fullest, for my next online customer experience and you better be good, because I will be watching how you will be successfully reinventing relationships. I’m not going to expect any less from you. I want to come back over and over again… After all, [disclaimer] I am an IBMer!

Technorati Tags: Northstar, Reinventing Relationships, #ibmexperience, Experience, User Experience, Web 1.0, Internet, Technology, Social Web, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Larry Hawes, Business Value, Knowledge Economy, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Web Workers, Social Media Aggregator, IBM Customer Experience Suite, IBM, Product Launch, Analytics, Social Analytics, Content, Context, I am an IBMer, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Efficiency