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

Corporate Blogging Goes Mainstream – Happy Bloggiversary elsua!

Remember when people used to claim that blogs are dead and how more and more social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like, were taking over our social activities both inside and outside of the firewall? Well, it looks like the trend may be turning around, as I have mentioned elsewhere on the blog some time ago, and it seems that corporate blogging is becoming more and more relevant by the day within the corporate world and beyond. Now, I don’t expect this blog entry to become, once again, another metablogging article on detailing why blogging is good and why it’s something worth while looking into; that’s something I’m about to get started working on with both the wonderful Megan Murray and the insightful Bertrand Duperrin. We will be sharing that piece of work shortly… Not to worry. What I wanted to do with this entry today though was to share a little bit of a celebration, since i realised, earlier on this week, how I have missed both of my bloggiversaries with my internal and external blogs, respectively. Ouchie!

Yes, that’s right! Way back, in 2005, on October 10th, I started this external blog over here to talk and share some further insights on the stuff I was learning related to Social Computing within the Enterprise, along with KM, Communities, Learning and a bunch of other topics. I guess it is just too bad I missed the 5th year bloggiversary on what it could have been a rather special date: 10-10-10, marking that same 5th anniversary! Oh, well, I guess that’s what happens when you are having fun and time flies without you noticing it much really! hehe

Over that period of time I have been having a couple of blogging breaks, here and there, just coming back from perhaps one of the longest I can remember. But in between, I have been putting together 1,169 blog posts, having received 3,460 comments so far, which I guess is not too bad either! It gets even more interesting though, when I realised I had missed this bloggiversary that I, too, missed the one from my internal corporate blog, which I got started back on December 3rd in 2003, and where I have already accumulated 2,747 blog entries with 6,466 comments, which, now that I come to think about it, is *huge*, for something that I started more or less as an experiment to see where it would take me in my journey to learn more about social software, social networking and blogging in particular.

All in all, it means that elsua has now been blogging for over 7 years, with an accumulated total number of 3,916 blog posts and 9,926 comments altogether, averaging, 559 blog posts per year, which, I suppose, makes up a pretty good convincing case of what blogging in general has meant for me all along: an indispensable knowledge sharing tool with which to share my views, my opinions, my key learnings, a few other insights, a few lessons learned, in short, my passion with all of you folks out there wanting to listen to my ramblings around all of these topics related to KM, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Learning and Communities. Thanks ever so much for being there all along and for sticking around! It’s meant a lot to me over the course of the last few years and hope we can make together another 7 & 5 years, respectively, blogging away!

You may remember how in the past I have mentioned how blogging is perhaps one of the most powerful and compelling Personal Knowledge Management, a.k.a. PKM, tools available out there nowadays. Something that I have always agreed with two of my favourite KM Bloggers: Bill Ives and Harold Jarche. And that’s exactly how I feel about my own blogging, whether internal or external. That opportunity to have a voice, an opinion, on whatever the subject matter, and share your knowledge and experience about it is priceless! No matter what! No matter how many social networking tools you use, there will always be a place for your blog as part of your personal brand. You may blog at a rather specific date or time of the day, or perhaps blog every so often, if you are so inclined. The interesting thing though is to always come back to the blog.

It will still be there when everything else is gone! It will be there when you delete your Facebook account, when you decide you no longer need to make use of LinkedIn, or when you find out Twitter has done something with your networks in there that you don’t feel very comfortable with anymore, etc. etc.. Yes, your own personal blog will still be there! That’s why, to me, whether things have continued to be rather busy and hectic or not, or whether I make, more or less, continued use of social networking tools, I always try to make time to drop by the blog and share an insight or two. Probably, I didn’t succeed very well in the last blogging break I took, since I didn’t manage to post much. Yet, here I am, about to enjoy my last working day for this year and prepare for an upcoming long, extended holiday break and already thinking of ramping up my blogging frequency quite a bit to catch up with everything that I have been wanting to talk about or share some thoughts about what I have been exposed to over the last few weeks.

Blogging, to me, has become my own personal learning space (As my good friend, Amalio Rey, would probably have put it as well) with an opportunity for everyone else to dive in and engage in the conversation(s) I may have started then and perhaps make them even richer. Or just, basically, move on. It’s become my own exhaust valve at times, and, as such, somehow I feel, right now, that it’s about to explode with the several dozens of articles I would want to share across. So I better keep up! The interesting thing about corporate blogging that I have always really looked forward to is, eventually, applying a key concept that I have been exploring for a while now through other social networking tools, mainly, activity streams, but which could be equally accurate for blogging as well, which is that one of narrating your work (That Dave Winer first coined a few years back and blogged extensively on it as well at a later time) or nowadays “Observable Work” (#owork) that other incredibly smart folks like Jim McGee, Brian Tullis and Greg Lloyd have been talking about lately.

Indeed, there are probably very few social tools out there that would be such a perfect candidate for observable work other than blogging; it provides you with that opportunity to share your thoughts, to have an opinion, a voice on how things are going around you, your projects, tasks or initiatives you have been working on, teams / networks / communities you have interacted with, new experiences you would want to annotate down, so you don’t forget key learnings you can apply at a later time, new opportunities to connect with other people who you share a common passion or interest with for a particular topic; in short, what I have mentioned above as my own Personal Knowledge Sharing (a.k.a. PKS) system that one has become so dependent on it that, when you are not blogging, you feel that something is missing; like an integral part of you is not there anymore, like you are naked!

That’s why I am really looking forward to the holidays, amongst several other things, of course; because it would give me an opportunity to come back to this blog properly, as I feel it deserves, because all along I have always acknowledged that if it weren’t for this blog, and my internal one, too!, I would have never made it this far inside the company I work for: IBM. I would have probably left a few years back already, but I guess my blogs had something else to say, because the last 3 major projects I have been working on in the last 7 years have always come along my way thanks to my blogging, thanks to that inner urge of wanting to share that passion across, because, blogging, too, can help you land, eventually, in your dream job.

Still think that corporate blogging doesn’t have a place within the social networking tools landscape? … You may need to think again!

Happy bloggiversaries elsua!!

My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week – Week #8

On my welcome back post from a few days ago, after a long hiatus of not having blogged much over here in this blog in the last few weeks, I mentioned how I was still planning on keeping things going with that series of blog posts I started a while ago on My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week, and which I have picked up as well back again on Twitter under the Daily #iPad App recommendations for #elsuapps. Well, I am happy to announce that series of entries is back and here we go with the edition for week #8! Read on… !

Now, there are a couple of new things I have thought about after all of that time not blogging away on this topic; the first one is another blog post (My good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Bill Chamberlin keeps asking me about it … hehe) where I plan to detail what having, and making extensive use of, an iPad has meant for me in the last few months, to the point, where it’s replaced, altogether!, my regular mobile computing habits with my MacBook Pro and nowadays I just travel with my iPad! The recent iOS upgrade to 4.2 has meant, for me, a whole new bunch of enhanced productivity gains that TCGeeks describes thoroughly quite nicely and in that upcoming entry I am hoping to reflect why I heart my iPad more than any other mobile device I may have ever owned. Stay tuned … will be coming up shortly!

As usual, and as part of this blog series of posts, I keep sharing a bunch of articles that keep demonstrating how the business keeps showing a growing interest for the iPad within the Enterprise, not just from the perspective of every CIO and top level executive to own their have their own iPads, but also from the perspective where even analysts are starting to place their bets on how the iPad will transform the way we do business as well. Perhaps one of the most interesting articles that I have read on this very same topic as of late is that one from David Carr, over at InformationWeek, under the title “iPads Hit The Enterprise“.

In that rather interesting article, you would be able to read about how plenty of business are already making use of iPads for their day to day tasks and activities and getting plenty of good results; never mind the user acceptance and wider adoption by the knowledge workers themselves; I mean, who wouldn’t want to have an iPad as your main tool at work, instead of that relatively old, clunky, frustrating desktop PC you’ve been using for years and years, right? Like I said, a rather good and insightful read for those folks who may still be wondering whether the iPad has got a space within the corporate world or not. My short, sweet and straightforward answer to that question: yes, it does! And big time!!

Ok, after having shared all of those rather interesting and insightful links, let’s move on with the list of recommended iPad Apps for week #8; as usual, it’s a list of 5 iPad apps that I keep using myself on a regular basis, and out of the 5 of them one is the iPad Game of the Week, just for those spare moments where one could use a bit of fun and entertainment, while other things are happening in between, like waiting in queues, or while travelling, etc. etc. Like with all of the various different blog posts I have put together on this series, I keep aiming at keeping the description of the Apps rather short and focused, hoping to spark an idea or two as to why I use those as opposed to others. Thus, without much further ado, here is the list for this time around… Hope folks would enjoy them, just as much as I do, and, remember, if you would want to share your favourite picks, go ahead and add them in the comments section and I would be more than happy to share them across in upcoming articles with due credit. So, let’s go!

• Flipboard: If you are a news junky, or if you would want to consume both news items as well as information resources shared through some of the major social networking sites (Like Facebook, Twitter and top blogs from multiple areas) in a rather new, innovative and rather creative way, Flipboard is probably as good as it gets. Even better when it’s considered by most folks one of the best RSS and Syndication technologies for 2010 or when you bump into a superb blog post that details how you can consume your Google Reader feeds directly from Flipboard itself. Absolutely fantastic and the latest version they have released is a *huge* improvement from previous versions as well… A must have! 
• AppShopper: This is, perhaps, one of my all time favourite iPad apps (Works pretty nicely as well on the iPhone!!) from all along! It is one of those rather nifty and powerful iPad / iPhone apps that would allow you to find, AND strike, the best deals of some of the most popular Apps or those that have got, for a limited amount of time, juicy sales discounts with rather high %s. They say that buying Apps can become very expensive; well, with AppShopper, that’s no longer the case! Most of the recommendations I keep making over here of paid Apps I got them through real bargains in AppShopper. It’s an essential, must-have app for everyone! Believe me, once you get this app, your wallet will be grateful. At least, mine is
• Wi-Fi Finder: This is one of those iPad apps that becomes incredibly helpful and rather powerful for those road warriors out there, constantly in the move with business / casual travelling, where they are always on the lookout for free wi-fi hot stops they could hook up their devices and get connected back again. Well, Wi-Fi Finder makes that job a whole lot easier by looking for you for those Wi-Fi spots and share them across with you. It even has got an offline capability where it downloads a database to your iPad and it searches for them even when you are disconnected. Like I said, ideal for those folks travelling out there!
• Emerald Observatory for iPad: As much as I love this particular iPad App, I must confess that I didn’t make regular use of it till the recent upgrade to iOS 4.2 introduced the wonderful concept of multitasking … on the iPad! Yay! From there onwards it’s one of the applications that I have got running in the background constantly to give me a glimpse of all of those bits and pieces of information that one wants to keep handy, but can never find the application that does it nicely. Well, Observatory does it and beautifully! 

• 7 Wonders HD: And, finally, like I have mentioned above, the iPad Game of the Week; I have got a few of them, but since I am planning on sharing just one per blog post, I will continue to do so with this one as well; so for week #8 the game of the week would be 7 Wonders HD; one of those games whose storyline may sound a bit simplistic, but that, as you get immersed in it, you just cannot escape its addiction till you are done with it; it will keep you going for hours and hours without end trying to reach for that final stage where complexity takes a new meaning… And when you get there, you will see what I mean … hehe

And that’s it, folks, for today! The series of blog posts on “My Top 5 iPad Apps of the Week” is back with this 8th edition and I am hoping you would enjoy it, just as much as I did putting it together! Oh, oh, and before I forget, there are some more good news coming up to the this blog as well, when very soon I will open up another series of blog entries, pretty much along the same lines as this one, but instead of iPad Apps, I will be talking, and sharing my favourite picks!, about iPhone Apps, now that I have finally re-acquainted myself with some of the wonderful apps I keep using on my iPhone 4, which brings me back into having a rather decent smartphone. So stay tuned for those coming up as well shortly!

… If you can’t wait, you can already have a glimpse of some of them at the usual place: #elsuapps in Twitter. Lots of good fun coming up!

Technorati Tags: Productivity, iPad, #elsuapps, Enterprise, Business, Productivity Tools, Flipboard, AppShopper, Wi-Fi Finder, Emerald Observatory, 7 Wonders HD, Games, iPad Apps, iPhone Apps

The Myth of Multitasking Revisited

In the past, and over the last few months, I have been blogging around the topic of multitasking quite a bit and I am starting to believe, more and more by the day, and rather firmly!, by the way, in our inability to multitask effectively, specially when having to deal with rather complex and tough tasks / activities in our day to day work. Lucky enough, plenty of really fascinating research is coming up confirming what I already suspected from all along and I just couldn’t help resisting the opportunity to cite one recent piece I bumped into under the suggestive heading: “Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers’ Speed of Job Completion“. I use to believe I might be capable of multitasking effectively and everything, but after reading through that paper one gets to realise it’s just a myth. It’s always been a myth. Time to move on…

I first bumped into that piece of research over at the Freakonomics blog, under the title “The Myth of Multiasking” and, as usual, I just couldn’t help but find some time to read through it in order to confirm that hunch I have been having for a few months now, after I wrote the initial article “Is Multitasking Bad for the Brain?“, which sparked a recent change in how I get work done nowadays: The Pomodoro Technique.

The superb piece of research was conducted by Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino and Nicola Persico who set themselves to analyse a sample of Italian judges investigating how they were keeping up with the various cases they were working on and how effective they could multitask eventually. Or not. And their conclusion couldn’t be more revealing:

“[...] workers who juggle too many tasks are necessarily slower in completing this workload than workers who concentrate sequentially on few tasks at the same time [...]“

I am not going to spoil it for you all and share many more insights further from the conclusion itself, you would have to read through the paper itself, but I am sure you can probably ascertain what it would be like. A wonderful read throughout, for sure! Highly recommended!

Since I am no longer a believer in multitasking, I am sure that, at this point in time, you may be wondering how I am doing myself with singlecasting, right?, specially having followed The Pomodoro Technique over the last few months… Well, it cannot be going better than it is at the moment, actually. Usually, I get started with my morning routines checking out the agenda for the day (For meetings and conference calls, so I can decide whether I need to prepare any of them, or not), and then I sit down for a few minutes picking up three (relatively tougher) tasks that would require my attention and full focus and for those three I would set up my pomodoro to 25 minutes to complete each and everyone of them. No matter what! No interruptions, no short breaks, nothing. Get them done and then move into something else. Usually a break after each of them has been completed.

Then the rest of the day is dedicated to some of those meetings and conference calls, closing off some other minor tasks / activities and catching up with my various social networking streams, both internally and externally; and, finally, perhaps allow some of the multitasking that still lingers in my day to day workload. That’s usually my day to day, although, as of late, I have been doing something that I never thought I would be doing, AND with great results! By the beginning of November, I decided to apply the Pomodoro Technique to how I interact in social networks as well, something that didn’t happen in the past that often.

That’s right! For a few weeks now I set up my pomodoro twice in the morning, to 25 minutes each, to catch up on my social networking streams, and perhaps another one, or two! (I depends on whether I have got more or less meetings!) in the afternoon to keep myself up to date with what’s happening and to find areas where I can help or contribute. And that gives me an idea of the time I spend, overall, in social networks; right now it’s coming closer to three hours per day, including blogging as well, combining both inside and outside social networking and somehow it’s starting to give me an opportunity to handle the social (Intra-)Web much better by sharing, connecting and helping other folks by being there, much more focused in the first place than whatever was happening in the past, where I was increasingly having that strong sense of spreading far too thin! (Which I am sure is a feeling I am sharing with plenty of you folks out there…).

I never thought I would be saying this, but by limiting my multitasking time to the bare minimum, even for my social networking activities, I am starting to find out that I am much more involved and energised and engaged with what’s around me, and the amount of stress trying to combining it all with some good balance is now a thing of the past. The pomodoro technique is helping me do that without me having to worry too much; and, eventually, since I am capturing all of the various different statistics, I am having a better grasp of where my time seems to be going, whether internal or external and whether I need to shift gears for one or the other depending on what needs to get done, which is really nice, because it allows me to almost completely eradicate multitasking altogether and, in my opinion, that can only be a good thing, because, after all, it *is* bad for the brain. Even for my social brain! … You.

Technorati Tags: Multitasking, Singlecasting, Productivity, Focus, Research, Myths, Social Networking, Pomodoro Technique, Social Computing, Social Software, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing