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

CommunityBuilders – Online Community Still Crazy After Years with Nancy White

Continuing further with that series of blog posts I mentioned in the recent past I would start sharing across on the topic of online community building and facilitating successful communities, as another one of my passions and areas of interest, I thought I would drop by over here today and share further details on a recent education event, that we hosted back in March in one of the IBM communities I co-lead with some other fellow colleagues, CommunityBuilders, and which I am think plenty of folks out there would find it rather interesting, specially, after you find out who our special guest speaker was… Intriguing, eh? hehe I am really happy that I have now got the time to finally share it across with you folks: it was our great pleasure, and true honour, to have with us, for an entire hour, one of the people who has been rather instrumental in helping spark my own interest in online facilitation and online communities over 11 years ago. And I bet that has been the case for several other thousands of people out there, too! Yes, of course, I am talking about the one and only: Nancy White.

If you have been involved with virtual communities and online facilitation, I bet it’s almost impossible not having come across the absolutely fabulous work on facilitating online communities Nancy has done, and shared across!, over the course of the years. Her work around Online Community Toolkit is probably one of those essential resources for any community manager, leader, facilitator out there who may want to get things started with their own online communities, or take existing ones into the next level of interactions. Her book, co-authored with Etienne Wenger and John Smith, on Digital Habitats – Stewarding Technology for Communities is probably what I would consider a bible on online facilitation, community building and community tooling.

I am sure that in a future blog post I would have an opportunity to put together a blog post where I can talk, much more in detail, about the contents of the book and how folks out there interested in both virtual and physical communities could benefit from it. But for now, back to the event we hosted a few weeks back… When I asked Nancy whether she would like to be our special guest speaker for CommunityBuilders by the end of last year and she confirmed she would be with us, I was really excited about the opportunity of finishing off the year with a big splash for our community online events. Alas, life had other plans for all of us, and we eventually hosted the event by the end of March! Talking about perseverance and stubbornness, I guess, right? Either way, we kicked off this year with a great start altogether!

Nearly a month later, I am very pleased to, finally, share across with you folks both the presentation materials that Nancy used during that one hour virtual event, as well as the recording of both the video and audio of the session itself, so that you all would have an opportunity to listen to her pitch while going through the slides. It was an hour long session, where Nancy covered some of the basics behind the concept of Community (And how not everything out there, other groupings, may necessarily be a community), how both technology and community are walking through a rather thin line influencing one another, for the better, in defining how community members connect with one another and how those connections influence the path technology is following; and from there onwards she dived into an engaging conversation with the rest of the audience through a rather lively Q&A session covering a whole bunch of topics going from examples of effective community tooling, communicating efficiently with your community members, measuring the value of communities towards their stakeholders, biggest new challenges for online communities today, promoting and engaging activities for communities, etc. etc.

Thus I guess I better stop here, for now, and cut right to the chase, sharing with you folks the link to the materials, so that you can have a look right away and dive into them. The link to the video recording can be found over at “CommunityBuilders Monthly Call – Online Community Still Crazy After Years with Nancy White” (30 MB download) and you can download a copy of the slides over at Slideshare or start checking the deck through the embedded code below:

There is very little more than I would want to add after sharing those resources across, other than encouraging you all to have a look and take the time to download the recording and go through the slides. If you are into online communities, community building and community tooling, it will be worth your time. I can surely vouch for that! We all learned tons! And, once you are done with that, let me also take this opportunity to point you to a recent blog post that a good friend of mine, Matt Moore, shared across over at the Innotecture blog, where he shared three wonderful short interviews (No more than 8 minutes long, for the longest…), where both Nancy and Matt covered the following topics:

1. “Nancy discusses how networks and communities overlap and differ and what this means for us as members.
2. Nancy and Matt Moore discuss how to keep community sponsors, community members and yourself happy.
3. Nancy and Matt Moore discuss how to pay attention to online community dynamics“

They were worth it, weren’t they? Lots of wonderful insights shared across in them as well, mainly, on the topic of online communities and (social) networks and how they both work together in unison to get the most out of those member interactions and their conversations. From here onwards nothing else from my side to add, other than to take this opportunity to share a special Thanks!! with Nancy herself for taking the time of being with us at CommunityBuilders and for being such a wonderful inspiration throughout the years! She probably doesn’t know this, but one of the reasons why I am so passionate about collaboration and online communities in general is due to her own contagious passion, expertise and know-how that she continues to share over the course of the years! Mesmerising!

Thanks ever so much, Nancy! Hope you folks enjoy the recording and the materials, just as much as we did!

Improving Your Presentation Skills – Part Deux

I am sure that you would probably still remember how a couple of weeks back I put together a blog post where I shared a good number of resources with plenty of hints and tips on helping “Improve Your Presentation Skills“. No wonder. At the time, the article made the rounds striking a chord, and probably hitting a nerve, or two!, that most of us seem to be able to relate quite close to all along: you can never learn enough about the art of delivering an engaging and thought-provoking presentation in front of an audience. Delivering captivating presentations is a gift, and a skill that needs constant fine tuning, nurturing, learning and maturing over time.

So, I am back! I am back putting together another article developing further into this very same topic, since a bunch of folks shared across a whole bunch of rather interesting resources I thought would be worth while sharing on this Part Deux entry. Are you ready for some more Presentation Zen? Read on then …

Start with this wonderful article shared by John Mancini under the heading “8 things I have learned about effective presentations“, which surely is a rather relevant piece with plenty of advice from John’s own experiences on delivering engaging presentations to large audiences by summarising them all into 8 things. I have taken the liberty of listing them all over here, as a teaser, to entice you to go over his article and read it through. It’s worth while every word!:

1. “There is no need for a keynote to be more than 20 minutes
2. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Them them what you told them
3. Get out from behind the podium
4. Try to deliver your content as if it is a performance. It is
5. Can the commercials
6. No font smaller than 24 pt.
7. No clip art and minimal canned templates
8. Less is better than more“

Once you are done reading John’s piece I can certainly recommend you also have a look into this particular article from UCBerkeleyNews for a rather interesting and refreshingly surprising read on the art of delivering a wowing presentation, featuring David Byrne. Moving on … another interesting resource, which would be worth while your time, for certain, and which one of my networks shared across on Twitter right after I published the first part of this blog entry, would be the evocative post shared by Dan Pallotta over at Harvard Business Review under the suggestive title “Delivering the Speech of Your Life“, where he, too, dives into sharing across his basic rules gathered from all of his years of public speaking; once again, allow me to take the opportunity to share the headers, as a teaser, to share with you what you will be finding over there when you start reading it:

1. “Know your goal
2. Memorise your speech
3. If you don’t want to knock it out of the park, don’t follow rule #2
4. Practice the transitions
5. Don’t fear silence
6. Never, ever, use PowerPoint as your speech notes
7. Give something of yourself
8. Be yourself
9. Don’t speak in abstractions
10. Feel what’s happening in the room
11. Make eye contact until it scares you
12. Don’t miss your own talk
13. Come for a place of love for your audience“

Very interesting set of tips, don’t you think so? I am sure you would agree with that sentiment, so go on and finish off reading Dan’s article and then come back for some more interesting readings on this topic of improving your presentations skills and how to get better at it by the day. Starting with this wonderful blog post that my fellow IBM colleague, Wes Morgan put, together just recently and which came out as a result of him sharing a bunch of tips on Twitter around the topic of public speaking. Lots of great insights in there, too! Worth while a read!

Now moving into the provocative side of things, here are a couple of mind-blowing links I am sure you would enjoy reading as well, still on this very same topic, but with a slight twist. The first one is a reflection by Steve Denning under the heading “Death by PowerPoint? Is PowerPoint the Villain?” and which ties in, quite nicely, with the main themes covered over at his book “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management“, which (The book) I will talk about separately in an upcoming blog post. Another worth while read!

From there onwards jump into this Slideshare presentation (Ohhh, the irony, eh? hehe) under the provocative title “Stop breaking the basic rules of presenting” and go flip through the charts of what I think is just the right combination of plenty of great fun mixed rather nicely with a whole bunch of tips and tricks on what to do, and what not!, when speaking in public delivering your presentation. And since we are talking about relevant presentations in Slideshare to this particular topic, here is another one of my favourites, titled “Don’t Be A PowerPoint Felon” which pretty much covers, and very effectively!, three different presentation crimes and how to avoid them. Just brilliant! I am sure you would enjoy it quite a bit, too! If not judge for yourselves:

Phew!! That’s what I call a whole bunch of resources, with plenty of hints and tips, tricks, techniques, know-how, and lots of experiences on achieving Presentation Zen. However, there is more… Plenty more! But, for now, let’s go ahead with just one more. If you haven’t gotten the time to go through all of those resources or interesting links I have shared above, not to worry, here is one final video clip that I would love to leave you with and which only lasts three minutes, but which, I am sure, after you watch it, will change your perception of putting together a presentation, and delivering it effectively, for good! And for the better! Starting today.

Have a look into this entry on “Create an Effective Presentation” by Nick Morgan, CEO of Public Words, who, coincidentally, just recently, put together this article under the heading “If You Must Use Power Point, Here’s How To Do It – 5 Tips From Hans Rosling“, which is also a must-read, packed with plenty of fantastic advice (By the way, one of my favourite TED Talk videos, as of late, from Hans Rosling himself is this one on “Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine“; watch it! and you will see the word engaging take a new meaning, to say the least!). Anyway, back to Nick’s 3 minute video clip, where he details “five key steps to engage any audience“, here is the embedded code, so you can play it right as we speak, if you are just too busy for all of the resources I have shared in this post so far

You see? I told you this 3 minute video clip by Nick was worth the wait all the way, right? A very good use of three minutes, if you ask me… Well, I guess that’s what happens when you use your own blog to capture some excellent resources you bump into on how to improve your own presentation skills and then after it’s out there you start experiencing how plenty of folks keep sharing across their own hints and tips, additional relevant resources, etc. etc. So, to all of you who have contributed to make this blog entry on this topic a reality (Part Deux) of becoming an engaging public speaker let me share across a special thanks! for taking the time to sharing them across! Now, it’s a good time to get things started and practice! Because practice makes perfection, or so they say …

The Power of Words – Back to Blogging!

Once again, back to the grid, back to my usual regular blogging activities, after my last business trip is now completed, which, this time around, has been slightly longer than usual, since I have been away on the road for 10 days, having just returned last Sunday from participating in a couple of conference events, as well as a bunch of customer meetings and enablement workshops on Social Computing in both Barcelona and Madrid. Phew! It’s good to be back to the “normal” and usual routines, but the overall trip has been tremendously beneficial in multiple grounds. Who would have thought that this time around I actually enjoyed travelling quite a bit, eh?!? What’s happening to me?!?!

Was it because I participated presenting in some amazing Social Business conference events both in Barcelona (April 5th) and Madrid (April 7th)? Or perhaps because I also took a couple of days off, along with the weekends, to do some sightseeing and check out some of the amazing venues surrounding both wonderful cities? Or was it perhaps because of the fantastic meetings, workshops and enablement sessions I have been engaging with throughout those few days with both customers and fellow IBMers, mixing quite nicely internal and external social software evangelism activities? Or, maybe, because I finally managed to get my hands on my new favourite, shiny, object that happens to start with an “i”, for iPad 2? Or who knows, perhaps I enjoyed this trip quite a bit for the simple treat of meeting up in the carbon with some wonderful people, a few of my Twitter friends, customers and fellow colleagues, with whom it was absolutely delightful to share dinners, drinks and rather inspiring conversations!

Goodness! I have got so much to share over here with you folks from over the last 10 days that I don’t know where to start! Perhaps, one step at a time, I guess. And somehow I feel I am going to begin by tackling something I have been talking about in the last few weeks and which I think I have finally come to terms with on striking a solution that hopefully will be a win-win for everyone. Do you remember when I reflected back on the day about those dormant periods with my blogging over here? When I was basically mentioning how with all of the business travelling I was finding less and less time to blog, while on the road? Well, how about if I keep things going, but instead of creating blog entries on the usual topics you folks have been reading about all along over here, I start blogging on some lighter subjects, which also happen to be some of my areas of interest, for a while now, like travelling in general and food (Yes, another #foodie person over here! Check! hehe).

Why not, right? It could be an interesting new experiment where I can try to see how blogging on those additional topics could help me out in a couple of ways:

1. To keep up with a regular schedule of blog posts, instead of the irregular periods of time here and there by combining both business related blog posts and some personal related ones. After all, we are all business people, professionals with a persona behind us, aren’t we, right?
2. To help, maybe, increase my social capital with you folks sharing additional areas of interest based on places I get to visit or recommendations to fabulous restaurants I keep bumping into every so often. I know of a few of you out there who would love to read more about those, too! And maybe share a table at any of them at some point in time, too! hehe
3. And, finally, perhaps give me also an opportunity to share one of those hobbies I have developed over the last 7 years: photography. As you folks know, I have got my own Flickr account, but it’s been a little while since I have shared a batch of pictures from the recent places I have visited, including Gran Canaria itself, where I live. So this would certainly help me get back on the schedule of posting more pictures on a regular basis. And then link to them over here with short descriptions on where I have been and all.

The good thing is that I already got a very very good example to follow. One of my old time KM mentors, and KM blogger extraordinaire, the always insightful and thought-provoking, Bill Ives, does this on a rather regular basis, when he blogs about his favourite restaurants on cities he has visited just recently, as well as sharing his travelling experiences, including some wonderful pictures, and not to mention his own art! Thus it shouldn’t be too hard, initially. But let me ask you, folks, what you would think about it? Will you stick around and find out some more what I have been up to while away from the traditional work environment? Or will you move on to something else more interesting…?

To help you decide going one way or another, how about if I also keep sharing shorter blog posts, where I can help spread the word around on those amazingly inspiring video clips, and other golden nuggets, one keeps bumping into every so often, which I think is worth while sharing across to raise some more its own visibility, maybe to inspire others into making a difference, maybe to detail how, sometimes, it’s the small things that matter, those that make us all a bit more human, after all. How about if we get this series going with this particular YouTube video on “The Power of Words“, which seems to be a spin-off of this other original brilliant piece of art: “Historia de un letrero, The Story of a Sign“:

Very touching, don’t you think? It will be another few weeks, before I am on the road again, in order to try this new experiment here in my blog on “getting more social, more personal and do business”, and see how it would go further along, but, certainly, this exercise would give me an opportunity to get back on track with my own regular blogging activities, which will resume, once again, from here onwards … So thanks a bunch for sticking around! We are back in business!