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

Google Plus – One Social Networking Tool to Rule Them All

Like I have mentioned yesterday, it’s been a few days already since I jumped the shark and joined the bunch of early adopters who have been hammering down, and taking for a spin, the latest iteration of Google to get social with Google Plus, right after Google Wave and Google Buzz. And I guess the experience has been somewhat rather positive so far, because a few days later, I’m still there, having a blast. So since a bunch of folks have asked me to share my thoughts about the overall user experience I thought I would put together this particular blog entry where I could describe a little bit what it is like: well, to me, it’s like being all over 2007, once again!

But let’s get started with things properly. As most of you folks already know, my first exposure to social software was inside IBM, back in 2001, with a Profile Social Aggregator called Fringe; then I started experimenting with the instant messaging social capabilities of IBM Community Tools (a.k.a. ICT) around the same time; in 2003 I got things started with my first internal corporate blog, followed in 2005 with my first social bookmarking site called Dogear. From there onwards, and in 2006, Cattail (an internal Personal File Sharing space) came along, just as I was getting started playing with micro-blogging / sharing tools like BlueTwit, as well as Beehive (Now SocialBlue) and a whole bunch of other pilot social networking tools made available to us, fellow IBMers, through the absolutely wonderful Technology Adoption Program, a.k.a. TAP.

Quite an exciting journey, if you would ask me, from the perspective of having that golden opportunity of living on the cutting edge of technology, although sometimes it’s been more along the lines of bleeding edge. Either way, the result was phenomenal since it gave a few thousands of us a unique opportunity where we could explore the potential of social networking for the enterprise, and still going strong!, and all along it’s been quite exciting being ahead of the curve from other waves of adopters or the mainstream itself. Even for us.

However, you can imagine how, as time went by, most of us ended up with a whole bunch of various different profiles in a good number of internal social networking sites resulting in spreading thinner than ever and eventually jumping into what some other folks have been calling social fatigue. Pretty natural, most folks seem to claim, and I would probably have to agree with them to a certain extent, since I, too, noticed such fatigue over the course of the years. Till 2007.

In that year, IBM decided to productise all of those wonderful social interactions and create, as a result of it, a single product: IBM Connections, formerly known as Lotus Connections. So in the end employee profiles, blogs, social bookmarks, files, activities, wikis and communities (And now Forums) became all integrated into a single point of entry: Connections itself. No longer would there be a need to keep up with multiple social networking environments, with multiple networks, with multiple levels of interactions. It was all coming along, rather nicely, into a single, unified experience. And we were all rather grateful! Yes, sir!

All of a sudden, all of that social fatigue vanished thin air and a new re-energised effort to consolidate both connections / networks and content was born! All of a sudden there was a single space where fellow colleagues could all interact, be social, get the job done doing their work, but still have plenty of good fun along the way, without having that sense of walking the talk thinner than ever. Yes, sir, we *are* all grateful!

Well, hello Google Plus! Welcome to my 2007 integrated user experience! Glad you could finally make it and very happy to see how you will help me fight that social fatigue I was starting to experiment with the Social Web and integrate all of my core networks into a single one, and all of that with a plus!

Now, I am sure that plenty of folks out there would not feel very comfortable with me advocating for a ONE, single social networking tool that could eventually rule over all of the others. But the thing is that, if things continue like that, Google Plus will eventually rule them all! And here’s why.

I am not going to bother folks sharing a good number of the rather interesting and insightful blog posts that other early adopters have been sharing so far in their own blogs. However, what I would like to do is to share with you folks why, if Google Plus continues to evolve nicely, like it is at the moment, even though we are only at iteration #1, I may well kiss good-bye to a good number of the social networking tools from the Social Web that I have been using over the course of the years.

Starting with the no-brainers, both Facebook and LinkedIn. Why? Well, because G+ seems to have done their homework properly and understood how much more benefit they would be getting from a rather understanding and compromising Terms of Service, something that both FB and LI still have got to come to terms with it.

Then followed by Flickr. If you have been using the Photos option within G+ you will surely agree with me that the user experience is far superior to Flickr’s upload of pictures, which is eventually what we would all want to do, right? The fact that you can import bulk uploads really easy makes it a breeze to move away from other photo-sharing social networking tools, like I recently did for Instagram with Instaport, and probably Flickr soon, too! Oh, I am now waiting for the iOS Apps to become available and that’s where my mobile photo-sharing will be going, eventually…

The next one coming down nicely would be Delicious… Why would I want to go and share my bookmarks and whatever other links in an external social bookmarking site when my core social networks, i.e. my social graph, the one I care about the most, are all hanging out in Plus. Why force them to go and do a couple of extra clicks to get access to interesting and relevant content when you can do that right there! Mind you, I haven’t been doing any external social bookmarking for the last few months, after the recent debacles and hiccups with services like Magnolia / Gnolia or Delicious itself, respectively. But I can see myself using Plus to share my favourite links with my social networks, in context, i.e. in Circles, which means we all get to hang out at the same space!

Moving along, the next one on the line of threat would be our beloved Skype. I am not sure whether folks have been experimenting with Hangouts (See this rather quick YouTube video clip on it) in G+ already or not, but if you have, you know exactly what I mean. They totally rock and I could surely see myself using them more and more as my core networks continue to make the migration over.

And, finally, the single one I feel would be the most threatened of them all: Twitter. And I know that this is probably going to hurt quite a few folks, when I say such thing, but I am already seeing it myself judging from how drastically my time in Twitter has gone down and how that time has been re-invested in Google Plus. I am a big fan of Twitter, as most folks know already. It’s been my single, most important social networking tool of them all! I live there. Or, at least, I used to. But the thing is that Twitter has been enjoying a good number of annoyances over the course of time that have provoked that love / hate relationship to evolve into one where I can’t care less anymore:

• Search: Looking back not even a week’s worth of tweets, both your own or others’, is not good enough, I am afraid! Specially, when you are doing live tweeting at conference events and a week later it’s all GONE! As if it never happened!
• Timeline: It used to drive me crazy I can only go back up to 6 hours of tweets; I know and understand the Social Flow and everything, but let me decide what I want and don’t want to read, please; I am already old enough to make such decisions.
• Replies & Mentions: They have never worked the way they should, have they? And that’s been like that for years, creating and generating unnecessary hassle for what I do believe is one of Twitter’s core capabilities… reaching out to people!
• Spambots: They may be doing something about it, but not good enough, in my opinion, when too much of it is out of our own control! Just like with email!
• Silly Twitter API limits: One of the reasons why I keep following very very few people, as opposed to the ones I know I should / could follow. Again, let me decide, without limits, the number of folks I would want to follow or not. Don’t make that decision for me, please.
• Twitter API new rules: That have crashed most of my favourite Twitter clients user experiences and no questions asked! Latest example, the recent changes where I cannot longer see DMs in my favourite Twitter client for Mac: Nambu. I do know it would happen eventually, but let’s face it, Twitter is what it is today because of its entire ecosystem, not because of the tool itself; if you ignore it, or kill it, be ready to suffer the consequences…
• Lack of support, All of the issues I mentioned above have been reported to Twitter by yours truly a few times, and I am still waiting for their first response on any of them :-//
• Hold a simple (Not even complex!) conversation: In Twitter? Yeah, right, good luck with that one! You will need it!
• Its lack of integration with other services: That I know will be addressed to a certain extent with the upcoming iOS 5 release, but then again probably a bit too late already, if we would have to wait for over 4 years to such integration into an entire social ecosystem. 

If you would look into each and everyone of those issues you could say that Twitter would be in trouble. But the thing is that Twitter *IS* already in trouble, because Google Plus addresses, AND fixes!, each and everyone of those annoyances and it does it beautifully, if I may add, even something so relatively simple like sharing clean URLs that you could then curate and re-share across.

Now, I am not sure what you folks would think about, but I am, for once, getting really excited about the huge potential that Google Plus has got to be a smash hit in the Social Web. Its unique opportunity to be pervasive enough to be part of Google’s entire ecosystem makes it tremendously powerful; its mobile capabilities (The Android App is brilliant!) will be par to none, as soon as the iOS App hits the Apple Store (Hopefully, this week!) and the other half of the mobile world gets down to business with it. Its simple, yet wonderfully insightful approach towards Circles (Think of Twitter Lists with a purpose) will help folks tame the info overload beast that most other social networking tools tend to have as they grow bigger. And the list goes on and on and on…

Indeed, you can colour me excited. I haven’t felt this excitement about the Social Web for a long while, probably as far back as when Twitter went mainstream, but I must confess that after having played with Google Plus for a good few days, I am still enjoying the experience, just as much as the first day, despite the learning curve, despite having to re-build my networks, despite the fact that there are mostly geeky early adopters in there, while we wait for the rest of the masses, etc. etc. It hasn’t faded away and probably it won’t. At least, for me, because right now I am just waiting for Google Plus to open up the doors and give us an opportunity to invite others, so that we can get that second and third wave of early adopters and from there onwards go mainstream.

Now, the final key question I am sure you folks would be wondering about as I get to wrap up this blog post. Will I ever leave all of those other social networking tools and move just to Google Plus? My personal gut feeling is that, just like I did with IBM Connections back in 2007, if my core networks (Specially the ones from Twitter) decide to move I’ll be making the move myself. So far, I am just two thirds of that move to be complete and then you could say that Google Plus would be, for me, at least, the one that would rule them all. Just like Connections does for my Intranet social interactions. And somehow that feels rather liberating… For a change.

Radical Management – A Different Kind of CEO

During the course of yesterday, my good friend, the always insightful Ana Silva was wondering, over in Twitter, and in her own blog, too!, under the heading “The Cluetrain Manifesto on art, work and life“, about potential new books to read during the summer vacation. A bunch of us dropped by and shared some suggestions that would surely make for quite an interesting and diverse reading. I mentioned a couple of them, but one that I really enjoyed reading for how thought-provoking, refreshing and liberating it was, to the point where despite the fact I finished it up a couple of months back, it’s still lingering there in my mind, was Steve Denning‘s “The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management“.

It’s just one of those books that’s very easy to read, with some great storytelling! (Of course, Steve is very good at it!), and lots of new, fresh thinking of the new role that leadership will need to embrace, if it would want to survive in the 21st century, but, most importantly, a new role management will need to embark on and live fully, if they would want their own businesses survive in the current knowledge economy for decades to come! Now, I will be putting together a much more in-depth review of the book itself and what I actually learned from it, while reading it, in an upcoming blog post, but I just wanted to share with you folks over here a video clip that tells a very powerful story and that, while going through it, reminded me of Steve’s book in setting up the stage of that new radical management and what that new generation of radical leaders would be like.

The video, of course, once again, comes from the inspiring KarmaTube Web site; it lasts for just a few minutes, and it tells the story of Haruka Nishimatsu, CEO of Japan Airlines, describing how he “takes the bus to work, eats at the company cafeteria and buys his suits at discount stories“. Not the typical CEO, you may be wondering, right? Indeed, by far! But it gets much much better. You would have to watch the video clip itself to find out more about another example, in my opinion, of what radical management is all about and why it’s this new kind of leadership the one we need to get us out of the financial crisis we have been living through the last few years. Yes, it’s that good!

My favourite quote from the entire interview probably sets the stage of what would differentiate managers, executives and leaders of the 20th century with those of the 21st century:

“If management is distant, up in the cloud, people just wait for orders. I want my people to think for themselves”

Priceless, don’t you think? I am not sure what you folks would think, but I feel the world needs, and pretty badly, plenty more CEOs like Nishimatsu-san.

#e2conf 2011 Highlights – 10 Reasons Why I Enjoyed the Event

I know that plenty of folks out there are probably waiting for the next blog post in the series of #e2conf 2011 Highlights from the Enterprise 2.0 conference that took place in Boston, MA, a few days back, by yours truly, but the truth is that in the last couple of days I have been distracted by what seems to be raving the Social Web as of late: Google’s attempt to get social with Google Plus.

A bunch of people have asked me to share across what my ¢2 worth of commentary would be like on that new social networking site and while I am working on that blog post already, I can certainly share with you folks that so far I feel, rather strongly, that it could well be the integrated, pervasive and circling around user experience I have been waiting for to kiss good-bye to all of the others. Including Twitter, which, for those folks who know me, would come as a big surprise, I am sure.

But so far on the first iteration of G+ I can see how all of the issues and bugs that I have been experiencing with Twitter over the years are now long gone! Forgotten altogether! But anyway, that’s not the purpose of today’s blog post. I thought I would go ahead and resume the #e2conf 2011 Highlights posts with this one where I will be sharing My Top 10 Reasons as to Why I Enjoyed #e2conf, this year more than never! The purpose of this entry is to capture all of those loose ends about the conference, before I go ahead and dive into the actual content of keynotes and breakout sessions, which is what the next series of articles would be about. So let’s go and do it! Let’s see all of those reasons…

1. The Conference Venue:

   In the last few years, the #e2conf event used to take place at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel and although the venue may have been rather appropriate, by moving it this year to The Hynes Convention Center, the difference has been tremendous! As a starting point, a lot more space to mix and mingle, or have private conversations as you may see fit; then closer to downtown, which means having proper food for lunch while still networking with attendees, or for those lovely walkabouts feeling you are *in* the city! Hosting an event in such a large venue allows for participants to feel there are plenty of folks, but without that sense of being overwhelmed, in fact, at times, it was quite the opposite! That all was quite a nice change from previous years and I, for one, welcome the switch for future editions as well.

   Did I mention as well how the conference venue was just right opposite the Apple Store? hehe Yes, I know, you can’t beat that either, if you are an Apple Fanboy/girl! 
   
   

2. The Wi-Fi:
   
   You would remember how last year the wi-fi worked really really well and provided us with a unique experience of staying connected to the event itself and not only those who were present with us, but also engaging virtually through our favourite social networking sites. Well, this year we had a new venue, so we were all, probably, a bit too skeptic that it may not work as designed / expected… The end result was phenomenal though! It worked rock solid for the entire conference event and it surely gave us all, conference attendees, a huge opportunity to share the excitement with those who couldn’t be with us in real life. Just wish Twitter would stop being so silly and not allow us to keep track of hash tags and previous events through the search engine, so that folks would be able to check the life tweet that went on throughout the several days it lasted.

   Thank goodness for the wonderful piece of hard work done by Jim Worth, who managed to capture all of the live tweeting that went one during that time and shared it across over at the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Social Web Coverage June 20, 2011. Like I said, over time, one learns how to survive without wi-fi connection, while at a conference event, but when you have it, boy, does it make a difference in providing an immersive online learning environment where everyone benefits from?!?

3. The Keynotes Format: 

   That’s right! The Keynotes new format was probably one of the most refreshing changes coming along from #e2conf and a clear sign the conference organisers are listening and engaging actively, because last year the feedback was rather brutal on the ill effects that vendor-driven keynotes would have for the audience. So this year they changed the format to make the keynotes less vendor-driven, much shorter!! -15 minutes maximum!, although I would have loved for 20 minutes; that’s probably the ideal format, in my opinion, for an engaging keynote without deviating too much into off the track talk and demo pitches. 

   One of the other things I really enjoyed about the keynotes is that they are all recorded and made available at The Brainyard and open / public to everyone to watch. Some of my favourites that I would strongly recommend folks to take a look at and watch through those precious little gems of 15 minutes would be: John Hagel, Mike Rhodin, John Stepper, Sameer Patel, Andy McAfee, Bryce Williams, Lee Bryant, Ming Kwan, Sara Roberts, Ross Mayfield, Bert Sandie and Deb Lavoy.
   
   Not to worry, on my next round of blog posts I’ll be putting together some further thoughts on the content shared during these keynotes as well as what I learned from them, where I will include full links to their online presence, if you would want to follow up further with any of them. Stay tuned, but overall the content of those keynotes was just outstanding! True love and passion for the subject! (And I will come back to this point later on …) 

4. The Quality of the Breakout Sessions: 

   While I was in Boston, and throughout the entire week, I kept mentioning how the quality of the presentations was incredibly high; the highest I have seen in the several years I have been there. To the point where some of them were the best of their kind in the last 3 to 4 years! So to make them justice I will be blogging separately about each and everyone of those breakout sessions that I thought were wonderfully engaging learning experiences so that you could have a glimpse on what was shared and discussed further along. 
   
   Another key item that surely highlighted the success from the overall quality of the breakout sessions was the fact that there were a bunch of different tracks that certainly helped orient folks better on what to attend and what not: Analytics and Metrics; Architecture; Business Leadership; Community Management: Engaging External Audiences; Community Management: Inside the Enterprise, Governance, Risk & Compliance; Mobile Enterprise; People, Culture and Internal Communications; Sales and Marketing; Social Apps and Platforms; Sponsored; Technology Leadership and Video and Unified Communications.
   
   Yes, I know you could say there was a bit of everything for everyone, which, I guess, is what every conference event should be aiming at eventually, don’t you think?
   
   

5. The Big Shift:
   
   This is probably one of the main reasons why I enjoyed the #e2conf event this year; more than anything else, because it, finally, showed good, strong, healthy indicators of maturity within the industry and how not only the technology is maturing, but also us, as knowledge workers, and the companies we work for. From a technology and social tools perspective to a pure social one, one where culture and other business related issues were almost omnipresent. All over the place!
   
   Thus during the course of the week we saw how we have been shifting from that mentality of “What is Enterprise 2.0?“, to the “How do we do Enterprise 2.0?“, to this year’s “Why does our business need to live social? What business problems are we trying to address eventually? How can I benefit the most from Enterprise 2.0 to help my business thrive in the 21st century by going social?“. Indeed, quite refreshing, if you ask me! And about time, too!!
   
   Now, we need to move further on with that prediction I did at the beginning of this year, where I mentioned that by 2012 we would all stop using terms like “Enterprise 2.0″ or “Social Business” to just call it Work! Because that’s essentially what we are doing: smart work through social networks and communities.

6. The Networking:

   Well, after the first of the series of blog posts I put together with these highlights, which you can catch up with over here, if you haven’t read it just yet, there is very very little I would probably need to add, for sure! It was quite an experience, this year, like no other! Not only from the perspective of meeting up some good old friends with whom we all keep sharing our favourite war stories on Enterprise 2.0, but also new friends whom we could share our experiences with and learn from theirs! My favourite part of it though? Well, something that doesn’t seem to be happening at other conferences … The lack of competition and showing off you are doing things better. Just a pure sharing and learning experience on all things 2.0, although that may well be my own perception… what do you folks think?

7. The Extra-curricular Activities: 

   It was rather interesting to see how, this year, compared to other occasions, the number of cocktails, receptions, after the conference day local gatherings, dinners, parties, pub crawl activities, etc. etc. had gone up sky high! At times those of us who were attending the event were even triple or quadruple booked for a single afternoon / evening! To the point where you would need to split up your presence in between events, so that you could hang out for some time without disappointing everyone. Tough to do, I know!, but GREAT fun! Although after I came back from Boston I realised I may have had far too much fun, as I keep trying losing those extra few pounds I brought back with me from the US

   But from here I would want to share a special and warm thanks with all of those folks who hosted such events for us and made them all lots of great fun! I can assure you we had plenty of good laughs, good food, great company, and even better conversations! And you all know who you are … if you can still remember, right? hehe

8. The Amazing and Immersive Learning Experience:

   Was, indeed, bigger than ever! Now, I can imagine how most folks would think very fondly of the Enterprise 2.0 event as the place where they would go and find out more about what’s happening in the industry, talk to their already existing customers and new prospects, see what other vendors are doing in this 2.0 space, listen to what industry analysts would be talking about, network quite a bit with other conference attendees, etc. etc. But, to me, it’s all slightly different. To me it’s that yearly pilgrimage to meet up with fellow 2.0 practitioners, share back and forth our own experiences in helping drive social computing within the enterprise, AND as a result of it, learn and absorb, A LOT!, what other folks have done so that you could reuse it and re-apply it when you get back!

   That learning experience is priceless. That, to me, is what makes it worth while going back to Boston, and Santa Clara, year after year. It’s those first hand exchanges of experiences with people who know exactly what you are going through that makes it all worth while. Yes, I know that plenty of people would say it’s a lovely echo chamber and everything, but, I am actually probably one of the very few who may feel very grateful for such echo chambers, because if there is anything out there that they are very good at is recharging your batteries, so when you come back in full force it would last you for a few months no end to keep gently pushing and become that trust agent who keeps aiming at making a difference at the company you work for!

   It’s that adrenaline rush you know you need, but never dare to ask too often, because you may like it a bit too much. I actually did this year and I had a total blast, even though it took me a couple of days to recover my own voice as a result of it! Totally worth it, though!

9. Good to Be Back in Boston!:

   Of course, who wouldn’t, right?!?! I have been coming back to Boston to attend Enterprise 2.0 a few times already, but this year it was rather special. The weather was just stunning (At least, for the first couple of days), encouraging everyone to be out there, mixing and mingling with people, hanging out on the streets, at the local bars & restaurants, watching the world pass by, thinking how we may not be that different all of us altogether from one another. The fact that the venue was very much downtown surely made a huge difference in enjoying a good couple of summer days in Boston!

   I also spent Sunday afternoon at Harvard, with a couple of good friends, and we enjoyed one of the most pleasant walks-around-town I can remember! Pictures, of course, will be shared shortly at my Flickr account. But don’t worry, later on in the week Boston showed us all the other side of things, when it wouldn’t stop raining for a day or two! Goodness! Hope next year it will hold up for a little bit longer! Boston in the summer can surely be as gorgeous as they say!

10. The Love Fest Atmosphere: 

    And, finally, something that I may have hinted in a good number of the reasons I mentioned above, but which I think still deserves its own space over here. Heading back to Enterprise 2.0 every year has become that massive love fest of 2.0 practitioners who embark on that “fantabulous” activity of group hugs, lovely cosy dinners, pub crawling to interesting places, etc. etc. whenever they bump into each other, wherever that may well be!

    There is no competition; there is no show-off; there are no intentions of diminishing one company over the other’s business; there is a fair amount of knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning, without ever asking anything in return; there is no knowledge hoarding where you try to absorb and suck on everyone else’s knowledge and experiences instead. I am not sure whether I am alone in living that perception, but, I, for once, appreciate it very much, because even if your competitors, customers and business partners are there, that whole aspect of open knowledge sharing, collaborating and learning, will make us all better, much better, at what we already do. And that’s something that, on its own, makes it totally worth it for me the over 30h+ of travelling, back and forth, time and time again. 

Thus, as you can imagine, and after another one of those massively long and meaty blog posts, I will surely be looking forward to the next #e2conf event that would be taking place in Santa Clara, in November, even though I won’t be able to make it there I’ll be following it virtually, in anticipation for next June, when I will be heading back to Boston and revive an overall even better conference experience!

From here onwards, folks, we will be moving right into the overall content of the event and what I learned during those 4 days. Thus stay tuned for more to come! We are only just getting started!