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

Are Blog Comments Worth It? Treasure the Conversations

WebWorkerDaily has got a very interesting and thought-provoking blog post where they are actually questioning the worthiness of having comments turned on in a blog, whether for personal or business use, given the recent happenings of very popular blogs finally deciding to turn comments off for now. That WebWorkerDaily article surely is a good read providing lots of insightful thoughts on what are some of the pros and cons of such a bold move. Well, here’s my take: keep them! Turn comments on. They are worth it. And here is why.

As most of you folks know already, I have been blogging for nearly five years externally, and for seven years internally, and even today I still think comments on blog posts are essential to the overall experience of blogging. I have always been thinking that a blog without comments is just another Web site. There is no interaction. No dialogue. No conversation. No reaction. No nothing. You just basically consume the content… and move on. Just like you would do with a regular (1.0) Web site.

However, think for a minute, the kind of impact you would be provoking if you open up for comments in your blog. You are opening your front door for other knowledge workers interested about what you may have got to say to share their ¢2 with you. To help improve the original ideas through conversation, through open dialogue, through constructive feedback; with as little barriers of engagement as possible. Yet, the outcome being tremendously much more powerful, since a good bunch of those comments are bound to improve the original blog entry. Beyond measure!

Who wouldn’t want to have that? Who wouldn’t want to open up the door towards a more open, and rampant!, innovation by brainstorming online in some really good ideas that may have been coming afloat during that fruitful exchange? Here is an example: check out this really inspiring blog post put together by my good friend, the always insightful and KM extraordinaire , Jack Vinson, under the title "Helping the Experts and Stopping the Email Chatter". Over there you can see how over the last couple of days we have been having a rather interesting discussion on sharing your knowledge, collaborating and re-finding the content shared. Specially when talking about experts engaging in Q&A sessions.

And best part of it, which is why I am still so fond of blogs, is the opportunity to keep the conversation going forever or to come back and re-pick it up again where it was left off and continue further as if nothing happened. Yes, you may not have comments to your blog posts just yet, or you may have a few them but because of whatever the circumstance you may not have had a chance to respond back, but that’s the beauty of it all: the door is still open for you to leave comments, whenever you would want to, or whenever you feel ready for it.

That’s why I am enjoying quite a bit that soft transformation of the new @elsua into a new blogging style, because while I was readying to embark into it I have also decided to do something I have been neglecting for a while now: taking an extra minute and enjoying, once again, the little pleasures of leaving comments behind the already existing ones that folks may have left behind the original blog entry I shared.

Indeed, for far too long I have been neglecting coming back to those blog posts and share a comment or two on the already existing discussions, but since I have decided a long time ago that my blog will always have commenting enable, I guess it’s time for me to return home, enter through the door and keep the conversations going. So, over the last few days I have been commenting back on previous blog posts and I am hoping to do that with each and everyone of them. Hang in there, if I haven’t gotten through all of them just yet. I guess we have got all of the time of the world to keep the dialogue going, right? I mean, it’s just like a good friend having embarked on a long long trip for a few months, then returns home, you get together to share a drink or two and carry on with the conversations you had before they left, as if nothing happened in between. Only to find out that the conversations are now richer and much more fulfilling…

That’s what commenting on blogs would do for me; that’s the kind of value they bring into my thinking and know-how; that’s why I treasure them much more than the original ideas shared across. More than anything, because they will always improve the overall quality of the original thought behind that post. Oh, and that’s why I am not so keen either on having a very popular blog. I want to enjoy that drink as it fully deserves. Time and time again!

Tags: WebWorkerDaily, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Comments, Commenting, Ideas, Brainstorm, Quality, Jack Vinson, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 49 to 51 (EMail Is Where Knowledge Goes to Die)

It has been nearly a month since the last time I put together a blog post over here on how I’m doing living "A World Without Email" and, while looking into the last few weeks, I have just realised that I’m almost on the closure of the second year experiment of giving up on corporate email altogether. So I thought I would write down today the one before last blog entry for Year #2 of those weekly (Now probably more monthly) progress reports sharing some further insights on the state of things at this point, as I am about to close the second year of this my new reality.

Over at my Flickr account you would be able to see the weekly progress reports for weeks #49 and #50. However, for week #51 I am going to share it over here, so you can get a quick glimpse of what the last three weeks have been like put together in combination. So here you have it:

As you would be able to see things are looking amazingly good, since, during the course of those three weeks, I received a total number of 44 emails, with an average of 14 per week! Yes, 14 emails received per week! Not sure what you would think, but I am feeling incredibly excited that what started as 30 to 40 emails a day (Nearly two years ago), it’s now turned to 14 emails a week! Huge achievement, if you ask me, and well on target for that follow up challenge that I set up at the beginning of the year of receiving 20, or less, emails a week. Yes, I know … double w00t!!!

If you notice, you will see there has been a steady decrease in the number of emails received over the last few weeks, yet that doesn’t mean that virtual online interactions have not been taking place. Actually, quite the opposite. I can certainly share with you folks how the number of those online interactions through social software tools have tripled during that time. Specially, for my second most frequently used social software tool while at work: Lotus Connections (Lotus Sametime is still number #1, by the way).

It looks like, at a much faster pace than last year, fellow colleagues are starting to experience how powerful some of the offered capabilities behind the firewall can well be; specially, for something so trivial, yet so incredibly useful as Lotus Connections Profiles’ Micro-blogging/-sharing component. I will probably be sharing some general statistics on IBM’s internal usage of that Profiles capability, but I can certainly tell you how well used it is at the moment that I am starting to see the effects myself by spending most of the time in there collaborating and sharing knowledge with my peers.

To me, it’s like a nice catching up exercise, because I have been using that functionality from the very first moment that it became available in previous beta versions, and most IBMers are starting to see the main benefits of using such micro-blogging/-sharing component versus using other traditional tools, like email. Yes, it’s plenty of good fun seeing how after these two years, nearly, I am not that crazy weirdo anymore for abandoning email and, instead, using social software tools. Things are catching up rather quickly! Exciting times!

I know at this point in time you may be wondering what kinds of interactions do I have on a regular basis interacting through Profiles Boards, right? Well, not to worry, I am already putting together another draft blog post where I am listing a Top 10 set of activities that I come across rather often when interacting, behind the firewall, on our very own instance of Lotus Connections. However, I will share with you what’s probably the number #1 activity I embarked on through micro-blogging/-sharing behind the firewall…

… Questions and Answers! Indeed, the good old Q&A that every single knowledge worker engages with time and time again during the course of the week and, in most cases, several times a day. As you can imagine, using micro-blogging/-sharing tools for Q&A already provides me with lots of advantages to help me reduce my email clutter even more.

Oh, and I am not the only one feeling the very same thing. Did you have a look into the wonderful blog post that Jeremy Sluyters put together under the title "EMail Is Where Knowledge Goes to Die", where he references that quote I have been using myself for all along from Bill French that clearly describes why I abandoned email a couple of years back? You should read it, if you haven’t done so just yet.

In it, Jeremy gets to share a very compelling use case on how, regardless of the tool, a certain, relatively simple and recurring task, like asking a question and getting an answer, finds its place in using much better and suitable social software tools versus email, providing an opportunity to save time and effort as well as allowing a much easier, and faster!, re-findability of the content originally shared.

Pretty compelling story, I can assure you. One that, once you go through it, will surely help you understand a bit better why living "A World Without Email" has been one of my passions over the last few months and why, as I am about to head into the third consecutive year without using email at work, this is just the beginning. This is just one use case of the kind of impact and business value of using social software tools to collaborate and share your knowledge across the company with your peers. One out of several dozens of them out there. One that has allowed me to reduce my email clutter substantially and that can only be a good thing. But it’s not just the only one. There will be plenty more and I will be looking forward to sharing them all with you in its due course…

For now, an open question for you all out there: are you ready to proclaim and live by our motto on "Email is where knowledge goes to die?"… If not, what’s stopping you? How can we help?

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Instant Messaging, Connections Profiles, Lotus Connections Profiles, Micro-blogging, Micro-sharing, Q&A, Questions and Answers, Help, Jeremy Sluyters, Bill French, Finding Content

New Experiement: Splitting Personalities

After the holidays and with all of the frenzy and hectic activities going on for Lotusphere 2010, which will get started next week in Orlando, FL, I didn’t have much of a choice with regards to sharing with you folks something that I got started a few days back, but that I have been thinking about it for a few months now. Yes, indeed, a new experiment! You see? This is what a long period of holidays would do to you! It would make you think things over and over and when coming back to work you would be ready to give that new idea a good try.

In my case, it is not so much of a new idea, not even a resolution for the new year, but something that I have been pondering about for the last few months already. Something that over the recent Christmas holidays I had an opportunity to think plenty more about it and take it into action as I returned back to work nearly a week ago.

No, not to worry, it hasn’t got to do anything email this time around (I think living "A World Without Email" is more than enough at this point in time, don’t you think?). However, it does relate to one of the social software tools that I have enjoyed the most in the nearly three years that I have been using it. Indeed, Twitter!

If you remember, last year I created a blog post where I was sharing some insights as to how disappointed I have been as of late with a number of social software tools outside of the firewall that I surely didn’t think would be turning around like they did, i.e. not respecting basic data ownership principles from their end-users based on their rather aggressive Terms of Service. Yes, I am talking about social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn & Slideshare, amongst several others.

I am still planning on coming back to that blog entry I shared a little while ago with a follow up one for 2010, since there have been some very interesting follow up comments from a couple of folks, but for now I thought I would share with you folks some more details on that new experiment as the result of me not using none of those three from here onwards (At least, till they change their ToS accordingly).

So, from here onwards I won’t be using any of those social tools I mentioned above, which means I will be having plenty of available time and energy to invest elsewhere. And this is where my new experiment for this year will kick in effectively. You may want to have a look and read this Techcrunch article by Vivek Wadhwa, to give you a little bit of background on what I am about to start (Hint: Basically use Twitter as my main social networking tool outside of the firewall, both for personal and business like interactions).

For a good number of months I have been thinking about splitting personalities with my one social software tool of choice outside the firewall (Twitter) and I think it’s now a good time to make it happen. That’s why for the last few days I have now got two many Twitter IDs that I will be using on a regular basis from here onwards. One of them, my usual one, elsua; the one I have been using now for nearly three years and where I try to have conversations around various topics of interest, which happen to be the very same ones as you will find in this blog. To name: Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Social Computing and Social Software Adoption. Basically, the one I will continue to make use of as I have been doing all along.

And the second one, elsua_b, which is the one I have decided to split personalities with from here onwards. Yes, that’s right! For the last few days I have already been using that second Twitter account to continue sharing nuggets about the very same topics as with the other one, but with a slight twist. And, that is, that I will, from here onwards, use this second account for everything that relates to IBM 2.0. Basically, my day job.

That’s right! After a few months of thinking whether it would be worth while splitting personalities and create this separate account for work related stuff it’s time for me to dive in and see how that experiment would go. I know that this may come as a surprise to plenty of folks, but, to be honest, there is a good reason why I wanted to get started with this experiment: and, that is to start sharing with the rest of the world some of the amazing stuff I get exposed to on a daily basis inside the company with regards to KM, CommunityBuilding, Learning and Social Computing. And not just from what I’m getting involved myself, but, mainly, from plenty of the activities that other fellow colleagues have embarked themselves on for a long while now.

Yes, all along I have been keeping "quiet" about this, since I didn’t want to overwhelm folks with far too much tweeting away than what I already do! (Yeah, those folks who already follow me know what it is like hehe); so that filtering is now going away with this new account: elsua_b.

I must say that for the few days that I have been trying it out I have been enjoying it quite a bit; I thought I would find it harder to work with both of them concurrently, but I have been using two of my favourite Twitter tools and that seems to have helped quite a bit. For elsua_b I am using Tweetie for the Mac, while for elsua I am playing, in between, with both Mixero and Nambu (When it doesn’t crash! -Ouchie!).

The interesting thing is that I didn’t know how helpful it would become right away eventually till I started to get everything ready for Lotusphere 2010, because I will be taking the opportunity to share with folks out there, who may be interested, what will be happening at the event, but instead of overwhelming folks with IBM related tweets at elsua I am going to make use of elsua_b instead.

I am sure you may be wondering now which one of the two you may want to follow, if you are using Twitter yourself, right? Well, I am pretty ok with whatever the approach: if you would want to follow the brand elsua keep following that one; if you would rather fancy checking out some of the stuff I get exposed to inside IBM with regards to helping make IBM more like IBM 2.0, then go ahead and follow elsua_b, because that’s where I will be sharing those related IBM tweets (Starting with live tweeting the Lotusphere conference next week!).

Oh, and if you don’t want to follow any of the two, that’s fine, too! Long time ago I learned just like I couldn’t keep up with following everyone, I would no longer get upset if people unfollow or don’t follow at all. Life is just too short to worry about such silly things as following & unfollowing, don’t you think? To me, Twitter is about providing good business value of their time (And mine!) by sharing knowledge nuggets that not only do I benefit about, but so do the network(s) of people who decided to follow me. Hopefully. In short, and that’s what matters, as far as I am concerned: helping you get the value of this split personality, because from my own perspective I’m already getting plenty out of it myself!

Thus stay tuned, because that me continuing to provide value will start next week, like I have just mentioned above, with Lotusphere where I will be live tweeting from that second account as much as I could possibly can, and, of course, depending on the network connectivity and availability. Fingers crossed the wi-fi will hold this year … So far, things are indicating that it may well be as if it will. Let’s hope so!

Tags: Twitter, Micro-blogging, Micro-Sharing, Experiments, Split Personalities, IBM 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Business Value, Value, Live Tweeting, Lotusphere, Lotusphere 2010, #ls10