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

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – IBM Blogger Q&A

On my latest blog post on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference event highlights for Day One, I mentioned how I would be putting together a specific entry to detail plenty more one specific item on my agenda for the day that I was really looking forward to, since last year I missed it. Yes, I am talking about the IBM Blogger Q&A meeting that took place with both Irene Greif and Bob Picciano, amongst several other folks (Like Suzanne Minassian or Casey Dugan – and a few others).

The reason why I thought about sharing some further insights from this event is not necessarily to detail what went on all along throughout the whole time, but certainly share with you folks a few hints of what happened during that time that I am sure would be worth while sharing over here. And very shortly you will see why…

To start with, there were a few other very well respected Enterprise 2.0 bloggers in the room along with myself (Like Mike Krigsman and Sameer Patel, for instance); and it surely was interesting from an insider point of view to check out the flow of the conversations and the agenda that was set up. First, an informal conversation (The Q&A part) with both Irene and Bob, to then continue with some demo time of several IBM technologies from the Enterprise Social Software space (Like IBM Lotus Connections v2.5, Olympus, Sametime 3D and Beehive’s Honeybees).

As you can imagine, I am well familiar with each of the various different demos provided throughout that time, since I have been exposed quite a bit to each and everyone of them. Perhaps, at a later time I will detail some more about them. So to me the main key area of interest though was actually the conversations going on with both Irene and Bob around the topic of social software and how they themselves make use of it extensively on a daily basis to reach out to their immediate teams and communities they hang out with.

At this point in time, I am sure there is very very little I would probably need to add about Irene Greif and the amazing piece of work she has been doing with The IBM Center for Social Software in Cambridge, MA, amongst plenty of other various different activities in the area of Research and Social Computing. Always an inspiration to listen to some of the stuff she and the rest of her team are working on in this area that most of us can’t even think of it just yet as we speak. Some fascinating stuff going on in that area of researching the next wave of Social Computing interactions with a business purpose. I tell you.

And then we had Bob Picciano, General Manager from Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, talking to a bunch of us on what his experiences have been like so far making use of social software tools for work. How he keeps using extensively LotusLive to reach out to customers and business partners; how he is using IBM Lotus Connections v2.5 (Mainly the Profiles micro-sharing component) inside IBM to reach out not only to his immediate teams, but also to help change the center of gravity so that it speeds up the process of reaching out to executives; how through using these social tools the traditional hierarchies and organisations become a lot more blurred and therefore much more dynamic getting the job done through networks and communities; and so on and so forth.

I could keep going on for a while detailing what we discussed during that Blogger Q&A session, but I think I will just summarise it with a comment from Bob himself to a question I asked while in there. Now, I know Bob for a while; we are connected through our various internal networks and share with one another plenty of stuff through that micro-sharing component from Lotus Connections v2.5. He keeps sharing nuggets to some of the stuff he is exposed to on a daily basis. But he keeps jumping into people’s Boards offering to help with his insights, his experience and further advice on how to tackle complex problems. He has managed to make it contagious as well for the rest of his executive team to dive into Enterprise Social Software. So I just couldn’t help but ask him "How does it feel making use of these social tools while at work, for an already pretty busy executive like yourself?"

Boy, his answer couldn’t have been much more revealing and provocative, as well as inspiring, as I could have expected it: liberating! Liberating to let command-and-control go! WOW! Who would have thought about that kind of answer, right? Indeed, that’s when it hit rather close home with my own efforts on social software evangelism; that the main clear benefits are not down just to the common knowledge workers, like you and me, but even high level executives, and whoever else in the management chain (That included middle management as well!) can benefit from it by letting some of that hierarchical structure become a bit more blurred and help facilitate and lead the work to be done through interactions amongst networks and communities that share a common affinity; whichever that may well be (A product, a customer, a business partner; in short, a common passion!); versus the traditional I command, you executive mentality.

Obviously, the results have been incredibly fascinating; even for myself, because more and more I am starting to notice how plenty of executives are already starting to make use of these social software tools. And that can only be a good thing. Yes, I know most companies advocate for a grassroots bottom up approach with regards to social software adoption; however, we should not ignore the power of sponsorship and leadership we can get from management, including executives!, to make use of these social tools with a business purpose! It’s all part of a balance that some times can be hard to strike. A balance between a healthy grassroots bottom up effort and the leadership, by example!, of executives who regardless of how busy their schedules may well be, they always make time to contribute back to their social networks and communities, because, after all, they are realising how much hidden potential and talent is out there inside each and every single business and there is probably nothing better than an executive leading the way unleashing that hidden power!

Yes, indeed, we need more Bob Piccianos in the corporate world! And the sooner, the better! For all of us.

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Agenda, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Reality Check, Twitter, Live Tweeting, 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, Barriers of Adoption, IBM, Irene Greif, Bob Picciano, Suzanne Minassian, Casey Dugan, Mike Krigsman, Sameer Patel, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Olympus, Sametime 3D, Beehive, Beehive Honey Bees, IBM Center for Social Software, Cambridge, MA, Research, Social Computing Research, Lotus, WebSphere, LotusLive, Profiles, Micro-Blogging, Micro-Sharing, Social Networks, Lowering Center of Gravity, Command and Control, Bloggers, Grassroots Bottom Up, Leadership, Sponsorship, Leading by Example, Middle Management, Executives, Social Software Adoption

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Highlights – Day One

Continuing further with the series of blog posts detailing some of the highlights from the recent Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston that I attended, I thought I would get things going again and dive right into it by following things further up with the last round of articles covering the various different highlights from each of the days throughout the event itself.

As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, there were a number of different sessions I wanted to attend and to such extent what I am going to do is to detail what I learned from each of them, since the live tweeting I did over at @elsuacon would do pretty much for detailing what happened on each and everyone of the sessions. As long as the wi-fi connection allowed me to, of course!

I realise that most of these remaining entries are going to be on the long side of things, even though I will try my hardest to brief them up as much as I possibly can; still I would kindly ask you to spare them as I reflect on what I learned throughout the event by putting together some of the various thoughts I shared live during each and everyone of the sessions and which I captured over at @elsuacon itself.

Thus, without much further ado, here you have got the highlights from Day One. Hope you enjoy going through them just as much as I did putting them together, reflecting, over time, on some of those major key findings.

Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World

With Matthew Fraser, author of Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom; Well, I got a copy of his book signed up by him with best wishes and everything, and I am hoping that the book will be much better than the session I attended because rather he wasn’t really aware of the kind of audience he was presenting to or he was told folks in the audience didn’t know, nor have a clue, about Enterprise 2.0; thus learned very little new as someone who has been heavily involved in social software evangelism in a large enterprise for the last 7 years!

Oh well, I guess that is what happens when people raise your expectations really high up on how great the book is and then you see the author speak in front of an audience and mention all of the stuff I got exposed to for the first time a few years back! I surely hope the book helps improve that first impression, because it wasn’t what I expected, to be honest. At all.

Open Enterprise 2009

With Stowe Boyd & Oliver Marks; certainly one of the highlights from Day One, as they got to share plenty of insights on their recent study on Open Enterprise 2009 initiative, where plenty of really good findings came about on what some other businesses are facing as challenges on their journey towards adopting social software successfully; examples like culture, traditional "collaborative" tools like email, leadership, lack of openness and trust and my favourite one: the confirmation that tools were hardly ever part of the conversations with the various interviewees. Does it ring a bell? hehe

From here onwards both Oliver and Stowe went on to detail the winner of the Open Enterprise 2009 award which went to the very impressive Hello-Booz Allen Hamilton. I am really excited about this one, because we got a presentation on it for about 15 minutes detailing some of what they have done and it’s one of those companies that I will be following up further on them and see where they may well be in a year time. Last year there were a few stars of the show and, surprisingly enough, they almost vanished this time around, so I am hoping things will keep steady for these folks, because they truly deserve it! Fingers crossed we will see them again next year …

Enterprise 2.0 Reality Check – What’s Working, What’s Not, What’s Next

With Matthew Fraser, Christian Finn, Nate Nash, Neil Callahan and Ross Mayfield; very little learned on this first panel, but incredibly funny! It was good to see some big players within the IT industry getting into some sort of a fight with some of the new Enterprise 2.0 players and still make it coherent. Perhaps one of the major discussions going around during the panel was the concept of whether Enterprise 2.0 is a revolution or an evolution.

Most folks shared their insights inclined towards the concept of witnessing a revolution at work, whereas I tend to think it is more an evolution of what we have been having all along. And it is not the first time we have seen this. In an era where phone calls and faxes were ruling the corporate world, email was introduced to disrupt the way we communicated back then; the same thing happened about 12 years ago with Instant Messaging and, fast forward, the same is happening now with social software. For these social tools to be taking the corporate world by storm we needed them to breed for a good number of years on stuff we were using (Still are!) back then.

That’s why I think, to me, it’s all about an evolution; an evolution that hasn’t got anything to do with the technology, nor the processes, but the cultural aspects we are all immersed in within the enterprise world; we are evolving from a 1:1 collaborative environment within enclosed, private teams where secrecy and lack of transparency and trust were ruling to an environment where work now gets done through the collaboration and knowledge sharing happening across multiple teams, networks and communities corporate wide and where trust, transparency, openness and going public rule in the way we interact not only to benefit those teams and whatever other groupings, but the entire organisation as a whole! That’s why I feel more comfortable talking about an evolution than a revolution … How about you?

Lessons Learned From Internal Communities

With Peter Kim, Jamie Pappas, Joan DiMicco and Patricia Romeo; I must say I was surely looking forward to attend this one, since I have always been involved with community building, so I wanted to learn some more on what other companies are doing in this space of nurturing and helping sustain communities, apart from hearing as well my fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, Joan DiMicco, talk about her insights on the research they have done about our very own Beehive.

Alas, I didn’t make it into the session itself, because I was invited to take part on a bloggers meetup with IBM executives, and other very well versed and insightful bloggers, to talk about what IBM is doing in the area of social computing; last year I was surprised I wasn’t invited to it, since I attended the conference with a media / blogger pass, but this time around things have been different. And quite different! So much so that it deserves its own blog post on the topic… And you will see why… (I guess that’s what happens when you comment on Twitter on something you find surprisingly interesting and it comes back to you big time the following year! hehe)

Transition Strategies for E2.0 Adoption

With Lee Bryant; This was one of the sessions where the wi-fi was non existent, at least, I didn’t get a chance to get connected throughout the session and, funny enough, to me was one of the best sessions from the entire event, and by far! I mentioned it later on during the course of the day, Lee’s presentation was worth while the over 27 hours I spent in transit to go to Boston to make it to Enterprise 2.0. And back! Yes, indeed, that good! So much so that I would be blogging about it separately because it has got far too many gems to go through, digest and apply.

Suffice it to say that Lee’s presentation focused on an area that very very few businesses have been focusing on so far: that second wave of social software adopters, who are now starting to be on the spotlight grabbing all of the attention as the next group that will be getting on to the bandwagon of social software adoption.

Lee’s presentation, which I am hoping to be able to share it somewhere, somehow for everyone out there to go through, started with some solid concepts on the need to spend some time focusing on this second group of knowledge workers as the next challenge to make a successful deployment of social computing strategies and the way he approached it was providing some incredibly helpful and concrete tips that anyone could apply right as we speak, with very little bandwidth and involvement, but with great results! I tell you, I *need* to get a copy in my hands of the deck and share it along, because it was just one of the very best and fine sessions I have attended in a long while!

Oh, and it was kind of interesting, as well as exciting, to see how powerful the concept of validation from third parties can be, because plenty of the tasks I am involved with my internally focused social software adoption and enablement team (a.k.a. BlueIQ) are some of the key learnings that Lee was commenting on!; but once again, I hope to have an opportunity to spend plenty more time on this one, because it is worth it. At least, it was for me. Too bad the wi-fi wasn’t working because I would have loved to live tweet it!

How Twitter Changes Everything

With Jessica Lipnack, Bill Ives, Clara Shih, Isaac Garcia and Patti Anklam; This was one of the panels where I personally learned the most from, even though I have been using microsharing tools for years, and rather heavily, and yet plenty of space to learn so much more!

This panel session was basically dealing with how such an important concept as micro-sharing or micro-blogging can help flatten the organisation and break hierarchies building personal trusting relationships; how, like with any other tool, there are some security risks and potential regulatory concerns we need to look into, and very seriously, yet, we haven’t even started to bring up the subject!; how tools like Twitter are starting to be seen as "The emotional Web" (And, boy, did we see plenty of that in this particular panel! Loved it!).

How perhaps one way to measure the business value from your Twitter experience, amongst others, should be about how many times you get validated, perhaps, with retweets, versus a high number of Following / Followers; how micro-sharing is perhaps the "perfect way to getting continuous feedback from those who folllow / care about what you’ve to say" (Wise words from one of my old time virtual friends I had the great pleasure of meeting up in the flesh while in there: Ed Yourdon!);

How micro-sharing tools value transparency instead of secrecy, participation vs. silence; how in the end these specific social software tools have got one specific mission for us all knowledge workers in the enterprise world: "crowd-sourcing, finding our what people are working on, create personal relationships and trust" and, eventually make use of it to help improve what most businesses have been failing with all along throughout all of these years: improve your social capital skills through regular interactions with those folks who you share a common passion with and trust the most eventually.

Like I said, one of the my favourite panels from the entire event as well and one that surely had plenty of golden nuggets as you could see from a few of the thoughts I captured while live tweeting. But perhaps one other final concept I would want to leave you with and which I learn about from the one and only, Marcia Conner (a.k.a. Marciamarcia), was that one of Twitter hygiene. Something that most of us, heavy micro-sharing tools users, haven’t exploited good enough and which I think we will start seeing plenty more over the course of the next few months as Twitter’s growth continues to be exponential.

Why? Because if you think you are not getting enough value from them seeing all of that noise coming along your way with useless tweets, it’s not because of the tool itself, but more that you are hanging out with the wrong crowd, i.e. your network(s) and some Twitter hygiene would be needed so that instead of noise, it’s all about the signals you should be getting! Easy, eh? Well, not really. It’s a constant battle of fine tuning it to meet your needs and those of the folks you follow or the followers you may have. And that’s the fascinating space we have yet to explore plenty more within the Enterprise environment. Exciting times ahead, indeed!

And that was it, folks! Those are my main highlights and key learning activities from yours truly, from Day One, from the Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston. Like I said, hope you enjoyed them; it surely was fun for me to capture some of the thoughts I have been pondering for a little while now after the event itself and, not to worry, already getting things ready for Day Two! Stay tuned! Coming up shortly …

Tags: e2conf, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, Agenda, Conference Events, Events, Conferences, Reality Check, Twitter, Live Tweeting, 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, ROI, Metrics, Return On Investment, Cultural Barriers, Barriers of Adoption, Open Enterprise 2009, oe09, Oliver Marks, Stowe Boyd, Matthew Fraser, Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, Christian Finn, Nate Nash, Neil Callahan, Ross Mayfield, Peter Kim, Jamie Pappas, Joan DiMicco, Patricia Romeo, Lee Bryant, Jessica Lipnack, Bill Ives, Clara Shih, Isaac Garcia, Patti Anklam, Hello-Booz Allen Hamilton, Revolution, Evolution, Beehive, Second Wave Early Adopters, BlueIQ, Social Software Adoption, Trust, Business Relationships, The Emotional Web, Ed Yourdon, Validation, Business Value, Micro-blogging, Micro-sharing, Social Capital Skills, Social Capital, Marcia Conner, MarciaMarcia, Twitter Hygiene, Enterprise Microsharing, Enterprise Microblogging

IBM’s Shape Your Future Innovation Event – Day 2 Highlights (A Glimpse into the Future)

After all of the travelling that I have done over the course of the last few months you would think I would start getting used to the fact that the worst part of travelling is to catch up with everything that has happened while you have been away. And I am not talking about just corporate e-mail, since that is not a problem for me any longer. It doesn’t exist for me anymore. I am just talking about getting together with my various social networks, teams and communities and find out what has happened since I left. In this case, beginning of last week! And WOW! Have things changed or what? Thank goodness folks have been telling me what’s been happening and I have caught up with everything I needed to!

So we are back again, resuming our regular blogging activities over here and with plenty of things to share with everyone! So I better get started so that you folks can catch up with what’s been happening lately. To get things going, here is a blog entry where I am going to be sharing with you folks the highlights from Day 2 at the IBM Innovation event "Shape Your Future", that I have blogged about a bit already last week.

The day was just as exciting, if not more, as Day 1, with plenty of things happening, like meeting up & speaking with my resource manager in The Netherlands, who I haven’t seen since 2003! Talking about working virtually and still at it rather strongly, while distributed, eh? Goodness!

But let’s talk about the Shape Your Future event itself, since I am sure that would be much more interesting for you. The morning started with a quick, short wrap up from what happened the day before and from there onwards we moved to the first keynote speaker of the day: Marcel Bullinga, who talked about Innovation & The Future. If I were to describe Marcel’s pitch with a single word, it would probably be inspirational! Yes, nothing more, nothing less to expect from a futurist! Utterly enjoyed it and, as you may be able to see from all of the live twittering I did during his session, rather intense, too! And only keynote speaker not wearing a suit! Just the kind of people I like!

If you would want to have another glimpse of what Marcel talked about on the topic of Innovation & The Future have a look into this video link that condenses pretty much his thoughts in a bit over 90 seconds! Once again, rather intense!

Alternatively, you can check out as well Future Check and you will see what Marcel is predicting for 2020. Quite some fascinating stuff & very much looking forward to exciting times ahead of us, too!

From there onwards, we moved on to the next keynote speaker session with Peter Hagedoorn, Senior vice president & Chief Information Officer(CIO) at Océ and Rob Beijleveld, Managing Director at ICT Media BV Owner, who both talked about the Enterprise of the Future, Implications for the CIO.

Anther really interesting and engaging talk where I captured a number of different twitterings with which I can surely identify with and which are reflecting on what the CIO of the Enterprise of the 21st century would be like. Keywords like prosumers; Internet companies; globalisation; people, processes & tools; etc. etc. But I think I could summarise the entire keynote session with a couple of quotes I captured live:

"Modern organisations are open collaboration communities, business decisions are taken at all levels, processes are global and are the glue in the company to company collaboration; all IT-technologies are allowed (Provided they can communicate)"

Or this other one:

"Legacy "thinking" companies will not survive in the globalised Internet society; thus change or die"

Does it ring a bell? (hehe)

From there onwards, it was time to move into the breakout sessions, where, if you remember, I was going to be one of the speakers; within the section "Social Innovation" and already on the subject of "Thinking Outside of the Inbox – How to Survive without e-mail?". The session went really really well, with a full room packed with folks, very interactive and engaging and getting lots of great feedback! Wish it would have been recorded, so I could share with you what was on people’s minds while I was telling them to challenge their inbox. But alas, it wasn’t. Either way, always refreshing to get feedback from people on what would be some challenges for them and sharing some practical tips from my side on how I have been managing without corporate e-mail for nearly eight months!

From there onwards, the event went on further with lunch and another round of breakout sessions, which I skipped, because I had the great honour of doing a press interview with Het Financieele Dagblad (With Jeroen Bos) to talk about my new reality of working with social software tools, as opposed to corporate e-mail. Unfortunately, the article with the interview, with the title "Hemels werken zonder e-mail", was only done for the paper version and currently not available online, so I am afraid you will have to grab a copy of the paper and read through it, because I tried to track it online and I couldn’t find it… (I know, a pity… Not very 2.0, eh? heh … Sigh)

Anyway, after having done the press interview, and after finishing off with some serious social networking while having a cup of coffee, we all headed to the last one of the breakout sessions and right from the beginning I knew I was going into the right one! Yes, that one of Joel Waterman, Program Director, Lotus Unified Communications Products South West Europe, who talked about "Collaborative Innovation". 

This was probably one of the best presentations from the two days and one of the breakout sessions from which I learned the most. I live twittered quite a bit on it! And if I were to describe the main reason(s) as to why I enjoyed it quite a bit, it would probably be the fact that Joel showed everyone why social networking tools like Beehive, Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes 8, etc. are my main tools to provide "Collaboration in context" and away from the traditional mail box. Very very powerful to see how UC2 (Unified Collaboration + Communications) will be shaping up how we collaborate and share our knowledge without not necessarily using corporate e-mail. Yes, I know, double w00t!!

The presentation that Joel was just so spot on that I had to ask him whether I could share it externally or not, outside of the firewall, and after having a very good conversation with him, I managed to get the deck from him and I have uploaded it, with his permission, into my Slideshare.net address. You will be able to find it over here, and I have also embedded it below, so that you can check it out right away. Hint: Pay special attention to slides 20 & 31, if you would want to know some more about some of the key success factors I have been going through all along, while giving up on e-mail:

From there onwards we went off to the last keynote session of the day with Peter Korsten, Global Leader IBM Institute for Business Value, who talked about the CEO Study 2008, which was actually a repeat session on the same theme from Day 1. So instead of me talking to you all about it, why don’t you just head over to Enterprise of the Future and find out some of the really fascinating stuff that came out of it on the topic of disruptive innovation!

And that was it! Time to then get things going with some pure social networking activities having a drink or two and a couple of snacks and preparing for a lovely evening with some friends in good old Rotterdam where two words would be the highlights of the evening: Summo (Restaurant) and cocktails!

And you probably know what followed up next, right? heh

Hope you enjoyed the review with the highlights for Day 2 of Shape Your Future and look forward to the next IBM Innovation event, which, by the way, is just around the corner And I will be there, too! …

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, IBM Netherlands, Shape Your Future, Travelling, Business Trips, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Twitter, Live Twittering, Shapeyourfuture, Social Innovation, Stories, Key Learnings, Exposure, Engagement, Involvement, Enterprise of the Future, Marcel Bullinga, Future, Future Check, 2020, Peter Hagedoorn, Rob Beijleveld, CIO, Prosumers, Internet Companies, Globalisation, Change, Change Management, Het Financieele Dagblad, Jeroen Bos, Press Interview, Joeal Waterman, Collaborative Innovation, Beehive, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Lotus Notes 8, Notes 8, Lotus Notes, UC2, Unified Collaboration and Communications, Communications, Slideshare, Peter Korsten, CEO Study 2008, CEO, Summo, Cocktails