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

Ziki – Your Own Personal e-Card on the Web

Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Ziki, Flickr, Blogs, BlinkList, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Tagging, Tags, Tagclouds, Syndication, Groups, Communities, OPML, LinkedIn, XING, MyBlogLog, Frappr, Ex.plode.us, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, e-Card

While most of the folks I get to read in my feeds on a daily basis have been trying out Facebook for the last few weeks, where it has exploded incredibly, I have actually been kind of busy with something else. Also while some of those folks have been pushing me to give up and join them, I have been busy watching how one of my favourite social computing tools from all time has been getting a facelift, and a lovely one, I must admit. Yes, that is right, I am still resisting entering the Facebook world. Most of my Twitter friends know why, mainly privacy issues of getting asked some nasty questions that I am not sure a social network tool should be asking, after all. But anyway, I am still resisting.

So while all of that has been going on, I have been quietly watching how one of the social networking tools I have been using for a good number of months has gone through a superb upgrade and now, more than ever, I have been enjoying most of the original features, plus a whole bunch more of the different additions put together. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Ziki, to me, one of the most interesting and powerful people portals out there!

In the past, I have been talking about Ziki a few times already, and during all this time, one of the things that I have realised about is that, as time goes by, I keep using it more and more, to the point where it is part of my daily online interactions along with some other social software tools. I heart Ziki, indeed, and from the very first moment that I got exposed to it. To me, it is one of the most elegant, simple, effective and straight to the point social networking tools that helps you aggregate all of your online content with a single point of contact and at the same time connect with other folks who may share similar interests, knowledge and experiences.

You may be wondering what is so special about Ziki at this point in time, right? Well, check out my Ziki profile to find out why. And if that is not enough, here you have got five quick reasons why you should look into Ziki yourself, if you are looking for a tool to syndicate all of your online content and build up your own unified online persona, like I have been able to do myself. So here you have got those different reasons:

1. Aggregation all of your online content in a single space: Yes, that is right. If you check out my own Ziki, as an example, you would be able to see online content from my Flickr account, my twitterings, all of my Internet blogs, my BlinkList bookmarks, my Feedburner and Technorati profiles, and the list goes on and on and on. If anyone would want to know the different places I have been sharing stuff people would just need to check my Ziki and off you go.

2. Addition of different basic social networking features: Apart from what I have just mentioned above, you would also be able tag your profile, your own content, other people, connect with them, join different interest groups, syndicate your content with the different feeds, group your list of friends and fans, watch out over different types of tagclouds of key terms, etc. etc. Yes, I know, all the bells and whistles we have all learned to love from various other social software tools. Pretty nifty.

3. Ability to create groups with common interests: This is one of the features that I like the most, although we may not have seen its full potential just yet. It may not have reached the critical mass you would expect of having multiple groups, i.e. multiple communities coming around to meet the needs of most users, but having the ability of setting up your own groups and stay in touch with them directly inside of the tool itself is quite handy, as you would be able to combine both the individual aspects of Ziki next to the group ones. I just wish more folks would be on it to provide many more relevant groups to connect with.

4. Ability to share your reading interests by importing your own OPML: This is perhaps one of my favourite reasons / features why I heart Ziki so much. And that is the fact that I can share my OPML file with everyone that may be interested in my feeds and when displaying the different categories you can down a customised OPML file and just add that one. Beautiful! That way people can subscribe to my KM or Social Computing or Learning feeds without even having to ask me for the OPML file. Incredibly helpful, to be honest.

5. A single URL address as your own e-Card: And, finally, on other of my favourite reasons. The fact that my Ziki profile, for the last few months, has become my online e-Card that I keep sharing all over the place. Examples, like my e-mail closing information (I no longer have lengthy details all over the place, just a single URL and that would be it!), or my LinkedIn or XING profiles, then MyBlogLog, Twitter Id, Frappr, Ex.plode.us, and my basic contact details like e-mail address, IM and VoIP clients, location, etc. etc. are now part of a single, very easy to remember, URL address that I can place anywhere else I would want to. Just brilliant!

And that would be it, folks, five reasons, five different key features, why, after the latest upgrade, you may want to check out Ziki as one of the best options out there to help create and maintain, rather easily, your own online persona, your own people portal! I know there are plenty more features you would be able to take advantage of, but those would be the ones that still keep me busy with it and away from entering other social networking tools like Facebook. Now we just need to have Ziki providing us with the opportunity to build up a business card with some of that data that we can print out and we are ready to do some business! Ziki rules!

Wikipatterns – Getting the Most out of Your Own Wiki Experience by Learning from Others

(Previously, on elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Wikipatterns, Atlassian, Confluence, Wikis, IBM, ShortCuts, Podcasts, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Patterns, Best Practices

Over the last few days I have actually been reading off my RSS feeds on a new offering put together by the folks over at Atlassian, the same guys behind the fine Confluence wiki engine, that I wish it would have been made available some time ago. Yes, that is right. I am talking about Wikipatterns that Stewart Mader has put together with his team and which he announced over at Introducing Wikipatterns.com a couple of days ago. What fantastic resource, indeed !

Reason why I mentioned above that I wish Wikipatterns would have been made available some time ago is because it would have been a really nice and handy resource that I would have been able to reuse for the several podcasting episodes I have been doing lately with my colleagues from ibm.com over at IBM Shortcuts around the subject of wikis and getting the most out of them.

Yes, that is right. I have mentioned this in the past, although over at my other Internet weblog. For the last couple of months I have been participating in the IBM ShortCuts podcast sharing a number of different tips on making the most out of social computing tools, and lately, have been talking a bit about wikis and how different teams and communities can make the most out of the whole experience.

And this is exactly why I would have loved Wikipatterns would have become available sooner so that I could leverage with some of the great stuff that has been shared over there. But what exactly is Wikipatterns you may be wondering, right? Well, it is, of course, a wiki page where a number of different patterns have been put together that detail how you can get the most out of wikis with the least effort possible. That is, with this particular offering you can read all about the dos and don’ts of participating in a wiki. What is good for the team or the community and, much more interesting, what is not that good for your team or your community when making use of a wiki.

However, what I really like about this particular Web site is the fact that for the first time there are a number of different roles identified from different wiki users. So by observing pretty close how the rest of your team is collaborating in such a shared space as a wiki you have got the opportunity to identify those "people patterns" or "people anti-patterns" and be able act upon them if you may need to. Not only from the perspective of helping find the most active and participative wiki collaborators, but also those other folks you would need to watch out and perhaps act upon them at some point in time.

Impressive, eh? You bet! I think that Wikipatterns is going to be one of those services that will prove incredibly useful for all of those businesses that are still struggling with the adoption of social computing within the enterprise as it would allow them to get the most out of the already existing collective knowledge and experiences put together by other knowledge workers who have been making use of wikis for quite some time already.

So Wikipatterns is the perfect Web site to point people to, who may be a bit skeptic about the whole thing of sharing knowledge and collaborating in an open environment where everyone is at the same level and encouraged to add content on top of each other’s content. Like I said, I wish this offering would have been made available several months ago because I would have been able to make use of it to convinced a few on why they may need a wiki, or not, instead of having to do it the hard way. Either way I am hoping that Wikipatterns continues to grow further showing, and demonstrating successfully, to people how wikis could become one of the most powerful collaborative and knowledge sharing environments to date.

And all of that, not to worry, without you having to worry about anything. Just leveraging on the already existing experiences from different knowledge workers. Way cool, eh? I now just wish I can find some time to help out and add some further content to it, because there more there is to it, the much better it would be for everyone else to learn how you can improve your own wiki experience. I already signed up (Only takes a couple of minutes!) and I am surely looking forward to find some spare time to add further up into it… How about you? Are you ready to share your best, or not so best, wiki experiences?

Let’s do it!

Lotus Connections – What Is It? – Some Initial Thoughts

Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Lotusphere2007, Rob Boccadoro, Yellow is the new black, Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, Activities, Activity Centric Computing, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, folksonomy, Me First, James Snell, Elias Torres, Roller, Roller Weblogger, Social Bookmarking, Dogear, BlinkList

As you may recall, I mentioned in the past a couple of times that over the course of the next few months I will actually be sharing some information details about one of the latest IBM offerings on the space of Social Computing: IBM Lotus Connections. There have been lots of different conversations around this very same during the course of Lotusphere 2007 and beyond, and while I am getting to digest some of those I am thinking as well about sharing with you folks those weblog entries that I have found particularly interesting.

Like, for instance, the one that one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Rob Boccadoro, shared not long ago over at Yellow is the new black: Lotus Connections – What is it? In that particular weblog post you would be able to get some further details on what Lotus Connections is actually going to be based on. Five different components: Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear (Social Bookmarking) and Activities:

I am sure that by now you may have heard about the different components themselves. Perhaps even checked out some of the screen shots of what they would look like (Rob shared some of them over there as well) during the course of 2007. However, I thought I would share a couple of quick comments on why I feel that each of the different components would eventually be making plenty of sense as part of the overall offering, because if there is anything really interesting about this particular Enterprise 2.0 application is the fact that we find a whole bunch of social computing areas put together under a single focal point of entry to make the final product: Lotus Connections.

Profiles -  This particular component puts together the best of both worlds: the enterprise employee directory data from every single knowledge worker picked up from the system itself plus some nifty social software features like tagging. So people would have the opportunity to tag themselves and associate themselves with the different annotations that would probably help others find and identify those different subject matter experts. In short, both a fixed taxonomy in combination with a powerful folksonomy.

Communities - This is actually going to be one of the components that I am actually going to find myself very interesting and enlightening, because in the era of the Me First (I am not sure I would agree with that particular concept, actually, but more on that at a later time) this particular component is actually going to show how to get the most of social networks from a community perspective, instead of just being Me First.

Blogs – I don’t think I would need to speak much more on this one, since all along I have been talking about how IBM has been embracing blogging, both internally and externally since as early as 2003, and some other folks like Elias Torres or James Snell, two other IBM colleagues who have been working really hard on this particular component, have given some further details indicating how this particular component would be running Roller Weblogger. Thus if you are interested in checking out how things develop from there I would suggest you keep an eye on their weblogs, too!

Dogear – This is actually one other component that I have mentioned in the past and, perhaps, one of my favourites: social bookmarking within the enterprise. As you may already know, I am actually a big fan of BlinkList as my default social bookmarking tool for Internet Web sites, but for those Web sites where content may be a bit too sensitive to share it with wider audiences I am actually making heavy use of Dogear: a protected and secured environment where I can share with other colleagues my favourite social bookmarks knowing that it is a safe place to share whatever I feel I need to bookmark behind the firewall.

I know there are other different social bookmarking tools available out there and, perhaps, one of these days I will detail why I am sticking with BlinkList and Dogear, despite some other really powerful offerings. We shall see.

Activities – And, finally, one of the most unknown new components that Lotus Connections will put together: Activities. I could tell a whole bunch of different things about this really cool social computing initiative within Lotus Connections, but I think that for the time being I am just going to point out to you a paper, that Rob also mentioned in his weblog post: Activity Explorer: Activity-centric collaboration from research to product. And from there I am going to venture that this is potentially one of those social software components that will make you walk away from e-mail and just collaborate and share knowledge much closer with your colleagues, as opposed to just exchanging e-mail messages. Yes, that is right. Activities will take you away from e-mail and will help you collaborate with others in exactly the same way as collaboration was conceived in the first place: sharing information and knowledge with others in an open environment where everyone has got the same level of visibility and involvement.

Thus, as you can see, a good bunch of different components from the social computing space put together under the same single focal point of entry, something that not many other social software tools are currently providing. As time goes forward, and as I get to digest some other interesting weblog posts from Lotusphere 2007, I will actually be creating different weblog entries regarding each of the different components so that you have got the opportunity to discover much more as we come closer to the availability of the offering some time soon! Thus stay tuned for some more to come!