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

The Business Case for Enterprise Social Bookmarking: $4.6 Million a Year in Cost Savings!

A couple of weeks ago, the amazingly talented Dion Hinchcliffe put together a blog post under the title of “The 2010 Social Business Landscape” that would probably classify as one of the most insightful, resourceful and essential articles published during the course of this year that everyone in the industry should be reading. Yes, in case you may not have seen it, it is that good! Worth while your time, for sure!, specially, if you are into some amazing graphicware like this one. But, there is something missing from that article, don’t you think? Something that, in my opinion, is one of the fundamental pillars from Enterprise 2.0. Have you spotted it yourself already? Indeed, social bookmarking / tagging!

Not sure what you would think, but I strongly believe that social bookmarking and social tagging are still an important and rather critical part of a successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption strategy. I would even go one step further and state that social bookmarking / tagging are probably essential key elements behind the social computing philosophy altogether. Yet, it’s interesting to see how they both keep getting neglected time and time again, when they are just so critical. I mean, can you imagine … having your business put together and create a massive index of must-have links with annotations and tags across the board that would help you re-find content much much easier than through just the traditional taxonomies? No, neither could I.

My good friend, Harold Jarche, talked about this very same thing as well not long ago on a virtual IBM event for the community of social software evangelists that I co-lead with one other colleague and which I blogged about over at Personal Knowledge Management by Harold Jarche (BlueIQ Ambassadors). In that presentation Harold mentioned how blogging AND social bookmarking are perhaps two of the most powerful personal knowledge sharing tools available out there noawadays and encouraged everyone to make use of both to get started with their own PKM / PKS strategy, which I wholeheartedly agree with quite a bit, since I have been using both for a few years now and I, too, consider them essential to help manage, to some extent, part of your knowledge.

So does Enterprise Social Bookmarking still have a good, solid business case to take back that prominent position amongst the top-notch social software tools within the enterprise? I am not sure what you would think, but I do believe it has. And not just for now, but for a few years already, despite what some folks have been saying all along neglecting such business case for social bookmarking, specially after seeing the debacle of a good number of different offerings available out there, to the point where a bunch of them have even disappeared from the landscape altogether.

By now, I am sure you may be wondering why do I so firmly believe about such business case for social bookmarking, right? Well, my own company. IBM. Over the last few years we have been using Lotus Connections’ Dogear (Now renamed as Bookmarks), where we have been storing over 1 million public bookmarks (Over 640k of them unique!), and with over 2.7 million tags (Over 177k of them unique as well!) of annotated content that we have bumped into out there on our Intranet, as well as externally. That’s just not too bad, is it? Well, it gets better…

For a good couple of years now, inside IBM, we have also been making use of Enterprise Tagging Service, an IBM developed social bookmarking AND tagging tool, which basically allows us to bookmark, tag and annotate various different resources from within our corporate Intranet. So far so good. Like any other standard social bookmarking site. The great thing though is that the results of that bookmarking and social tagging exercise have now been injected, for a few months already, into our Intranet corporate search engine, which means that along those standard system driven search results, we also have the people driven ones with the use of ETS. But the really neat thing is that one of the main resources that also keeps feeding this bookmarking and tagging service is actually Dogear / Bookmarks!

That’s right, the standard corporate Intranet search engine, which, back in the day, didn’t have much of a good reputation, to be honest (People kept saying how you couldn’t find things anymore … does it sound familiar to you as well?), changed tremendously that perception and customer satisfaction increased by 50% while incorporating ETS AND Bookmarks into the mix of results. Thus, eventually, here we have got the best of both worlds: a fixed taxonomy established by the corporate search engine guidelines and standards, and a rather dynamic and constantly changing folksonomy where knowledge workers themselves get to successfully contribute by annotating and bookmaking successfully various different Web resources to then make them easily searchable on a wider scale.

You can imagine what happened from there onwards, right? Not only did the perception, from knowledge workers, of the corporate search engine changed dramatically, but it also managed to save IBM $4.6 million a year in cost savings and productivity gain. Yes, $4.6 million a year! My good friend, and team colleague, Rawn Shah, described it, quite nicely, under the blog post “Enterprise Tagging Service social software saves IBM $4.6 million a year“, if you would want to do some additional reading on how it actually works out. Mind you though as well that article is from 2008, so as more and more of us keep bookmarking and annotating various different links, I bet that’s a lot higher in 2010!

That’s probably why it may well be a good thing that whenever you are planning to drive the adoption of social software within your business you may be thinking about adding social bookmarking and social tagging into the mix, too, because, more than anything else, there is a great chance that you would be capable of benefiting, even more, from your already existing efforts to empower your knowledge workers to be a bit more in control of their own personal knowledge sharing social interactions.

And to show you a little bit more of how it could work out eventually, I thought I would finish off this blog post with another one of those amazingly talented and hilariously funny YouTube video clips from the series of “The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections” that my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Jean Francois Chenier, has been putting together over the last few months. The latest episode of this unfortgettable saga is episode #9 on the topic of Social Bookmarking – The Wisdom of Swarms. It lasts for nearly 4 minutes and there is probably very little introduction that I would need to do, if you have been watching them all along. So here is the embedded version, so you can start playing it right away and let yourself be convinced on the importance and relevance, still today, of social bookmarking and social tagging within the enterprise!:

Technorati Tags: BlueIQ Ambassadors, Bookmarks, Business Cases, Case Studies, Collaboration, Communities, Connections, Dachis Group, Dion Hinchcliffe, Dogear, Enterprise 2.0, Harold Jarche, IBM, Innovation, Jean Francois Chenier, KM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Workers, Learning, Lotus Connections, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, PKS, Productivity, Rawn Shah, Social Bookmarking, Social Bookmarks, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Software, Swarms, The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections, Web 2.0, Tagging, Social Tagging, Tags, Annotations

Personal Knowledge Management by Harold Jarche (BlueIQ Ambassadors)

If you have been following this blog for a little while now, you would know how Personal Knowledge Management, a.k.a. PKM, or Personal Knowledge Sharing (PKS), whichever term you would prefer to make use of, has always been one of my favourite topics to talk about and share some further insights over here and elsewhere. It’s been all along one of those areas that has always caught my attention since way back when I was first involved with KM in the late 90s. It’s one of those fascinating fields that has permeated successfully throughout time from traditional KM and into the world of Social Networking reaching a new level of awareness that surely makes it all worth while diving into, if you haven’t done so just yet. More than anything else, because, if anything, that interest will keep raising as time goes by! And here is why …

Managing knowledge is quite a daunting task; in fact, most people claim (I am one of them, too!) that it is almost impossible to manage it successfully. How can you manage what you yourself don’t know really that well after all? How can you manage what you are just not even aware you are knowledgeable about till you are confronted with it? How can you manage what you know till you eventually have a need for it to resurface again? Quite an interesting set of questions, don’t you think? So where does Personal Knowledge Management fit in then?

Well, indeed, it’s impossible to manage knowledge, even your own knowledge. However, knowledge workers can have a good chance to self manage some of that knowledge so that they can re-find and reuse it effectively and efficiently at a later time. There are a whole bunch of processes and traditional technologies that have been helping people try to figure out how they can have their own PKM strategy. And, lately, over the last few years, with the emergence of social software tools, that job of managing one’s own knowledge seems to have become much easier. Although perhaps still with plenty of room for improvement.

Either way, under that premise, and if you are interested in finding out plenty more how things like social bookmarking, Twitter, wikis, (social) tagging and even your blog! could help you get off to a great start with building your own PKM strategy, I bet you are going to enjoy the remaining of this blog entry… hehe

Earlier on today, I had the great pleasure, privilege and honour to invite my good friend and (P)KM extraordinaire, Harold Jarche, to spend a few minutes with one of the communities I co-lead inside IBM: BlueIQ Ambassadors (A bunch of enthusiastic and rather passionate folks around social networking, whose main mission is to help facilitate the adoption of social software within IBM … Yes, my daily job, too!). I eventually asked Harold whether he would be willing to talk and share some further insights around the topic of Personal Knowledge Management. One of the various passions that he has been talking about for quite some time now.

Of course, I was really excited when he agreed to participate in such virtual event, since I knew he was going to provide some really good conversations on the topic of PKM that would get lots of interesting and relevant dialogue on this subject. The expectations were rather high, but then again, if you already know Harold, he was up to the task and big time, exceeding all of them and delivering plenty more!! (With lots of attendees clapping virtually at the end of the session!). Absolutely wonderful!

And the great thing about this all is that in agreement with Harold we eventually managed to record both the audio and video of the virtual webcast and I am now more than happy to drop by over here and share with you folks a bunch of interesting and relevant links to that virtual event that I’m sure would make you think around PKM for a long while.

As a starting point, you could have a look into the essential, must-read article he put together on this subject under the title “A Personal Learning Journey“; from there onwards you could browse through his delicious PKM tags to then stop by this Slideshare presentation from where he grabbed a good number of slides for today’s event.

Once you have gone through that additional reading, it will get even more interesting, because you could actually check out the following couple of links, very much related to today’s event:

• Presentation Materials – Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) by Harold Jarche (BlueIQ Ambassadors)
• Audio & Video Recording – Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) by Harold Jarche (BlueIQ Ambassadors)

That’s right! Above, you would be able to find a link to the presentation that Harold used in PDF format and the second link is a streaming link that when clicking on it it will start playing the video recording of the session which will include the audio as well, so you will be hearing Harold, and a bunch of us!, commenting on PKM and what all the fuss is about

Of course, there are lots and lots of things that I could comment on with regards to the wonderful session that Harold did with us today, but I’m not going to do that right now. I would rather prefer you go and watch through it (Lasts for about 56 minutes, so get yourself comfortable first!) and then at a later time I will be putting together another blog post where I will share my two cents on what I learned from the event as well as I’ll put together some further insights on whether I share his PKM vision … or not.

For now, just to let you know that we have got much in common with both of our notions around PKM, to the point where his mantra Seek > Sense < Share is pretty much along the same lines of what I have been using myself for a long while now. But better get busy and start playing the recording itself to find out plenty more!

From here, just a very very special Thanks!! to Harold for being with us today and for doing a superb job in meeting up all of our expectations around the subject of Personal Knowledge Management and for sharing his insights, in-depth knowledge and expertise on that subject matter with us all! Wonderful stuff! Thanks ever so much, Harold!

What a blast!

Tags: Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKS, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Learning, Education, Events, Virtual Events, Webcasts, Harold Jarche, BlueIQ, BlueIQ Ambassadors, Sense Making, Sharing, Seeking, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Productivity, Getting Things Done, Dropbox

Trip to Boston to Attend and Present at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference

It looks like, in this blog, I am going through one of those phases that pretty much resembles the Guadiana river. I show up. I don’t. I show up. I don’t. Goodness! I need to stop that before I go insane myself! I am now, finally, back again into my regular blogging activities!

I guess the main reason for that to happen has got to be how incredibly hectic things are at work nowadays. If my last blog post I was sharing with you folks how busy things were in general; well, last week was no different. First due to a rather interesting and very fruitful business trip to Madrid for a customer workshop on social software adoption as well as host my first face to face reverse mentoring meeting with an executive at work. Have been having a few virtual ones, but this was the first one where we could talk in front of each other’s faces. Nothing beats the face to face contact, for sure!

And then, towards the end of the week, due to an IBM internal micro-jam, on the topic of Web Digital Plan Jam that basically kept me buzzing around for three days non stop! But I guess that would be the subject for another blog entry, where I could share some further thoughts on those subjects. For now though, getting back into the swing of things again with the blog and really excited about next week. Why? Because, once again, it’s Enterprise 2.0 conference time in Boston, folks! Yay!

As you may have seen already all over the place, next week several hundred Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts will be heading to Boston to attend what’s probably *the* most relevant conference event of the year around the subject of Social Computing within the Enterprise, and that keeps growing bigger and bigger by the year. And this time around it is no exception.

I’m pretty excited about it all, since I’ll be heading to Boston in the next few hours; in fact, by the time that I may get connected to the Internet again I will probably be in that wonderful city already, trying to catch up with the multiple interactions and networking activities going on in preparation for the event that starts next week Monday.

Like I said mentioned already, a whole bunch of the industry thought leaders in this Social Computing space will be there sharing their insights, participating in various events, delivering their keynote speaker sessions, panels, breakout sessions, workshops, demos, etc. etc. And I just can’t wait to meet up with the good bunch of them I have been following over the course of the years and which, just in itself, will make the entire trip worth the time and effort. So many good friends to catch up with! So many new good friends to meet up in the carbon for the first time! WOW! I am not sure where I am going to get the time to meet them all and catch up with them, but one thing for sure is that I have already come to terms with the fact that I won’t be getting much sleep next week. Oh well, for a good cause, I am certain!

I was planning on sharing some further insights where I would comment on the overall agenda of the Enterprise 2.0 conference event and everything, but I see how this blog post is already starting to become far too long. So I think I’m just going to do that in another blog post where I will be sharing with you folks what my agenda is going to look like, i.e. what sessions I will be attending, what others I may not be able to attend, but which I will be interested in following up further on, and, finally, make some suggestions on other sessions that folks who read this blog may be interested in. Should be quite an interesting activity coming up shortly…

For now, though, just to let folks know that regular blogging activities will resume from here onwards. In fact, I have got a bunch of blog posts that I would want to share before the conference starts next week Monday and it would be interesting to see how many I can sneak in, just seeing how plenty of the folks I want to meet while in there, are gathering together to get good reality checks; starting with the World Championship of Football (Or Soccer, whatever term you would prefer to use!), currently taking place in South Africa (GO Spain!!! hehe) and, of course, my dear Lakers (GO Lakers!!) who have been fighting to retain the title in The NBA Finals for a few matches already (And still some more to go!) and who are playing, you guessed it right!, against the team whose hometown I’m going to be spending the entire week over at!!

Now, don’t you think that’s an interesting experience on its own? On all grounds! Thank goodness there would be plenty of good friends who are coming along who are also rooting for LAL, so, at least, I will be in good company avoiding getting myself in some kind of trouble hehe Naaahhh, not to worry, too much excitement building along on what’s about to start in a couple of days with the Enterprise 2.0 conference, thus I’m sure the distractions will be rather frequent!

But, for now, I am going to leave things over here as is, as I prepare my way into putting together a couple of other blog posts on some interesting stuff I have bumped into over the last few weeks, as well as what lies ahead on this incredibly exciting week about to start!

Are you ready? I surely am!

(Oh, did I mention how my entire team, the BlueIQ Team, will be there as well? In fact a bunch of us will be speaking at the conference on various topics, but feel free to reach out to us if you would want to catch up with us all and learn plenty more about social networking within the Enterprise, social software adoption and what IBM has been doing in this space for a few years now. Happy to exchange any experiences, know-how, key learnings, lessons learned, etc. etc. over a drink or two, of course!)

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Weblogging, Blogs, Guadiana Effect, Web Digital Plan Jam, micro-Jams, work, busyness, burstyness, Boston, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Conference, Conference Events, Conferences, Events, e2conf, #e2conf, 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, Productivity, World Championships, Soccer, Football, South Africa, Spain, Basketball, Lakers, Celtics, Networking, BlueIQ, Social Software Adoption