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

Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM’s w3 and www Connections – Job Role and Responsibilities

Now that the word is out there, and since I have been in the new job for a couple of weeks already, I guess it’s a good time to reflect on what does the Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM’s w3 and www Connections do on a daily basis in terms of my job role and responsibilities. As a starting point, the novelty effect has been huge altogether, because in these first two weeks I have been in the IBM CIO Organisation there has been a growing trend that I am finding it quite fascinating, and rather intriguing, and, perhaps, somewhat rewarding, although totally unexpected: everyone seems to want to have a piece of me now, or, better said, everyone wants to grab my attention for one activity or another, whether it’s related to my day to day job, or not. Something that, funny enough, did not happen in the past, even though I have always been rather visible all along. Looks like the new job may have triggered a new, fresh interest in Social / Open Business for fellow colleagues, specially, when they are no longer pondering about the Why or the What but diving right into the How. And that is a good thing, that’s one of the many reasons why I got hired into this position in the first place: help Social / Open become the new fabric of how fellow knowledge workers get work done by becoming part of their collaboration DNA.

But I am sure at this point in time you are probably wondering about what does that mean exactly, right? Well, this is the blog post that will try to detail somewhat what my job role and responsibilities are in the new gig. It’d be the first time that I share publicly (Even outside of the firewall) what I will be measured upon in terms of my overall performance at the end of the year, what we call at IBM our Personal Business Commitment, but in that exercise of openness and transparency I am hoping it will help folks out there get a bit of clarity in terms of where my main focus areas will be. Over the course of time I am hoping to be able to share plenty more about each and everyone of those responsibilities and how they are working out over the course of the time. And perhaps expand even further on the wider implications of some of those tasks. 

So, for now, perhaps an initial introduction that I am sure would be good enough to help everyone understand what I will be involved with in the next few months (years), more than anything else because last week Friday I was doing an internal keynote talking about Social Business and Adoption in Madrid and the host didn’t know exactly how to present or introduce me (jokingly). Understandably so, since hardly anyone knows what I will be doing from here onwards. Thus I thought to help out with that clarity I would go ahead and share it over here. That way I can reference it much easier over the course of time, while at the same time it will help serve me as a good reminder for myself of what my main focus areas should be like, instead of jumping from initiative to initiative that may be, or may be not, related to my core tasks. So, without much further ado, here you have got the tasks and activities I will be heavily involved with in the new job: 

• Overall Global Social Adoption & Enablement Lead: essentially, meaning that I’ll be leading the overall effort to transform the way employees work using social software as the core part of their work.
• Drive enablement to increase successful adoption, leveraging the models established in the past by both BlueIQ and CommunityBuilders: meaning, basically, not to reinvent the wheel and leverage the huge mindset that both of those efforts, i.e. community driven social adoption initiatives through BlueIQ Ambassadors and CommunityBuilders have done over the course of the last 6 years and which, as of late, were a bit dormant. Time to wake them up and get down to work!
• Support the specific goals of driving social adoption through the Innovation & Values Team 9 project of Expertise Locator and Client Collaboration Hub: where finding experts in an organisation of over 450k employees along with collaborating more effectively with customers and business partners outside the firewall have become two of the major use cases to help Social / Open Business blend with the day to day business operations, getting one step closer towards considering social networking just that: netWORKING.
• Expand Outside CIO Interaction & Engagement: with a couple of efforts that I am truly excited about myself, because both of them do help out accomplish a common vision: build on the ecosystem around Social Business. To name: 

  – Create and consolidate a Social Board of Advisors to help improve the feedback mechanism for our very own Enterprise Social Software Solutions.

  – Establish an open source Connections social community for sharing extensions and customisations to Connections itself resulting in having the best of both worlds coming together: 2.0 practitioners and developers being part of the same ecosystem.

• And, finally, evangelise our use of Social / Open both inside and outside of IBM, through client briefings, internal / external meetings, public speaking events, and various other social networking activities out there on the Social Web. I know, this is the one task that most of you out there would be familiar with all along, since I have been doing that for a few years now. Perhaps the twist though is that over the course of time I’m planning on writing about the usual themes I have written over here all along, but also share additional insights on how this new job role moves along in terms of what I learn, what I am working on, the challenges, the opportunities, the lessons learned, the mindset, the overall mission of showcasing IBM’s own journey into becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise.

  That’s why, after the short hiatus I went through in the last couple of weeks, I am back now with my Big Three hoping to dive back into the Social Web to keep the conversations and the dialogue going… 

And that’s it! Those are essentially the main tasks and activities that I will be working on over the course of the next few months. Yes, I am excited, as you can imagine. Very much so! More than anything else, because of what I wrote down in a previous blog post in terms of why I took this job a few weeks back: “keep challenging the status quo of how certain things work in the business world in an effort to become much more open, transparent and sustainable. Indeed, an openly Socially Integrated Enterprise.“ 

There have been a whole bunch of other interesting and rather intriguing things that I have noticed as well in the last two weeks that I will be talking about and reflecting on over here, like the massive hard reset / reboot I have gone through with living “A World Without eMail“, taking me back to February 2008, but then again that would be another story for an upcoming blog post… 

Becoming a Jedi Master – The Secret Art of Cultivating Online Communities #sbf12 #cmgr

Now that I am done with my last business trip for the first half of the year, and will be taking a break from travelling till the second week of September, I guess it’s time to reflect a bit on what it has been like and perhaps share a few insights here and there on things I have learned, events that I have participated in, (keynote) speaker sessions I have done, workshops I have conducted, seminars and panels I have participated in, conversations and new ideas I have been exposed to and everything else in between. There is just too much to share out there and so little time, so we better get things going … And to get us started how about sharing a couple of thoughts on what, to me, has been the Social Business event of the first half of 2012? Not bad, eh? Well, indeed, that event took place in June, in Milan, and it’s the Social Business Forum that Emanuele Quintarelli, along with the smart folks from OpenKnowledge, put together doing a fantastic job and managing to raise the bar so high that hardly any other conference event held thus far has come even close. Specially, in the area of Thought Leadership 2.0. Yes, that good. 

I am sure that by now most of you have been exposed to the couple of blog posts that have been shared across that contain all of the presentation materials, and video recordings from the entire event. Perhaps you may have watched already a few of them altogether. But, just in case you may not have, take a look into this particular article, where you will find all of the video recordings from all of the keynote speakers, or this other blog post, where you will be exposed to the video recordings of 40, out of the 65, speakers. Yes, 40 videos for you to enjoy and learn lots from! And covering a wide range of topics, too!, from case studies of companies that have already embarked on their Social Business journey and that are willing to generously share their key learnings on the experience, to multiple discussion panels and various presentations from thought leaders on different 2.0 topics (like online community management, social CRM, customer service, etc. etc.). Like I said, lots of superb content to digest. In small chunks, one at a time, perhaps, but not to be missed!

So where do you start then? Well, allow me to give you a fast forward introduction on what I think would be some of the most compelling sessions for you to dive into from the comfort of your computer or whatever other device. Starting, for now, with the keynotes, I would strongly encourage you all to go through the Social Business Manifesto by Emanuele Scotti and Rosario Sica which is a must-watch to get some perspectives on what Social Business should be about!

Over the course of time I am hoping to bring forward over here to this blog a good number of the topics they shared with us, during the opening session, that would help spark some additional conversations, I am sure. There is just lots of meat to digest just alone on that particular session. But then I would encourage you all to watch John Hagel‘s presentation (“From Stress to Success – Pragmatic Pathways for Social Business“) as well to internalise what are some of the various different challenges that linger around Social Business to become successful in the corporate world today. Not to worry, I am not going to spoil this one much, since I would encourage you all to spend 22 minutes to watch it on its entirety. It will be worth while your time, I can guarantee you that! 

From there onwards, move on to Ray Wang‘s keynote speaker session on “Enterprise gamification to drive engagement” to see how gamification and gaming in a business context can have a space and, most importantly, how it can be done just right, without having to infantilise your knowledge workforce, which is what is, unfortunately, happening nowadays out there with plenty of vendors who are making the very same mistakes we have consistently done for over 18 years when we tried, and failed!, to gamily Knowledge Management. Priceless insights from Ray, for sure! 

Now, fast forward to the other couple of rather inspiring keynote sessions that we had the privilege of listening to and watching and that have definitely left one of the better aftertastes from the overall conference. Starting off with Knowledge Management and Radical Management extraordinnaire, Steve Denning, who wowed and inspired the audience with a rather provocative talk with an even more controversial heading: “Transforming the Workplace with Radical Management“. This is the one keynote session that I would strongly encourage all managers and leaders to go and watch. And find out more about what’s coming their way sooner rather than later and how they may need to be prepared … 

Finally, my other recommendation for one last keynote session to not have missed is that one from my good friend Esteban Kolsky under the suggestive heading “Social, Connected, and Collaborative – Will Employees and Customers Build the Future Enterprise Together?” where over the course of about 25 minutes he comes to disrupt, and pretty disturbingly, our own perceptions around the social enterprise, the connected enterprise and stick around with what’s left … Yes, indeed, the collaborative enterprise. Another must-watch without a single doubt! 

Like I said, pretty tough to eventually pick up the keynote sessions that I have enjoyed the most, but, if I were to choose, the ones I have mentioned on this blog post so far would have hit the mark and big time! However, if you do have the time I would certainly recommend you go through all of the remaining ones, too! 

Now, on upcoming blog posts I will be sharing further insights and additional recommendations on breakout sessions that I feel you should also have a look into as perhaps some of the most compelling ones and the ones, where, in my opinion, I learned the most around Social Business. However, for now, and since a whole bunch of folks out there have asked me in the last few weeks a few times whether there was a recording of the session I did on online community management, or not, and whether I have shared my presentation out there on the Social Web, I thought I would close off this article sharing the links to both of those resources, since they are now available to everyone. 

Indeed, my good friend Emanuele Quintarelli invited me to be one of the speakers on the Online Community Management track to talk about “Becoming a Jedi Master – The Secret Art of Cultivating Online Communities“, where in a rather practical session I could share a whole bunch of hints and tips, use cases, lessons learned, experiences, know-how, practical good practices, etc. etc. around the subject of managing, leading, facilitating or stewarding online communities. Trying to make it very informative, pragmatical, fun, engaging, somewhat inspiring so that when folks would come back to their communities they would have plenty of ammunition they could make use of. And I think we did! 

I am saying that I think we did, because when I started putting together the piece of work for the session I didn’t attempt to, once again, reinvent the wheel. Instead, I went back to our internal and external IBM communities and asked around trying to gather our overall collective experience of having done online community building for decades, having started with the good old IBM VM Forums, back in the late 60s, and perhaps, specially, in the last 15 years with the huge boost on community building that we have witnessed throughout. The end-result then is not myself having gathered those insights alone, but through the collective piece of work of a whole bunch of brilliant community facilitators (Included on the Acknowledgements – slide #2), who have been putting together over the course of time what I would consider “Communities 101 – The Essentials“. 

Thus, with all of that said, and with a special thanks and a sincere token of eternal gratitude for having the privilege of co-leading such a wonderful group of online communitybuilders, I would love to share with you both the presentation materials that I did *not* use and the recording of the breakout session I did. Yes, indeed, it may sound weird, I mean, the fact I didn’t use any slides throughout the 30 minutes, but when you go through the recording, you will see what I mean and why I thought it was a much much better idea. Why? Because it gave me a unique opportunity that I have been enjoying tremendously on the last few conference events that I have participated in: engage directly with the audience!

Something that I will reflect on in an upcoming blog post I have got in the making, but, for now, here’s the embedded code of the slides, along with the embedded code of the video recording. Hope you folks enjoy it just as much as I did consolidating the slide-ware and conducting a rather interactive session from which I learned much more from the audience than whatever I could have anticipated and which perhaps marks a new beginning for yours truly on what, to me, it means being a speaker in front of an audience, but that’s another story for another day … 

Becoming a Jedi Master. The secret art of cultivating online communities – Luis Suarez from SocialBizForum on Vimeo.

CommunityBuilders: The State of Community Management 2011 with Rachel Happe

If you would remember, late last year, over at CommunityBuilders, one of our IBM internal communities of community facilitators, we had the great pleasure, and true honour, of having with us guest speaker Rachel Happe, co-founder from The Community Roundtable, come and present, along with Jim Storer, on The State of CommunityManagement 2010. That session was one of the most commented and interactive we had throughout the whole year and, of course, we decided to go and come back for more. So I am pleased to share over here with all of you “The State of Community Management 2011 with Rachel Happe“.

That’s right! A couple of weeks back we had the opportunity of inviting Rachel again to come and talk to us about the absolutely wonderful piece of work by The Community Roundtable folks on the yearly free whitepaper “The 2011 State of Community Management“. And, once again, another rather popular session with lots of interactions and great conversations on the side. So after things have quiet down a bit, specially with my crazy travelling schedule as of late, I am really happy I am finding an opportunity now to come and share with you folks over here some further details on how you can get a copy of the slides that Rachel used, as well as the recording of both audio and video of the event itself.

As a starting point, you can download the slide deck from CommunityBuilders – The State of Community Management 2011 with Rachel Happe and the recording from this other link. The replay lasts for a little bit over one hour, so you may want to go and watch it over a cup of coffee / tea, or two. At the same time, and as a teaser to what you will be able to find on that education session, Rachel pointed me as well to this Slideshare presentation they have which covers a similar set of slides you could peek through:

So, what else can you expect from watching the replay? Well, as a starting point you would be able to get a good reminder, and a refresher, of the excellent Community Maturity Model along with a good dive into the main key themes from the 2011 study / research:

• “Social Business Becomes A Strategic Imperative
  
• Interest in Community Management Has Increased
• The Community Management Discipline Is Evolving
• A Lot of Confusion Remains”

From there onwards, Rachel, once again, did a great job in describing how those new findings translate into a really nice bunch of good / next practices for each and everyone of the various elements from the Maturity Model, which would mean it would give folks a great opportunity to learn some new tricks on the art of community building, as well as find out some pretty interesting nuggets on how leadership stands with regards to Social Business and Community Facilitation, from a recent survey they conducted as well. Truly fascinating, specially, the data around culture lagging…

Now, don’t worry, I am not going to spoil it for you any further, since otherwise you wouldn’t need to listen to the recording any longer hehe. Just hope these teasers would give you enough ground to go ahead and take a look, as we are approaching the weekend and have perhaps a bit more time to go through it than through the regular week at work  I can tell you though that it would be worth while your time. Every minute of it.

From here onwards, I would just want to take the opportunity to share a special Thanks!! with Rachel for being with us, once again, and we surely look forward to further interactions in this fine art of managing and facilitating online communities. Later on, in its due time, I will share across another blog post where I will comment further more in detail about The State of CommunityManagement 2010 full report, which I can surely recommend you have a read, if you would want to learn plenty more of the traits behind successful community management. That is, learning new tricks right from the horse’s mouth, The Community Roundtable, if you would ask me…