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

IBM’s Lotusphere 2010: What About BlueIQ?

Over the last couple of days, and as I have been wrapping up things at work to start making my way to Orlando, Florida, in order to be able to attend next week’s IBM’s Lotusphere 2010 conference event, a few people have been asking me whether I would be having a speaking slot at the event itself as well; so today I thought I would take this opportunity and share with you folks what I will be doing myself during the course of next week (Apart from being one other regular attendee, that is). To start with, no, I won’t be speaking during the event.

My BlueIQ team and myself have submitted a couple of abstracts, as well as a BoFs session on Social Software Adoption in a large corporate environment as that one from IBM, and, unfortunately, none of them got approved We know and understand how tough it is eventually to get a speaking slot on from what’s already a rather crowded and rigorous selection, so next year we are going to try harder and be back for more! Hopefully, by then the committee behind the approval of abstracts would be much more interested around the topic of Social Software Adoption in general (Hint: If you noticed, there isn’t a single session within the social software set of abstracts that made it through dedicated to the rather important subject of moving beyond the tools and their deployment and focusing on extracting value from a successful social software adoption strategy … Oh well … )

Either way, we know and understand how tough it is to get on the agenda, so we are committed to try much harder next year and see if that time around we can make it. Ok, but that doesn’t mean that we would not be doing anything during the course of the event, right? Of course, not! Like I have been saying already for a few more days, my entire team is going to be there and we got a bunch of different unevents piled up that we hope folks interested in the subject of social software adoption would be willing to participate and share some more insights with us exchanging experiences, know how, lessons learned, good practices, etc. etc.

Thus we will eventually be hosting a couple of lunches under the heading "Adoption and Value", both on Tuesday and Wednesday from noon EDT to 1:30pm EDT. You may be wondering what kind of conversations we would be having with those present both my team and myself, right? Well, here is a short blurb that describes what we thought about:

"Learn how to conduct social software advocacy in the enterprise – a chat with IBM Software Group’s internal adoption team.
 Look in the lunchroom for balloons marking "BlueIQ" tables
"

Now, you would remember how in the past I have been talking in this blog about the program I am part of and what my team does, right? BlueIQ, indeed! But you may be wondering what do we do exactly beyond helping accelerate the adoption rate of social software at IBM. Basically, some more specifics on what it is to drive the social software adoption inside IBM and for 500k employees.

Well, here is another short blurb that may help out a bit addressing those questions:

"Code-named "BlueIQ", this internal program coordinates the IBM Software Group adoption of social tools like Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, and Rational Asset Manager, as well as pilot work developed in IBM’s Technology Adoption Program and research labs. We provide both high-level value analysis as well as deep-dives on the technology; and we’re called on to provide training worldwide, engage with clients, and speak at conferences.



BlueIQ’s methodology for social software adoption combines task-focused education materials, jumpstarts, metrics, motivational activities, and enablement social tools with our most valuable asset: volunteers. 



Over 900 BlueIQ Ambassadors voluntarily carry the message of “productivity through social software” to the furthest corners of the company. In exchange, they’re the first to learn about new technologies, receive specialized content to share with their clients and peers, and grow their careers through an internal network of like-minded experts.



Through reverse-mentoring, we also pair subject matter experts with executives in order to provide task-focused social software education tailored to their unique needs"

That’s just not too bad, eh? Finally, I have found a chance to share with everyone out there what it is that I do on a daily basis while at work in my role as a Knowledge Manager, CommunityBuilder and, specially, Social Computing Evangelist. That’s why we are really excited to move forward with these unevents so that folks who may be interested in these topics would have an opportunity to come along and exchange plenty of ideas and experiences with us in order to make it a mutual learning experience, which, I guess, is what matters the most. Always! I mean, the learning experience heh

So, if you are a fellow IBMer who is interested in finding out what it is like helping accelerate such adoption of social tools, or if you are within Sales and would want to find out plenty more about how these social tools could help you, your customers and business partners, feel free to bring them along and let’s get the conversation going! Alternatively, if you are none of the groups mentioned above, BUT still with a keen interest in exchanging some more ideas on these topics, by all means, come on up, too, join us and let’s get the dialogue going!

In fact, that’s the whole point of having these kind of informal unlunches with the BlueIQ team I belong to; learn plenty more around the art of doing things right while helping your entire organisation, or business unit, adopt social software tools, so you would have an opportunity to show them how these social tools can be effectively business tools that would certainly help you, your team and your communities improve your / their day to day productivity.

Thus we hope to see you there! (Remember to re-read the text above on how you can find us on the huge lunch room and don’t be shy; come and say "Hi!" and share lunch with us for a few minutes. I promise we won’t bite … )

Tags: Lotusphere, Lotusphere 2010, LS10, Lotusphere2010, Lotus Knows, Lotus-Knows, LotusKnows, #ls10, BlueIQ, Social Software Adoption, Unevents, Unlunches, Informal Conversations, Dialogue, Sharing Experiences, Lessons Learned, Good Practices, Value, Business Value, Adoption, Lotus Connections, Connections, Social Tools, Metrics, Task Centric Computing, 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, Connections, Productivity, Events, Conference Events, Orlando, Florida

Trip to Madrid and Barcelona to Present at Lotusphere Comes to You on Enterprise 2.0

The last couple of days have been rather hectic at work, more than anything else as I was going through the final details for my next business trip that will start tomorrow. Well, not exactly tomorrow. But yes, tomorrow I am on the road again! Yay!

Yes, that’s right! Tomorrow I will start with a half and half vacation / business trip into mainland Spain. More specific going to Madrid and then Barcelona. I will be spending a couple of days off in both cities and in between I will be taking part of what promises to be quite an interesting couple of events taking place during next week: Lotusphere Comes to You 2009 (Lotusphere llega a su ciudad 2009).

As you will be able to see from the agenda, both events are going to be rather intense and on a fast pace, since there would be plenty of stuff to cover for just one morning each. Still it promises to be rather exciting to be able to get together in a single place IBM’s customers, various business partners as well as a bunch of IBMers, talking about some of the really nice stuff that was shown during Lotusphere 2009.

In this particular edition there are plenty of news to be shared as well and as such there are plenty of new sources of information. There is a blog with a tremendous amount of detail on what the event will be like and other pieces of relevant details that may be of interest; there is also a Facebook event for folks to hang out before, during and after the event, as well as a Twitter ID, where people can reach out to digest some more info details.

But, let’s go back into the agenda for a minute:

As you would be able to see, pretty intense, like I mentioned earlier on! Take a look though at the time slot 11:15 to 11:45am where yours truly, along with another fellow colleague, will be talking on the topic of Web 2.0 and how it has moved into the corporate world under Enterprise 2.0. We will be talking about collaboration, productivity and adoption within the enterprise, but at the same time we will be spending some time in discussing the huge opportunity for social software in the current business environment as well as cover the latest news related to perhaps a couple of the most powerful Enterprise 2.0 products IBM is offering at the moment: Lotus Quickr & Lotus Connections.

We will be mentioning some of the really cool features coming up with both Quickr and Connections, specially with v2.5 of Connections, where there are some pretty fundamental changes worth while exploring further.

Like I said, one event to keep an eye on. For sure! If you would want to register for the event head over here and sign up! If you also fancy getting together before, during or after both Lotusphere Comes to You events (Madrid & Barcelona), for a drink and / or a chat, you know where to find me already, right?

See you there!

(Oh, and not to worry, I won’t be talking about "A World Without Email", unless you ask me to )

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, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Lotusphere, Lotusphere 2009, Lotusphere Comes To You, LS09, LCTY09, Lotusphere Llega A Su Ciudad 2009, Madrid, Barcelona, Spain, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, Quick, Connections, Business Value, Adoption, Social Software Adoption

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! …

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