Either way, the reason why I am putting together this blog post today is because, as I have mentioned a couple of days back in another entry, last week I spent a few days on the road while participating on the Lotusphere Comes To You events in both Madrid and Barcelona and, once again, I experienced what it is like being disconnected for a good chunk of the week without remedy. I thought I would be able to get by being on my own home country, but, as you will see shortly, things didn’t turn out to be all right at the end of the day.

This is not going to be a rant post, well, at least, it’s not the original intention I’m putting it together for. It’s the reality. My reality of travelling on a rather regular basis both inside and outside of Spain and time and time again having to struggle with this hard fact: that true mobile Web computing is a myth. It always has been; it’ll be for a long while still.

As usual, I thought I would have an opportunity to do some work getting connected to my company’s VPN connection during those days I was not participating at the LCTY2010 events, but, unfortunately, things happened in a slightly different way than planned. As a starting point, I got to stay at the same hotel I usually stay in, the Confortel Suites Madrid (Calle de López de Hoyos, 143), where the rooms are large, spacious, clean, with everything included and where the service is amazingly helpful and very competent. And, of course, they offer free WiFi throughout the building! Pretty neat, eh?

It surely is! It’s the hotel where I have stayed already a few times, because of the lovely perks I just mentioned above, including that free WiFi. However, this time around, things didn’t work out all right. I stayed there for two and a half days and throughout all of that time I just couldn’t help get connected to the WiFi (The entire time!) and, what’s worse, not even the Ethernet ADSL connection. Yes, for two and half days. I raised the issue a few times and got told the connection was working and therefore should be able to access it, but alas I didn’t. Yes, I guess that’s what you get for free WiFi, right? No, I mean, really, I didn’t pay a single Euro cent for it, so I guess they were thinking of not delivering much, so I was cut off altogether from it.

That’s probably just fine, if you know about it in advance (I mean, if I would have known about it beforehand I wouldn’t have gone to that hotel in the first place. I would have wanted to save myself some time, and a few frustrations). You can then say you can opt-in for the pay per day use and get by your day with ease and doing your work. No, that won’t work, I am afraid. And not just for this hotel. It looks like, by default, you rather have free WiFi, or nothing. There is no alternative for pay per use models you could make use of, which means that if that one doesn’t work you are out of luck, like I was for those couple of days! Ouch!!! Yes, it hurt and quite a bit!

I then thought, "Hang on for a minute, you have got the iPhone 3G with you and that has got tethering with it, why don’t you give it a try?", which I did and this time around the results were a bit mixed up! Yes, through my iPhone tethering I found out I could connect to the Internet, but alas it would not allow me to connect through my VPN connection, so I was half way there! Well, actually, I never moved from that position; so got stuck with a good valid Internet connection, but most of the content I wanted to access was behind the firewall so again, there I was trying to get some work done and struggling to pass by the fundamentals: getting properly connected in the first place.

During the conference events I actually managed to have a good, solid WiFi connection, which I am sure most of you folks may have noticed, as it gave me an opportunity to live tweet all of the different sessions that I attended, although I didn’t have much more time to get some work done along the way. So I had to wait till Barcelona and hope for the best!

After a three hour delay, and stuck at the MAD airport all of that time with no access to the Internet, since we were asked to go from gate to gate to catch our next flight, it was time for me to arrive in Barcelona where I was staying at the Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I, a lovely, fancy and elegant 5* hotel where everything was just perfect, including the venue of the overall event itself. Except, of course, for the Internet connection.

This time around they didn’t have free WiFi, but a pay per use wireless connection, as well as another Ethernet based one. I thought it would be all right to make use of it, so I eventually paid 20€ (Yes, 20€!!) for 24 hour uninterrupted connectivity thinking I would probably be on my way to finally get connected in a decent manner. No, not this time around. I eventually checked the speed of the network through SpeedTest and got these whopping results:

I know you may be thinking that those are not such bad speeds for a hotel WiFi connection and I would probably tend to agree with you, except for a minor reason, which I think is a good one: the 20€ I paid for it! I have got a 10MB download WiFi connection at home for which I am paying 49€ every month. So let’s do the math on this one. If I am paying for what I would consider an outstanding service, I would expect pretty much to get *that* kind of service and not something that even my 3G iPhone can outdo in no time!

If you have it, and if you charge for it, the least we can all expect is that you would be able to deliver consistently, right? Well, it didn’t happen while staying in this 5* hotel and I surely was very surprised about it, because I thought it would be that kind of excelling service all around! It never arrived. And what’s worse is that I tried to using the iPhone tethering again while in Barcelona and that worked for the Internet connection, but not to help me get connected through the VPN option. Again! [Arrrgggghhh]

So once more, I was stuck for another day and a half, without access to my internal VPN network and on the brink of shouting out loud "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!"; I have had it! So much for relying on Internet Access services in multiple places that at the end, and due to the lack of them, one would have to go basics and start acting accordingly; thus here is what I’m doing from now onwards:

• Get one of those, somewhat not so cheap either!, UMTS devices that would help me stay connected regardless of where I may well be at all times; yes, I know and I do realise that’s going to be an expensive purchase, but then again, not more expensive than the several hundreds of $$$ I’ll be saving to the company not having to pay 20€ anymore per day trying to get connected through a very poor connection in the first place. It just doesn’t work that way, I am afraid, so moving along with the times: getting the independence I need to get my job done! That’s all what matters for Web Knowledge Workers nowadays don’t you think? I mean, can you imagine yourself travelling not having access to the Internet/Intranet? No, neither can I!
• Stop coming back to those hotels that have failed to deliver on what they themselves said they had in service; life is just too short to have to spend several hours trying to figure out whether you are connected or not; I just want to have things easy: start up the Mac … connected! Am I asking for too much?
• Create some sort of black list of those hotels where the service advertised in the specific area of Internet Connection didn’t deliver; more than anything else to help others avoid the frustrations I keep going through time and time again for continuing to come back to the hotels that don’t seem to put their act together. So this time around, I am starting with the Confortel Suites Madrid and Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I hotels in both Madrid and Barcelona, respectively, which failed to deliver (And they did a great job at it!) and managed to keep me disconnected for most of the week!

As you can see, staying connected while travelling still remains a challenge, and an expensive one, too!, if you ask me; and once again this week I will be putting things to the test when I travel to London to participate in the SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit while I keep wondering what the network connectivity would be like, both at the event and at the hotel I’m staying. Will the latter be added into my already started black list? Time will tell … [Fingers crossed...] I just know I had to put a stop to this nonsense of not getting a good, decent Internet / Intranet connection, right when I needed, and even if I would have paid for it. There is a time when enough is enough, and for me that time has arrived today. And for you?

Tags: Mobile, Mobility, 2010, Smartphones, LCTY2010, Lotusphere, Travelling, Business Travelling, Business Travel, Mobile Web Computing, Hotels, Confortel Suites Madrid, WiFi, Internet Connection, Connectivity, Lack of Service, No Service, iPhone, Tethering, Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I, Black Lists, SpeedTest, Services, Pay Per Use, VPN, UMTS, Web Worker, Web Knowledge Worker, Access, Internet Access, Wireless, SOMESSO, Headshift, #sbs2010, sbs2010, Social Business Submmit, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Productivity, Mobile 2.0, Mobility 2.0

So here I am; more than happy to point you to two essential, and worth while going through, blog entries that will surely make you think quite a bit on how important trust is for Enterprise 2.0 to succeed within the corporate firewall (And beyond, for that matter!); yes, I do realise that trust is one of those recurring terms / themes that perhaps may have been abused quite a bit, specially in the workplace context (Just as much as terms like Collaboration, Communities, or, even, Knowledge Management), but then again, when you see the word trust you know pretty well what you are referring to and could very well explain it in a sentence or two.

Well, my good friend Oscar Berg has just done that over at one of his recent blog posts titled "Control is waste & trust drives value creation", where he shares a couple of golden nuggets worth while remembering, when describing how crucial trust is for any personal business transaction amongst peers, customers or business partners:

"Trust is the fuel for any enterprise. Trust in your purpose, trust in your peers, trust in yourself.

Trust drives value creation.

Control is a sign of trust failure. Control does not add value. Control is waste. Control restricts value-creation. It is something management adds when they don’t trust their employees to perform as expected" [Emphasis mine]

I couldn’t have said that in much better words that those employed by Oscar; trust is the glue that makes collaborative work happen effectively across teams, communities and networks by helping knowledge workers excel at what they know best: constantly innovate. Every move, every conversation, every personal business interaction happening in an open environment where there are no restrictions, no limits, "no rules", just a bunch of knowledge workers wanting to make a difference for their customers and their business by sharing their knowledge across and collaborating efficiently.

The rest of his article is just as good and equally thought-provoking, so I would encourage you to go and read through it and find out his thoughts on how that lack of trust impacts tremendously the overall performance and productivity of those knowledge workers. Priceless!

Ok, now that you have read Oscar’s article, check out the absolutely delightful piece that my good friend, the always insightful, Euan Semple, has put together over at infoBOOM under the title "The Trojan Mice Approach to Enterprise 2.0", where he touches based on one of the recurring themes I have been mentioning on this blog for a long while already; and that is the critical role that people (Knowledge Workers) play in the successful adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world, regardless of the tools / technologies and processes that may be available out there. To quote:

"You can build as fancy and expensive a system as you like but if people don’t want to use it and don’t feel comfortable using it then you might as well not have bothered. To get people to embark on this sort of culture change you have to gain their trust and they have to learn to trust each other. This is a process that has to happen incrementally and over time. Those charged with helping it to happen have to be sensitive to the powerful dynamics they are opening up and respectful of those they are expecting to engage" [Emphasis mine]

Once again, Euan nails it; it’s never been about the tools, nor the processes in place, but on the people themselves making good, and responsible, use of those tools as what they are, enablers, to help execute on each and everyone of those business processes they may be responsible for. It would be only then when things will really progress further in the right direction; that one of a very much needed change where those business needs will be finally matched up with the true, up until now hidden and ostracised,  talent, expertise, skills, know-how, experiences that knowledge workers have been accumulating over the course of time and which have been waiting all along inside that closet of command and control for far too long.

Euan, once more describes it much better than I could and, as usual, in his very suggestive and succinct way:

"The trick will be to move from “command and control” to "engage and support”. Building trust takes time. Becoming comfortable enough to be “social” takes time"

The remaining challenge though may well be whether businesses would be patient enough to wait for that more than worth it change to take place or whether, instead, they would prefer to do things the usual way: business as usual…

Tags: People, Trust, Oscar Berg, Control, Command and Control, Value Creation, Business Value, Personal Business Interactions, Euan Semple, infoBOOM, Time, Change, Change Management, Business As Usual, Support, Engage, Enable, 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, Productivity

If you would want to find more details about the various Lotusphere Comes To You events around the world you can go and have a look into them over here, or at this particular link, where you will find the scheduling; in this case for Europe, but you could also access other geographies from there. The main Web site though for the Spanish Lotusphere Comes To You events can be accessed over at this link.

From there onwards, you can have a look into how you may be able to register for the event (If you happen to be around…), as well as check the agenda that has been put together for both events. Lots of interesting and rather relevant topics related to the main Lotusphere 2010 event that took place in January, as you may be able to see; I have now taken the liberty of sharing this screen shot of the agenda below so you can get a glimpse of what to expect:

You will see how in the agenda there is a key concept permeating throughout the entire event for both locations and that is the one on Collaboration. But not just collaboration for the shake of collaboration alone; more along the lines of Social Collaboration (i.e. The Social Enterprise) and Smart Work / Collaboration.

I will be speaking at two different time slots around the topic of Social Enterprise (One of my favourite topics as of late ) and the really cool thing is that in both cases I will be sharing the stage with a couple of very talented fellow IBM colleagues: Rafael Gallegos (Lotus Software Sales Manager SPGI) and Ed Brill (Director, Product Management IBM Lotus).

It will be the first time that I will be sharing the stage with both of them on a particular event, and I just can’t wait!, as I am sure it would be plenty of good fun! Ed and myself didn’t get much of a chance to talk while in Orlando, so it would be a good thing catching up, too! Plus it would also be a great opportunity to watch him deliver his session on "Smart Collaboration: la evolución del puesto de trabajo de colaboración" (I have already checked out his slideware for the session and I can tell you that you will enjoy it quite a bit! Lots of very similar topics to the ones I have been talking about over here for a while already …)

But don’t miss out the rest of the topics covered on the agenda, because there’re some golden nuggets out there as well worth while checking out, like "Modelos flexibles de adopción de las estrategias colaborativas" with David Gutierrez Serrano and Luis Sanchez Acera (Yes, another Luis! How many of them can you have doing very similar things in the same company, eh?!?!) and a couple of use cases / success stories of how IBM customers have been making use of Lotus Collaboration technologies all along.

Like I said, lots of good stuff! And I surely can’t wait to get there on Monday morning to go through the final round of details and get things going on Tuesday in Madrid and Thursday in Barcelona. Exciting, to say the least! As usual, there are a couple of online spaces that folks would be able to check as well to see how things go before, during and after the event. There are a Facebook and LinkedIn groups, as well as a Twitter ID. And from my side I’m hoping to be able to live tweet the event using my alter ego (Split personality) over at @elsua_b (And a few other tweets, coming through to you from the good old @elsua Twitter ID). Then I will be putting together a couple of blog posts with some of the highlights on my way back from both events, hoping to share with you what some of my main key findings have been during those couple of days.

All of that, of course, if I managed to have a good connection to the Internet, although having the events hosted in Spain is going to make things a lot easier this time around … Yay for iPhone tethering!!

If you would want to get together for a drink or two, or just basically drop by and say "Hi!", you know where you can find me, right?

Don’t forget to register, if you are going to be around during those dates! Look forward to seeing you all next week and exchange a thought or two on what a Social Enterprise is all about …

Tags: Lotusphere, Lotusphere Comes To You, LCTY, #ls10, #lcty10, #lcty, Conference Events, Madrid, Barcelona, Spain, Agendas, Lotus Knows, Collaboration, Social Collaboration, Social Enterprise, Social Web, Smart Work, Remote Collaboration, Rafael Gallegos, Ed Brill, David Gutierrez Serrano, Luis Sanchez Acera, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, @elsua_b, @elsua, Registration, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, IBM, Lotus, IBM Lotus, Networking, Social Networks, Communication, Connections, Productivity

Yes, I know, and I fully understand it, since I experienced it myself in the past, I realise that for plenty of folks out there, it may not work out all right altogether, more than anything because of that ever increasing sense of being overwhelmed by the event itself AND the backchannel. Where do you place your attention, right? Can you focus on both tasks at the same time? I mean, paying attention to the event and then the backchannel as well? Quite challenging, indeed!

It’s not easy, I agree with that, but in my experience that’s just at the beginning; just till you get the hang out of it; till you have attended a good number of them to make them feel second nature to you. It’s only then when you would be able to see how powerful such backchannel conversations can be to enhance the overall experience of what’s been shared across, and when you are soliciting input with a bunch of team / community members, that’s probably as good as it gets, too! Having everyone on the same page listening to that specific media and giving them an opportunity to expand that user experience by chatting with others is just priceless. And those who may have tried it out already could probably vouch for that last statement as well…

However, how do you get started? How do you overcome the initial hurdle(s) of starting to incorporate backchannel chats into both virtual and face to face events? Are there any good resources out there you could leverage to get things going? Yes, there are!

Here is one of my favourites: check out the short blog post from iLibrarian on this very same topic: "7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication", which references a whitepaper put together by the good folks behind Educause that provides a very clear, insightful, very helpful and thorough overview of the main key benefits behind backchannels (Link to .PDF here)

In that specific article the folks at Educause start setting up the stage by putting together an scenario of how it could well work out for one of those virtual events I mentioned above: a lecture and using Twitter as the backchannel. From there onwards, there are seven different sections that cover, very nicely, the overall content of why these kinds of online events do matter, more and more by the day, in helping facilitate a much richer, endurable and engaging overall experience. And I can tell you, after having participated in hundreds, if not thousands!, of them over the course of the last few years, they have now become an indispensable and integral part of how I enjoy these kinds of events myself.

Here you have got the seven questions put together that the whitepaper covers, so you can have a glimpse of what you may expect on that two pager .PDF article:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

I realise the article has got an embedded flavour for a learning / education background, but if you scratch that out and change it for business it still does make perfect sense, which makes a rather interesting resource for those folks out there interested in wanting to spice their (virtual) events even more and continue introducing some more of those 2.0 elements that everyone keeps talking about while attending those virtual events.

Then perhaps in a later blog post I will share with you folks my Top 10 reasons on why I do benefit the most from backchannels for events not just as a communication tool, but also as a powerful real-time collaboration environment that is, by far, superior to any other kind of collaborative tool. But for now, how are you benefiting from backchannels yourself? Do you still find them an overwhelming experience? Can you live with or without them? What do you think? Do they make sense in today’s interconnected world?

Tags: iLibrarian, Educause, Whitepapers, Education, Learning, Backchannel, Instant Messaging, Twitter, Micro-Sharing, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Business Value, Communication, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Resources, Virtual Events, Conference Events

Yes, that’s right! As more and more mobile devices, mainly smartphones, are starting to look with much more detail into the mobile Enterprise 2.0 world, we are beginning to see how plenty of our favourite social software tools for business are making it through and rather successfully. So eventually finding an expert, while you are on the road, or working remotely, is probably no longer the big issue it used to be.

Check out the recent blog post that my good friend, Dennis McDonald put together on this very same subject and which I have referenced above already under Collaboration In Your Pocket Is Here! In that article Dennis states very clearly what are some of the biggest challenges that Mobile 2.0 has got ahead, if it would want to make it through successfully. To quote:

"[...] We see in the demo nothing but the basic elements of enterprise expertise management — access to individuals and groups and the ability to locate and obtain access to needed expertise.

These functions incorporate the essence of expertise management that I wrote about here and here back in 2006. Now, though, the tools and functionality have become more accessible, more streamlined, more user friendly, and much more mobile. Hopefully all smartphone interfaces will be able to access such apps in the future"

He is actually referring to this demo shared in YouTube that shows IBMs Lotus Connections on an Apple iPhone (Wish it would contain sound as well; it would be have so much more effective! Oh well…), where the main focus is eventually on keeping things as simple as possible: i.e. finding the experts at your fingerprints with as few steps as you possibly can, without much clutter, so you can connect with them right away to help you answer those questions that came up while you are on the road and without access to your computer or a reliable network.

Of course, the response should be fast, almost in real-time, more than anything else, because that’s what you will need right there, right then, but still keeping yourself on task, without any other distraction than just getting the job done! I couldn’t have agreed more with Dennis on this important point, where bloated features are left behind to help speed up the process of the task at hand; somehow I sense that’ll become incredibly empowering when your connectivity is seriously challenged. That way you can make the right connections right away and if you would need to come back for more complex interactions you can do so from the comfort of your own computer, whenever you are back connected online.

That YouTube demo is a good showcase of how that simplicity should work out for everyone out there exploring their extensive use of smartphones as their mobile computers. It surely is the right step forward into making it a reality at some point in time in the near future:

But does that necessarily mean that 2010 will be the Year of Mobile? Both Peter Kim and Bill Ives have put together some very compelling blog posts on the topic stating that would be the case. Yet, somehow, I remain skeptic, rather skeptic, to be honest, on this one. And mainly, for two single reasons that I see as big barriers of entry to make that dream of Mobile 2.0 become a reality:

• Your company mobile phone: I do realise that this may well be a rather localised barrier, specially if you are reading this from the US or some European countries, like Germany or the UK, but my current company mobile phone, in 2010!, doesn’t allow for anything else than voice and SMS / text messages. No data transfer in place, no plans to incorporate it any time soon! How does that put me in a position to state that 2010 will be the year of Mobile? Well, may be not so fast, at least, in my country, Spain.
• The carrier: of course, you would say I could buy my own smartphone and use it for work, which I do, I own an iPhone 3G, yet the problem arises with the carrier: always the carrier (Amongst several other huge issues I’m skipping for now, like battery life, to name one…). The current contract with my provider (Movistar) is less than desirable; rather expensive and the two most frequently used / seen words in such device are two I never thought I would be seeing so often: No Service, which, I think, speaks for itself, don’t you think?

So, while social software tools are starting to make good progress into entering, successfully, the realm of the mobile world, making that social business experience much more endurable allowing you to carry it on with you, wherever you may well be, there are still some more fundamental challenges, showstoppers, that we should probably not ignore, nor neglect. In fact, I would start believing it would be the N Year of Mobile, whenever those two issues are fixed, universally. Till then, I will remain skeptic, no matter how cool a mobile social software application demo would look like, even if it is about one of my favourite Enterprise Social Software tools ever!

Tags: Finding Experts, Expertise Location, Expertise Locators, Web 2.0, Experts, Subject Matter Experts, Enterprise Micro-Sharing, Enterprise Micro-Blogging, Micro-Blogging, Micro-Sharing, Lotus Connections, Connections, Real-Time, Business Cases, Use Cases, 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, Dennis McDonald, iPhone, Apple, Demo, Mobile, Mobility, Mobile 2.0, Smartphones, YouTube, Peter Kim, Bill Ives, Text Messaging, Data Transfer, Movistar, No Service, Universal Mobility

I know there are plenty of people out there who have been claiming all along that if your social software tools would require extensive training and education for your knowledge workers you are not doing things right, because they are far too complex to be used in the first place. After all, Web 2.0 tools are relatively easier and much more friendly to use than whatever else we have been using in the past, right? Well, may be not…

Check out the article Intel’s Social Media Training by Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd. Like I said, it’s a good, solid piece that describes quite nicely what Intel’s strategy is for social media training and education for everyone of its employees. But the best part of the article is the listing of examples of the education provided as part of that strategy.

I am not sure whether you may have noticed the slight difference, perhaps, with other training strategies on social computing adoption available out there, but Intel’s puts the money right where it should well be: not on the social tools themselves, but on changing and adapting people’s behaviours. On provoking a social change both inside and outside of the corporate firewall and using the social tools as what they have been all along: just enablers!

That strategy is just so spot on! And I am really glad it’s been highlighted in the article throughout, although perhaps not using the same words; still, I have always believed it’s the right approach towards helping knowledge workers adopt some of these new social tools. Coming from a KM & Collaboration background myself, one of the main key issues that knowledge workers have always claimed has been the lack of training and education on Collaboration.

Yes, we are all social beings, we all like to socialise, both outside and inside our workplace, yet collaborating successfully sometimes is not as easy as what it may seem. In fact, there may be some challenges out there, like throwing collaborative tools (And I’ll be including email in here as well, even though I don’t consider it myself a rather collaborative one!) out to people with nothing else than a single "You’ll figure it out in its due time, not to worry; start using the tools today!"

That’s why I really like Intel’s approach; instead of throwing people out there to these new social tools to help them share their knowledge across and collaborate much more effectively, they are placing the focus on demonstrating actively how knowledge workers can change some of their work habits, and behaviours!, to make use of these social software tools much more effectively, so that collaboration happens much easier than ever before.

It takes a lot of effort and hard work to make it happen, I can tell you, but placing the focus on showing people how they can improve their day to day productivity with these social tools, vs. a focus on what the tools have got to offer is definitely the right step forward and one that is bound to be successful. That’s something that I can relate to as well in my day to day job.

As part of BlueIQ (IBM’s initiative to help drive the adoption of social software within the company), and over the last good few months, we have been putting together a very dynamic and active training program that keeps updating itself constantly, where our main focus are not the various social software tools we make use of, but more the tasks / activities that fellow IBMers can achieve using these tools.

That’s right! Those training modules are aimed at helping knowledge workers become more productive, because, at the end of the day, that’s what it is all about: improving people’s productivity on their day to day tasks and activities. And social software tools are just that, like I said above already, enablers that allow me to get the job done much easier, faster and much more efficient and effective than some of the various pain points we all keep suffering from, while we still make use of those other traditional collaborative tools. Yet, the focus hasn’t changed over time: pick up a good 10 to 20 of the most frequently executed tasks, activities and to-dos and show your employee workforce throughout how they could complete them, much more satisfactorily, using social computing tools.

So far that training program is one of the stars from the overall BlueIQ initiative with a really high % of acceptance by those attending the courses, as well as those consuming their content offline at their own leisure, which, to me, comes to confirm the fact that just because the tools are so easy to use it doesn’t necessarily mean people wouldn’t want / need additional education resources available to them, so they could be even better at what they do currently. That’s where traditional KM & Collaboration failed to deliver and why I do hope that things would be different for this new wave of social networking tools, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.

Because the way things are at the moment, we probably don’t have much of a choice anymore if we would want to remain competitive…

Tags: Harvard Business Review, The Conversation Blog, Intel, Social Media, Training, Education, Social Media Training, Learning, Jeanne C Meister, Karie Willyerd, Changing Habits, Changing Behaviours, Social Changes, Productivity 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Communication, Productivity, Tasks, Activities, Task Centric Computing, BlueIQ, Adoption, Enablement, BlueIQ Enablement, Competitive

My good friend, the always insightful and forward-thinking, Gil Yehuda has put together a very comprehensive blog post where he is actually coming up with what could be a really worth while trying effort on tackling this problem of finding experts (I agree with him that using a locked out database won’t be very helpful…). He actually uses the example of Web 2.0 consumer offering Aardvark, that allows people to ask questions, wherever they may well be, to experts in multiple various ways, at the same time that the experts have got plenty of choices on how they would want to respond back. A very interesting and fascinating method for Q&A, which I would agree with could also work very well in an Enterprise environment.

Have a look and read it through over at Finding Experts in Your Company and you will see how Gil’s approach is not so crazy, after all, of moving the working principles from a consumer related social software offering into the corporate world and making it work rather successfully. Here, at IBM, like in many other businesses, we also have this challenge of finding experts, specially when you come to think the IBM entire population (Including contractors) is up to 500k people. And we have taken a whole bunch of different approaches to try to find the best solution. Some of them *do* work, some others are not so efficient. But we keep trying …

Here’s my favourite one though; one of various options, but one that’s starting to grab more and more traction and become an indispensable solution to that everlasting issue of finding the right people at the right time with the right level of information / skills to help us answer even the toughest questions: Enterprise Social Software Micro-sharing/-blogging (Yes, I know, I’m one of those folks who still makes a distinction between micro-sharing and micro-blogging…)

Most folks out there would probably know by now how for a good while we have been exploring the world of micro-sharing/-blogging behind the firewall with research projects like BlueTwit in order to instigate that ambient intimacy, that Leisa Reichelt coined a while ago; or that declarative living that James Governor has been talking about all along or that narrating your work that Dave Winer coined a while ago as well. And it proved to be rather successful for the several thousand people who use it on a regular basis.

But then came our internal deployment of Lotus Connections Profiles and its Boards feature that took the whole concept of micro-sharing/-blogging into a new level. Day in, day out, thousands of micro-messages get shared across and a good chunk of them are interactions taking place directly between experts and seekers of information. And all of that out there, in the open, public and transparent to everyone (Behind the firewall, that is…), so that people have got an opportunity to chime in accordingly, if there would be a need for it, or just learn along the lines.

We are starting to see how plenty of the Q&A interactions that used to take place through traditional, more private & secretive tools, like email, are starting to be moved into such open space as Profiles Boards, with the immediate result that information that was hidden before till the next iteration would take place, now it’s available to everyone through great real-time search engines like SaND. Never mind the transparency that’s been happening all along allowing multiple networks to benefit from the social interactions of, perhaps, a few…

There are plenty of benefits that I could list from fostering this kind of behaviour, and perhaps in a follow up blog post, I will go and list a bunch of them, but for now, I would want to leave you folks with what I think is the main one and which, more and more, knowledge workers are identifying as the real gain for micro-sharing behind the firewall: an opportunity to create a direct, uninterrupted, connection, the spark of a starting and always growing fruitful relationship, between subject matter experts themselves and those seekers of information to help them solve those problems. So that, eventually, SMEs can spend more of their time working on more complex questions / queries, since those relatively simple ones have already been answered in the various social networks making all of that new information available to everyone.

Like I said, I will be coming back to this particular topic, since it’s one of those areas that has always fascinated me all along, coming from a traditional KM & Collaboration background, specially seeing the kind of impact that social software tools are having in helping solve one of the longest, still standing, problems we have been facing from all along in the enterprise world.

If you have ever been thinking about what could well be a good, solid business case for Enterprise micro-sharing/-blogging, I guess this is as good as it gets. And I haven’t even touched the subject of the multiple informal learning processes involved all along through those various open and public social interactions. Even if they are just a few characters at a time …

Tags: Finding Experts, Expertise Location, Expertise Locators, Gil Yeguda, Aardvark, Web 2.0, Q&A, Questions and Answers, Experts, Subject Matter Experts, Seekers, Enterprise Micro-Sharing, Enterprise Micro-Blogging, Micro-Blogging, Micro-Sharing, Ambient Intimacy, Leisa Reichelt, BlueTwit, Declarative Living, James Governor, Monkchips, Narrating Your Work, Dave Winer, Lotus Connections, Connections, Profiles, Boards, Search, SaND, Real-Time, Business Cases, Use Cases, Studies, 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

This blog entry is inspired by another article that was written a few hours back by my good friend, and former IBM colleague, Alan Lepofsky under the title "Finding The Balance Between Online and Off" and I can certainly recommend it as an interesting and thought-provoking post on what are some of the various different challenges that knowledge workers face today with regards to their own exposure to the online world: The Social Web.

Alan questions that, as more and more social networking tools keep flourishing and demanding much more of our attention and that of our various social networks we hang out with online (We can see the latest example with Google Buzz), it is becoming increasingly more difficult to make it work in a balanced way with our offline lives. To the point where, while we may enjoy quite a bit our own online lives, we seem to keep neglecting the offline ones. And that may not be a good thing altogether. Read through his entire post and you will see what I mean…

For a good number of years most businesses have been trying to strike that good balance between like and work for each and everyone of their knowledge workers. More than anything else, because it’s probably the right thing to do (And you will see what I mean in a couple of minutes…). However, things didn’t always work out as they should have and eventually if you would go out and start asking those employees they would tell that work life balance is a myth. At least, for them!

Well, it shouldn’t be! After all, we are all smart and very productive knowledge workers, aren’t we not? I mean, "A knowledge worker is someone who gets to decide what he does each morning" (Beautiful quote by Thomas A. Stewart), so why is it that difficult to strike that good balance between the two? To me, it’s all about our inability of "Saying No!" (By the way, I would strongly recommend you read that wonderfully crafted article by Alexandra Samuel, although I would totally understand it if you say "No!" ).

It’s about our inability to let things go (Like reading every single thing that comes through your way – Facebook, Twitter, email, newsgroups messages, Instant Messaging, etc. etc.); to let information fly past by us without even having a peek at it; to say "No!" to other fellow knowledge workers, because we don’t want to hurt their feelings; to be ourselves when we already know what’s right and what’s not so right (Working from 6:00 am in the morning till midnight is not right! No matter what your boss or your colleagues tell you about it or regardless of that huge deadline that is approaching!).

And things are only getting worse! All of that thanks to social software tools! Yes, that’s right! With them the always thin line between work and life becomes thinner than ever. We are now more capable of working remotely, distributed and virtual that our personal offline lives, vs. our online work related ones, are becoming almost impossible to distinguish. And that’s when we are starting to be in trouble, as Alan has put it quite nicely under the rather insightful questions he ponders towards the end of his post.

So, you may be wondering, where do you draw the line? How do you put a stop to it? Where have I drawn the line myself (Specially seeing how most folks who know me seem to be perceiving how I seem to "live" out there, up in the clouds, on various social networks, when it is actually not the case)? Well, it starts with that concept I mentioned at the beginning of this post: it’s all about Work Life Integration!

IBM’s short article on The New Workplace Model puts it quite nicely:

"In today’s fast-changing world, the most skilled and creative professionals expect to take charge of their own integrated lives"

That’s right! Spot on! It all starts with you! Not your boss, nor your peers, nor your family, nor your friends. It all starts with you taking responsibility, and action!, for your own online and offline life; for your own work and personal life; in short, it all starts with you taking care of yourself. No one else. Just you! Yes, I can tell you you may not please your boss, your colleagues, your family, friends and whatever other acquaintances. But that’s fine, don’t worry too much about it! Why? Well, for a very good reason: because if you don’t do it, NO ONE will! That’s why it all starts with you deciding what you do each morning. But think wisely. That’s where work life integration kicks in! That’s where you take back control of who you are and how you may make use of your time, both offline and online.

Unfortunately, that’s something that I learned myself throughout the years the hard way. Till one day (Those of you who know me well would probably venture to guess when that happened and be right) I decided to put a stop to it. To say enough was enough. I wanted to make that work life integration work out for me all right. Not for everyone else, but for me. I’m sure it wasn’t pretty for everyone, but thanks to that move I could probably state I’m still alive and kicking and *loving* what I do, both offline and online!

Thus the next time that someone asks you to do something, to read something, to comment on something, to get something done even, sit back, relax, count to 10 while you are taking a deep breath and evaluate, rather carefully, whether that new task fits right in with your recently re-discovered self: the one who understands that what matters the most is your own self, because no-one else would for you … Time to take control back of who you are both online and offline, don’t you think?

Tags: Work Life Balance, Work, Life, Balance, Work Life Integration, Integration, Alan Lepofsky, Offline, Online, Google Buzz, Thomas Stewart, Knowledge Workers, Saying No, Alexandra Samuel, New Workplace, Models, Self, Things That Matter, Smaller Things, 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

As you may be able to see from the attached weekly progress report, it seems that things have been looking good as well for week #52 with just 19 emails received for that week, thus still right on target for that follow up challenge of 20 emails, or less, received per week that I set at the beginning of the second year:

But I guess it’s now a good time to share a couple of thoughts in the shape of a final report on what that second year has been like up to this point and share across as well some statistics that I am sure most of you would find interesting and relevant.

The first year of "Thinking Outside the Inbox" I received a total number of 1,647 emails, which is an average of 32 emails per week, with a high peak of 60 emails received in a single week and with the lowest peak being at 3 emails for one week as well. That’s not too bad, considering I started this initiative with an average of 30 to 40 emails a day! Yes, a day!

Now, for this second year, the one on living "A World Without Email" things have gotten even better; I have received a total number of 1167 emails for the entire year, which means an average of 22 emails a week and a reduction of 480 emails overall (Nearly a 30% decrease year to year!). The maximum peak of emails per week was actually 47 and the minimum just one single email in a week!

I know I have mentioned before how I have set up for myself a follow up challenge for this second year to be on 20, or less, emails a week, but I guess 22 isn’t that bad. In fact, not bad at all! When was the last time you ever received 22 emails per week? Before starting this initiative I cannot even think how far back I was getting that kind of email traffic. Probably not even in the late 90s!

So I guess this proves, for the second year running, that there *is* life out there beyond the addiction to corporate email. That you can work at a large email driven corporation (Like pretty much most of them are out there!), as the one I work for, and still remain as productive as ever (If not more!) using social software tools to collaborate and share your knowledge across vs. other traditional ones like email.

I can imagine that plenty of people out there wouldn’t feel comfortable with what I have been doing all of these months in this space, since they aren’t probably too sure whether they would make it work for them or not, but then why not? Why don’t people try it out? Why don’t they dive in, shake that email addiction off and move into much more open, public and transparent interactions? Just for the sake of giving it a try. A single week. Just one week! Not more. Just ONE! What would you lose? Probably not much, right? But think what you would gain altogether…

I do realise that some of the sentences I just shared above may sound a bit too provocative, but then again if I see how most of the folks I collaborate and share knowledge across with have been immersing themselves in using social software tools behind the firewall (Lotus Connections Profiles micro-blogging/-sharing component, Activities, Communities and Files have been a bit hit over the last few weeks!) I would say there is no way back. Once you decide to step in, take the social tools for a spin, you won’t be back; or, at least, with the same kind of email volume as before and that can only be a good thing, don’t you think?

Anyway, why did I title this blog post with the final progress report as "Email Is Dead … Long Live Email!", specially after all I have written all along, and after all of the details I have shared over here over the course of the last few months? Well, like I have been saying all along, I don’t think that email will die a painful death; quite the opposite, it will probably re-purpose itself into becoming what it was originally designed for many decades ago: a messaging / notification system. Right now I still make use of it to process two different types of interactions:

• Calendaring and Scheduling events: so that I can process my meetings, conference calls and whatever else from the agenda (Usually I spent about 15 to 20 minutes per week to go through them). You see? For this only purpose, unless someone shows me something different, I will *always* be using email for this context, but then again, is it really email itself or just calendaring and scheduling notifications? What do you think?
• 1:1 Interactions of a Confidential or Sensitive Nature: Of course, I bet you wouldn’t want to discuss out in public things related to your salary payslip from last month, right? Or perhaps whatever other HR related sensitive issue(s); or if you are talking about confidential information that you wouldn’t want others to know. At least, not initially. You see? This is another scenario that still forces me to use email, although I must confess that in most cases I sort out such kind of interactions through a private Instant Messaging conversation or a phone call. Much faster.

Thus, as you can see, I still see good uses for corporate email. Pretty much like the folks over at Wrike who have put together this rather interesting, and thought-provoking, Slideshare presentation under the heading "Email Is Dead … Long Live Email". I would strongly advise you all to spend a few minutes going through the charts, so that you have an opportunity to find out plenty more why there’s still a good, and solid!, business case for some interactions happening through email.

For me though, it’d be the calendaring & scheduling of events, as well as those 1:1 sensitive / confidential interactions. I bet for you there may be some others. Wrike’s deck puts together things in context on what may potentially be a successful adoption of social software tools starting with … yes!, email! Pretty much along the lines of the latest Google initiative that just launched today: Google Buzz and which relies quite heavily on … yes!, GMail!

You see? Email is not dead! By far! It’s here to stay with us for a long long while! However, after two years, and going into my third consecutive year, I still prefer, and very much so!, to live "A World Without Email". And you? Can you let it go? Will you let it go?

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, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Final Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Lotus Connections, Connections, Profiles, Activities, Communities, Files, Email Is Dead, Calendaring and Scheduling, Confidential, Wrike, Email Integration, Google Buzz

However, I am not going to start telling you all sorts of various different details on how IBM has been adopting social software tools over the last few years, starting probably on that landmark date of late 2003, when a blogging platform called BlogCentral  first became available through the Technology Adoption Program (a.k.a. TAP). No, I am not going to do that. Mainly, because I am not very fond of re-inventing the wheel myself, and, secondly, because there is a stunning online resource out there that has done a wonderful job in describing very thoroughly how everything got started and where we are now.

Check out the article put together by Casey Hibbard, over at Social Media Examiner, under the title: "How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation". Casey has been working with my fellow IBM colleague, and good friend, Adam Christensen, putting together, perhaps, one of the most tremendously comprehensive and thorough articles / reports, available out there that clearly describes in very simple, effective and helpful terms what IBM’s Social Media strategy is at the moment, and how it all got started a few years back.

In a way, the article itself is a lovely trip down the memory lane on how things got started, not only from the perspective of what social tools there are out there available to us, from back then till today, but also how something so important as IBM’s own Social Computing Guidelines came about and how IBM made a conscious decision to not just have a single corporate social media voice, but instead have thousands of voices! making them all become *the* brand. I know that this may surprise a few folks, but if there would be a single word that I could use to describe it I would probably stick around with effective.

Another interesting part from the article itself that both Casey and Adam talked about is the section on "No Policing", which I am sure it is going to come about as a shocker, specially for those businesses out there that still live in a command-and-control world. Well, here is an interesting, and very relevant, quote from Adam on what IBM means with that "No Policing":

"We don’t police. The community’s largely self-regulating, and so there hasn’t really been a need to have someone go about and circuit these boards and blogs" Christensen said. "Employees sort of do that themselves… And that’s worked wonderfully well"

Indeed, again thanks, for the most part, to those Social Computing Guidelines I mentioned above. Thus, as you will see, it’s not unrealistic to have such policy. Yes, I am sure you would be thinking by now there is a lot to risk involved, but then again, there is plenty more to gain. And having had those guidelines for nearly five years now, and living by them quite dearly, I can assure you that the advantages have been much more numerous than the disadvantages. But you can read more about it on the article itself…

Finally, you will be able to see a couple of other very interesting, and revealing, sections around the subject of the key role from Jams in helping mature those efforts of social software adoption as well as how social media plays that paramount role within the Smarter Planet initiative. Rather fascinating read!

Before I let you go though, as I am wrapping up this blog post, I will tell you what’s my favourite part of the entire article; one that has always been in people’s minds with regards to their own social software adoption efforts (And initiatives): proving the business value of social software. Yes, the good old dilemma of figuring out the ROI of social networking. Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while already, you know what my ¢2 of the conversation are. So I’m going to finish this article with Adam’s take on it (Which, by the way, I wholeheartedly agree with 100%!!):

""I think if you d ask any senior executive at IBM, How important is it for our employees to be smarter? , inherently they understand that these tools can play in helping with that, Christensen said. "I don’t see myself rarely or ever having that hard conversation on the value of engaging employees in these spaces.""

Spot on, don’t you think? All the way coming down from the top! It’s all about how smart and productive you would want to be with these social tools as a knowledge worker. And next time that someone asks me what IBM is doing in this space of Social Computing or what my thoughts are on proving the business value of social software, I guess you folks know where I will be pointing people to, right? …

Exactly!

Tags: Social Media Strategy, BlogCentral, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Casey Hibbard, Social Media Examiner, Adam Christensen, Social Computing Guidelines, Guidelines, Policy, Brands, Branding, Voices, Jams, Smarter Planet, Business Value, ROI, Return On Investment, Leadership, Smart Work, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, IBM, Social Networks