If yesterday I referenced a podcasting episode I participated in with the Dogear-Nation folks, Michael Rowe & Michael Martine, you would remember how I mentioned as well I had another little surprise for you folks that I would be talking about today. And here I am, with that same spirit of keeping this blog post short, I am very very happy to announce that from now onwards I will be one of the co-hosts from the Sweettt weekly podcasting series with one fellow IBM colleagues and very good friend, Matt Simpson.

Yes, that’s right, from now onwards and, on a weekly basis, I will be the co-host, along with Matt, of The Sweettt Show and over the course of about 30 minutes we will talk about various different subjects, in most cases having to do with Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Social Software, Knowledge Sharing, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Collaboration. Indeed, the usual stuff both Matt & myself have been blogging about all along…

To get things going, and without much further ado, last Friday we sat down and got busy recording the first episode of the podcasting series, which, as you will notice, is a rather long one, a bit over 86 minutes!, but it gave us the perfect opportunity to detail what would be some of the main topics we will be discussing and touching base on in in much shorter future episodes as we move along.

However, to give you a sense of what you will be able to find on this first episode I have put together the following TOC with some additional commentary that I am hoping will certainly spark your interest to listen to it and, why not?, perhaps come back or subscribe to the entire podcasting series. You are more than welcome to leave your comments over here or in at The Sweettt Show and rest assured that we will be covering them in future episodes, so if you have got any questions or items you would want to bring up to our attention, go ahead and share it with us! Oh, and before you ask, we are both in Twitter as well, in case you may want to leave a comment or question that way as well. Here are our IDs: elsua (Yours truly) and Matt Simpson.

Thus, here is the TOC you will find on our first episode of The Sweettt Show:

- Introduction of the podcast, Matt & yours truly as co-host of the weekly show and how we got to know each other back in 2001!
- Communities & history of IBM Communities with CommunityBuilders & Babble.
- Openness in communities to let them flow freely wherever they may want to go…
- CommunityMap - Index of IBM Communities behind the firewall.
- Communities and the role of collaboration, knowledge sharing and social software tools as enablers.
- Of course, giving up on e-mail & what’s meant for me over the course of the last six months!
- Attending conference events and how face to face interactions are the purest form of social networking at its best.
- Glimpse of the networking activities while attending Enterprise 2.0 in Boston. Both Matt and myself were there (Yes, I know, my highlights are still coming up! Not to worry. I haven’t forgotten! heh)
- Mark Masterson, Rosario Sica, Emanuele Quintarelli all get a mention
- Origins of Knowledge Management, back in the days of the (in)famous pyramid of tools, processes & people, as well as the umbrella concept of something called KM.
- Knowledge Management vs. Enterprise 2.0: Are they one and/or the same?
- Personal Knowledge Sharing vs. Knowledge Management.
- On the ease of use of knowledge sharing as the way it should be. Natural. Flowing.
- Simplicity rules when collaborating and sharing your knowledge with others. On lowering the barriers of entry & engagement.
- Of course, once again, giving up on e-mail in favour of other 2.0 interactions in an open, public and transparent Enterprise 2.0 world.
- On Social Software Evangelism at a large corporation like IBM and describing what it is like (i.e. I am co-leading a community of over 400 evangelists inside IBM helping accelerate IBM’s adoption of social software - BlueIQ Ambassadors, as part of BlueIQ).
- On passion & finding the dream job …
- Communities as major catalysts of social software adoption within the corporate world.
- Still think that social networking is all about goofing around? You may need to think again!
- Having fun at work? … What’s that?
- What kind of role should trust have in the corporate world with the emergence of Enterprise 2.0?
- Accelerating the adoption of Social Software inside IBM through a community effort. Getting things started with recommendations on SmallBlue, a.k.a. Atlas (Who would have thought about that, right?)

Phew! I know! Pretty intensive 86 minutes! But we surely had fun and we hope that you would, too, at least, just as much as we did recording our first episode together! You would be able to listen to the podcast live over at New Cohost . We’re Going Enterprise 2.0 or, if you would prefer, you could download the podcast right away from this direct link.

Hope you enjoy it & till next time!

(Oh oh, and not to worry, there is still one other surprise I have got reserved for you folks, actually two of them, but those may still take a few days before I can talk about them over here as I am still finalising them Stay tuned though for more info details coming up!)

Tags: The Sweettt Show, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Series, New Media, IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, E-mail Abuse, Visibility, Awareness, Think, Re-purposing E-Mail, Dogear-Nation, Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Twitter, CommunityBuilders, Babble, CommunityMap, Enterprise2conf, E2.0, Mark Masterson, Rosario Sica, Emanuele Quintarelli, Traditional KM, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Ease of Use, Engagement, Simplicity, Evangelists, Ambassadors, BlueIQ Ambassadors, BlueIQ, IBM SWG, SWG, Passion, Fun, Play, Fun@Work, Play@Work, Trust, SmallBlue, Atlas, Lotus Connections, Connections

Today’s blog post is actually going to be a short one. Finally! I do realise that over the last couple of weeks most of the blogging I have been able to do has been rather extensive and turning on to the long side of things. I guess that’s what happens when you keep writing and you get more and more excited as you move from paragraph to paragraph talking about the subject that has been keeping you busy for a little while, in this case, to me, my giving up on e-mail quest, amongst several other things…

Well, today I am going to make an extra effort and, although I am still incredibly excited, I am going to try to keep things on the short side. More than anything else because of the subject I would want to touch base on. You will see exactly what I mean in a matter of seconds. So let’s get things started!

If I would have to define with a single word the last couple of days from last week, I guess I could summarise it all with this one: podcasting! Yes, that is right! Over the last few months and, ever since I got things started with this new reality of mine of having given up on e-mail, corporate e-mail, that is, I have been getting plenty of comments from different folks in various multiple online spaces (As well as in real life!) wondering whether I would be chiming in to the world of podcasting / vodcasting to continue sharing some further insights on the subject by sharing some more from the various experiences I have been going through all along.

And time and time again, I knew I always wanted to do something else extra, but felt as well I just needed to wait for the right time. Well, that right time was last week Friday, when I got invited as a special guest by the two Michaels behind the super fine, enjoyable & enlightening, some times thought-provoking, some times educational, Dogear-Nation podcast (Michael Rowe and Michael Martine, respectively) to participate on the recording of episode #61 of their weekly show. And, boy, I just couldn’t turn down such a kind offer. So over the course of a bit over an hour, and in between of some initial audio problems, we went ahead and had a superb time recording one of those podcasting episodes that would be difficult to forget for a while!

Check out "Dogear-Nation - Episode 61 - Adding e-mail to Luis’ Inbox", where over the course of roughly a bit over 30 minutes we got to talk about a whole bunch of different subjects that people had tagged for the day in del.icio.us. Here is a quick synopsis of some of the links of what we talked about so that you get some further insights of what to expect, if you go ahead and decide to have a listen:

"Social Computing
I freed myself from e-Mail’s grip - Luis Suarez  (Yes, of course, I got to talk a little bit about my experiment & what it has been like over the last few months… Six months in concrete!)
Ma.gnolia.com - Social Tagging
Thomas Vanderwal — Why Ma.gnolia is One of My Favorite Social Bookmarking Tools
University of Michigan Social Computing Degree
A New Approach to Exec Recruiting

Tablet Computing
We Want a Dead Simple Web Tablet
CherryPal PC Cherry Pal PC has Juice

Science!
Nova Science Now
She blinded me with Science and Live
IBM Slides from 1975 presentation - Powerpoint Old school

Final Thoughts
Michael R — Automagically updating Apps on iPhone
“Michael” S. — Bolder and Keep it Simple
Michael M. — Dogear-Live on Kyte.tv"

You may want to listen to the episode online over at the Dogear-Nation blog, or, alternatively, you can also download the .mp3 directly from this link. Hope you will enjoy it, just as much as we did recording the podcast. It surely was plenty of good fun & something tells me it may not be the last time that I will be participating as a guest. They have been wonderful hosts all along! heh

Oh, oh, and not to worry, that’s not the only surprise I have got ready for you folks around the area of podcasting… Stay tuned for some more to come shortly!

(A big and special Many many thanks!  to both Michaels for having me on the show! It was a fantastic experience! Thanks, guys! Till next time!)

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, E-mail Abuse, Visibility, Awareness, Think, Re-purposing E-Mail, Podcasting, Podcasts, Dogear-Nation, Dogear, Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Vodcasting, New Media, del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, Thomas vander Wal, University of Michigan, Social Computing Degree, Executive Recruting, Executive Blogging, CEO Blogging, Tablet Computing, Tablet PC, Web Tablet, CherryPal PC, Nova Science, Live, IBM Trivia

After a really good workshop event last week in Madrid on Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing (I am already drafting a post on it to share the various experiences), here I am, once again, back at my regular blogging activities, just like I have been doing lately. But perhaps this time around with a bit more of excitement, more than anything else because it is time again for another weekly update on my progress report of giving up on e-mail, i.e. corporate e-mail. And this one is going to be a special one…

If you would remember, On February 15th, that is, about six months ago, I decided to make the blunt move of announcing in all of my blogs, both internal and external, that I would no longer be using e-mail, corporate e-mail,  that is, in order to collaborate and share knowledge with my fellow colleagues. Instead I would be making extensive use of social computing and social networking tools in order to be just as productive, if not more!

Yes, that’s right! Last week marked the 24th week in a row that I have been enjoying this new reality of mine where most of my interactions while at work are happening through the usage of social software versus the good old e-mail. From the very beginning there have been a couple of reactions that have walked hand in hand throughout all of this time and which I thought I would be mentioning over here as well. First, there were the folks who thought I have gone crazy for abandoning and not using such a pervasive and easy to use tool as e-mail, and that I would give up on this experiment in like no time; and then, secondly, there were those folks who were very much supportive of what I was trying to do (And prove!) and therefore had plenty of positive reactions, specially from a bunch of folks who wanted to learn from my experiences all along and throughout the entire time and see how they could apply them for their own needs.

Six months ago I decided to give up on e-mail, indeed! And I cannot believe that the time has gone by so quick and without me hardly noticing. But that has been the case and if you have been following the different experiences I have blogged on the topic in the past it surely has been a blast all along! No doubt about it! As an example, and thanks to such a blunt move at work, I have been able to travel in this time many more times than in the eleven years I have been in IBM altogether!!

Funny thing is that despite those six months having gone by already, plenty of folks out there still think that I gave up on corporate e-mail because I had issues with time management, an overloaded Inbox, mail quotas exceeded on a repeated and regular basis, etc. etc. Most folks think that to me e-mail is dead with the emergence of social networking tools. Well, nothing further than the truth, I am afraid. I have never said that e-mail is dead. On the contrary, everyone would agree with me that it is still very much alive and kicking! And I would agree with that statement, too!

What I am just saying, and I have been saying that now for over six months, is that e-mail is, probably, not the best of tools out there to encourage open, public & transparent collaboration and knowledge sharing activities amongst knowledge workers and as such, six months ago I decided to stop using e-mail for such tasks. No more collaboration and knowledge sharing through e-mail. Only thing that I would still handle via e-mail would be what I have been mentioning already quite a bit: one on one private conversations where the subject matter is of a sensitive or confidential nature. For the rest everything else is going out there, in the open, readily available for everyone else, not just me, to chime in and engage accordingly. That would be the case when we can then talk about Collaboration, with a capital C.

And I can honestly say that it has been quite a ride, since I got started with this movement! So much so that plenty of folks have been blogging quite a bit on the topic (Currently compiling a blog post I will be putting together with a good bunch of these links, apart from the extended commentary I am making myself on some of the most relevant and insightful ones!); some of them have started similar initiatives like the one I am following over here, and as a result of such move I have been travelling quite a bit all over the world, including as well the publication on some of the most relevant online mainstream publications, if you would remember. Quite a blast, indeed!

I am sure that by now you may be wondering what the results have been from last week, right? From week 24. Well, I thought I would go ahead and share those results with you over here:

As you would be able to see, there seems to be a trend changing over here, because for the first time in a long while the number of e-mails has decreased substantially on the first three days of the week, while it peeked really high on Thursday & Friday last week, which means that I would need to look into it more carefully and see how the different patterns may well change or adapt over the next couple of weeks, specially if you look into the last two days where there has been a massive increase compared to previous weeks! Not particularly excited about it at the moment, since it looks like today I have been going through a similar count of incoming e-mails as in last week. We shall have to wait and see how much of this becomes a trend, or not, but it surely is going to be quite interesting.

However, for now, and to wrap up this special blog post and the weekly progress report for week 24, I thought I would reference a blog post that my good friend Dave Pollard blogged about just after I created the previous weekly report, i.e. for week 23. It is one of those blog posts that you are, I am certain, going to find rather controversial and thought-provoking, yet very much realistic, and I must say that if it were down to me, it would be something that I would try, first as a pilot, for about one week, and if successful, and I am sure it would, I would be implementing it all over the place for an extended period of time. Yes, that kind of impact on how the corporate world would be functioning from then onwards!

The title of the blog post is "Memorandum to All Employees" and it comes to share with you a letter by which from August 1st 2008 knowledge workers working at whatever the company would no longer be making use of e-mail to collaborate and share their knowledge. They would have to make use of other more open and public (social software) tools. Here is another tease just to share with you what Dave is up to:

"Please note that, in addition to face-to-face appointments, phone calls and Calendar bookings, there are a number of other technologies available for communications:

1. For simple, unambiguous, straightforward requests for information, approval, appointments or instructions, and replies to such requests, you can use the company’s Instant Messaging system. The system should not be used for more complicated matters — if it takes a respondent more than one minute to reply, it is an inappropriate use of this technology.

2. For conversations that cannot occur face-to-face and which require looking at documents together, you can use the company’s Desktop Video & Screen-Sharing system. This tool requires no pre-booking and can allow users to ’share’ the contents of each other’s screen while they converse.

3. For ‘FYI’ type communications, the documents should be posted to the appropriate category of the company’s E-Library, where those interested in the document who have subscribed to it by RSS will automatically receive notification about it. If you think someone should subscribe to a category they are not subscribed to, suggest this through an Instant Message.

4. For surveys, where you are seeking consensus, in those rare cases where a face-to-face brainstorming is not a much more effective means of achieving it, you can use the company’s Instant Survey tool.

5. For group training or sending of instructions to a large number of people, you can use the company’s E-Learning tool for asynchronous training, or, if interactivity is expected, the company’s Desktop Video & Screen-Sharing system for real-time events."

Fascinating read, eh? The blog post goes on further with plenty of gems to share with others, just like the ones I quoted above. And the commentary, although, not too many, surely shows an interest of having such policy implemented. And at this point in time, I am not sure about what you would think, but I would be more than happy to take Dave’s letter and comply with it. How about you? Do you think you would be able to quite using e-mail from August 1st?  Would you ever be willing to do such thing and leave your comfort zone? Would it be worth it for you as well as it has been for folks like myself, ever since I got things started?

What would it take to your company / business to run, say, for a day, or, even better, for an entire week, without making use of corporate e-mail? Do you think you could survive? And if so, why haven’t you done it then? What’s stopping you? … Want to join us?

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Transparency, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, E-mail Abuse, Visibility, Awareness, Think, Re-purposing E-Mail, Delegated Tasks, Dave Pollard, Madrid, Memorandum

Yes, that’s right! If you folks have been checking my Dopplr account recently, I am going to be on the road tomorrow afternoon, once again. This time around to Madrid, where I have been a few times already this year, but this time around for a specific and concrete event I will be participating in with a couple of good friends and colleagues that I am really excited about. No, this time around I won’t be doing one of those "See the Light - Thinking out of the Inbox" sessions per se, although I am sure I would be having the opportunity to chime in and make a few connections with what has kept me busy for the last five and a half months!

The main reason why I am flying out tomorrow afternoon / evening to Madrid is to participate in a specific workshop event on Thursday morning that I have been organising with a couple of colleagues from IBM Software Spain where we will be covering a number of different topics related to Social Computing and Enterprise Social Software. The workshop event itself actually fits in quite nicely with the current work I am doing at the moment, along with the rest of my team, where we are helping accelerate the adoption of social networking & social networking tools within the IBM Software (Tech) Sales teams, and, as a result of that, to the entire company as well, since most of the stuff we do is open, public and available to everyone (Inside of the corporate firewall, that is )

Thus tomorrow afternoon I am flying over to Madrid and on Thursday morning I will be spending most of the morning, working with a couple of colleagues, and good friends, too!, on a workshop that will have two different and specific sections. The initial one where I will be spending about one hour explaining further some more what social computing is all about, some of its main key concepts, then explaining a bit my team’s mission and goals and then, finally, hoping to engage in a good conversation as to why Enterprise 2.0 is there and why we should engage with it & start embracing it for our daily interactions while we collaborate, connect and share our knowledge with others.

Pretty much along the lines of the slide deck you will be able to find over at IBM: Web 2.0 Goes to Work, which has been shared in Slideshare already, and which was recently presented by my boss’ boss, Gina Poole, at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. But perhaps with a couple of modifications to accommodate an internal only audience. I have taken the liberty of embedding that deck from Gina to give you a glimpse of what I would be covering on that first hour:

IBM Web 2 0 Goes To Work Presentation:

Then, once we are done with the first hour, we would go for a short break, and right after that the good fun will start! A couple of IBM folks from the IBM SWG Tech Sales team and myself will be working through, following a workshop format, two hours of intense practical tips on how to carry out common tasks from our day to day interactions with a 2.0 flavour, while we collaborate and share our knowledge with other fellow peers by focusing on some of the most powerful, and popular!, Enterprise 2.0 applications that IBM has got as offerings and which we are also making use as part of the Technology Adoption Program:

- Lotus Notes 8
- Lotus Sametime 8,x
- Lotus Connections
- Lotus Quickr
- Lotus Sametime Unyte

At the same time, we would also be covering some of the various different IBM Research applications that we are all currently testing out through the TAP program I mentioned above and which would give folks a nice intro into the bleeding edge of some of the most compelling Enterprise 2.0 tools IBM has been testing for a little while now. Like, for instance, Fringe, Beehive, Small Blue / Atlas, Cattail, Media Library and a bunch of others. Plenty of good fun, I am sure!

A solidly packed workshop of closer to three hours which will keep us busy for most of the day. Then right after that, I will be staying in the city for a few hours before flying back home late in the evening. Thus I am not really sure whether I would be having plenty of time, but if you are around and want to get together for a coffee, tea, a quick chat or something, give me a shout and we can look if we can make it fit this time around…

I wish I could share some of the stuff we will be covering during this workshop, as I am sure you would be wondering right now whether I would be able to share the various materials, but I am afraid that this is an internal only event since some of the slides, plus most of the demo is of a sensitive nature containing information that may not be suitable for everyone. Hopefully, as time goes by I may be able to share some more of these materials after sanitising them a bit. We shall see how that goes …

Either way, we are back on the road! And I can’t wait to share with folks how they can be more productive in their daily routines by spicing up their interactions with some more 2.0 flavours coming from all over the place!

(Oh, did I mention how we actually organised the whole entire event through a Connections Activity and a conference call? Not a single e-mail was sent out whatsoever! :-D)

Tags: IBM, IBM SWG, IBM Software, Technical Sales, Sales, Tech Sales, Workshops, Events, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Innovation, Dopplr, Madrid, Spain, See the Light, Enterprise Social Software, Slideshare, Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco, Gina Poole, Technology Adoption Program, TAP, Lotus Notes, Notes, Notes 8, Lotus Notes 8, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Sametime 9, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Quickr, Quickr, Lotus Sametime Unyte, Sametime Unyte, e-meetings, Research, IBM Research, Fringe, Beehive, Small Blue / Atlas, Cattail, Media Library, Connections Activities, Productivity, Productivity Tools, Productivity 2.0

Coming closer to the six months barrier since I got things started, here I go again sharing with you folks the progress weekly report on my new reality of giving up on e-mail, corporate e-mail, that is. This time around on week 23 and after a very interesting week last week, where the blog posts I have shared previously seemed to have had the desired effect, judging by the number of e-mails received thus far today, Monday. But that would be the subject for another upcoming progress report. Not to worry…

Let’s get down to business though on what happened last week and see if there were any changes. Here is the weekly report:

As you would be able to see, things have gone back to "normal" with a total incoming count of 34 e-mails for the entire week! This is really good news, because it’s a clear indication of how the previous week was just an isolated event, as I have been explaining all along on that weekly progress report. It is also interesting to see how the days with the highest peaks of e-mails coming through are actually Monday & Tuesday, while Fridays seem to be pretty quiet, which means that folks perhaps would want to get their delegated tasks going at the beginning of the week, so that you can complete them by Friday. And on this particular day things seem to be rather quiet, because perhaps those folks presume you are busy working on the backlog of e-mails received at the beginning of the week. Interesting trend to watch…

Either way, you would be able to see how low the numbers seem to consistently be as we get closer to the weekend, which I can’t blame, because, at least, they are not carried over for over the weekend! But really pleased to see how the numbers have gone down substantially from the previous week, where an unusual activity was taking place given those two scenarios I described earlier on of an incorrect usage of e-mail.

Thus, what else happened during the course of last week? (You may be wondering, right?) Well, plenty of interesting things that I will be mentioning over here as time goes by over the next few days; however, for now, I would want to point you into a very insightful and thought-provoking link that I been reading lately and which pretty much comes to conclude the exact same thing I have been saying for a while on the kind of interactions that I still feel should be going through e-mail.

It is a link I have been talking about with Dave Pollard over in Twitter as we have been exchanging some thoughts on some of the stuff that he blogged about over nearly a year and a half ago! and what I have been doing over the last few months when I decide to stop using e-mail at work. Yes, indeed, this interesting link is from Dave’s blog itself under the very suggestive title "When Not to Use e-mail".

In it, you will see how Dave puts together a whole bunch of really good reasons as to why e-mail is perhaps not the best of scenarios to share information, knowledge, etc. with others in a specific context. I would strongly encourage you all to go ahead and read his very enlightening article, but for now, I am just going to tease you all with what you are going to find and here are the ten scenarios that Dave feels should not be handled through e-mail. Oh, by the way, I can’t stress well enough how much in agreement I really am with him on this one and you will see what I mean after you get reading further with this initial list:

"1. To communicate bad news, complaints or criticism
2. When you are seeking information that is not simple and straight-forward
3. When you are seeking approval on something that is involved or controversial
4. When you’re sending a few people complicated instructions
5. When you are asking for comments on a long document
6. To request information from a group on a recurring basis
7. To convey instructions to a large number of people
8. To achieve consensus
9. To explore a subject or idea
10. To send news, interesting documents, links, policies, directory updates and other ‘FYI’ stuff"

Like I said, to read further up on each of the different scenarios, I can certainly recommend Dave’s article itself. You would be off to a really great read and I am sure, after you have read it all, how it would come to  mind the one single item that is clearly an exception to what I am trying to do, as the main reason why I would still make use of e-mail while at work: those one-on-one private conversations of a confidential or sensitive nature, where only the other person & myself have a got a need to know. No-one else! For the rest, everything else is going out in the public, open & transparent collaborative and knowledge sharing spaces!

If you have taken a few minutes to read through Dave’s blog post you would be able to see how scenario after scenario he is already indicating, and very clearly, where e-mail keeps failing to meet our new demands of a more collaborative and knowledge sharing nature that the 21st century is providing us with while we get to embrace, more and more, Enterprise Social Software or Social Computing Tools in general.

Thus, if you still thought that you don’t need to re-purpose how you are using e-mail on a daily basis, read further Dave’s article and I am sure it would make you think twice about it again. To me, I just got convinced more and more how I need to keep pushing for re-purposing my incoming e-mails, because e-mail is clearly not meeting my needs any longer, while I am attempting to work smarter, not necessarily harder… How about you?

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Transparency, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, E-mail Abuse, Trust, Visibility, Awareness, Think, Re-purposing E-Mail, Delegated Tasks, Dave Pollard, Twitter, Confidentiality

As I am starting the process to wrap up another very interesting week at work with plenty of things happening to get things going with a very much anticipated weekend, here I am again sharing with you folks some further details on the weekly progress report from the series I have been doing over the last few weeks, where this time around plenty of things have actually happened. We are now on to Week 22, five and a half months already, since I decided to start giving up on e-mail, i.e. corporate e-mail for my daily interactions to collaborate and share knowledge.

And as you would be able to see from the graphic from the weekly progress report, that particular week has been rather rough, specially since the number of incoming e-mails has reached up to the second highest number of e-mails received in those five and half months! Yes, that is right, not very pleased at the moment, but here is the report anyway:

I am sure that if you come to check the different e-mail counts from previous weeks, you would notice how the second half of the week was actually rather all right, and along the lines of what I have been experimenting in the last few months, however, both Monday & Tuesday were rather special, to put it mildly. As you can see, the numbers went sky high in there, 13 & 15, respectively, to then, by the end of the week make a total of 47 e-mails! 47!!!

Thus you may be wondering what actually caused that sudden increase, right? Well, two different things. Both of them not very pleased with, to be honest, although one of them seemed to be a one time event, and here is why:

- Reason #1: people, who got a bit surprised?, perhaps, of the 15 minutes fame from the NYTimes article I got published a couple of weeks back under "I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip", decided to send a couple of e-mails whereas in the past they would be using, with me already, IM or several other social software tools.

Probably to prove the point that they could break the whole thing whenever they would want to. Perhaps because they don’t think for themselves they can break their e-mail addiction any longer, like I did. Maybe because they felt that e-mail was the easy way out to get the message across and they could move on to something else, since they have delegated their tasks on to others with those e-mails.

Either way, I think this was a one time event because this week’s report, which I will share over the next few hours, didn’t show that increasing trend. Things have gone back to normal. Phew!

So, perhaps they were teasing me, after all!

- Reason #2: this particular reason I am about to explore though has brought some growing concerns on why I strongly feel that e-mail is broken as a collaboration and knowledge sharing tool. It has got to do with how folks get to abuse, and pretty badly, the usage of "Reply to All" (That lovely e-mail button that, if it were for me, and along with the Attachments one, would be gone in no time!).

Yes, that’s right! The reason why those two days were very active in the e-mail front was because a couple of folks kept replying to each other in e-mail AND including EVERYONE ELSE  in the conversation, when they DIDN’T need to be there in the first place! I am sure this scenario does sound familiar to you all! No doubt!

This is one of the reasons why to me, e-mail is broken in this particular respect, not because of the tool itself, but of how much people have abused it over time. Why would people keep "Replying to All" when we all know most of those folks don’t need to be there in the first place? How many e-mails a day do you usually get where this particular feature has been abused? I bet that plenty of time is wasted having to process such e-mails, more than anything else because you first have to read it, then see how is on the list of the .cc, then evaluate whether you would need to respond or not, and if not process it accordingly! Goodness!

Here is the thing though that changes the whole aspect about "Reply to All".  I just wish people would understand that unless I show interest myself on being in such an e-mail thread, please DO NOT include me beyond the first initial e-mail. In most cases I probably even don’t need to be there in the first place, so why would you want to add clutter to my e-mail count? To get exposure? To get visibility you are getting involved in the conversation? Or to show everyone you are active working on something for the rest of the folks on that e-mail thread? Or to show your boss you have got a record of getting folks involved? Or to continue further with your e-mail addiction, specially when people from the "Reply to All" reply back asking why they have been added into that distribution list?

Think! Challenge the "Reply to All" button! Unless you have got the additional interest from the other parties to be involved, don’t include them. You know why? Because we all trust you that you will do the right thing with that task. No need to include us on it in a frenzy exchange of e-mails that would take us all nowhere! All of you, including me, would be much better off! For sure.

"Oh, hang on" -you may say -"But you are going to miss some important stuff we are discussing over here!". "Oh, really?" -I would go- "Well, if it is that important, not to worry, I will find it out (Or it will find me!) in its due time when I do really need it! Or, even better, if it is really that important and crucial for us all, don’t use e-mail! Use something much more sophisticated, open, public, transparent, to share that piece of knowledge or information so that EVERYONE benefits from it! That, to me, would be really important!"

Thus, as you can see, the high numbers from week 22 were, mostly, due to the fact that people seem to be obsessed, rather massively, if not addicted, with the "Reply to All" button. It seems like they could not live without it. It sounds as it is incredibly tempting to see an e-mail with a bunch of folks already on the addressee list and your fingers start getting that nervour reaction that prompts you to hit that specific button! DON’T! Spare us!

Now you would probably understand why I just wish I would wipe it out completely! It doesn’t have any purpose for the one-on-one conversations that I have been mentioning are the best, and most suitable, for e-mail interactions. I am starting to think, more and more by the day, that if you would want to break your e-mail addiction, because that is what we are suffering from at the moment, or, at least, if you would want to control it a bit, STOP abusing the "Reply to All" button!

We would be eternally grateful …

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Transparency, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, New York Times, NYTimes, Reply to All, E-mail Abuse, Attachments, Trust, Visibility, Awareness, Think