Very few times in my whole life have I gotten too upset about any sports event, but this time around, and with the occasion of the Eurobasket 2007 finals , it had to be the next one. After having played some serious ball during the entire course of the tournament, and perhaps too exhausted, both physically and mentally, after yesterday’s epic victory against Greece, Spain is not going to have the Crown of Europe this time around, as Russia went ahead this time around.

Yes, I know, probably one of the worst matches I have seen played by Spain. I know at any other given point in time the victory would have been more than possible, but in a time where things didn’t seem to go right, and after some tough luck, I guess it had to be Russia’s turn after what happened earlier on today when Spain beat Russia in volleyball back in Moscow. Funny thing, eh?

I guess we are even this time around, folks, although I would have wished to win the gold medal in basketball instead, because what are the chances of being the world and European champions once again? Probably very slim.

Either way, I am extremely happy that we are European champions of volleyball for the first time in history for Spain, and silver medal (For the sixth time ever!) in basketball. I know that we all wanted to have plenty more, but when you come to think about it, that is just such a huge achievement!

You bet we will be back again! This great generation of talented players, who play like a real team and who demonstrate game after game what teamwork is all about, is not going to give up just like that. It just won’t happen. They are all truly remarkable and this has just been one match. They are still my team. Now and the next time, and the next. And the next. Forever.

Congrats to Russia for taking away from us that Crown of Europe that I think we all thought was going to stay home. Perhaps next time…

Tags: Europe, Crown of Europe, Spain, Russia, European Championships, Finals, Volleyball, Madrid, Moscow, Basketball, Champions, Eurobasket, Eurobasket2007

Once more, you will have to excuse me for going off topic over here, but this time around I just couldn’t help it. I am sure that by now you may have heard, read or watched the sad news about Luciano Pavarotti leaving us for a better place at age 71 due to pancreatic cancer. Whether you care for opera or not, whether you have attended an opera live or not, whether you may have listened to any performance of such fine art, or not, Pavarotti was one of those very special characters that transcended his immense talent and reached out to everyone out there!

There are lots and lots of things that I could say about him, about how special he was, about how gifted his voice was, about how such a natural he would ever be in all of our hearts. However, I am not going to do that. I am just going to let you all go to YouTube, and start witnessing what is going on in there! Lots and lots of video clips with his various performances are going up sky rocket in the last few hours with thousands of people watching them through. Quite a remarkable tribute to someone who we all know was rather unique on his own.

As I said, you may be a very big fan of Opera (In which case I know that most of these words will just be obvious to you), or not. The thing is that Pavarotti has been one of those incredibly inspirational folks who can give you goose bumps any given time of the day by listening to him, and in most cases it will make you cry with tears of passion, full emotion and remarkable natural talent.

So here is a small and humble tribute to someone who has made me cried with tears of joy and content by witnessing some of his best performances ever. Now you tell me, after watching the links I have shared below, who cannot sit back, relax, and enjoy such a wonderful experience.

Luciano, wherever you may well be now, you shall never be forgotten. Ever. Thanks much for those little precious moments that certainly made us as human as we could be. We are all more than grateful to you for sharing your talent with us and for helping us partake from these emotions:

Nessun Dorma

Ave Maria

Caruso

Miserere

(Like I said, goose bumps, tears of full joy and intense feelings)

Tags: Luciano Paravotti, Pavarotti, R.I.P. Opera, YouTube, Tribute, Talent, Voices, Life, Nessun Dorma, Ave Maria, Caruso, Miserere, Performance, Ovation, Unique, Singer, Opera Singer

Tags: Barcelona, Cancellations, Holiday, Twitter, Baloncesto, Basketball, Basket, Eurobasket2007, Eurobasket07, Championships, Warriors, Crown, Spain

You would remember how a couple of weeks back I mentioned that this coming Wednesday I was planning to take some vacation and head over to Barcelona, hoping to be able to meet up with a few folks who I have met in real life or on line in the past. Alas, I am afraid that I will have to wait for another opportunity, because over the course of last week a personal emergency has kicked in and shifted around all of the different plans and priorities. So much so, that earlier on this morning I cancelled the hotel reservations and had to postpone the holidays for a later time. Yes, I know. A bummer.

I cannot talk much about that particular personal emergency, other than mentioning that things are going all right, although with a slow recovery process (Don’t worry, it is not me), but I am hoping that once it is all over I may be able to share something over here on the kind of impact this experience has been having on all of us over here. Stay tuned for some more.

I am not sure when I would be able to make it to Barcelona again, but I am hoping that perhaps some time in October or thereabouts I would have the opportunity, so if you would still be around by that time I will let you know, just in case. For those folks who contacted me to get together, I have been twittering the main cause of it and know you would understand why I had to cancel it. I am hoping though we would be able to meet up at some other point in time and catch up. Thanks for sticking in and for all of your understanding

So, I am not going to go to Barcelona after all, and I surely was looking forward to it. What can I do in the mean time to console myself? Well, I may have just found it. I do know that this is completely off topic, like it was exactly a year ago, but I just couldn’t help mention, even if it is just briefly, how over the next few days I shall be enjoying one of my other passions in life: basketball (Or like a well known wise man would say — BA - LON - CES - TO!!!).

And all of it because of this particular event that got started today and, of course, because of these guys:

Pictures courtesy of Kaplan DF

Our warriors!

(Good luck to everyone and let’s play!!)

Tags: BlogDay2007, Blog Day, Metablogging, Blogs, Knowledge at Work, Denham Grey, Engineers without fears, Matt More, Acidlabs, Stephen Collins, eme ká eme, Miguel Cornejo Castro, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, KM 2.0, Knowledge Worker, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, eLearning, Virtual Worlds, Communities, Communities of Practice, CoPs, IBM

Yesterday was kind of a very busy day, both at work and on a personal level, so in the end I didn’t get much of a chance to create a post over here, so I thought I would go ahead and share this one today for a special event: Happy Blog Day 2007! Yes, that is right, today is Blog Day 2007, an event in the blogosphere that would help everyone promote those different weblog posts that even though they may not be very very popular they still provide some really good content. So I thought I would play the game and do my fair bit of homework on it.

And that is why in this weblog post I am going to follow the rules of this special event and share five different blogs that I read on a regular basis and whose content is just superb, hoping that you may find them useful as well and may have a chance to subscribe to them if you would wish to. So let’s get down to business:

1. Knowledge-at-work by Denham Grey: Yes, I know, this is not really a new blog at all, since Denham has been blogging already for quite some time. However, things have gone a bit quiet since beginning of the year and I am hoping that with this post I may get him to pick things up and get blogging again. If you browse through some of the different blog posts he has been sharing thus far, you would be able to see that he has got something to say about Knowledge Management, don’t you think? For those folks who may not know, Denham is one of the first folks who was thinking about KM when none of us were even busy with it! Thus, Denham, ready to come back? Please?

2. Engineers without fears by Matt Moore: And here we go now with something quite the opposite. For a good amount of time Matt has been relatively quiet over at his blog and over the last few weeks he has gotten started with blogging on a much more regular basis and just as insightful and thought-provoking as ever. Matt’s blog posts are those that would make you think about KM related topics twice. Always looking for that twist that differentiates what he has to say from whoever else. If I would have to summarise what you would be able to find over there I guess I would be able to do so by just saying: refreshing! (And worth while a subscription!)

3. Acidlabs by Stephen Collins: In the past I have been referencing a number of different weblog posts from Stephen and by now you probably already know what he is up to. Remember Knowledge Worker 2.0? One of the best presentations that I have seen to date around the subject of Knowledge Management 2.0 and already introducing the concept of knowledge worker 2.0 for the next generation of the workforce. And that is exactly what you would be able to find over at his blog: some really good insights on where we are with Knowledge Management and where we are going, which is perhaps the most exciting part of it all. Another worth while subscription, to say the least!

4. eme ká eme by Miguel Cornejo Castro: For those folks who may have hanged out at several KM and Communities of Practice related forums, there is probably very little that I can say about Miguel. He surely knows his stuff about the topic of KM and CoPs. So when I saw that he was getting started with his own weblog I was very excited, because everyone out there would be able to see what he is up to.

However, there is also one thing to note about his blog and that is the fact that Miguel is one of the very few blogs on KM sharing articles both in Spanish and English and somehow I feel a bit guilty (In the good sense of the word, of course) that I am not following his example. Perhaps this particular weblog post would help me get the final push and be a bit more prolific with my Spanish related posts. Let’s see. Miguel can have that kind of influence, you see?

5. And, finally, here is the fifth link that I am going to be sharing with you. This time around from a fellow IBMer: Wonderwebby by Jasmin Tragas. Jasmin has gotten started blogging externally just recently and if you browse through some of her blog posts you would be able to see her excitement about virtual, distributed collaboration and how Knowledge Management can help in this space.

At the same time you would be able to see how she gets to explore social computing and social software tools in order to help improve the way knowledge workers get to collaborate. But if there is something else that you would find rather interesting is how she is exploring virtual worlds, like Second Life, and their impact on eLearning. to help improve the way we get to acquire new knowledge and share it with others. Some pretty interesting stuff (Also if you would want to find out what IBM is doing in this particular area).

And that would be it for now. Five blogs worth while looking into as part of Blog Day 2007. I do hope that you get to check them out and perhaps subscribe to one or two as you may see fit. Time now to celebrate! and get started with the weekend!

Have a good one, everyone!

Tags: Gran Canaria, Ingenio, Pasadilla, Guayadeque, Fires, Incendio, Disaster, Catastrophe, Tragedy, Canarias7, Canarias Bruta, Atarecos, Paradise

And while we are still recovering from some of the fatal consequences from the recent fires developed in Gran Canaria, that wiped out in a matter of days thousands and thousands of years of nature doing what she knows best, here we go again. Canarias7, as usual, is doing a superb job in keeping us updated by reporting some news from earlier on this evening on a new fire that got started around 8.30pm local time in Ingenio, Gran Canaria, around the area of Pasadilla, close to Guayadeque (Guayadeque being one of the most emblematic and charismatic spaces from the entire island!) and which by the time I am writing this down it looks like the fire is under control and has not been progressing for several hours already.

However, it has not been extinguished just yet as the firefighters are still doing their magic in helping keep it under control. A couple of bloggers, Miguel, from Canarias Bruta, Reena and Esther, from Atarecos, have already been commenting on the situation, but it looks like not much more has been mentioned thus far. Something that could be taken as good news, in the sense that the fire may not be as serious as the one that took place a couple of weeks back.

The number of hectares potentially affected has not been mentioned just yet, as they are probably still evaluating the reach of the fire and ensuring it is extinguished as soon as possible, but you can already have a look into this thread of opinions from people all over the island sharing their thoughts about what is happening. Link is in Spanish, I know, but you would be able to see some of what is going on with 9 pages of commentary and growing!

I just hope that we may have learned something from our previous grievous experience(s) and, like it is mentioned in this particular editorial, we need to ensure everyone gets the message that it is the task of us all (Administrations, firefighters, special units, etc. and us, the common people) to take care of what was given to us without asking for anything in return. And the least we could all do is just that, take care of it to be able to pass it on generation after generation:

“Ahora, solo cabe esperar que las administraciones tomen buena nota de la sabiduría popular para restablecer el orden ambiental y social en la isla, porque ellos, los campesinos y los habitantes de la reserva de la biosfera saben mejor que nadie cómo preparar la tierra para el futuro.“

Like I said it back then, my dearest paradise is burning again and it hurts. It truly hurts…

(Picture courtesy from Canarias7)

Tags: Robert Scoble, ScobleShow, Videocasts, Interviews, IBM, Drew Clark, Mike Moran, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, OmniFind, Marketing, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Second Life, Virtual Worlds, Guidelines, RedMonk, RedMonk.TV, Ali Arsanjani, Robert LeBlanc, Sandy Carter, James Governor, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Communities

If you would remember, a few days ago I created a weblog post where I was pointing to a recent video cast that Robert Scoble did with one of my fellow IBM colleagues: Drew Clark where Drew got to talk about some of the awesome stuff that is going on inside IBM and which would certainly help provide an awareness to outside folks on what is going on there. If you have listened to the interview, you probably heard the "We are not your father’s IBM!" statement and therefore I am going to go back for some more, since it looks like plenty of folks who think that IBM is still the same of what it used to be. Well, think again.

Yes, that is right. It looks like Scoble has been a bit busy at the IBM house lately, because he has put together a couple of interviews with two other IBMers that I can certainly recommend, to help you get an idea of what is going on in other areas from this 370,000 employee large enterprise.

The first interview I would want to point out to you is the one he did with Mike Moran, an IBM Distinguished Engineer and Product Manager of IBM’s OmniFind search software, who gets to talk over the course of nearly 15 minutes about Marketing and how social media has changed the way we share information out there in the public along with some of what IBM is doing on the subject. Pretty good for a distinguished engineer, don’t you think? I mean, who would have thought about that, right? Well, listen to it.

The second interview that I would want to point out to you is another one he did recently with Irving Wladawsky-Berger, with Larry Magid, from CBS News, chiming in as well, in which Irving (Recently retired after 37 years of service! WOW! I wasn’t even born when he joined IBM!!) gets to talk about the huge impact that virtual worlds, in general, are going to have beyond the immediate impact we are seeing in the gaming world.

Irving gets to talk about how those virtual worlds (Second Life amongst many others) will help shape up the way we interact with other knowledge workers to conduct business and drive revenue out of it. In fact, he also touches base, roughly, on the recently published IBM Virtual World Guidelines that Roo Reynolds gets to describe superbly further so well over at Eightbar. I tell you. An interview worth while the nearly 22 minutes that it lasts! Lots of good stuff in there and I just wished they would have continue talking some more. It was just starting to get really good when they had to go. Sigh

Oh, and if you didn’t have enough with that, and want to find out some more as to why this IBM is not your father’s IBM any longer, check out the super fine job that the folks at Redmonk.TV have done interviewing several other IBMers on various different topics:

"Its not exactly live TV, but the content is online now- interviews with Ali Arsanjani (IBMs approach to business / IT service modeling and “World is Flat?”, Robert LeBlanc (turning IGS into an automated services company rather than a body shop) and Sandy Carter (using the latest cool media tactics and tools to educate people on SOA. T-shape people, technologists taking up the cross?)" (Excerpt taken directly from James Governor’s Monkchips blog)

Disclosure: I work in *that* company