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

Trip to London to Participate in SOMESSO / Headshift’s Social Business Summit

After I came back last Friday from a couple of recent business trips to both Madrid and Barcelona to speak at the Lotusphere Comes To You events, and while still recovering, slowly, from a nasty cold I caught on the plane back home, I’m starting to get ready for my next business trip; taking place next week Wednesday and heading to London for Thursday’s SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit. And, as you can imagine, I just can’t wait for it to start! Here is why …

But, hang on, before I dive further into what I will be doing at the Social Business Summit, just wanted to let folks know that I’m already on the process of putting together a couple of blog posts summarising my experiences from last week’s business trips, with keywords like lack of connectivity (Nothing new!), physical social networking for the win!, Social Enterprise, Collaboration, cloud computing, and a vision. Hopefully, I may be able to sneak them in over the course of the next couple of days and if not I will do so when I get back from London the week after this other event. So stay tuned! (For now, if you just can’t wait to hear about what they were like, check out the live tweeting I did under @elsua_b for a taster).

Right! So why am I heading next week to London, you may be wondering, right? Well, a few weeks back Lee Bryant, CEO and co-founder of Headshift, part of Dachis Group, invited me to participate on the upcoming SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit that will be taking place next week, on March 18th, where I will be moderating one of the panels: the one on Internal Use of Social Software, where I will try to share some further insights on what IBM has been doing for nearly three years now with one of its most successful social software adoption programs: BlueIQ.

It surely promises to be a rather interesting one, since I’ll be moderating a discussion where I will be sharing some of the various good practices we have been putting in place to help IBM accelerate its own adoption of these social tools; I am sure the interactions and conversations from those folks attending such session will also be rather insightful, as I’m certainly hoping they will be adding their two cents of how their own organisations are tackling the important topic of adoption of social computing (Both inside and outside their firewall(s)). If there would be a single word I could use at this point in time without revealing too many details just yet it would probably be "Interactivity!". So that would give you an idea of where we would be heading… Oh, but let me add another one as well though: "Provocative!"

Good starting points, don’t you think? Well, that’s just the beginning! It will be a whole lot better than that! I tell you. If you haven’t seen it just yet, I would suggest you take a look into the agenda of the event and this other particular blog post that Lee himself put together and which would help set the context of what will be happening at the summit. From the agenda you will be able to see how both Jeff Dachis  and JP Rangaswami will be the keynote speakers, to kick things off to a superb start already, to then finish off with the invaluable contributions of the many delegates attending the three themed workshops (Internal Use Cases, External Use Cases & Market / Ecosystem Use Cases) helping establish and identify the necessary changes and actions, as well as challenges, to progress further into that "Social Enterprise" concept that a bunch of us have been talking about for a little while already…

Then at the end of the day, each of those three themed workshops will be reporting back providing a comprehensive picture of the current state of things and where we will be heading with social computing inside & outside the enterprise to define the next generation of interactions and models of engagement amongst knowledge workers, customers and business partners. As you can see, I just can’t wait for it to start! So much to share, so much to learn from, so many conversations and discussions to dive into; in short, now you know where my excitement originates from and why I am really looking forward to participating in this Social Business Summit.

More information details about the Summit can be found over here, as well as the agenda itself, which contains the details on how people can sign up for the event, if you are interested in attending (Got anything better to do on March 18th? hehe).

As usual, depending on how things go on the connectivity front, I may be able to live tweet some of the various sessions I will be attending and then share with you folks follow up blog posts with highlights from the event. I currently plan to be there on Wednesday, while I prepare the workshop itself, and staying till Saturday morning, when I get back home, so if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or lunch / dinner, etc. etc. give me a shout and get in touch!

Can’t wait to see folks over there! … Just three more days …

Tags: SOMESSO, Headshift, Social Business Summit, Summits, Events, Conferences, Conference Events, Workshops, Lotusphere, LS10, LCTY10, Madrid, Barcelona, London, Lee Bryant, BlueIQ, Jeff Dachis, JP Rangaswami, jobsworth, Social Software, Adoption, Enablement, Social Web, Social Enterprise, Social Collaboration, Social Ecosystems, 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,Social Business Summit, SBS, #sbs2010, sbs2010

When Command and Control Needs to Become Engage and Support

Every so often there are those times when you bump into a couple of articles published by people, who you know and respect dearly for the tremendous amount of great work they have done in the space of Social Computing, that give you such an adrenaline rush, while reading through them, that you just can’t stop thinking about anything else for a little while. And if those blog posts have got to do with two of my favourite topics from all along (People and Trust) in that context of the Social Enterprise, you know I will surely be sharing my two cents of the conversation.

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

What the … Is Social Media Anyway?

I love it when all of a sudden, and through one of my various social networks, someone comes along and shares one of those links to rich media that you know you are going to enjoy, not just from digesting its content, but also from the perspective of acknowledging you will be reusing it at some point in time in upcoming presentations you may do on the topics you feel rather passionate about, specially in the area of social software adoption. "What the HELL is social media" is one of those videos …

If yesterday I blogged about how important both people and passion are for a successful adoption of social networking for business, both inside and outside of the firewall, today I thought I would share with you folks a link to a YouTube video that, if anything, permeates some of that very same passion from all over the place! indeed, go and watch "What the HELL is social media". If you are into social computing, you will enjoy it; if you are not, it may convince you this time around…

It’s a little bit over 2 minute YouTube video that explains, quite visually, 10 main different reasons why knowledge workers should be paying attention, and care!, about social media, social software, or whatever other related term. Yes, I realise there are differences between all of them, but the main key concepts would still remain the same.

And those key concepts are the ones mentioned throughout the video clip itself. Created by Kama Glover and Tim Fogg (And compiled and edited by Peter Kerwood) it will be one of those videos that I am sure you will be using rather extensively from here onwards in those upcoming workshops, where you could sneak in a couple of minutes of visuals right before you start your events and get people on the right track from the very first moments. And jazzed up quite a bit in the process, too! I know I will, even if I don’t agree with statements like this one: "[On Facebook] It has won the social networking war". Well, maybe it’s still a little bit too early to say, don’t you think?

Here is the embedded video so you can hit PLAY and starting going through it. Then let me know through the comments if it would, indeed, be one of those videos you would reuse for an upcoming presentation on 2.0 that you may be working on already … or not. I would be curious to know what you thought about it and whether it’d help get some of those 2.0 messages across…

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Customers, Clients, Kama Glover, Tim Fogg, Peter Kerwood, Facebook