Phew! I really needed to have those couple of extra days off over the weekend to unwind from a massively busy schedule with plenty of travelling all along in the last couple of weeks, having just returned from Barcelona on Friday, then on the road again over the next couple of days. Too hectic, huh? Yes, probably, but loving it! Every minute of it! Yes, that is right! Things seemed to have been rather feverish lately and must say that there is no sign it is going to stop any time soon! That’s why you have seen very little activity from my usual regular blogging, but fear not, because now that I am done with the weekend I have got a bunch of posts to share with you folks over the next few hours!

Starting with some more reviews from the Next08 event in Hamburg from a couple of weeks back, where I am hoping that the video recording of my session will become available shortly as well, so that I can share the link with all of you, as most of the different replays are up and running already and in various different places. Then from there onwards continuing further with the weekly reports on my progress giving up on e-mail, where the good news keep piling up, thus stay tuned for those, too!

One of the other things that I would want to touch base with as well is with regards to one of my customer visits from last week to Barcelona, where the session I provided on Social Computing in the Enterprise sparked some really good, and thought-provoking, discussions I am hoping to touch base on as well (Link here, in Catalan). Not going to mention too much just yet in order not to spoil it, but I can certainly guarantee you that it would be quite an interesting read.

At the same time I am planning to create another blog post on the Startup 2.0 event that I was kindly invited by Jose Antonio del Moral and where I met a good bunch of folks involved with Start ups and the Web 2.0 world with a special mention to some fascinating discussions with one of the folks I have been following up for a little while now and whom I know our relationship is going to get more active than ever: Tom Raftery (By the way, Tom, congratulations on the massive gig! Great news for sure!! ). Thus something else to talk about over the next couple of days as well.

Finally, and as I am entering the 16th week in a row of my new reality on giving up on e-mail, I am now ready to start sharing with you folks different blog posts where I can talk about my social software tools suite that I have been using all along and with which I am sticking around for the next few months, in order to help me successfully move away from e-mail. Thus stay tuned for those entries as well if you would want to find out some more how you can get started yourself. Oh, and a lovely surprise I am hoping to be able to share as well very very soon, too!

And now, to wrap up this half-way-through-catchup status blog post from the last few days, I will detail where I am going to be this week and the next (My Dopplr account has been updated already, by the way, in case you are wondering). But before I do that watch out as well because I will be creating a number of other different blog posts where I am going to be sharing some further details as to where I will be over the next few weeks ending up, so far, to the end of June! Non-stop travelling till then! But let’s get started with one step at a time…

Starting this coming Wednesday I am actually flying out to Germany to participate in an event that the IBM Software (Tech) Sales folks have been setting up and which I am surely going to enjoy quite a bit! It is called "See the Light (2.0)" and its main purpose is to help spread the message around with regards to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Social Computing in general. Yes, I know, my kind of thing! Indeed!

Initially it is going to be for an IBM internal audience, thus a bit more restricted than the events I have been participating thus far in the last few days, but still equally exciting. So much so, that I will be one of the speakers talking about the presentation I have been doing already a couple of times and which I am thinking about changing its title a little bit, thanks to the inspiration from this particular event itself. Thus I will be presenting on "Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail", but I am thinking that I may be changing the title to something more like "See the Light - Thinking out of the Inbox". Much shorter, straighter to the point on what I am doing lately, as well as keeping that evangelism flavour that part of my job role entails. We shall see how that goes…

So, where am I going to go? Well, it certainly is going to be quite interesting and totally new to me. I will actually be in six different cities in Germany over the course of eight days! Yes, you are reading it right. I will be in six different cities over the course of eight days enjoying the unique experience of the Autobahn. Thus I will be flying out this coming Wednesday to Munich where my Tour of Germany will start the next day; then from there onwards off to Stuttgart the day after to continue further with the roadshow. Then I will be spending the entire weekend in Cologne (Probably where I would be getting the highest chances to meet up with folks as I unwind a bit from everything while in there) and will continue with Monday to Frankfurt, Tuesday to Düsseldorf and, finally, Wednesday to Hamburg. And Thursday on my way back home! Have a one day rest at home, and off we go again with the next trip on Friday (But that would be another entry on this blog, not to worry!).

Goodness, eh? Yes, that’s right! That’s the kind of massively hectic week that is awaiting me, talking to a whole bunch of people on Social Computing in IBM and the kind of impact it is having within the corporate world and then finishing up sharing my experiences on how I have been using successfully social software tools to walk away from work related e-mail for the last four months. Sounds like some good fun ahead of me! And I can’t wait!

I am sure that during the course of these few days where I will be travelling I will have some time to keep posting those posts I mentioned above I would want to touch base on, but I am thinking as well that if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or a dinner, you may want to keep in touch, leaving a comment over here, or contacting me through the various social software tools we interact with each other already. No guarantees I would be able to make it, like I said, Cologne is probably the best option over the weekend, but you never know. I may be able to generate more free time than I expect at that point in time. Either way, here you are, resuming my blogging activities after a wonderful and relaxing weekend and ready for another two weeks of feverish activities in the 2.0 space!

Come on! Let’s do it! Let’s get the fun started!!!

Tags: Travelling, Travels, Barcelona, Spain, Next08, Hamburg, Germany, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Clients, Customers, Catalan, Startup 2.0, Startup2.0, Jose Antonio del Moral, Jamoral, Tom Raftery, IBM, Software, Tech Sales, Sales, See The Light, SeeTheLight, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, Autobahn, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne, Köln, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Roadshow, Tour of Germany

Today, for the first time, in many many years that I have been working in IBM, something happened at work that made me go speechless! And those of you who know me in real life would agree with me how difficult that is. As you all know, this week I am mostly in Barcelona talking to different various customers on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 and social computing and therefore I have been so far a bit more disconnected than the usual home office time, but then again, all of a sudden and, in a split second that I go online with my Instant Messaging tool at IBM (Sametime) I get a whole bunch of IMs from people I work with asking me whether I have stopped crying after having heard the news…

And I thought … what?!?! What are you talking about? "You haven’t heard?" I get thrown back at me. "I haven’t heard what?" "Oh, you haven’t heard … Gia Lyons is moving into another job?" I went ahead and said … GREAT!!! "Outside IBM with Jive Software", I get thrown back again at me rather quick and off I go and shout out loud… "That’s just … (Insert your favourite bleep word here, please, hehe) AWESOME piece of news! The news of the year, for sure!"

Yes, that is right. Today I found out that one of those folks who I have always felt was rather special and unique, and still is! (Very much so!) is moving along into a new adventure and no other than with Jive Software, one of those companies that I have grown to have lots of respect for, and admiration for, the superb piece of work they are doing in the Enterprise 2.0 space helping break the barriers and hurdles the corporate culture has been putting together for a while now. Any company out there that is trying to do that and is successful deserves such admiration! For sure! And it’s got mine. For quite some time now, for sure!

So when I read the news that my good friend Gia Lyons was moving into such company as Jive I just couldn’t help, but being extremely happy for her, because I know she has made the right decision. I know Gia for several years now and I know what she is capable of ("Impossible" is one of those words that is not in her dictionary!). I do know as well that she is going to be thoroughly missed by a whole bunch of us sitting on the other side of the fence, but in my own personal case, and based on our own relationship throughout the years, both outside and inside of work, I am not too worried about it. Yes, she is gone from IBM; yes, she is no longer going to post to one of the most successful internal blogs there is right now; yes, I know she is not going to share quite openly all of her knowledge and various files she has been putting together behind the corporate firewall. And to be honest, I don’t care.

I cherish Gia dearly not because of what she has done for this company, and, believe me, she has done A LOT! But because of the various ways that she has been able to touch different people in multiple different ways, over and over and over again, starting with myself, leaving a mark behind that right now is almost just too painful to bear! Yes, indeed, she is that kind of special person. One that transpires pure genius on everything there is to know about Enterprise 2.0. One lively and unique personality that’s difficult to bump into in a lifetime. So contagious that just being around her you sense the energy & passion. Yes, that’s the word that would probably best describe her. And she is now going into a new adventure where that passion is going to come out even more! Whoooaaaahhhh!!!

Yes, I know I will miss her; yes, I know we will not be able to talk as much as we used to; yes, I know we may not be meeting in person as often as we did just recently (Still hope that we will be able to meet up at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston beginning of June); but today it is one of those days where I am very very grateful that we have got Twitter available, even if it has been rather flaky lately, because I do know that from now on, she is just going to be one tweet away…

Oh, and if you would want to get touched by her in multiple various ways as well that would make you think twice about the things you do in this space, check out her Internet blog over at Connected. She is just getting started with it for the last few weeks, but a good bunch of us have been privileged to get to know her from her internal one for several years now! Don’t miss your opportunity now…

If you ever get a chance to bump into her, stop her and get her to share some of that passion with you. It’s infectious, I am telling you, be warned, you will never be the same, like I am not the same person ever since I met her. Gia Lyons is one of those people I am extremely proud and honoured to have worked with. She has done so much for this whole social computing space that this particular blog post is already running short of words! So, yes, like I said earlier on … I … am … speechless … BUT in a WONDERFUL way!

Why? … Because She Will Always Be One Tweet Away…

Tags: Gia Lyons, Jive, Jive Software, IBM, News, Sametime, Moving, Adventure, Happiness, Energy, Passion, Privilege, Honour, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Collaboration, Innovation, Knoweldge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, Lotus Connections, Connections, Twitter, Connected, Blogging, Metablogging, Opportunity, Connecting, Relationships, Conversations, Touched

As you may all recall from a blog post I put together a couple of weeks back, this week I am in Barcelona, preparing for a couple of client meetings, over the next couple of days, to talk some more about Social Computing @ IBM and the kind of impact it is having within the corporate firewall, and then on the 21st I have been kindly invited by Jose Antonio del Moral to attend Startup 2.0, where I will also be able to meet the one and only: Tom Raftery. An event that surely promises to be one to remember! But more about it as time comes by as I will be sharing as well a short story on how I got into that one.

For now, and while I am wrapping things up for the next couple of days, where everything has now been ready for a few hours already, I thought I would drop the first of a series of blog posts detailing some of the highlights from the superb event that I attended last week in Hamburg, Germany: Next08. An event that will be difficult to forget as all of the already high expectations I had for it before getting there were met and exceeded big time! To say the least.

As you may remember from previous conference events, I have now developed the tendency to live twitter events as opposed to live con-blogging them and so far I have been quite delighted with the results. Next08 was no exception and have been able to share a bunch of tweets at my second Twitter id: elsuacon. As you would be able to see, there are some intervals where nothing seemed to have happened and that was because the wireless connection was a bit flaky at times, but was still able to capture some offline tweets which I will be sharing shortly as post-conference notes in that same Twitter stream. That would give you a good sense of the kind of event that this conference has been! Just amazing!

So what could I talk about in this first post sharing these highlights? Well, there are many many things, but I think that the first thing I should be sharing with you would be some quick, short notes on the various keynote sessions that I got to attend and which I am sure you would find rather interesting as well, specially for three of them! No doubt!

Here we go then:

To get things started Matthias Schrader kicked off the conference with a short pitch detailing what we were going to find throughout the event and, I tell you, if the expectations were high with Matthias’ presentation they reached into another level! Very good!

From there onwards we had the first three keynote speaker sessions with Geraldine Wilson (From Yahoo! Mobile), Matt Cohler (From Facebook) and Mike Jennings (From Google - Android). Both Geraldine’s and Mike’s sessions were recorded so I am not going to comment much on them, except for mentioning that the future of the Mobile 2.0 market is bright and that I hope to be able to jump in very shortly with my Nokia N95, being able to do all of the stuff we saw during the speeches. I must say that Mike’s session on Android though was a bit too technical for my taste, but I am sure that the techies on the floor enjoyed it quite a bit. I think I would have done the presentation a bit different. A bit more on the pragmatic side of things showing the potential for mobile workers like you and me. I guess better luck next time…

What was disappointing as well a little bit was Matt’s session on Facebook. Too basic, in my opinion, from the perspective that those folks who may have been using Facebook for a while would have learned very little, if much at all. I think I would have focused more on the current situation that Facebook is facing with more and more business folks abandoning it by the day (I think we would all love to find out more on what FB is doing to gain those folks back, before it is too late, and if at all worth it), un-targeted adds, privacy (Not deep enough originally), security, Intranet potential, etc. etc. Like I said, I would have provided a bit more than just the basics.

Another keynote session that I enjoyed quite a bit, specially since most of the background was new to me and found it rather fascinating was Werner Vogels‘, from Amazon, who opened up my eyes a bit more on some of the really good stuff that Amazon is doing, and yes, nothing to do with books! hehe Highly recommended watching the replay!

For the first three keynote speaker sessions, with Geraldine, Matt and Mike, the video recordings are already available and you can re-play them from here. Werner’s session is not up yet, but it would be another one to watch!

Finally, from all of the various different keynote speaker sessions, I would strongly encourage you all to have a look at two of them that really had an impact throughout the whole event. Just those two, and another hidden gem, were worth while attending the entire event! Yes, of course, I am talking about Steve Rubel’s and Stowe Boyd’s inspirational sessions that are going to make you think and WOW for quite some time to come! At least, they have with me. I was there live, but I am surely going to watch them again from the re-play, because too many goodies thrown out at you cannot be left behind just like that!

Stowe’s session on Social Revolution on the Web, and its impact on business, media and society … and us, as individuals is already available for re-play, and at the same time he has made it available, with the lovely option to download a copy of the deck, in Slideshare. Like I said, the session’s video is already up and running and you can watch it over here, but if there would be a single sentence that could summarise what we witnessed and that made me proud of being an edgling was this one: "A well-ordered humanism does not begin with itself, but puts things back in their place. It puts the world before life, life before man, and the respect of others before love of self.” Claude Lévi-Strauss. Priceless! Watch it! Now!

Steve’s session, just as inspirational as Stowe’s, is probably an essential must-watch the re-play (Whenever it would become available) for those folks in marketing and PR in order to figure out some more what’s going on at the moment and what are the emerging trends in the next couple of years, if not sooner, altogether! Very thought-provoking, to say the least, and, once again, if I were to summarise it using a couple of keywords I would probably say the following: Attention Crash, Digital Curators, Open Collaboration (Slide 25 from the deck & and a must see!!) and the role of Digital Nomads ("It’s conceivable that in the future corporations will be more virtual than they are today").

Like I have mentioned above, Steve’s session hasn’t got a video re-play at the moment from all of the keynote sessions I have mentioned in this blog post (Werner’s either, by the way), but I am sure they would be added eventually, and when they are, be certain to go and spend some time watching them. You can then thank me later

Oh, and to close off this initial first blog post on the highlights from the keynote sessions, I would now like to point you to the hidden gem from the event that although I couldn’t make much sense out of it (Need to polish my German skills for the next time I am around!), from what I talked to people right after and for several hours, it was just pure delight and a treasure enjoying one of those engaging speakers that will make you think twice about things and shake your ground big time! Yes, I am talking about the final keynote speaker session from Gunter Dueck, fellow IBM colleague , whose video re-play is now available, and who provided such an inspirational and capturing speech, in German, that I am hoping my German readers (Specially my good friend Martin Koser, who I am sure is going to enjoy it quite a bit!) would be able to enjoy and then share a highlight or two from the talk, because from what I could gather asking around, it was a speech to remember!!

And that was it, folks, first blog post with the keynote speaker session highlights done with. Next blog post will deal with some of the other sessions I got to attend during the course of the event, and then a final blog post where I would just comment further on impressions of the overall event itself … For now, I am just going to tease you all a bit embedding both Steve’s and Stowe’s decks over here, to give you a glimpse of the unique opportunity we had last week at Next08 to be watching them live giving such powerful presentations in under 30 minutes! Yes, a privilege, that’s the word … (Even more when you get a chance to talk to them on the side, too!)

Next08 - Marketing Trends - Open Files

The Social Web - Why The New Web Matters

Tags: Barcelona, Spain, IBM, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Jose Antonio del Moral, Startup 2.0, Tom Raftery, Hamburg, Germany, Next08, elsuacon, Twitter, Live Twittering, Live Con-blogging, Matthias Schrader, Geraldine Wilson, Yahoo! Mobile, Matt Cohler, Facebook, Mike Jennings, Google, Android, Mobile 2.0, Mobile, Nokia, N95, Werner Vogels, Amazon, Steve Rubel, Stowe Boyd, Web, Internet, Marketing, PR, Trends, Open Files, Slideshare, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edglings, Attention Crash, Digital Curators, Open Collaboration, Digital Nomads, Gunter Dueck, Martin Koser, Marketing Trends, Social Web

I was just on the verge of posting over here in this blog the first of three posts that I have put together sharing some of the various highlights from the IBM Web 2.0 and Beyond summit, along with one other blog post detailing my experience while I was in NYC for a couple of days, but then I realised that each of them are rather lenghthy entries and since yesterday I created a couple of blog posts over here already I thought I would go easy with some light blogging today in preparation for what’s ahead in the next couple of days

So, with all of that said, I am just going to put together a few lines in here to let folks know that, once again, I will be on the road travelling to meet up with a couple of customers. This time around, as you may have been able to check through my Dopplr account already, next week, on the 19th of May, and till the 22nd, travelling to Barcelona and with a fully packed agenda for the 20th and 21st meeting various clients to discuss Social Computing within the Enterprise, and the kind of impact Social Software is having within the corporate world.

I will be coming back on the 22nd and since I already got the flight tickets and everything I just need to worry about the hotel, although I have been provided with some excellent recommendations already. Probably staying in the city center to be able to move easily and quickly, too! I doubt I would be getting much free time during the course of the 20th and 21st, specially during the working hours, but other than that it looks as if I am going to be pretty free for the rest of the time.

Thus fancy meeting up? How about some lovely tapas, a couple of beers here and there and all of that on the beach?!?! That’s the plan I have already set up with Tom Raftery, who earlier on today contacted me through Twitter to let me know that he got notified by Dopplr that we would be both going to the same city at the same time! How cool is that? (Dopplr ROCKS!!!) He is going to be there for the Startup 2.0 event, while I will be meeting up with customers, but it sounds like a really cool plan to me! Not only will I be able to finally meet up with him in real life, but I would be able to catch up with the event he will be attending with his highlights while I treat him for a drink or two heh

I know as well that Ferdy Rodenas lives in Barcelona, so that’s probably going to make it easy as well to meet up with someone I have been looking forward meeting up for a little while now, after all of our online interactions in various different places, just like Tom.

Thus there you go. We got a plan. Tapas, beers, a bunch of good friends and all of that on the beach, because I am sure the weather is going to be rather nice. Want to meet up, if you are around? Do let us know. Through a comment over here, or on Tom’s blog or Ferdy’s or hook up with us on Twitter. Probably the easiest way. Hope to see you there!

(Not sure just yet whether I would be able to blog about the outcome of the meetings with these customers, you would need to wait for a few more days, but if I can, I surely will, because so far the the scenarios are just perfect on one of the core arguments that I use for my pitch on Social Software in the Enterprise. Stay tuned for more to come…)

Tags: IBM, Travelling, Trip, Barcelona, Customer Meetings, Dopplr, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Tom Raftery, Twitter, Startup 2.0, Events, Ferdy, Ferdy Rodenas, Tapas, Beers, Beach, Life, Work, Balance

This week promises to be one of the shortest, and weirdest, weeks I have ever had in the last few years, as I’ll be enjoying three national bank holidays in a row, starting on Wednesday and finishing up on Friday, and will therefore be taking those days off! Like someone I know would say … W00t! But if this week is going to be a strange one, the same would have to apply to last week as well!

No, I haven’t forgotten. It is that time of the week already where I will be sharing with you my weekly report on how I am doing with my giving up e-mail campaign. I was just mentioning how much of a weird week it was, since I was out of work most of the time and without even noticing. Yes, that is right, you would remember how Monday was the day I was coming back from an amazing week in the US, attending the Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit in IBM Yorktown Heights and visiting NYC for a couple of days, then Tuesday & Wednesday were a couple of in between days as I was preparing my way to participate in a customer workshop on Friday in Zürich, then time to travel again on Thursday and return back on Saturday evening.

Quite an intensive week, indeed! But, unfortunately, and, like usual, life had other plans for me. My younger brother was taken into hospital for an operation to address a Trigeminal Neuralgia on Tuesday afternoon, to then get operated on Wednesday and wait for a couple of days before going back home again. I am now happy to report that he is doing just fine and although he was supposed to leave the hospital during the course of today, he decided to stay in one more night and will be leaving back home during the course of tomorrow. So, that is a piece of big news. And good ones, too!

Then on Wednesday evening, and, as I was preparing everything for my trip on Thursday morning to Zürich, I finally developed a terrible cold and a very very painful sore throat with which I could hardly say a word, nor swallow a thing (Not even any liquids!). So when I developed 39 C of fever I decided to cancel the whole trip as there was not going to be a single chance I would be flying in that state and decided to spend Thursday and Friday in bed, resting, and taking it easy, while I was getting rid of that nasty bug I got while I was in NYC!

Oh, and a quick interruption in here, I have got some AMAZING colleagues at work, because within minutes of me canceling the whole thing I had one specific good friend who came over to the rescue, grabbed all of the materials I had for the workshop, flew to Zurich for me, and did a GREAT job! And today his manager had a lovely e-mail coming from me, and he himself a lovely surprise along with it as well! There, that’s social networking doing its magic once again. This friend of mine working for IBM as well, obviously, is someone I mostly communicate with through various social software tools, since we both work in different projects, teams, business units, countries, you name it!

Anyway, so you can imagine how awful it must have been having to experience all of that in a single week. It started quite all right with me returning back from a pleasant trip across the pond, but then over time it developed into plenty of different issues that have just gotten fixed over the course of the weekend. Younger brother is doing fine and with no more pain any longer! My cold is completely gone and feel much better, thank you very much and today has been my first day back at work after being knocked down for those two days for the first time in 11 years! Yes, *that* bad!

But, as you can probably imagine, there is one single thing that doesn’t stop in this life, and that is the amount of e-mails you get on a daily basis, so I have still been keeping up with the weekly report and if last week was the one that has resulted in one of the busiest so far from the 11 weeks I have been following this experiment, this time around, this week, things have gone back to normal! Phew!

I knew it! I knew that last week was an exception due to some  special circumstances I mentioned back then and surely glad to confirm that although I was gone again, for most of the week, the amount of interactions through e-mail have gone down again. Here is the weekly screen shot with last week’s results:

37! Yes, that is right! 37 e-mails, coming from 60, the previous week! Talking about having a remarkable difference from one week to the other! Who would have thought about that, right? Well, there you have it. Funny enough, I mentioned in a couple of internal social software tools that I was offline sick and that it would take me a little while to respond back in those same social software tools and the response seems to have even reached my incoming e-mails! Which I think, not sure about you, was just terrific, because just this morning, it meant that I didn’t have any e-mails to process and could just get to work right away, even after a tough week last week.

You see? This is what I mean when I keep saying I will not give up any time soon on this experiment. On the contrary. I am even already investigating some alternatives for diverting a good chunk of the e-mails I am getting at the moment, and see if I can reduce that incoming e-mail load down to 20, or under 20 a week! Will keep you all posted on it as time goes by.

For the time being, I am just going to leave things as is, and already getting busy finalising those drafts I mentioned I would be putting together summarising my experiences while I was at the IBM Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit as well as my experiences in NYC! Thus stay tuned as they would be finally coming up shortly!

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, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Conference Events, Summit, Zurich, Family, Sick, Illness, Brother, Trigeminal Neuralgia, Balance, Life, Things That Matter

What an exciting day today! And what an exhausting one, too! After having travelled over 17 hours I am completely shattered, yet, the excitement I just mentioned is winning over the whole thing! My body just wants to go and get some night sleep. My brain and my heart though are just buzzing from what promises to be one of those events very difficult to forget! Yes, folks, I am talking about IBM’s Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, which starts tomorrow and till the 17th of April, where I will be having the opportunity to present, for the first time and following the format of a BOFs session, my pitch on "Thinking out of the inbox: More Collaboration through less e-Mail". W00t! I can’t wait!!

But if I have to be honest with you folks, the main reason why I am so looking forward to this week’s Web 2.0 event is because for the first time in years I would be able to put together a face behind the text, the voice, the interactions of a whole bunch of people I will be meeting up with for the next few days. It is going to be one of those experiences where I will be taking social networking to the extreme once again. The experience through the Web on what you can get from social computing will have NOTHING to do with what is going to happen tomorrow and over the course of the next couple of days.

And today just saw a glimpse of it already. Arrived at the hotel, chilled out a bit, unpacking and getting comfy and, of course, had to get the wireless connection to see what various people were doing and right away and in less than 30 minutes I got my WHOLE week booked up with some really really cool events!! Way awesome! Not only meeting up with a great bunch of social software enthusiasts, but also exposure to lots and lots of great materials, fantastic keynote speakers, lovely dinners and meetups in the evening and after the event already packed with additional activities I will be confirming with different people involved. So if you tried to get in touch with me before, not to worry, I shall be sharing all of the details with you shortly. If you haven’t got in touch just yet, but planning to do so, by all means, I am sure we could spend some time catching up with each other! After all, one thing is the social computing interactions through the Web and another thing is just getting to experience it in real life.

Which is what I am about to do in the next few hours, so you may need to excuse the light blogging coming along, since I doubt I would have much time to blog it all initially due to the fact I will be running around like mad helping out that everything works out all right with the rest of the organisers. Plus attending some sessions, plus meeting some new people, plus getting to talk to some of those folks I know for years! and the list keeps growing larger and larger by the minute!

So much so that I think that in between enjoying the event, the multiple various conversations I will engage with, the social events and whatever else I sense there will be very little time blogging ahead of me. Thus that’s why this time around I am going to try something different…

Remember my twitterrhea over at Lotusphere 2008, where I got a chance to tweet quite a bit on all of the happenings during such a terrific event that I got exposed to? Well, this time is going to be different. To start with, I have gone ahead and created an exclusive new Twitter id: elsuacon, that I will only be twittering about the different events I will be attending from here onwards, and that getting started tomorrow. So I am planning to go wild on that one and make as much annotations as my little brain can process, with the hopes that those notes in Twitter will help with the creation of highlights through various blog posts on what the event has been. Thus the blog posts may not be that often, since the sessions are very very short and there are multiple places where I would have wanted to blog and won’t be able to, but my new Twitter ID, elsuacon, surely is going to get plenty of activity.

So you can imagine that with all that said, I am going to share with you one short, quick warning: do not subscribe to the channel unless you would want to go through some twitterrhea which may take over your own Twitter snippets. You can certainly keep commenting and engaging in the conversation over at my usual Twitter handle, but everything else, like session reviews, anecdotes, summaries, stuff learned, etc. etc. will go into this new Twitter account I have created.

Hopefully, that way, I can put together plenty of thoughts very quick for each session, which I could then summarise and put together with some nice wording after the whole thing is done as part of the Highlights. Apart from the day to day dialogue. At the same time, I am sure you have seen already how one of my fellow IBMers,  Sacha Chua, one of the folks I have been wanting to meet up for a long while now!, has created a hashtag for the event under web20summit, so folks can also follow our thoughts easier and much much faster.

And talking about thoughts, there would be plenty of other stuff I could talk about for what’s left of the week, but one step at a time, my body is seriously asking for some rest, and I think I am going to give in. So, stay tuned for plenty more to come and if you see I have gone far too quiet on this blog, it is for sure due to the fact that I am taking the extreme the usage of elsuacon, over at Twitter!

Can’t wait for all the fun to get started!!

Tags: Yorktown Heights, NY, IBM, Watson Research Center, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, Web20Summit, Web20Summit2008, Web20Summit08, Conference Events, Summit, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal KM, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Social Software Adoption, MacBook Pro, Twitter, Blogging, Con-Blogging, Metablogging, BOFs, Birds of a Feather, Crowne Plaza, White Plains, Events, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, elsuacon, Sacha Chua, Hashtags