After being rather hectic the last couple of days, working on a couple of presentations for more upcoming conference events, plus my regular work duties, including meetings galore all over the place, here I am back again at the blog. This time around with something that I had the intention of blogging already beginning of the week but that Jerry Bowles‘ SMT Blogger of the Week - Luis Suarez, the Blogger from Paradise displaced till I could find a better time for it. And that time is today!

As you may well remember, this past Monday, 17th of March, St. Patrick’s Day, I was actually celebrating the fact that I have now been living and working remotely from one of the places I fell in love many many years ago and which I knew at some point I would be coming back. Yes, last Monday was my fourth anniversary of having moved to Gran Canaria! I guess that time flies when you are having fun, right?

Anyway, plenty of folks who have gotten to know me over the years, both in real life and virtually through the various social networks we share in common, have been wondering why I am just so crazy about this island. After all it is just plenty of sunshine and beaches all over the place, eh? Well, not exactly, there is just so much more!, that people don’t know about that, after being four years over here, I thought it would be a good time to change that perception a bit.

Yes, I know, what I am just about to announce over here in this blog may not have much to do, probably nothing, with the regular blogging activities I have been carrying out over here on topics like Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing or Enterprise 2.0 over the last few months. But I thought that after four years of having contemplated the idea, I guess it is just about time to announce that from now onwards, and, on a more or less regular basis, I am planning to share over here the odd blog post with various different references to some of the most emblematic natural spots that Gran Canaria has got to offer.

That way, you would have the opportunity to find out for yourselves why I have fallen in love with this island for its variety, amongst many many other things; after all, you don’t name such a tiny island a mini-continent for nothing, right? If you would remember, that is, if you have been a long time reader from this blog you would know how for a good number of weeks this new initiative I am trying to re-introduce again was an integral part of this blog and after a little while I stopped it for a few months. Well, now it is the time to bring it back. As a way to celebrate the four years I have been living over here and also as a way to show you what keeps me going and enjoying every minute of it.

So whenever the odd blog post on this subject would come up, I will be sharing rather a bunch of photos, probably from my Flickr stream, and / or some video footage with short clips of no longer than 2 minutes, 3 tops!, that I would be recording with my Nokia N95 and uploading it into my DailyMotion account from various different places that have captivated my heart all along and which over the course of the last few years have made me understand and comprehend some of the most impressive beauty of this island of Gran Canaria. Yes, I know, so much more than just sun & beaches!

And to get things started, here are a couple of short video clips I shoot a couple of months back, on a splendid sunny and warm day, where I decided to go to the countryside and up into the mountains to check out some of the stunning scenery you can ever imagine. The name of this place from the video clips is Roque Bentaiga, one of the most emblematic, beautiful and stunning natural spots from the entire island and one that as you come closer to it you can sense how magical the place is on its own! Just as I get to write this down I get goose bumps all over the place from thinking that a few weeks back I was nearly at the very top! And here is why:

Thus I hope you enjoy this new section, here in my blog, I am planning on updating every now and then sharing with you all some of the reasons why I may have been living over here for over four years, but I still love every minute of it and as time goes by, and I get a chance to share some more pictures and video clips, I am hoping to be sharing some of the charms that this island of Gran Canaria has got to offer!

Are you ready?

(No, not to worry, I am not abandoning the creation of blog posts on the major themes from this blog that you folks have been familiar with all along. I am just sharing with you all some of the reasons of why I am where I am and enjoying it a great deal!, so that, hey, you never know, whenever you may be coming this way you know some of the cool places you could check out! Consider me as your virtual touring guide from this precious mini-continent island!)

Tags: Gran Canaria, Roque Bentaiga, Bentaiga, Landscapes, Mountains, Sunshine, St. Patrick’s Day, Travelling, Photography, Video, Flickr, DailyMotion, Nokia N95, N95, Mini-Continent, Beaches, Sun, Life, Life Work Balance

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!, to all of those folks who may be celebrating it today! I know that for plenty of the people who get to read this blog, today is a special day with plenty of things to celebrate and enjoy throughout. Well, you are not alone. I am, too! A day like today, 17th of March, back in 2004, my life, both on a work and personal levels, changed drastically! I came to live and work remotely to Gran Canaria, the place I once fell in love with about 12 years ago! Yes, that is right! Today is my fourth anniversary enjoying quite a unique situation: The Blogger from Paradise.

It is funny! Earlier on this morning, I had the intention of sharing with you folks something new I was going to re-introduce into this blog, as a way to celebrate these four years I have been living over here fully engaging with social software both inside and outside of the corporate firewall, and lo and behold, there I was having to postpone it for a few more hours, as I got alerted about something that I thought would be worth while sharing as well as part of such important celebration as today’s.

Yesterday late afternoon, I got contacted, through Skype, by Jerry Bowles, Co-founder and CEO from the Social Media Today collective, and he kindly asked me whether I would want to do an IM interview with him detailing some more about my role within IBM as a social computing evangelist as well as sharing some further thoughts on the impact that social software is having not only within IBM, but also with its various employees, like myself. Of course, I just couldn’t resist such an interesting offer and the result of it is SMT Blogger of the Week - Luis Suarez, The Blogger in Paradise.

In that particular article you would be able to read our Skype IM conversation on what kind of impact social networking has been having with myself and my various interactions with other knowledge workers, including my own boss, Gina Poole, who still keeps actively engaged with the internal blogosphere. Quite an interesting read, which clearly indicates how things are shifting within the corporate world, where employees may not longer be stranded in a fixed office in a traditional work location. On the contrary, with today’s pervasiveness of social computing along with the high penetration levels of broadband Internet connectivity, knowledge workers may be having the unique opportunity to decide where they would like to be working as their most motivating space to deliver on the job day in day out for an extended period of time!

Now, I am sure that everyone would understand that there are various different circumstances on how various knowledge workers get to interact with other colleagues, customers or business partners, but it is also very accurate to think that the traditional restrictions we once had about having to work from a fixed office work location may no longer be relevant in today’s distributed world. Such is the impact that social software is having amongst our current workforce where over 42% of the total population is now mobile; and I am surely glad to be one of those very very lucky guys who has got his dream job within such a large enterprise. And in Paradise.

Many people keep asking me what is the main business value from social software, and all along I have been saying something that certainly resonates with plenty of other folks out there as well. I am sure. In my own case, the main business value I am getting through social computing is the fact that the last three jobs I have had, have actually been given to me because of my corporate blogging activities, amongst several other tasks related to social networking. So, for those folks out there who may be thinking that that there isn’t value in social software, they ma need to think about it, because throughout my own experiences you can see that the impact can be tremendous, to say the least!!

What a great way to celebrate four years of coming to the place where I feel like home. Always have. Always will. And get to work on what I am really passionate about at the same time: Social Computing, Community Building and Knowledge Sharing! The picture shared below is just one of the thousands and thousands of reasons why I fell in love with the island four years ago and still am, just like in the first day …

Roque Bentaiga

Tags: St. Patrick’s Day, Saint Patrick, Patrick, Gran Canaria, Paradise, Jerry Bowles, Social Media Today, SMT, IBM, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Gina Poole, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Blogs, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Workplace, Virtual Teams, Online Communities, Skype, Mobile Workforce, Mobility, Flexibility, Work Life Balance, WLB, Working At Home, WAH, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, KM, Gran Canaria, Roque Bentaiga, Bentaiga, Mountains

First day at work today, after having enjoyed a wonderful week, last week, in Zürich, presenting at a couple of events and with various different meetings talking about social computing and social software, and one of the things that I keep thinking about, and reflecting some more, is the beauty of face to face social networking activities I experienced. Nothing like the human touch to nurture and work through your relationships to help improve your social capital!

As you can imagine, I had a fantastic week over there and I am surely looking forward to coming back, specially to meet up again some of the great folks I got introduced to during the course of the week. Even though they may all well be a little bit crazy! Yes, you are reading it right. Crazy!!! And if not judge for yourself…

Folks, meet Daniel Saeuberli, Collaboration, Messaging & Portals at IBM Switzerland, and Urs Schollenberger, Manager of Lotus Sales & PLM Switzerland! Two of the hosts I had while I was there for the entire week and who went further and beyond their call of duty to make my stay incredibly comfortable having every single thing sorted out for me and nothing to worry about! Just two wonderful people, to be honest! If you ever get a chance to bump into either of them, go and stop them and talk with them. You will learn a thing or two, I am sure! I did!

One of the many things I learnt was how Daniel is, like someone I know would say, a little bit crazy! Yes, folks, meet Daniel in his spare time. Here is his Facebook profile to give you a hint on what he enjoys the most. It is not playing cards, believe me! Yes, that is right, Daniel is into skydiving, but not the usual skydiving that we are all used to and everything with people jumping off with their parachutes.

Daniel takes it to the extreme and, my goodness, does that word get a new meaning when he is around!! Check this out. Have a look into this video clip placed in YouTube of just a little bit under 7 minutes, where you can see him in action:

WOW! You may be thinking, right? Well, yes, so was I!! Daniel is the one doing all the shooting with the video camera while heading down at an incredible speed, in the middle of the mountains, with plenty of snow and rather cold, I can imagine, and still having a superb time! I still remember the conversation we had last week where he explained how it all got started for him. Purely fascinating!! (And I would fall short in describing how it felt back then!)

Not to worry, I am not going to jumping any time soon, although he tried to convinced me over a drink or two, but just watching over the video you can see what kind of passion drives Daniel and his team to do what he gets to do on a rather regular basis. I think it is just remarkable that out of his already pretty busy and tight schedule he still gets to do stuff like that!!

And they are looking for sponsors for their extreme skydives!! Can you imagine? Having your product or logo flying around in such a stunning scenery going at an incredible speed and recording it all while going down? Ha! Talking about viral marketing, folks!! Nothing compared to that, I am sure.

I tell you, it was a real pleasure meeting both Daniel and Urs, and a whole bunch of other folks while in there. But it was some serious fun as well get to know what these folks get to do, and I mean not just the business person, but the complete person. With their craziness and fascination for skydiving, errr, I mean extreme skydiving!!

Oh, and guess what? Some of his good friends, who are also doing lots of skydiving, actually hang around in a place, which is just about 10 minutes from where I live! In fact, I actually get to see them every single Sunday whenever I go to the beach! Small world, eh? heh Amazing!!

Tags: Zürich, Switzerland, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Social Capital, Daniel Saeuberli, IBM Switzerland, IBM CH, Urs Schollenberger, Facebook, YouTube, Skydiving, Extreme Skydiving, Speedflying, Extreme Sports

The last couple of blog posts that I have put together were actually detailing various different highlights from the trip to Switzerland I have been doing this week presenting at Lotusphere Comes To You, both in Zürich and Geneva, respectively. Well, this third entry will be the final post from the series where I will be sharing over here some of the highlights from the remaining of the week, Wednesday, Thursday and today Friday.

As you may well know, the original plan was to actually meet with a bunch of customers and conduct a number of different meetings and workshops around the subject of social computing and the kind of impact it is having within the corporate world. Not sure why, or what the reasons were, but all of those meetings have been postponed for later in the year and since I have got a non-refundable flight ticket I actually decided to stay over here in IBM Zürich, Vulkanstr., and enjoy some office time.

Mind you, I know that for a whole bunch of you, this may sound like something very common and not unusual, but believe me, for me it surely was. I have been working remotely from home for the last four years and my closest office location is over 1,000kms. So coming back to an office space after that long surely was going to be quite an interesting experience, to say the least.

What I enjoyed the most? I never thought I would be saying this, but the canteen! And big time! The choice of dishes and various different options is incredible compared to others I have been to in the past. What I enjoyed the most? Hummm, not sure I thought I would be saying this either, but actually being surrounded by a whole bunch of strangers who are my colleagues (Didn’t know any of them personally, by the way), yet didn’t know much more about them. I guess I have been spoiled by Twitter and its lovely ambient intimacy for just too long! Ha! There I said it! Oh, oh, by the way, have you checked out the awesome 2,5 minutes video put together by the Common Craft folks under Twitter? (Show it to your colleagues, friends & family, because I am sure they are going to love it and learn quite a bit where you have been hanging out all this time! And if you want to get them on board, make them watch it!! Yes, I know, it is that good!!)

Right, so after that little discrepancy of being more connected to my social networks online than to those folks who were sitting next to my desk (What a weird feeling! I need to fix that for the next time, specially if my hosts are not there Yes, I know, busy people with customer commitments, too!) I actually enjoyed the stay quite a bit.

I had the opportunity to witness how social computing is slowly, but steadily, taking over the day to day interactions over here. In fact, one of the coolest things I have been doing over here was to recruit social computing evangelists for one of the communities I am co-leading and which is part of my day job! I went from zero members from Switzerland to over half a dozen in a couple of hours! heh Yes, there is nothing like recruiting face to face over a cup of coffee and some great conversations! heh

It was so cool to be able to reconnect as well with some of the folks I used to work with remotely many many years ago and see how we have all moved through different paths to then reconnect again. And we used Beehive for getting together over lunch and get some conversations going. No e-mail, no IM, just purely Beehive! (Goodness, I love that social software tool! And hope to be able to blog about it very shortly as well, too!!)

The interesting part from this particular gathering was to actually get to hear first hand from a bunch of folks sharing with everyone what their experiences have been with social computing over here; the struggle, the challenge, the excitement of getting things done, the adoption rates going up, etc. etc. Till one of the folks being with us shared a hard copy of a newspaper article that I just found too funny! So much so that I couldn’t resist taking a picture of it with my N95: e-mail coming to an end (Article in German, by the way). I bet you guessed what we talked for the next few minutes, right? Yes, indeed, about fighting and challenging e-mail on the workplace! *So* re-energising, to say the least!

For the rest, and after having spent well over two hours of lunch (Yes, I heart those kind of lunches!! heh) we all went back to our desks and mentioned we would meet again when I get back, some time in April or June this year, we shall see. But one thing for sure is that I can’t wait.

From there onwards back to the desk in an open office with plenty of buzz and having to mute my phone while in conference calls because my team thought I was in some kind of party with all the noise in the background! (I wish! ). Overall, I had an incredible week meeting some really smart and passionate folks who live social computing, so much so, that before I came over here I thought it would be rather dead, and on the contrary, it is alive and kicking and very much so!! Just brilliant!

Finally, from here a special word of gratitude to the wonderful hosts I have been having throughout the week. They have made my stay incredibly pleasant and very indulging, so much so, that they all know I will be back!! And I can’t wait for it, to be honest! Zürich still is one of my favourite cities in Europe and when you have got special places in dodgy areas like Lily’s, event better!!

Till next time!!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, Lotusphere Comes To You, LCTY, LCTY2008, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Communities, Social Media, Learning, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Zurich, Geneva, Switzerland, e-mail, Office, Lily’s, IBM Zürich, Twitter, Ambient Intimacy, Commoncraft, Screencasts, Beehive, N95, Gratitude

My goodness!! What a week! And it is just Wednesday!! I am surely looking forward to the weekend! Hummm, did I say that it is just Wednesday?!? Can’t wait for it soon enough!! As you may have noticed, over the last couple of days, I have been doing a little bit of light blogging here in my external blogs, more than anything else because of how incredibly busy I have been with multiple projects whose deadlines are coming to a close this week. Phew! (Now you know why I am looking forward to the weekend!).

Between preparing a bunch of presentations for other folks and for myself on social computing for upcoming events I will be doing in all over the place (check out my Dopplr account for more details on where I plan to be over the next few weeks), and also putting together a bunch of enablement materials on various IBM social software tools for the team I am working with, things have been rather hectic, to put it mildly. On top of that, more and more people keep asking me to come over and present for them on social computing and explain some of the stuff that is going on at IBM in that regard, so kind of ensuring that I don’t mix up with those various invitations. That’s also taking a bit of time, for sure. Phew!

But, but, … but … I am surely loving it! I am enjoying it quite a bit because for the first time in several years that I have been doing lots of stuff around the subject of social computing, this time around the focus, the commitment, the energy to share that passion on social software all over the place is finding its way around and people keep asking about it and how they can engage themselves with it! And that, folks, is way cool! I have been saying this for a little while now, but the expectations that I had for this new job have actually exceeded all what I had in mind four months ago and ever so much more!! It is just fascinating!! I mentioned back then I was coming into my dream job and so far it hasn’t fallen short from that perception!

I am not too worried about the fact that it is taking me more and more of my time along with it, since I am thoroughly enjoying it thus far and that is what I always wanted in the first place for the last five years! I know that my regular blogging activities will be coming back shortly, too!

Apart from that, I am also enjoying my fight against my work e-mail and making some really good progress there. Still going strong! I know that I owe you folks out there a couple of blog posts on how things are going, and those will be coming up shortly. But for now, I just thought I would share a couple of comments in here to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you . Just been a bit too hectic and that regular blogging will resume shortly with a whole bunch of stuff I want to share across not only from what I am getting exposed to, but also what I am seeing in the space of social computing in general and something major that will be happening to me in a couple of months that is going to change my life for good! Yes, it is that good! But you will have to wait till it becomes official … (Hint, hint, I already mentioned what it would be about a little while ago in Twitter). Yeah, I know, … a bit nasty! heh

But that will keep you busy trying to figure it out while I get back to normal over here and start putting together some more content on what drives my passion at the moment:

 Social Computing & Knowledge Sharing. Knowledge Sharing & Social Computing!

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Weblogging, Light Blogging, Dopplr, IBM, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Remote Collaboration, Dream Job, Progress Report, Life, Work, Hectic, Twitter, Passion, Commitment, Energy, Efforts, Focus

Today has been one of those incredibly hectic days with all sorts of things happening in various fronts. One of them I am hoping to be able to blog about in the next day or two. We shall see. It’s been rather interesting and exciting (Apart from very thought-provoking at times!) at the same time. But more on that later..

For now, I just want to share with you folks a video clip that one of my fellow IBM colleagues shared internally and which, to say the least, will make you think twice about the things you and I care. Yes!, another one of those blog posts where it’s the small things that matter… And here it is why:

After watching through that I am sure that one gets to learn a thing or two on putting the right things into the right perspective, don’t you think?

Update 14/02/08 : Special thanks to David Rojas for the additional comments and for finding the video in YouTube, much better to link to and embed than the original, so … updated!

Tags: Life, Priorities, Work, Money, Perspectives, Small Things, Small Things That Matter, What Really Matters, Economy, Poverty, Richness, Wealth