As most of you may remember from a recent blog post I created a few weeks back, today was my first day at my new job as part of IBM’s Software (SWG) Tech Sales and Social Software Programs and Enablement Teams. Overall, I have been having an incredibly busy day with plenty of meetings, getting to know folks, prepare a number of different initiatives and tasks (Some of which I am hoping to be sharing over here as well at some point), buzzing around from one place to another, but all in all with plenty of good fun! Yes, I mentioned it way back, when I was first announced it, to me, this is my dream job come true! And today I have been able to validate that hunch. And big time!

Like I have just mentioned, I have been having some really good discussions around the subject of social software and the adoption of social computing within the Enterprise. Today, for instance, I participated, as one of the panelists, on one of the most powerful IBM (Behind the firewall) communities monthly events around the subject of ROI for Social Software (Yes, one of my favourite subjects recently) and the dialogue around it is still buzzing around in my head, despite the fact it took place several hours ago. I got to come back to it again and share some more insights on that particular subject.

Also another thing that I have been working on today is starting to figure out how to reach out to larger audiences and get them more involved with the subject of social networking. We already have got something piled and almost ready to go, but it will actually be taking place at a later time this month. Not to worry, I shall be blogging about it as well.

So, as you can imagine, it has been really busy the whole day today, with hardly any chance to hang out in many of the various social networking tools I frequently engage with, but I knew from the beginning of the day that it was going to be that hectic and still looked forward to it, as I knew I was going to be able to contribute into several different places on how knowledge workers can start embracing some of that social software culture!

But all that excitement was topped by something that has got to do pretty much with the subject of this blog post. Yes, I had an interesting, very busy, incredibly enlightening and rich day at work, but a day like today, 8 years ago, I became an IBM full time employee, having worked before for over two more years with a contractor company to IBM. Yes, that is right, I have been working for this company since 1997, but on November 1st 1999, I became an IBM full time employee.

Who would have thought that a bloke like me, graduated as an English teacher in 1995, at the University of Salamanca, Spain, would have been for so long in one of the largest IT companies in the world doing what he loves the most: working as a Knowledge Manager, Community Builder and Social Computing Evangelist! And landing in what appears to be his dream job, too!!

Is there a better way to celebrate your 8th anniversary in a company having gone through all that? I doubt it. The whole day has been an exhilarating set of events, one after the other, and if someone would have told me 8 years ago where I would be in 2007, I would have probably told them they were crazy. But then again, it looks like I am the one who is crazy, because I am still having plenty of good fun. And big time!

Tomorrow is Friday, just a day before the weekend, so guess what I will be doing after I am done with work… of course … CELEBRATING!!! It doesn’t happen every day that you make 8 years (10 in total, with the contractor work) in a job you never thought you would be getting the hang out of it long term. Well, you never know. I may have … after all.

Thus Happy 8th Anniversary, Mr! Hope you still go strong for another 8 years!

Tags: IBM, Software, SWG, Tech Sales, Social Software, Social Software Enablement, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Anniversary, University of Salamanca, Spain, Knowledge Worker, Celebrations, Life, Work, Job

Today is Blog Action Day! and I was actually pondering earlier on whether I would be one of the folks who would be creating a blog post related to the subject of the environment (or not), which is what Blog Action Day! tries to promote; every blogger creating a blog post for the day in their respective blogs and help spread of the message: “Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future“. James Governor, a.k.a. monkchips, mentioned that I should go ahead and share some further insights and here I am.

You may probably think, after reading that paragraph, that I may not be really concerned about the environment, right? Well, that is not the case by all means, specially living in such fragile place as I have been living for the last three and a half years. It has always been in my mind. I have always been watching different T.V. programmes on the subject to help educate myself on how I could help, or take different tests like the Ecological Footprint Quiz (Where I scored 4.3 where the average for Spain 4.7, mainly because of the different flights I have taken this year, which makes me wonder quite a bit, too! Perhaps I should stop travelling as much as I have been doing this year altogether) that would show how much on track I am. Not good enough, I know, but still trying really hard to improve my footprint by the day, it is a continuous learning process, because after all it’s the least we could all do, don’t you think?

So, while I have been thinking what I could blog about on the subject for Blog Action Day!, I mean, trying to establish the relationship between the environment and Knowledge Management along with Social Computing, it just hit me big time! And here I am. Putting together a few thoughts on how I think both KM and Social Computing could help out bring forward the conversation on how to preserve what’s been given to us so that we can pass it on to later generations in best of conditions.

They say that both KM and Social Computing are all about having an impact. An impact in the way you share knowledge, you collaborate, you connect and innovate with others. An impact that, if anything, has always been notorious for taking action, your *own* action, into wanting to change things and make things happen the right way.

Thus, in a day like Blog Action Day! I have finally decided to take action myself and comment on something that I have always found hard to believe and that has bugged me for quite some time now, but yet it’s happening day in day out. I am not sure what is going to happen next, but, at least, that is my way to show I care and how this article will be the kickoff of something that I hope will be happening soon.

We all know that one way to improve your footprint on the environment is to apply and live by the word recycle. Yes, recycle as much as you can! But what happens when you live in a small town of say 10,000 people, or less, like I do, and you find out there isn’t a single container you could make use of to recycle paper, plastic or metal? Yes, that is right. I live in a place that seems to be not very environmentally friendly since, except for glass, everything goes into the same bucket. That doesn’t seem to be right, does it?

That is why, thanks to Blog Action Day! and to prove the power of Social Computing and KM, I am going to start taking action myself and spread the message around. Recycling is essential for us all, not just for big cities. It’s our responsibility to recycle all we can, so that we can continue to educate ourselves in how to preserve what has been given to us. It is our responsibility to act now! (Regardless of where you are).

They say that the biggest impact of KM and Social Computing is when applied locally and I truly believe that (And for a number of years now). Thus with the excuse of today’s blog post I am actually going to take some action of my own, and continue to blog every now and then on how the little town I live in makes some more substantial progress into encouraging us all recycle more properly by providing us the means of doing so. Because, otherwise what is the point of everyone else recycling except us? What is the point of spreading the word around on things that are just not right, if we don’t react and fix them right away?!?! How difficult could it be to provide us with the right means to do some serious recycling of everything we make use of? Is it really that complicated? I doubt it.

Stay tuned for some progress as we move along. Feel free to link to this blog post to enhance that impact we can all have in our daily lives. Does your small town recycle enough? Does your local town hall worry too much about the waste we are all generating? If not, what are you willing to do to make it happen? I am not sure about you, but today I just got a new mission started. Want to join me? Start local and have that impact you always wanted to have: respect the environment!

Tags: Blog Action Day!, James Governor, Monkchips, T.V., Cuatro, Ecological Footprint Quizz, Ecological Footprint, Travelling, Recycle, Recycling, El Tablero de Maspalomas, Gran Canaria, Spain, Social Computing, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Social Software, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Collaboration, Innovation, Technology, Impact, Environment, Local, Earth Day

It’s Friday!! My brain toasted. Completely shattered. It’s been a long long exciting week with far too much happening and still digesting some more of it. But not to worry, I shall be sharing some of the stuff as time goes by.

Was just thinking about creating the daily weblog post over here, as usual, but in the end decided to just be your YouTube pimp for the day, once again, and leave you with another superb video clip from the Did You Know series.

Did You Know 2.0:

Yes, indeed, another very enlightening video clip, don’t you think? With plenty of food for thought to discuss further, I am sure, but right now I feel like the weekend is just around the corner, waiting for me, so I better get ready and grab it, before it leaves me behind …

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: Life, Changing World, Work Life Balance, WLB, YouTube, 21st Century, Future, Reality, Now!, Globalisation, Jobs, Learning, Connected, Connections, Technology, Shift Happens, Conversations

I cannot believe that another year has gone by just like that! Yes, that is right, folks. Today it is elsua.net’s second anniversary!! A day like today in October 2005 elsua.net was going live on the Internet. After 2.5 years of blogging internally behind the firewall, I finally decided, back then, to dive into the Internet blogosphere and join the crowds. Now, two years later, it still feels as if it was yesterday! Yet a few things have changed and quite a bit!

668 blog posts (This one included) and 1.148 comments (A ratio of 2.2% if you would be interested) later, I guess things are going pretty all right. I am still enjoying the experience as if it was my very first week of blogging! I know that most of you are not into statistics and everything, but I thought I would share a couple of comments to compare some of those details with the first anniversary.

I am now up to 714 RSS / Atom readers. Yes, that is right! That’s you folks out there faithfully reading some of the stuff I have been blogging over here over the last couple of years. Thanks ever so much for sticking around all along! Also just yesterday I reached the 60.000 page hits (Currently 60.225), which, for a Knowledge Management blog, I guess it’s not too bad. As you all may well know, the primary reason why I get to blog in all of my blogs is not to get some massive readership dropping by once or twice and then moving on. I would rather prefer to have a smart readership that sticks around for a while. So thanks a lot as well for dropping by every now and then!

I know that there are plenty of highlights I could mention over here of some of the really cool things that have happened over the course of the last year (Most of which you have already witnessed all along), but perhaps the one that will stick with me for a long while is the fact that starting Nov 1st I will be going into my dream job and part of that huge career move is due to elsua.net. At least, that is what people keep telling me. So if you still think that social computing does not have any kind of impact within your own career and the business you work for, you may need to think again

Because if it has worked out for me, there is no reason why it could as well work out for you! I am sure of that!

Here is to another 2 years of blogging! And hope you will be sticking around as well! I’ll see you all around!

(Oh, you may have noticed as well how, in the last few days, I have now tweaked the blog template and removed most of the different widgets that were slowing down the Web site itself and have moved most of those to my Facebook profile, but I will elaborate some more on this shortly, too!

Also according to Emezeta Rank, a new and rather interesting Spanish Web 2.0 offering, elsua.net could help me earn 850$/month. Isn’t that enticing or what? )

Tags: elsua, Luis Suarez, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Learning and Knowledge, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Communities, Online Communities, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, KM 2.0, Conversations, Anniversary, Blogiversary, IBM, Metablogging, Readership, Social Computing Evangelist, Dream Job

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!!)