As most of you folks out there may already know by now, specially if you had a chance to read the blog post I created about this topic about two weeks ago, this has been my third week without e-mail at work! Well, not entirely accurate, people still keep sending me e-mails and everything, but instead of me going ahead and replying to each and everyone of them, I don’t. I go out there into IBM’s various social computing spaces and provide the answers over there to them (And to the wider IBM as well as a result of that!), with the final outcome that they know from there onwards where they can go to get a much faster response from me. And e-mail is not it!

To all this, you may remember that I only apply a single exception, which is when people send me an e-mail that may well be of a very sensitive nature, i.e. confidential material, or a private one-on-one conversation. The rest is going out elsewhere… i.e. on to social software tools!

I haven’t been blogging much over here on my actual progress report on how I am doing, whereas in my corporate blog I have been sharing, at least, one or two blog posts a week, so I thought I would break that over here and start sharing with you folks my progress. At least, with a weekly blog post, so that over time, and, over the course of the next few months, you would be able to find out how things are going.

Earlier on this week, I got contacted via IM at work by a couple of folks who thought I would not be able to pull it off together for so long and that eventually I would be giving in to it. And to that my answer has been that today is the end of the third week and I am still going strong. When I decided to take the plunge and make this bold move, I knew one thing for sure: there is no way back! Ever onwards!

Thus, on to the third week, and here is a screen shot with the progress report:

As you would be able to see what it once was 30 to 45 e-mails a day, now has turned into 39 e-mails a week!! And this just on the third week of trying it out! Over time I am expecting to keep this number going lower and lower and in the end try to re-purpose how I use e-mail at work, i.e. basically what it was first initially intended for: a one on one conversation / communication instrument. For the rest bring on the open, public conversation into whatever IBM’s social computing tool we both may be sharing!!

And you know the weirdest part of it all? Well, you are not going to believe it, but subconsciously I am starting to apply the same principles to my external e-mail in how I handle every single incoming e-mail and so far it is going great! I am starting to see a reduction in there as well. Not as drastic, but still very relevant and noteworthy. We shall see how it evolves further.

One thing for sure, is that I am getting a kick out of it, because by bringing the conversation out in the open and collaboratively work with my social networks to get the job done, I feel like I am contributing ever so much more to the overall social computing space and I guess that for a social software evangelist that is not a bad thing … is it?

Have a good one, everyone!!

(Oh, and now that I am done with various deadlines I had to finish off this week, and seeing what a long weekend I have got ahead of me as I am starting to prepare to go to Zürich on Sunday, I shall be getting back to the blog posts where a couple of folks have been sharing some further comments and will keep adding further into the overall conversation. See you there!)

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, Confidentiality, Privacy, Private Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0

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

A few weeks ago one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Peter Andrews (Faculty and Innovation Strategist - Executive Business Institute) asked whether I’d like to have an interview with him talking about the topic of blogging and the kind of impact that is currently having within the corporate world. As you can probably imagine I just couldn’t ignore such an invitation and we spent a bit over one hour talking about blogs and how they are shaping the conversation within the enterprise. And so Effecting Blogging: Joining the Conversation was born and published on ibm.com.

That is right. Earlier on today, that particular interview I did with Peter was published over on the Internet and, if you are interested, you can grab it over here. To give you an idea of what you will find in there he is the summary published on the Web site:

"To some blogging is intriguing but mysterious. But with some basic tools and a few guidelines, it can be an effective business tool and even replace email as the center of work activity. The keys to successful blogging are writing about a theme you are passionate about, being consistent and persistent, having a thick skin and recognizing, above all else, that you are not in control. In essence, blogging is interactive, which means listening and reacting is as important as having your say."

From there onwards, there were a number of different questions I went through with Peter and I thought I would share some of them over here as well, so that you can get a glimpse of what you will find in the interview and how you may be able to skim through them easily:

Q. Could you say a bit about social computing and its emerging value to businesses?

Q. Back to blogging. What advice would you give to someone who wants, not necessarily to blog, but to get the most value (from a business perspective) from the blogs that are out there?

Q. This naturally leads to the advice you’d give someone who wants to be a successful blogger (for his or her career / business), since participation becomes inevitable. What would that advice be?

Q. One of your theses, which you put into practice, is making blogging, rather than face-to-face meetings or e-mail, the center of your work / life. Could you walk me through a typical day that illustrates this?

Q. This is almost unimaginable for some of us. Can it be approached with baby steps? If someone wants to make blogging central to their business life, what steps should they take?

Q. What are some of the creative uses of blogs that you’ve seen? What is your advice to those people?

Q. In your blogging life, have you had any surprises?

Q. On the other hand… Have you seen any blogging disasters? Any cautionary tales?

Q. Blogging, as with much of Web 2.0, is participatory, and possibly democratizing. Doesn’t this in some ways threaten management?

Q. Why do companies need to accept the ethos of blogging? Can there be a compromise between current business culture and this emerging participatory culture?
Does anything about the blogosphere worry you?

Q. How will blogging transform society?

Q. How does it change the discourse? Does it open up new topics? Change the depth? Engage new participants with different perspectives from text
bloggers?

Q. What do you see in the future for blogging and allied practices?

Yes, I realise that it is a long interview (Guess that’s what happens when you are excited about the topic you are passionate about! ), so without much further ado, I am just going to point you to Effecting Blogging: Joining the conversation from where you can download the full PDF IBM Executive Technology Report.

Hope you enjoy it, just as much as I did going through the interview with Peter. And stay tuned, because in that same interview I have already hinted some things about my new mission at work with the current job I do on a daily basis for this year. Some people may find it shocking. Some people may find it impossible. I can only say it’s now my reality!!

Tags: IBM, Executive Technology Report, Executive Business Institute, EBI, Peter Andrews, Effecting Blogging, Blogs, Metablogging, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Innovation, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, ibm.com, e-mail, Productivity, Blogging 101, Technology Adoption

As you may have well read from my various twitterings during the course of yesterday, I am already here in Orlando attending what’s supposed to be the IBM conference of conferences worldwide: Lotusphere 2008. The actual conference starts today with the general speaker session, something that plenty of us are looking forward to big time, so much so that there will be a repeat of the session at a later time today as well, seeing how many more people than last year are attending the event. That clearly tells you something about the importance of what we are about to witness. And not to worry, I am hoping to be able to blog it, or, a least, twitter it.

But first things first. A couple of highlights from yesterday’s pre-event, with the Welcome Reception party and a few other things. If I were to summarise yesterday from my own perspective I guess I would be saying two different keywords: shopping and networking.

Yes, that is right. On Sunday morning, instead of going down to the lobby and get registered for the overall event, and from there onwards hanging out with some other folks, I have actually spent most of it shopping locally for some clothes and toiletries, because after a rather exhausting and extenuating trip that took me over 24 hours apparently, the couple of airlines I was flying with managed to lose my luggage! Yes, indeed! Orlando has got something really special about this because I have been a couple of times already and in all instances they have managed to lose my luggage. And that is over the course of years and with various different airline companies. Sigh.

On top of that, last Saturday there was, a lovely severe weather alert which resulted in me arriving at the hotel nearly four hours after the original time I was supposed to be there! Goodness, was I happy to be upgraded to a junior suite at the Swan hotel when I got here! That, folks, is what real customer service is all about!

So, after that bumpy start of the conference which ended up with me staying at a very very nice hotel room, getting some shopping done (Hopefully, my luggage would get here before I would need some more clothes… Fingers crossed…) and trying to sort out everything I’ll just go and detail the second highlight of the day which was getting myself into some serious social networking in real life!! And that experience, folks, was just awesome!!

Even though plenty of people were actually hanging out at the local bars catching up with some American Football (Yeah, I know exactly what you are thinking! Me, too!!) I eventually got to catch up with some folks I have wanted to meet up for quite a while. Alan Lepofsky (Who is going to be announcing something really cool during the conference… Stay tuned! Apart from something else I have been very very keen on getting my hands on for a little while now. W00t!), the one and only, Ed Brill (Who is way way too much fun and who apparently knows more about me that whatever I would have imagined! Ha! There you have it, social networking working its magic for you! heh). There have been plenty more folks I finally caught up with, and for those of you interested in finding out some more who they may well be, plus some other updates I’ll be putting together I have uploaded already a batch of pictures into my Flickr stream which will continue to go on during the course of the conference itself.

From there onwards I got to finally meet my team within the IBM Software group, the Social Software Programs & Enablement team! And that was just fantastic! Why? Because I only got to join the team about 2 months ago, and to be given the opportunity to meet them all up at a Welcome Reception party is probably the best of options to get to know them all and get busy with some serious team building!! I guess plenty of virtual teams would have the opportunity to get started the way I did last night! And yes, very very personal opinion, folks, but my team is just like no other! Wonderful bunch of folks really excited about getting things done while having some serious fun, along the lines! Yes, my ideal dream job!!

And, finally, if there was one other massive highlight from yesterday was the fact that I got one of my dreams come true as well and met one of the folks I have admired for quite some time now, more than anything else because of the kind of impact he has had, and still has, in most of us who have been following him wherever he may be going. Yes, that is right, last night, while we were at Kimono’s (A Japanese karaoke bar at the Swan hotel) I was actually sitting next, without knowing, the unforgettable Ze Frank. Yes, that same Ze Frank you are thinking about! How cool is that?!?!? You go into a bar with a bunch of your friends and all of a sudden you bump into Ze and start talking!! Whoooaaaahhh!!! That’s what just happened last night and must say that he is even cooler and way much more fun in real person! But I guess you already knew that, right?!?!

So that was it, a bit of a long blog post, I know, but plenty of things and excitement going on, don’t you think? Well, today there will be plenty more, I am sure! Stay tuned for my twitterings and blog posts because I am hoping to be able to share some more with you folks!

But so far, all of the really really high expectations I had about Lotusphere 2008 have been exceeded and big time!!! And that was just the pre-event! Imagine what it would be like over the next couple of days… Hang in there! It’s going to be a lovely ride!!

(Oh, here are some pictures of some of the folks I have met during the course of yesterday … Recognise anyone?)

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Shopping, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Communities, Alan Lepofsky, Ed Brill, Flickr, Photos, Team Building, IBM Software, Ze Frank, Kimono’s, Swan Hotel, Orlando, Twitter, Blogging, Metablogging, Learning

As you may have well already read over at Dennis Howlett’s Irregular Enterprise blog, or through my various twitterings, this coming Saturday I will be travelling again to the US to attend my first conference of the year and must say that I will be starting with an awesome event that I have been looking forward to for the last couple of years. Yes, indeed, this coming Saturday, and till Friday afternoon next week, I shall be in Orlando, Florida, attending IBM’s Lotusphere 2008!!!

To say that I am incredibly excited about the whole thing is probably an understatement, because I know I am off to a wild ride (Never better said!)!! This time is going to be a special occasion as well, since I will not be presenting at the event itself. I will just be splitting my time in attending as many of the sessions as I possibly can and hanging out at the "Social Software @ IBM" booth where I will be talking to a whole bunch of customers on the topic of social software, social computing and how IBM is making use of such tools to improve the knowledge sharing and collaboration across the enterprise.

At the same time I will be spending quite a bit of time demoing, while talking, of course, some of the most interesting IBM social software tools that have been coming along over the last few months, as well as giving folks a teaser about a couple of them that haven’t seen the light publicly just yet, but of which you will find out some more about very very soon! One of them, specially, is the one holding me from sharing the slide deck and pitch I did at the recent IBM iForum event in Zurich that I have been talking about quite a bit. Stay tuned because that one is coming up shortly as well! Thus if you are around and are willing to spend some time seeing what’s going on in that space come over to the "Social Software @ IBM" booth and say "Hi!"

As I get myself more and more exposed to various different details, I shall be sharing them over here. However, there are already tons of materials available all over the place that you can check out to see what the event is going to be like.  As a starter check out the Technorati tag for the event: Lotusphere2008. Then you can head over to Planet Lotus, which I am sure is going to be raving with commentary throughout the event (Already got started!). There is also a Ning space built up for the occasion as well as a Twitter channel. And the list goes on and on and on…

Also, and while you are busy trying to figure it all out, you may want to check out the link to the Tracks and Sessions to see some of the outstanding materials that will be presented throughout the few days the conference lasts. I would be, of course, very interested in following up with all of the different sessions related to social software and social computing (InsideLotus - Lotus, Portal and Collaboration Software has actually put together a very nice summary in this case, if you would want to read further on it right away).

Oh, you may be thinking that checking out all of the different sessions and tracks through the Web site is not really that friendly, right? Well, here is Genii Software coming to our rescue and putting together a superb Lotus Notes database with which you can navigate through the entire event and find the sessions you would be interested in! Here is another link to one of the most recent blog posts on the topic where you would be able to read some more about it. This would certainly become really handy, while I am stranded in airplanes for over 20 hours this coming Saturday, don’t you think?

Finally, there is one other thing that I would want to share further with you. Stay tuned for the various multiple updates that would be coming from various prolific Lotus bloggers, because I am sure they are not going to stop a single minute before, during and after the event. Special attention to Ed Brill’s blog, Alan Lepofsky’s, Chris Reckling & Ted Stanton’s InsideLotus, Mary Beth Raven’s blog, Rocky Oliver’s Lotus Geek and The Taking Notes Podcast blogs, amongst many many others, because I am sure they will all keep you busy for quite a bit. Oh, and I, too, would be looking forward to Blogging community birds-of-a-feather, of which you can read plenty more over at Ed’s blog.

In short, it looks like it is going to be one of those events difficult to forget! Plenty of good fun all around! And since it is my first Lotusphere I bet I am going to enjoy it even more! More than anything else because I am seriously looking forward to meet up with a bunch of folks I work with in this distributed world day in day out, also meet up with some of the folks I have been reading of their blogs for so many years (It surely is going to be nice to put a face behind the quality writings); and finally get together on to some really good discussions with various different people on social software and social computing! What else can I ask for?

Oh, yes, I got myself an extra battery for the MacBook Pro I’ll be bringing in with me, so it looks like I am all set! Let’s hope that the network connection would work as you would expect (So that I can blog about some of the stuff that would be going on during the event); that I get the chance to show the demos the way I intend to (Yes, indeed, I will be using the Mac for those, too!! ) and that I am able to find the folks I want to meet up amongst the several thousand people attending!! So if you are around in Orlando during that time (Starting this coming Saturday and till Friday morning) and want to say "Hi!" or go together for a drink or two while doing some massive social networking … stay in touch! You can comment on this blog post, contact me through Twitter, or Facebook, or the Ning Lotusphere space, or e-mail, or … well, you know where to find me

See you there!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Collaboration 2.0, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Learning, Communities, Dennis Howlett, Irregular Enterprise, Orlando, Florida, iForum, Innovation, Ning, Planet Lotus, Twiter, Genii Software, Lotus Notes, Notes, Connections, Lotus Connections, Quickr, Lotus Quickr, Sametime, Lotus Sametime, Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Chris Reckling, Ted Stanton, InsideLotus, Mary Beth Raven, Rocky Oliver, Lotus Geek, Taking Notes Podcast, Blogging, Metablogging, Mac, MacBook Pro, MBP, Apple

While still trying to digest some of the fantastic, overwhelming and exciting reactions to the initial blog post on Next Generation Knowledge Sharing & Learning Online Conference Event - In Spring 2008? and while I am still trying to figure out a couple of things before I comment further back into that particular blog entry on further steps, I thought I would go ahead and do some light blogging on a topic that I seem to have been tagged from a couple of folks already, who I read on a regular basis and who have been participating in a couple of different memes on a very similar topic: Seven things you didn’t know about me by Martin Koser and Gullible about Work / Blog Balance by Reasonable Robinson.

Yes, that is right. It is another meme where the rules seem to be pretty straight forward:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.

2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself.

3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.

4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

And although Martin’s meme post seems to be slightly different I thought about combining both of them since the overall outcome seems to be pretty similar. So here we go with the meme post and here you have eight random facts about myself that you may not have heard / read elsewhere:

1. I was born and raised in a very small village in León, which is where I have spent a good chunk of my life. Another good chunk is spread around The Netherlands (Where I lived 7 years) and, finally, Gran Canaria, where I have been living for nearly four years now.

2. I first got exposed to the world of computers in high school (Yes, I was one of the folks who owned an Amstrad CPC 464!) and back then my marks on computer lessons were really bad, which gave me the impression I would never, ever, work with computers. Fast forward to today … Already 10 years in the IT world and still going strong!

3. After I graduated from University, I spent one year working in Thale, Germany, where I got to experience one of the most severe winters in my life thus far with up to -30C. for several days!! But I must say I loved the overall experience quite a bit!!

4. First time I came to Gran Canaria was in 1996 (For a very short period of time) and back then I knew I would be coming back at some point. It took me only 8 years to make that happen

5. I actually got my job at IBM while I was spending a two week holiday in The Netherlands in 1997. Probably the longest two weeks I’ve ever known!! (Already heading for my 11th year in the company!)

6. While working for IBM, I spent another year of my life in Dublin, Ireland, where there is very little I would need to explain, if you ever have been there. Yes, I know, I need to get back there for a short visit and catch up some time soon!

7. I was first exposed to Knowledge Management by the end of 1999 and during that time I already sensed it was going to be the field / discipline I would be developing my skills & expertise over the course of the years. Two years later I was working, full time, in a Knowledge Management team. Till today. (And, yes, still going strong, in case you are wondering…)

8. And, finally, I initially got started with my blogging experience back in 2003, as a way to prove to myself how I could work smarter, not necessarily harder, relying on the community and my social networks to get the job done versus having to do the job myself re-inventing the wheel over and over again. Four years later, and just a couple of days after the 10th year anniversary of the word "Weblog", I still feel the same way. Blogs, and plenty of the various different social networks where I hang out, still make me work smarter. Much smarter! Not harder.

And that would be it. Next on this blog post is to actually tag another 8 people who would be willing, hopefully, to take the challenge and share with us 8 factoids about themselves that we may not have heard elsewhere. So here is my list of folks I would love to hear some more from on this particular topic. In random order: Jasmin Tragas (a.k.a. Jazzydee), Thomas van der Wal (a.k.a. wanderwal), David Stephenson (a.k.a. DavidStephenson), Susan Scrupski (a.k.a. ITSinsider), Dennis McDonald (a.k.a. ddmcd), Stuart Henshall (a.k.a. stuarthenshall), Andy Piper (a.k.a. andypiper) and Jon Husband (a.k.a. jonhusband).

I am sure that I could have included a whole bunch of the folks I get to interact with on a daily basis, so feel tagged as well if you would want to chime in a well. Why not, right?

Either way, I am sure that with this particular blog post you actually got to find out about stuff on me that you probably haven’t seen / read elsewhere. Hope you have found it just as entertaining as it was for me to put it up going through that trip down the memory lane.

Now time to go ahead and digest some of the wonderful discussions going on Next Generation Knowledge Sharing & Learning Online Conference Event - In Spring 2008? and see where it would take us all… Fancy joining us on that wild ride, too?

Tags: Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Meme, Things, Martin Koser, Reasonable Robinson, Tagging, Leon, Spain, Gran Canaria, Amstrad CPC 464, Thale, Germany, IBM, The Netherlands, Dublin, Ireland, Blogiversary, Weblog Anniversary, Work Smarter, Jasmin Tragas, Wonderwebby, Thomas van der Wal, David Stephenson, Susan Scrupski, ITSinsider, Dennis McDonald, Stuart Henshall, Andy Piper, Jon Husband, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0