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

Spark – CBC Radio – Full Interview: Luis Suarez Explains How to Quit Email

After a couple of rather long blog posts I think it is now a good time to probably go for a short one, don’t you think? A little bit of a breather; actually, I thought I would go and share with you folks a follow up blog post from one I did earlier on this week and which I would think you would find quite interesting, specially if you have been following my little project of living "A World Without Email".

Earlier on this week, you would remember how for the weekly progress report for week #29 I mentioned that later in the week, yesterday, to be more precise, I would actually be spending a few minutes doing a Skype interview with the wonderful Nora Young from CBC radio show Spark, where I would be talking much more in detail about how to give up on corporate email for good and how I have been doing it for the last 18 months and counting…

And it looks like the interview is now available at the CBC Spark blog under the following title: "Full Interview: Luis Suarez explains how to quit email". You will be able to listen to the podcasting episode directly from that blog post or you could download the MP3 from here.

It lasts for a little less than 28 minutes and in it we had a great conversation throughout where I started giving some background on why I begun with this initiative over 18 months ago; the consequences and key learnings over time; the kind of responses I have been receiving all along; where I would go further from here, and, perhaps the much more interesting part, which is the one where I share a few tips that would help out everyone out there, who may be interested, how to perhaps not give up on email altogether in favour of social software tools, but certainly how to reduce quite a bit of that email clutter we have probably gotten too used to and, instead, make good use of social software tools to share our knowledge and collaborate with other knowledge workers.

I must say that being interviewed by Nora was actually plenty of good fun, because we eventually managed to talk about a good number of things I didn’t touch base in the various blog posts I have done so far, or the numerous conference events I attended last year or the ones I have been involved in this year so far. I was surprised about that, because I thought I had said most of the stuff around this topic of giving up on corporate email already, but it looks like Nora just asked the perfect set of questions to help me share a different set of insights on what it has been like living without email at work for over a year and a half now and still going strong…

So, I am going to keep this post on the shorter side of things, and leave it over here for now. And if you would be interested in listening to the interview I did with the delightful Nora (We surely had plenty of good laughs, too, on common misuses of corporate email! Hilarious some of them!), you can head over to the original blog post Dan Misener put together, or, alternatively, you could download the .MP3 file from here.

Hope you enjoy listening to it, just as much as I did participating in it. It surely was a blast and I would want to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to Tony Burns, who made the introduction with Dan possible in the first place and to Nora & Dan himself for having me in their show! Thanks ever so much, guys! It was fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Tags: Tony Burns, Alumni, Dan Misener, CBC Spark, Spark, CBC Radio, Radio, Nora Young, Interviews, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Diversifying, Fragmentation, Email Clutter, Reducing Email Clutter, Radio, Podcasts

Collaboration Matters 8 and 9 – Lotusphere Highlights with “Los Dos Luis”

A few weeks back I got invited to participate in a couple of podcasting episodes from the wonderful folks behind Collaboration Matters: Stu McIntyre and Neil Burston. And, of course, I couldn’t reject such kind offer. Even more when I found out the other guest for those two episodes was eventually IBM fellow colleague, and good friend, Luis Benitez (Not to worry, we are not twin brothers, despite what most folks keep telling us, even if we tend to look alike somewhat! heh) and on the agenda we were going to talk about Enterprise Social Software as well as detailing some of our key highlights from Lotusphere 2009, held earlier on this year in Orlando, FL.

And so we did take part on these two different fun podcasting episodes, where we talked about a whole bunch of different topics, but always with some of the best highlights, in our opinion, of Lotusphere 2009 running in the background. Now those episodes are readily available for replay and I am sure you may be wondering what we did talk about actually with both Neil and Stu, right? Well, here is a quick synopsis of what you will find in both episodes, to give you a taster of what to expect:

Collaboration Matters 8 – Los Dos Luis (36MB download and running for 26 minutes in Spanish with Neil)

• Lotusphere – the excitement and the challenges
• Successes and challenges for Social Software
• Is Social Software "Mainstream"?
• A Year without email – working in different ways?

Collaboration Matters 9 – LS09 Connectr BoF Review (41MB download and running for 30 minutes in English with both Neil & Stu)

• What is a Connectr?
• Who was there and what did we discuss?
• Tools versus Enablement & adoption
• What Social tools are people using – injecting Social Software capabilities into the existing application landscape
• Actually using Social tools – asking questions and opening up the Silos
• Do Social Software Best Practices really exist?
• Who is driving social software adoption within organisations?

As you will be able to see plenty of really good and interesting topics where both Luis Benitez and myself shared our two cents on what we have been seeing in this social software space for a little while now and where we may be heading next. On episode #8 I even got a chance to talk about living "A World Without Email" and this particular episode may be more interesting to those folks who speak Spanish, since we had the entire conversation in Spanish! Funny enough, it’s probably one of the very few podcasting episodes I have done in my native language. Yeah, too funny!

On episode #9 you will be able to get a grasp of our first public reactions to the BOFs session both Luis Benitez and myself did along with Stu on the topic of Connectr. Perhaps one of the most engaging and interactive sessions I have been talking around the subject of Enterprise Social Software, adoption, social tools, the so-called "best practices" of social software (Priceless that one, I can tell you know, and something I will be coming back to shortly as well with a couple of follow up blog posts) that I can remember in a fully packed room.

So, I am going to leave it there for now, and would encourage you have a listen to episode #8 where you can find out plenty more about social software at the same time that you can practice your Spanish skills , or have that rare chance where you can hear me talk in Spanish about some of the 2.0 subjects I have been really passionate about all along. On episode #9 you will be able to find out, first hand, what we learned from the BOFs session (Connectr) we did at Lotusphere.

From here I just want to take this opportunity to share a special thanks! to both Stu and Neil for their time and for their kind invite to the Collaboration Matters podcasting show and to my tocayo for sharing along all of the good stuff he has been doing all this time in the field of social computing and, more specifically, around IBM’s Lotus Connections. Thanks, guys!

Tags: Collaboration Matters, Stu McIntyre, Neil Burston, Connectr, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, A World Without Email, IBM Lotusphere, Lotusphere 2009, Lotusphere2009, LS09, BOFs, Lotus Connections, Connections, Enterprise Social Software, Social Software Adoption, Best Practices

The Sweettt Podcast – Episode 11 – Information Flow (Part II)

I haven’t been very successful today trying to join the superb 24 hour online event from Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation on “Conversations about Learning in Organisations” that I blogged about yesterday. It looks like Elluminate doesn’t get along well with my Mac apparently, since it keeps crashing consistently ever single time I try to access the online event (And I don’t seem to be the only one either!); so I guess I will have to try again tomorrow and, if that doesn’t work still, I suppose I will be catching up with the various recordings that will be made available at a later time.

Moving onwards then!

Yes, folks, it is that time again! The Sweettt Podcast moves on further along and I am happy to bring you over here our next episode (Episode 11), where both Matt Simpson, my good friend and co-host, and yours truly spent a few minutes talking some more around the topic of Information Flow (Part II). You can download or play the podcasting episode from this location. And here are some show notes of what you may expect from listening to it that Matt already mentioned in the corresponding blog post:

• “What is more important, quality or quantity?
• Who you are in your blog is very different than who you are in a microblog.
• What constitutes a valid blog? Can a blog be trivial?
• When does your Twitter become a village? – See Laura Fitton
• How do you enter a online social village and navigate its streets?
• To achieve flow in the information space, how do you sample information?
• What is the alternative to managing content within the information space?
• How do you choose which new technology to use in the information sharing space?
• What kind of people try technology first? What does a bleeding edge early adopter look like? See Chris Miller
• How do you keep track of your new technology?
• What’s the ideal amount of technology for the majority of us?
• Which is the predominant future trend, increased technology fragmentation with more tools, or consolidation of technology into fewer tools?
• If services become specialized and exploited in other contexts (other web sites), what will be the incentive for the service to be provided, especially if people are not going to the homepage?“

And, of course, you will notice as well how we spent some time as well talking about living “A World Without Email” and our growing need to diversify our email inboxes; to fragment them so that it does fit a specific purpose versus all purposes, which is what is happening at the moment. Some fascinating conversations, indeed, which developed into other areas we will be exploring in future podcasting episodes.

Oh, yes, it is good to be back! Hope you enjoy the episode, just as much as we did

Tags: The Sweettt Podcast, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, Modern Salon, Tertulia 2.0, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Series, New Media, IBM, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Conversations, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, Tertulia, Conversations, Dialogue, Communities, Learning, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Information Flow, Learning Trends, Learntrends, Elluminate, Micro Blogging, Micro Sharing, Quality, Quantity, Blogging, Blogs, Metablogging, Laura Fitton, Pistachio, Pistachio Consulting, Twitville, Chris Miller, Idonotes, Technology, Web