Over the last couple of months I have been participating on a number of different podcasting episodes, (Internet) TV interviews, news articles and a whole bunch of other kinds of rich media publications talking, most of the time, around the topics of Enterprise 2.0, internal social software adoption and 2.0 evangelism, and, lately, the new social term that seems to be en vogue nowadays: social business. I originally had planned to share a few insights about the most interesting ones and point folks to the original resource to watch or read through them, but then I realised that there are out there far too many to mention in a single blog post, more than anything else, because some of the conversations have been substantially different from one another. So I thought that perhaps I would drop by over here, every now and then, and point folks to the odd one or two, so you could have a look into some of them, if you would be interested, but always being conscious of trying to strike a balance on not sharing them all one right after the other. That’s why I have decided as well that I will be splitting them up half in half and share some other pointers over at my Posterous site, which would also give me an opportunity to keep things going over there as well, as I keep making a much heavier use of it from here onwards…

As things are starting to settle back in, after a couple of hiccups with WordPress plugins here and there, following the hardware upgrade debacle of my hosting provider over the course of the weekend (Thank goodness everything turned out all right eventually!), here we go, once again, getting immersed on that regular blogging schedule. And today I thought I would let you folks know about a couple of interesting podcasting episodes that I have listened to or that I have participated in, that you may want to tune into as well. Because you do still listen to podcasts every now and then, right? Yes, that’s what I thought. Me, too! They still play an important role in my day to day knowledge sharing and collaborative activities, whether discussions in real time prime above all, while watching them live, or participating as one of the guests in the various conversations.

So last week Friday, my good friend Stu McIntyre and his partner in crime, Darren Duke, kindly invited a couple of folks, and good friends as well, Bilal Jaffery and Jon Mell from the Dachis Group / Headshift, along with yours truly, to participate in their weekly podcasting show “This Week in Lotus” where we spent a bit over one hour talking about a whole bunch of various different topics, including some of my favourites hehe

Yes, that’s right, last Friday, Stu, Darren, Bilal, Jon and myself had a blast recording “This Week in Lotus 018 – A world without email? Or Blackberries?” [Link to the podcasting episode], where we talked, amongst several other things, about the recent product launch of IBM’s Northstar as well as IBM Customer Experience Suite, that I have talked about over here, a little bit about “a bad week for the opposition“ and, of course, my favourite topic as of late, living “A World Without Email“.

Like I mentioned above, the episode lasts for a bit over one hour and towards the end of the podcasting episode we had a chance to talk about the experience of giving up corporate email and, instead, rely, plenty more, on social software tools to collaborate, share your knowledge across. In short, to get the job done. Now, this particular conversation with those folks was slightly different than the one I recently participated in at TWiT net@night, since I eventually continue to build further up and add more insights on the overall experience that I may not have shared elsewhere before. More than anything else with the purpose of helping those folks out there, who may be interested, to find out some more the various reasons why I started, how I do it and what’s meant for me, and the teams and communities I hang out with, so that perhaps you may also have a good chance to give it a try for yourselves.

I am not going to expand much further on the topic, since you can go and have a look into the accompanying blog post that was put together [Link here], and check the extensive show notes that have been provided where you can get a good glimpse of what we talked about, as well as checking out plenty of the links that we mentioned during our conversations. If you go there, you will also find a brief section of Tips where each of us pointed folks into some interesting hints and tips, tools, blog posts, applications, etc. etc. Worth while a read, if you are an avid iPad user as well!

I am sure you would have a good time listening to it, just as much as we did recording the session altogether; I think you would enjoy it as well if you are also an IBM Lotus user or are interested in IBM’s Lotus products, because we also talked about them a little bit. And, while talking about this very same subject, if you didn’t have enough, or if you would want to find out, plenty more, what it is like hacking stuff together with IBM’s Lotus Connections social tools suite or how IBM is helping accelerate the adoption rate of social software, both inside and outside of the company, I would strongly encourage you all to have a look and listen to the latest podcasting episode from the fine “The Taking Notes Podcast“.

Because in “Taking Notes Episode 121: 2010.09.17 – Evangelizing Lotus Connections“, and over the course of 37 minutes, you will be able to listen to co-hosts Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux, interview two of my favourite IBM people, and really good friends, Sacha Chua and Luis Benitez (Yes, my twin brother!), talking away for a large chunk of time on some of the really cool, and pretty neat, things they are both involved with hacking together Lotus Connections as well as their great work as social software and Enterprise 2.0 evangelists. You can grab the episode itself from the following link and start playing it right away…

Lots of golden nuggets in there, including a lovely discussion on how microblogging helps drive business value within organisations. You gotta listen to that story to realise the true power of enterprise microblogging behind the firewall. Flattening the organisation in a matter of minutes would be rather an understatement, to say the least! But quickly go through the show notes as well and hit play to start listening to it. I am sure you will enjoy it, even more of you are a techie yourself hehe

Ok, that was it! From here onwards, I just want to take this opportunity to share a special thanks! with both Stu and Darren for inviting Bilal, Jon and myself to such an entertaining and enlightening podcasting show as This Week In Lotus. Oh, remember as well that, every week, there is a new episode to listen to! So take the dust away from your favourite .mp3 player and go ahead, subscribe to the podcast. There will always be something new to listen to… and learn, I can guarantee you that!, which is just wonderful. That’s the whole purpose behind podcasting altogether, don’t you think?

Well done, guys!

Technorati Tags: #ibmexperience, #lawwe, A World Without Email, Adoption, Business Cases, Business Value, Challenge Your Inbox, Collaboration, Communication, Communities, Connections, Conversations, Enterprise 2.0, IBM, IBM Customer Experience Suite, Innovation, KM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Lotus, Lotus Connections, Microblogging, Microsharing, net@night, No-Email, Northstar, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, PKM, PKS, Podcasting, Podcasts, Productivity, Productivity Tips, Productivity Tools, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Software, Stu McIntyre, TWiT, Web 2.0, This Week in Lotus, Darren Duke, Bilal Jaffery, Jon Mell, The Taking Notes Podcast, Bruce Elgort, Julian Robichaux, Luis Benitez, Sacha Chua, Evangelists, Hacking, Podcastings

Yesterday, if you would remember, I put together a short blog post where I was mentioning how apart from having one of those days of meetings galore jumping from one to the next, I was also looking forward to the great opportunity of participating live on the Blog Talk Radio podcasting show, hosted by John Moore, and along with one of my favourite Enterprise 2.0 people, Mark Masterson, as co-guest. Well, I am happy to confirm that the recording of that podcast episode is now available for replay.

And, boy, did we have such a good fun with that interview or not? John asked us a few rather interesting, insightful and provocative questions on what we thought were some of the major key points behind figuring out the business value of social networking. That was just a blast! What an adrenaline rush of back and forth between Mark, John and yours truly! I had such a great time!

John himself has actually put together a rather nice short blog post on that podcast under the title Social Media ROI and Hippy 2.0… It all made sense... In it he mentions how the recording lasts for about 56 minutes and it starts off at around minute 5, after he spent a little while sharing some further thoughts on the news and trends of the day / week related to social media.

I bet you may be wondering, right now, what we actually talked about during the course of nearly one hour, right? Yes, I agree with you, that’s a long time to spend on a podcast, but it certainly was such a good fun that I don’t think none of us minded at all! Thus here you have got some of the headlines and an annotation of two on the topics that we covered during that live podcast show:

• Business Value of Social Networking: Where we talked about how sometimes it’s much more effective, and productive, to focus on figuring out how to get the most of all of these social networking tools as our next generation of business tools to help us collaborate and share our knowledge more efficiently than trying to figure out the Return On Investment (ROI) of those social interactions without having even gotten things started in the first place!

  How it may prove to be much more convenient to demonstrate how social software can change the way we interact with customers, as well as with the rest of our peers, by humanising those very same business interactions helping nurture, even better, our own personal business relationships. We eventually shared plenty of thoughts and ideas of how this could pave out for almost any business out there!

• Living "A World Without Email": Yes, of course, we couldn’t miss out on this one, could we? Most of you folks, regular readers of this blog, already know quite a bit what this topic would be about, but what you may be interested in is the part of the conversation where I shared some further insights on demonstrating the ROI of giving up on corporate email and what it’s meant not only for me as a knowledge worker, but also for the organisation I work for and for those other peers I get to interact on a regular basis.

  Reducing your corporate email conversations by over 95% and instead move those into open social software spaces is one heck of a success story, don’t you think? Specially when over 3.5 years ago, most people felt I was crazy for doing such thing in such an email driven corporation like IBM (And probably like most of them out there as well!) and today, more and more teams and groups are also seeing such substantial reduction with their incoming emails by utilising more various different social tools. I may not be that crazy after all …

• Or, maybe, I still am! Because the other topic we talked about, during that one hour conversation and which we covered quite extensively, was a new crazy? idea that I came up with a few days back and which is picking a rather nice momentum and plenty of traction. Of course, I am talking about Hippie 2.0.

  Who would have thought about that? An initial blog post that I put together and shared across a little bit weary about it (I wasn’t sure whether it was going to strike a chord or not!), eventually has been raising a huge amount of rather interesting and very refreshing conversations on the true nature of embracing social networking beyond the business context, that is, how it is affecting us all as a society.

  That blog entry so far is one of the most popular threads on this blog and has sparked a good number of developments that will certainly keep a bunch of us buzzing for a little while longer! Who knows, perhaps for a long while…

  The thing is that we already have got a Web site up and running under Hippie 2.0 (Using Posterous at the moment and with a unique opportunity to have an open space where everyone can contribute with whatever the relevant content); we talked extensively about it on yesterday’s live podcast; a few people have already contributed some top notch content (Including some fun stuff!); and a few folks have been leaving comments already throughout the various entries and we have got a bunch of other really cool things coming up!

  I say we because my good friend Jay Deragon has been doing an outstanding job in pushing forward some of the content you will see on the Web site when you head over there. And for that, I am incredibly grateful! Thanks ever so much, Jay!! Really appreciate all of your efforts and glad you, too, feel the same way about this crazy idea!

Right, there were plenty of things related to social networking and proving its business value altogether that we talked about during that live podcasting episode over at Blog Talk Radio, but I think I am going to stop commenting further on it for now. Instead, I would encourage you all to go and listen to it, by perhaps quoting one of the best live tweets that people shared across during the show and which clearly represents the true spirit behind such a movement as Hippie 2.0:

"If you focus on fear, you’ll get fear. If you focus on humor, you’ll get laughs" (Superb quote from Mark captured by Susan Scrupski)

I hope you have enjoyed listening to the episode, just as much as we did during the live recording of the podcast. Like I said above, I had a great time participating in it and from here I just would want to take this opportunity to thank John Moore for inviting both Mark and myself into the show, to Mark for being such great fun, smart, insightful, witty, and another Hippie 2.0, like yours truly, and, finally, to Eric Andersen for helping facilitate the connection over … Twitter!

Thanks ever so much, guys! It’s been a great pleasure and hope to see you all soon over at Hippies20.com!

Tags: Blog Talk Radio, Podcasts, Podcasting, Radio Shows, Mark Masterson, John Moore, Business Value, ROI, Return On Investment, Hippies 2.0, Hippie2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Productivity 2.0, email, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Eric Andersen, Susan Scrupski, ITSinsider, Jay Deragon, Posterous, Twitter

With meetings and activities galore happening at work right as we speak, and with the usual catchup of the daily routines in multiple social spaces, I think that today is going to be one of those days where blogging will be rather light, as opposed to keep sharing some additional insights on that topic that keeps coming up over and over again on Social Computing and business processes. So, you will have to excuse me for a minute till I get back into my usual swing of things. Or, alternatively, you could go ahead and join my good friend Mark Masterson and yours truly, later on today, at 3pm EDT – 8pm UK – 9pm CEDT, at the Blog Talk Radio show, with John Moore as our host, talking about the "Business Value of Social Media".

Yes, that’s right, later on today, in just a bit over an hour, both Mark and myself will be spending a few minutes with John talking about the business value of Social Software. I know, indeed, one of my favourite topics from all along: the good old ROI of Social Networking. Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while … you will know more or less what we will be talking about, but, in case you may not have, here is the link to the details of the show itself.

As you may have noticed already, Blog Talk Radio is one of those shows where folks can participate live and as such you would be able to join us as well by dialling in using this call-in number: (347) 324-3248. We would very much like to have you on today’s show and participate with us in, I am sure, what promises to be some pretty interesting and exciting conversations around business value of social computing, and, perhaps, even a bit of the little movement a bunch of us got started with a few days back: Hippies 2.0.

Who knows what else we would end up talking about… Either way, knowing the subjects both Mark and myself have been talking about for a little while now, you would realise that if you are into Social Computing in the Enterprise, you are in the right spot! So, come and join us later on today! And be ready to share your thoughts on what you think the business value of social networking is all about! Happy to engage in a, for certain, enlightening and insightful conversation where we will all learn a thing or two. For sure!

Can’t wait to be on the show already! And you? Will you join us as well? … We hope so!

See you there!

Tags: Blog Talk Radio, Podcasts, Podcasting, Radio Shows, Mark Masterson, John Moore, Business Value, ROI, Return On Investment, Hippies 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Productivity 2.0

Over the course of the last few months a bunch of folks have been asking us why The Sweettt Podcast, that weekly podcasting tertulia I used to co-host with my good friend, and fellow colleague, Matt Simpson, went into a dormant status and whether we would be picking things up again any time soon. So in the last few months we have been revisiting the opportunity to re-vive the podcast and after a few conversations here and there, we are very pleased to announce that The Sweettt Podcast is back!

Yes, that’s right! It’s been nearly a year ago since we published the last episode and during that period of absence both Matt and myself have been getting together on and off to check whether we would be ready to come back to it or not. And after a few conversations we have been having, we decided that we are just benefiting far too much from that dialogue, so we decided to re-vamp the show and get back to it, after the rather long hiatus, on a weekly basis, although perhaps with a few changes we hope folks would appreciate as well.

I am sure, at this point in time, if you were a regular listener of the podcast, you may be wondering what were the topics we discussed on our welcome back, right? Well, not going to reveal much of it for now, since you can start listening to (Or downloading) the podcast right away from here, but I will certainly share with you some of the highlights of what we tried to cover over the course of 1 hour 48 minutes:

1. Flaming excuses for not posting our discussions for the past year (bonus – clean the inside of your computer screen!)
2. The iPad experience, and what it takes to achieve quality (bonus – a cartoon!)
3. Web Filtering – pros, cons, goods, and evils
4. Employee happiness as a source of quality and productivity
5. And then… Luis turns into a Robot

As you may have noticed, we touched base on a whole bunch of topics going from some flaming excuses as to why it took us so long to come back, along with explaining a little bit the new format of the podcasting series; then we talked about some of the various different reasons as to why I can’t wait to get my hands on an 3G iPad to, finally, be able to ditch both my 3G iPhone and iPod Touch (Diving into what user experiences with mobile gadgets should be like, or would be like very very soon! </stop drooling>).

From there onwards we touched base on some pretty interesting topics we keep hearing, or reading about, out there on the Internet around Social Computing and how some businesses are starting (If not fully on board by now!) to introduce Web Filtering. We covered the pros, the cons, the good, the bad and the ugly of filtering or blocking content for knowledge Web workers and, eventually, we started off a conversation on what employee happiness means and whether the motto "Happy People Produce Quality" (From the first project team I was part of when I started working for my current employer IBM over 13 years ago) would still stand in today’s corporate reality or whether we should be focusing on something else.

Some pretty interesting conversations that would take most of the actual podcasting episode, till the very last few minutes, when my Skype connection decided to play funny and make me become an automaton, a robot, which is funny, because that’s the main conclusion I have reached over the years on the main dangers behind Web Filtering. Oh the irony of technology some times … !!

So we stopped recording at that point and I am sure we would be covering that very important topic, once again, in the near future. For now though we thought it was a good welcome back! and we are surely looking forward to the next one! Like I said, you would be able to listen to the episode directly from this link, or download it for later playback with this other link. Alternatively, if you are using an .MP3 mobile device you would be able to subscribe to our iTunes podcasting series link and grab that and other future podcasting episodes.

We hope you will enjoy The Sweettt Podcast, just as much as we do when we record the episode(s) live! And, remember, if you would want to participate in any of these episodes feel free to reach out and get in touch with Matt or with yours truly. We do certainly treasure having guests in our tertulias and we hope to see you soon again!

(Gosh, it’s *good* to be back! It’s been far too long …)

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, Productivity, Flaming Excuses, Apple, iPad, User Experiences, Web Filtering, Filtering, Blocking Social Media, Blocking, Employee Happiness, Happy People Produce Quality, Automatons, Robots

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

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

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

Sometimes things are just so incredibly busy that you lose track of time and before you realise it, several months go by, and you feel pretty bad that you haven’t blogged about something that is so close to your heart for how wonderful the overall experience is that you don’t know where to hide anymore! Well, indeed, that’s exactly how I felt today, in the midst of a full day of meetings galore!, when I became aware it has been quite a long time since the last blog post I put together for our dear Sweettt Podcast! Yes, that Modern Salon, or Tertulia 2.0 podcast, as both my good friend, and co-host, Matt Simpson and myself like to call it, that we have been doing for a little while now.

Indeed, last time I blogged about The Sweettt Podcast was in November last year! Ouch! That hurt! I cannot believe that it’s been that long already! Where does the time go, eh?!?! Not to worry, every so often we have been able to get together and record some amazing conversations with some really interesting folks in the area of Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration, plus our usual 1:1 conversations on whatever else is left out there …

However, I thought I would pick up the subject again, specially after talking to Matt and announcing we have fixed the issues with the iTunes store (Finally, you can now subscribed to our podcast by going into this link!) and let you know that since last time I blogged about it, we have got two more episodes for you to enjoy:

1. Sweettt.com – Episode 9 – Put Your Innovation Where Your Mouth Is – Part 2 of August 22nd Discussion
2. Sweettt.com – Episode 10 – Information Flow – Part 1

Plus plenty more that will get posted over the course of time. Yes, we know, we could be a bit more regular on our sharing of the various recorded episodes. And we are working on it! Eventually, we are also going to change a little the scheme we have been using when announcing those different episodes.

Instead of putting together rather lengthy blogs posts where we share extensive show notes, including some fancy tagcloud visualisations with the wonderfully crafter Wordle, we decided we don’t want to be the bottleneck, so from now onwards expect rather shorter entries, like this one, with one or two lines explaining the major themes we discussed on the podcast and from there onwards we are going to leave it up to you to go and listen to the various episodes and share your thoughts / comments to keep the dialogue going.

And that’s it! I guess we are back in the game! The Sweettt Podcast feed is now finally fixed and we are ready to keep those conversations flowing. Are you ready to join us? Do let us know! Get in touch! We would be delighted to have you on the show!

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, Wordle, Conversations, Dialogue, Communities, Learning, iTunes

It’s been a little while now since last time I posted about this. My holidays kicked in, a bunch of business trips followed and the usual catchup has delayed a bit the sharing of this blog post. Yes, indeed, as you may have seen it already, The Sweettt Show is back! And with that both Matt Simpson, my fellow co-host, and yours truly are back into the full swing of things with our podcasting series!

You may have noticed how over the last couple of weeks we have slowed down a bit. Like I said above already, it is in part due to my not being there for our weekly recordings, but we still get together and record the episodes which you can then listen and engage with at a later time, whenever we have got the opportunity to push them forward. And, as you may have noticed already, we are on Episode 8 already, this time around on the following topic: Inside and Outside the Firewall – Part 1 of August 22nd Discussion.

Matt already shared his show notes, which are an excellent read and a must go through, if you woud want to find out more on the essence of this particular episode, before you start listening to it. I will take the opportunity now, though, to recap and share my own show notes to provide you folks with an additional set of commentary that would help digest the content of the podcast or, at least, help venture what we have been talking about over the course of a bit over 35 minutes.

Thus here they are. I have tried to keep the same spirit and flow as with previous episodes, hoping to spark as well a smile here and there and hoping as well it would give you an opportunity to chime in with that special request that Matt mentions towards the end of the recording:

- Still lingering around on the awesome experience of the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, back in June.
- Robin Carey, from Social Media Today gets a mention. One of the many fine people we met while at the conference (*wave* Hiya, Robin! *wave*)
- Oh, and Mark Masterson gets another mention! We might as well make it with him on the show! Actually, we are!! Stay tuned!
- Yes, indeed, there is nothing that will beat face to face while at a conference, but then again, social software provides the perfect add-on to help augment that face to face experience and make it even much more intense! And relevant.
- Enterprise 2.0 social software within the corporate world *still* has got a place. Just because not many people are as extrovert as we think they are.
- Finding your own comfort zone would be key for that social software adoption. Even for something like sharing pictures!
- IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines get another mention along with the opportunity to have a protected environment where people can play with these social tools in a safe environment.
- Yours truly regretting the fact it took me two years!, before I decided to have my Internet blog(s)! Should have been a lot sooner than that!
- Yeah, don’t get too comfortable either or you will never move on / change! (Yes, I learned through the hard way!).
- WOW! Matt has been online for 17 years and all over the place!!! Where were you back then? (I was playing ball! ).
- (Did you know that Matt was probably the first person who introduced the concept of wikis inside IBM, way before the corporate world was even thinking about it?)
- Censorship is not healthy. Period.
- There is always a space to share stuff internally and externally. What would rule it? Yes, indeed, you got that one right! … Common sense.
- Little anecdote shared as well of how all my three blogs started with different content and because of having, each of them, different audiences in the end it all moved into cross-posting between all of them.
- Corporate blogging is *not* a waste of time! Why? Because a blog empowers employees to have a voice, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall.
- Even smaller companies can benefit from blogging. Meaningful content will still be shared and commented on. Remember, it is not about the quantity, but the quality of the blog posts!
- Ranting is not as effective as constructive feedback. Isn’t that right? heh
- (Although sometimes the odd rant here and there wouldn’t harm, right? Even in the microsharing world!)
- Another perk from corporate blogging: allowing you to find experts on a particular subject they are passionate about. Yes, sir!
- Injecting now one of my all time favourite thoughts I have been putting together all along: people will always be keen on sharing their information / knowledge just because they want to, not because they have been told so. It is a natural behaviour.
- Storytelling, anyone?
- Another perk of social software behind the firewall: a much lower barrier of entry. In most cases, it takes a matter of seconds to have a blog, a wiki, a podcast, etc. etc. No approvals required!
- Oh la la "The Emperor has no clothes!" coming back again! Always learn to be positive, don’t criticise, always suggest improvements. That’s how we have been taught (Wise words from Matt, indeed! Loved it!)
- You see? Constructive feedback & co-creation of solutions can do wonders!
- Not being afraid of bad news is key in the world of social software adoption. Be ready to take that feedback on what’s broken and help fix it! It cannot get better than that!
- Openness, transparency, public knowledge exchanges … Hummm, where did I hear that before?
- Go and read the main five reasons Matt has annotated that clearly explain why social software within the corporate world still has got a place. It always had and always will!
- Yeah, at the end of the day it is all about how your passion drives the stuff you do at work (And outside as well, of course!), but it is that passion that will make things easier to engage with others, and connect with them, specially if you share that common interest!
- Thus what is it that you are passionate about? Is that passion showing?

So there you go, another really interesting episode, we think, that we hope you get a chance to enjoy and participate from. Now, off to The Sweettt Show and engage in the amazing conversation that is going on at the moment! Will see you there!

Wordle of episode #8

Tags: The Sweettt Show, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, 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, Wordle, Jonathan Feinberg, Conversations, Robin Carey, Social Media Today, SMT, Mark Masterson, Social Computing Guidelines, Corporate Blogging, Enterprise Social Software, Common Sense, Constructive Feedback, Co-Creation, Ranting, Openness, Transparency, Public, Knowledge Exchanges