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

Trip to London to Participate in SOMESSO / Headshift’s Social Business Summit

After I came back last Friday from a couple of recent business trips to both Madrid and Barcelona to speak at the Lotusphere Comes To You events, and while still recovering, slowly, from a nasty cold I caught on the plane back home, I’m starting to get ready for my next business trip; taking place next week Wednesday and heading to London for Thursday’s SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit. And, as you can imagine, I just can’t wait for it to start! Here is why …

But, hang on, before I dive further into what I will be doing at the Social Business Summit, just wanted to let folks know that I’m already on the process of putting together a couple of blog posts summarising my experiences from last week’s business trips, with keywords like lack of connectivity (Nothing new!), physical social networking for the win!, Social Enterprise, Collaboration, cloud computing, and a vision. Hopefully, I may be able to sneak them in over the course of the next couple of days and if not I will do so when I get back from London the week after this other event. So stay tuned! (For now, if you just can’t wait to hear about what they were like, check out the live tweeting I did under @elsua_b for a taster).

Right! So why am I heading next week to London, you may be wondering, right? Well, a few weeks back Lee Bryant, CEO and co-founder of Headshift, part of Dachis Group, invited me to participate on the upcoming SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit that will be taking place next week, on March 18th, where I will be moderating one of the panels: the one on Internal Use of Social Software, where I will try to share some further insights on what IBM has been doing for nearly three years now with one of its most successful social software adoption programs: BlueIQ.

It surely promises to be a rather interesting one, since I’ll be moderating a discussion where I will be sharing some of the various good practices we have been putting in place to help IBM accelerate its own adoption of these social tools; I am sure the interactions and conversations from those folks attending such session will also be rather insightful, as I’m certainly hoping they will be adding their two cents of how their own organisations are tackling the important topic of adoption of social computing (Both inside and outside their firewall(s)). If there would be a single word I could use at this point in time without revealing too many details just yet it would probably be "Interactivity!". So that would give you an idea of where we would be heading… Oh, but let me add another one as well though: "Provocative!"

Good starting points, don’t you think? Well, that’s just the beginning! It will be a whole lot better than that! I tell you. If you haven’t seen it just yet, I would suggest you take a look into the agenda of the event and this other particular blog post that Lee himself put together and which would help set the context of what will be happening at the summit. From the agenda you will be able to see how both Jeff Dachis  and JP Rangaswami will be the keynote speakers, to kick things off to a superb start already, to then finish off with the invaluable contributions of the many delegates attending the three themed workshops (Internal Use Cases, External Use Cases & Market / Ecosystem Use Cases) helping establish and identify the necessary changes and actions, as well as challenges, to progress further into that "Social Enterprise" concept that a bunch of us have been talking about for a little while already…

Then at the end of the day, each of those three themed workshops will be reporting back providing a comprehensive picture of the current state of things and where we will be heading with social computing inside & outside the enterprise to define the next generation of interactions and models of engagement amongst knowledge workers, customers and business partners. As you can see, I just can’t wait for it to start! So much to share, so much to learn from, so many conversations and discussions to dive into; in short, now you know where my excitement originates from and why I am really looking forward to participating in this Social Business Summit.

More information details about the Summit can be found over here, as well as the agenda itself, which contains the details on how people can sign up for the event, if you are interested in attending (Got anything better to do on March 18th? hehe).

As usual, depending on how things go on the connectivity front, I may be able to live tweet some of the various sessions I will be attending and then share with you folks follow up blog posts with highlights from the event. I currently plan to be there on Wednesday, while I prepare the workshop itself, and staying till Saturday morning, when I get back home, so if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or lunch / dinner, etc. etc. give me a shout and get in touch!

Can’t wait to see folks over there! … Just three more days …

Tags: SOMESSO, Headshift, Social Business Summit, Summits, Events, Conferences, Conference Events, Workshops, Lotusphere, LS10, LCTY10, Madrid, Barcelona, London, Lee Bryant, BlueIQ, Jeff Dachis, JP Rangaswami, jobsworth, Social Software, Adoption, Enablement, Social Web, Social Enterprise, Social Collaboration, Social Ecosystems, 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, Productivity,Social Business Summit, SBS, #sbs2010, sbs2010

When Command and Control Needs to Become Engage and Support

Every so often there are those times when you bump into a couple of articles published by people, who you know and respect dearly for the tremendous amount of great work they have done in the space of Social Computing, that give you such an adrenaline rush, while reading through them, that you just can’t stop thinking about anything else for a little while. And if those blog posts have got to do with two of my favourite topics from all along (People and Trust) in that context of the Social Enterprise, you know I will surely be sharing my two cents of the conversation.

So here I am; more than happy to point you to two essential, and worth while going through, blog entries that will surely make you think quite a bit on how important trust is for Enterprise 2.0 to succeed within the corporate firewall (And beyond, for that matter!); yes, I do realise that trust is one of those recurring terms / themes that perhaps may have been abused quite a bit, specially in the workplace context (Just as much as terms like Collaboration, Communities, or, even, Knowledge Management), but then again, when you see the word trust you know pretty well what you are referring to and could very well explain it in a sentence or two.

Well, my good friend Oscar Berg has just done that over at one of his recent blog posts titled "Control is waste & trust drives value creation", where he shares a couple of golden nuggets worth while remembering, when describing how crucial trust is for any personal business transaction amongst peers, customers or business partners:

"Trust is the fuel for any enterprise. Trust in your purpose, trust in your peers, trust in yourself.

Trust drives value creation.

Control is a sign of trust failure. Control does not add value. Control is waste. Control restricts value-creation. It is something management adds when they don’t trust their employees to perform as expected" [Emphasis mine]

I couldn’t have said that in much better words that those employed by Oscar; trust is the glue that makes collaborative work happen effectively across teams, communities and networks by helping knowledge workers excel at what they know best: constantly innovate. Every move, every conversation, every personal business interaction happening in an open environment where there are no restrictions, no limits, "no rules", just a bunch of knowledge workers wanting to make a difference for their customers and their business by sharing their knowledge across and collaborating efficiently.

The rest of his article is just as good and equally thought-provoking, so I would encourage you to go and read through it and find out his thoughts on how that lack of trust impacts tremendously the overall performance and productivity of those knowledge workers. Priceless!

Ok, now that you have read Oscar’s article, check out the absolutely delightful piece that my good friend, the always insightful, Euan Semple, has put together over at infoBOOM under the title "The Trojan Mice Approach to Enterprise 2.0", where he touches based on one of the recurring themes I have been mentioning on this blog for a long while already; and that is the critical role that people (Knowledge Workers) play in the successful adoption of Enterprise 2.0 within the corporate world, regardless of the tools / technologies and processes that may be available out there. To quote:

"You can build as fancy and expensive a system as you like but if people don’t want to use it and don’t feel comfortable using it then you might as well not have bothered. To get people to embark on this sort of culture change you have to gain their trust and they have to learn to trust each other. This is a process that has to happen incrementally and over time. Those charged with helping it to happen have to be sensitive to the powerful dynamics they are opening up and respectful of those they are expecting to engage" [Emphasis mine]

Once again, Euan nails it; it’s never been about the tools, nor the processes in place, but on the people themselves making good, and responsible, use of those tools as what they are, enablers, to help execute on each and everyone of those business processes they may be responsible for. It would be only then when things will really progress further in the right direction; that one of a very much needed change where those business needs will be finally matched up with the true, up until now hidden and ostracised,  talent, expertise, skills, know-how, experiences that knowledge workers have been accumulating over the course of time and which have been waiting all along inside that closet of command and control for far too long.

Euan, once more describes it much better than I could and, as usual, in his very suggestive and succinct way:

"The trick will be to move from “command and control” to "engage and support”. Building trust takes time. Becoming comfortable enough to be “social” takes time"

The remaining challenge though may well be whether businesses would be patient enough to wait for that more than worth it change to take place or whether, instead, they would prefer to do things the usual way: business as usual…

Tags: People, Trust, Oscar Berg, Control, Command and Control, Value Creation, Business Value, Personal Business Interactions, Euan Semple, infoBOOM, Time, Change, Change Management, Business As Usual, Support, Engage, Enable, 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, Productivity

Trips to Madrid and Barcelona to Present at Lotusphere Comes To You

Yes, indeed, it is that time of the year where very soon I will be on the road again for my second and third business trips of the year and already working towards finalising the last few details, before I embark on the not-to-be-missed and always interesting Lotusphere Comes To You events. That’s right! Next week Tuesday and Thursday, 9th and 11th of March, I will be in both Madrid and Barcelona, respectively, presenting a couple of times per event on the topic of the Social Enterprise (What else, right? hehe).

If you would want to find more details about the various Lotusphere Comes To You events around the world you can go and have a look into them over here, or at this particular link, where you will find the scheduling; in this case for Europe, but you could also access other geographies from there. The main Web site though for the Spanish Lotusphere Comes To You events can be accessed over at this link.

From there onwards, you can have a look into how you may be able to register for the event (If you happen to be around…), as well as check the agenda that has been put together for both events. Lots of interesting and rather relevant topics related to the main Lotusphere 2010 event that took place in January, as you may be able to see; I have now taken the liberty of sharing this screen shot of the agenda below so you can get a glimpse of what to expect:

You will see how in the agenda there is a key concept permeating throughout the entire event for both locations and that is the one on Collaboration. But not just collaboration for the shake of collaboration alone; more along the lines of Social Collaboration (i.e. The Social Enterprise) and Smart Work / Collaboration.

I will be speaking at two different time slots around the topic of Social Enterprise (One of my favourite topics as of late ) and the really cool thing is that in both cases I will be sharing the stage with a couple of very talented fellow IBM colleagues: Rafael Gallegos (Lotus Software Sales Manager SPGI) and Ed Brill (Director, Product Management IBM Lotus).

It will be the first time that I will be sharing the stage with both of them on a particular event, and I just can’t wait!, as I am sure it would be plenty of good fun! Ed and myself didn’t get much of a chance to talk while in Orlando, so it would be a good thing catching up, too! Plus it would also be a great opportunity to watch him deliver his session on "Smart Collaboration: la evolución del puesto de trabajo de colaboración" (I have already checked out his slideware for the session and I can tell you that you will enjoy it quite a bit! Lots of very similar topics to the ones I have been talking about over here for a while already …)

But don’t miss out the rest of the topics covered on the agenda, because there’re some golden nuggets out there as well worth while checking out, like "Modelos flexibles de adopción de las estrategias colaborativas" with David Gutierrez Serrano and Luis Sanchez Acera (Yes, another Luis! How many of them can you have doing very similar things in the same company, eh?!?!) and a couple of use cases / success stories of how IBM customers have been making use of Lotus Collaboration technologies all along.

Like I said, lots of good stuff! And I surely can’t wait to get there on Monday morning to go through the final round of details and get things going on Tuesday in Madrid and Thursday in Barcelona. Exciting, to say the least! As usual, there are a couple of online spaces that folks would be able to check as well to see how things go before, during and after the event. There are a Facebook and LinkedIn groups, as well as a Twitter ID. And from my side I’m hoping to be able to live tweet the event using my alter ego (Split personality) over at @elsua_b (And a few other tweets, coming through to you from the good old @elsua Twitter ID). Then I will be putting together a couple of blog posts with some of the highlights on my way back from both events, hoping to share with you what some of my main key findings have been during those couple of days.

All of that, of course, if I managed to have a good connection to the Internet, although having the events hosted in Spain is going to make things a lot easier this time around … Yay for iPhone tethering!!

If you would want to get together for a drink or two, or just basically drop by and say "Hi!", you know where you can find me, right?

Don’t forget to register, if you are going to be around during those dates! Look forward to seeing you all next week and exchange a thought or two on what a Social Enterprise is all about …

Tags: Lotusphere, Lotusphere Comes To You, LCTY, #ls10, #lcty10, #lcty, Conference Events, Madrid, Barcelona, Spain, Agendas, Lotus Knows, Collaboration, Social Collaboration, Social Enterprise, Social Web, Smart Work, Remote Collaboration, Rafael Gallegos, Ed Brill, David Gutierrez Serrano, Luis Sanchez Acera, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, @elsua_b, @elsua, Registration, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, IBM, Lotus, IBM Lotus, Networking, Social Networks, Communication, Connections, Productivity