Yes, indeed, I will be on the road again! This time around to Hamburg, Germany, and as early as next week to attend an external conference whose line-up put together so far is rather fascinating and impressive: Next Conference, a.k.a. Next08 - Realtime. At the same time that I will be attending the event, I have been invited to participate as one of the speakers (Have got a keynote session at 2.45 p.m. CET on May 15th) and will have the great honour of sharing the stage with one of the folks I have been following for quite some time now and for whom I have got plenty of admiration accumulated over the course of the years. Yes, I am talking about JP Rangaswami, author from Confused of Calcutta and today Managing Director of BT Design for BT Group, according to the Wikipedia.

If you care for a moment to check out the agenda you would be able to see the good amount of great speakers that will be there, too. Some of them folks I have been following, and violently agreeing with all along, for quite some time as well, but who I have never met face to face and next week may be the perfect chance to do so. Examples like Stowe Boyd, yes, that edgling, Steve Rubel (The one and only!), Stefan Kellner (From Plazes), Gunter Dueck (Fellow IBM colleague who has done some tremendous piece of work on Knowledge Management and data warehouses), Leisa Reichelt (Author of the super fine Disambiguity) and the list goes on and on and on.

Thus with that specific agenda and impressive list of amazing speakers, you can imagine that the excitement is starting to grow inside of me quite a bit. More than anything else, because it is just right around the corner and can’t wait to get there and continue to learn from all of these thought leaders who have been pioneering in the Social Computing and Enterprise 2.0 spaces for quite a bit already!

In case you are wondering what I would be talking about at the event, I am sure that, if you have been following this blog for a while, you would already have a sense of what it will be about. Yes, indeed, about my experiment on giving up on e-mail, work related e-mail, that is. And with the well known title (Put together already by Craig Cmehil and Ed Stephens, respectively) of "Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail". I have already finished the slide deck and this time around it is very much public, for open consumption, outside of the firewall, so once I get the heads up from the conference organisers I will be sharing the deck over here, after I upload it into Slideshare.

Yes, almost ready, indeed! You may be wondering when I am planning on getting there, right? Well, I will be arriving on the 13th, at around mid-day and will be leaving Hamburg on the 17th of May late in the evening. So if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or to catch up with a lovely conversation while I am there, do not hesitate to contact me and we will arrange something, I am sure. For now, signing off and checking out some further details from the overall conference itself, which I am sure is going to be one of those special events where I might get to finally figure out whether I am a centroid or an edgling. Or something in between, who knows heh

Tags: Conference Events, Next Conference, Next08, Realtime, IBM, Hamburg, Germany, JP Rangaswami, Confused of Calcutta, BT Group, Stowe Boyd, Edgling, Centroid, Steve Rubel, Stefan Kellner, Plazes, Gunter Dueck, Lisa Reichelt, Disambiguity, Craig Cmehil, Ed Stephens, Slideshare, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Marketing 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Media 2.0, e-mail, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media

So, with all of that said, I am just going to put together a few lines in here to let folks know that, once again, I will be on the road travelling to meet up with a couple of customers. This time around, as you may have been able to check through my Dopplr account already, next week, on the 19th of May, and till the 22nd, travelling to Barcelona and with a fully packed agenda for the 20th and 21st meeting various clients to discuss Social Computing within the Enterprise, and the kind of impact Social Software is having within the corporate world.

I will be coming back on the 22nd and since I already got the flight tickets and everything I just need to worry about the hotel, although I have been provided with some excellent recommendations already. Probably staying in the city center to be able to move easily and quickly, too! I doubt I would be getting much free time during the course of the 20th and 21st, specially during the working hours, but other than that it looks as if I am going to be pretty free for the rest of the time.

Thus fancy meeting up? How about some lovely tapas, a couple of beers here and there and all of that on the beach?!?! That’s the plan I have already set up with Tom Raftery, who earlier on today contacted me through Twitter to let me know that he got notified by Dopplr that we would be both going to the same city at the same time! How cool is that? (Dopplr ROCKS!!!) He is going to be there for the Startup 2.0 event, while I will be meeting up with customers, but it sounds like a really cool plan to me! Not only will I be able to finally meet up with him in real life, but I would be able to catch up with the event he will be attending with his highlights while I treat him for a drink or two heh

I know as well that Ferdy Rodenas lives in Barcelona, so that’s probably going to make it easy as well to meet up with someone I have been looking forward meeting up for a little while now, after all of our online interactions in various different places, just like Tom.

Thus there you go. We got a plan. Tapas, beers, a bunch of good friends and all of that on the beach, because I am sure the weather is going to be rather nice. Want to meet up, if you are around? Do let us know. Through a comment over here, or on Tom’s blog or Ferdy’s or hook up with us on Twitter. Probably the easiest way. Hope to see you there!

(Not sure just yet whether I would be able to blog about the outcome of the meetings with these customers, you would need to wait for a few more days, but if I can, I surely will, because so far the the scenarios are just perfect on one of the core arguments that I use for my pitch on Social Software in the Enterprise. Stay tuned for more to come…)

Tags: IBM, Travelling, Trip, Barcelona, Customer Meetings, Dopplr, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Tom Raftery, Twitter, Startup 2.0, Events, Ferdy, Ferdy Rodenas, Tapas, Beers, Beach, Life, Work, Balance

Thus as you can imagine I haven’t had much free time just yet to finish up those various blog post drafts I keep wanting to share over here at some point. But, like I have said it already, not to worry, they will come. However, today I just wanted to share with you something that I am sure you are going to enjoy. It is actually a couple of video links that match quite nicely the festive time I have been enjoying whole day today.

The first one is actually a video clip which is part of a videocasting series that is going on inside IBM and which is having a huge success at the moment, to say the least. Some time ago, my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, George Faulkner came together, with a couple of his colleagues, with this bright idea of encouraging IBMers to shoot short video clips showing where they were working, i.e. the IBM building site, customer location, on the road, whatever, but mostly from the IBM office wherever it may have well been in the world. And that is how "This is where I work…" was born and why, from the very first moment, it became quite a show!

Thousands and thousands of downloads have gone through already and, funny enough, I never thought I would be taking part of it, since I always doubted people would be interested in my home office location. However, while I was in NYC, after having finished a superb week at the IBM Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit event, I spent a couple of days with George, and a bunch of other IBMers, and George, as brilliant as he is coming up with some serendipitous discoveries and fun activities, proposed to me to shoot a short video with several fragments sharing my thoughts on my stay in NYC’s IBM sites and do a clip on "This is where I work … today!". 

He thought we could take a few pictures here and there and get things rolling, but I thought we could actually do it with a little bit of a twist and decide to put to a good service, as usual, my Nokia N95, and we went video. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you would know how much in love I am with the N95 device (And you would probably know my reaction to other fancier mobile devices -no names mentioned in here - hehe) and after those couple of days, even so much more now!

I have been getting lots of comments about the quality of both the sound and the video footage for a mobile device and all I can say is that the N95 beats any other device in this category by quite a bit! One of the best purchases I have done in my short life buying gadgets. And the proof is this blog post.

Thus attached, and without much further ado, here you have got the video clip from that series "This is where I work … today" where you would be able to see yours truly, in various locations throughout the city, talking about what it is like working for a large corporation in the city. All done on the fly, with no script, no pauses, no premeditated wording going around, just pure, informal, on the spot, good fun!

George did both the video shoot and the post-production, more than anything else because he is much more talented than myself, for sure! And if not judge for yourselves. Here I am, talking to you from NYC in front of a video camera for the first time in my life and having a great time at it!

Yes, indeed, after you have watched this video clip I am sure you would understand now, in case you haven’t done so thus far, why I *love* working for the company I work, and why I am still enjoying it just as if it were my first day 11 years ago!! You got that one right, because of the people!

Does it ring a bell? Well, here is another good reason. A bonus clip I put together myself with the Nokia N95 while in NYC, enjoying some of the lovely spring weather I was fortunate to witness throughout the whole week!

Of course, I will be back!! (Even if that means bringing back with me another nasty bug that may take me down again for a couple of days! hehe)

(Time now to go and enjoy a long walk through one of my favourite places over here…)

Tags: Holidays, Bank Holiday, Koninginnedag, Ascension Day, IBM, George Faulkner, Videocasting, Vodcasts, This Is Where I Work, Nokia, N95, Serendipity, New York, New York City, Central Park, 11 Madison Ave, 590 Madison, Fun, Fun Stuff, Work Life Balance, Balance, Life, Work, Things That Matter, Spring, Experiences, Unforgettable Experiences

We will have to wait for another 24 hours and see how he would react further, but so far the pain he was having from the Trigeminal Neuralgia is now gone! He was even thinking about watching his favourite football team play tonight for the semis of the Champion’s League! That is the spirit, indeed!!

Like I said, very much relieved, but, unfortunately, so much so that I have been caught with my guard off and over the last few hours I have developed a massive cold and a HUGE sore throat that has drained all of my energy that I may have got left. It hurts quite a bit, and just a few minutes ago, I had 39C of fever. Not looking good, eh?

Yes, that is right. In other circumstances it would have been something that I would have taken care of by having a long rest and try to recover as soon as possible. Slowly, but steadily. Yet, this time around is not going to happen, because tomorrow (Those folks who may have checked my Dopplr ID may already know about this) I am on my way to Zürich to attend an important customer workshop on Friday for which a bunch of us have been working really hard for some time and around the subject of social networking.

Thus there you have it, with that sense I should be having a long long rest for the next couple of days, I am currently busy finishing the packing of my suitcase, then have a lovely chicken soup, some antibiotics and straight off to bed, hoping that tomorrow I will feel completely new! (Fingers crossed!)

I would have loved to meet up folks while I am there, for sure, but unless I recover to a pretty good state, I would suggest you stay out of the way and perhaps meet up some time again in June, when I have got another trip planned for Zürich. We shall see.

So this is just another short blog post where you can see that those highlights on the Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit from IBM, it will still have to wait for a few days, till I get back and feel better. Also there is a whole bunch of stuff I would want to share, but right now the only thing my body wants to do is hit the bed, sweat it all out, and be completely new tomorrow!

Let’s hope so… Regular blogging activities would resume shortly as well … Have a good one!

Tags: sick, travelling, customers, workshops, getting-well

But if I have to be honest with you folks, the main reason why I am so looking forward to this week’s Web 2.0 event is because for the first time in years I would be able to put together a face behind the text, the voice, the interactions of a whole bunch of people I will be meeting up with for the next few days. It is going to be one of those experiences where I will be taking social networking to the extreme once again. The experience through the Web on what you can get from social computing will have NOTHING to do with what is going to happen tomorrow and over the course of the next couple of days.

And today just saw a glimpse of it already. Arrived at the hotel, chilled out a bit, unpacking and getting comfy and, of course, had to get the wireless connection to see what various people were doing and right away and in less than 30 minutes I got my WHOLE week booked up with some really really cool events!! Way awesome! Not only meeting up with a great bunch of social software enthusiasts, but also exposure to lots and lots of great materials, fantastic keynote speakers, lovely dinners and meetups in the evening and after the event already packed with additional activities I will be confirming with different people involved. So if you tried to get in touch with me before, not to worry, I shall be sharing all of the details with you shortly. If you haven’t got in touch just yet, but planning to do so, by all means, I am sure we could spend some time catching up with each other! After all, one thing is the social computing interactions through the Web and another thing is just getting to experience it in real life.

Which is what I am about to do in the next few hours, so you may need to excuse the light blogging coming along, since I doubt I would have much time to blog it all initially due to the fact I will be running around like mad helping out that everything works out all right with the rest of the organisers. Plus attending some sessions, plus meeting some new people, plus getting to talk to some of those folks I know for years! and the list keeps growing larger and larger by the minute!

So much so that I think that in between enjoying the event, the multiple various conversations I will engage with, the social events and whatever else I sense there will be very little time blogging ahead of me. Thus that’s why this time around I am going to try something different…

Remember my twitterrhea over at Lotusphere 2008, where I got a chance to tweet quite a bit on all of the happenings during such a terrific event that I got exposed to? Well, this time is going to be different. To start with, I have gone ahead and created an exclusive new Twitter id: elsuacon, that I will only be twittering about the different events I will be attending from here onwards, and that getting started tomorrow. So I am planning to go wild on that one and make as much annotations as my little brain can process, with the hopes that those notes in Twitter will help with the creation of highlights through various blog posts on what the event has been. Thus the blog posts may not be that often, since the sessions are very very short and there are multiple places where I would have wanted to blog and won’t be able to, but my new Twitter ID, elsuacon, surely is going to get plenty of activity.

So you can imagine that with all that said, I am going to share with you one short, quick warning: do not subscribe to the channel unless you would want to go through some twitterrhea which may take over your own Twitter snippets. You can certainly keep commenting and engaging in the conversation over at my usual Twitter handle, but everything else, like session reviews, anecdotes, summaries, stuff learned, etc. etc. will go into this new Twitter account I have created.

Hopefully, that way, I can put together plenty of thoughts very quick for each session, which I could then summarise and put together with some nice wording after the whole thing is done as part of the Highlights. Apart from the day to day dialogue. At the same time, I am sure you have seen already how one of my fellow IBMers,  Sacha Chua, one of the folks I have been wanting to meet up for a long while now!, has created a hashtag for the event under web20summit, so folks can also follow our thoughts easier and much much faster.

And talking about thoughts, there would be plenty of other stuff I could talk about for what’s left of the week, but one step at a time, my body is seriously asking for some rest, and I think I am going to give in. So, stay tuned for plenty more to come and if you see I have gone far too quiet on this blog, it is for sure due to the fact that I am taking the extreme the usage of elsuacon, over at Twitter!

Can’t wait for all the fun to get started!!

Tags: Yorktown Heights, NY, IBM, Watson Research Center, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, Web20Summit, Web20Summit2008, Web20Summit08, Conference Events, Summit, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal KM, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Social Software Adoption, MacBook Pro, Twitter, Blogging, Con-Blogging, Metablogging, BOFs, Birds of a Feather, Crowne Plaza, White Plains, Events, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, elsuacon, Sacha Chua, Hashtags

But this time around I am going to be mentioning something else that I thought was really really cool and that I was rather excited about. As you well know, on this weekly series of blog posts about Gran Canaria I have developed the tendency to share both some pictures and short video clips of various places that have impressed me all along from this island and way at the beginning I was actually making use of DailyMotion to store those videos, well, it looks like things are going to change from here onwards.

No, I am not talking about stopping with the sharing of those videos. On the contrary, I am going to keep it going stronger than ever. For sure. What I am really going to start doing is making good use of the wonderful new feature that the fine folks of Flickr have put together. Yes, video!!!  How awesome is that? Right next to the good bunch of pictures I have been sharing all along I will now be able to add Flickr videos as well and share them as part of the same flow. Love it!

Yes, yes, I know that most people have been indicating how sharing videos in Flickr is a little bit limiting, since you can only upload videos which are 90 seconds long, but I tell you what, that’s just more than enough for me! In fact, most of the video clips I am planning on sharing will be that length anyway, so it makes perfect sense to place them together next to the pictures, don’t you think? And for those video clips longer that 90 seconds? -You may be asking, right? Well, I will continue to make use of DailyMotion, of course!

So let’s get the ball rolling then! Earlier on today I went ahead and shared a couple of short video clips in Flickr in almost no time, with a very user friendly interface and along the same lines of flow you get with sharing pictures and they are both part from a single series I created from one special place in my heart that gives me shivers every time I get to go there.

The name of the place is called Meloneras and is just on the very south of the island of Gran Canaria. It is one of those emergent touristy spots in the area where you will be able to find some of the finest hotels from the south of the island. Definitely, a good place to stay. For sure. However, what it also has is one of those stunning everlasting boulevards that would allow you to take long long walks along the coast enjoying quite some marvelous sunsets, both in winter and summer time! The most spectacular ones are the ones happening during the winter time when the sun sets across the Atlantic ocean. Just brilliant!

The funny thing is that I happen to live about 7 to 10 minute drive from there, so I get to go every now and then with the dog and spend one hour or one hour an a half unwinding from everything else and enjoying just one of those special places that only when you get there you realise the kind of beauty you are contemplating. I tell you, very few things can get better than that! And if not judge for yourself with these two videos I shared earlier on:

What did I say? It kind of makes you think you would want to be there, right? Well, that is just how I felt myself earlier on today a couple of times while I was struggling with a couple of tools. Perhaps next time I should just leave it and enjoy another one of those unforgettable sunsets @ Meloneras!

Want to join me?

Tags: Gran Canaria, Meloneras, Costa Meloneras, Sunsets, Daily Motion, Flickr, Flickr Video, Life, Life Work Balance, LWB, Tourism, Boulevard, Unwinding, Walks

This is an event that focuses on "emerging business and technology activities within IBM that utilize the Web as a platform and define how the Web will drive innovation to IBM’s business and for our customers", which I know for most of you folks out there would sound very familiar with other social computing related summits. And it would probably be, at least, from what you can sense while reading that quote I just mentioned above.

To me, this is going to be one fantastic, wonderful and unforgettable event because for the first time in over five years that I have been working as a Social Computing evangelist at IBM, it will be the chance for me to meet up a good bunch of the folks I have come to develop a virtual relationship with through various different social software tools, both internal and external, and this would be the first time that I would be able to meet up with most of them in real life!

We are all incredibly excited about the opportunity to meet up and share our experiences with one another face to face (Still the best social networking experience there is out there. No doubt!!) on how we are, each of us, getting along with embracing, adopting, promoting, facilitating, living the Enterprise 2.0 experience at such large corporation as IBM.

I wish I could share with you folks the agenda of the event, but since it is just an internal only event, I am going to keep it to myself for the time being, but for sure it is going to be one marvelous occasion. That’s for certain! A good bunch of the topics that will be covered are around several of the subjects I have been blogging all about over here on how IBM is adopting various social software tools within the corporate world. So perhaps not much new in that space, if you have been following this blog closely for a little while now. However, the interesting part would be how different people from various business units and organisations get to share their take on how that adoption is going ahead. Exchanging experiences, pain points, lessons learned, success stories, you name it! Now, that is just going to be incredibly fascinating to witness and engage in with further conversations.

Like I mentioned above, I was checking the other day the list of people attending the event and I realise how one of the major highlights from the event, even before I get over there, is going to be the networking piece! Of course, I will be blogging all about it as I am planning to take my MacBook Pro with me. I am sure, I will be twittering as well quite a bit throughout the event and who knows whatever else. Each of the sessions lasts for about 30 minutes, so there will be some compressed and brief thoughts, I am sure, but they would eventually get there.

One other reason why I am really excited about the whole event, apart from the incredibly good quality of the sessions, and the networking that will be going on, is the fact that it will be as well the first time that I will get to present, this time around as a Birds of a Feather (a.k.a. BOFs) session, on my own experiences on how I am getting on with giving up on e-mail, work related e-mail, that is. Yes, that is right, I will be conducting that BOFs session during the course of one hour, and whatever else more, on how such experience is going and how other folks may be able to join me with it. That would be the first time that I will be sharing plenty of tips on how I actually get it down and how for the last 8 weeks I have been able to reduce considerably the good amount of e-mails I was already getting through to me at one point.

I just can’t wait for that session to take place, since I will actually be using a couple of slides as entry points to get the discussion going and then I will dive right into it! (Not to worry, I will share the slides as well over here in its due time!). Now, here is the big question. What do you think is going to be the title of the presentation / BOFs session? Any ideas? Well, if you followed my Twitter stream a few days ago, it is actually coming out from a good number of conversations I had on that very same day. And thanks to Craig Cmehil and Ed Stephens (And a bunch of other folks who chimed in altogether as well) the final title I have adopted is:

"Thinking out of the inbox: More Collaboration through less e-Mail",

which fits in quite nicely with what I have been doing over the last few weeks. Thus thanks much, Craig & Ed, for participating in the brainstorm session and for helping out coming up with that title! Loving it! (Stay tuned later on in the week for another lovely surprise coming up your way , by the way).

Finally, to wrap up, I will be leaving Monday early morning next week, arriving through JFK on Monday afternoon and staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains for the entire week as I will be leaving on Sunday evening. Thus if you plan to be around and fancy getting together for a drink or two (Guess I will be rather busy from the 15th till the 17th, but pretty open after that, for sure!), get in touch and we will get together! Right now that end of the week looks very much available at the moment.

And that would be it for now, folks. Like I said, I will be doing plenty of blogging and twittering all along on what promises to be an stunning event around Social Computing, but if you really want to get down to some serious social networking, and you happen to be around, give me a buzz and we will meet up!

Tags: Dopplr, Yorktown Heights, NY, IBM, Watson Research Center, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, Conference Events, Summit, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal KM, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Social Software Adoption, MacBook Pro, Twitter, Blogging, Con-Blogging, Metablogging, BOFs, Birds of a Feather, Craig Cmehil, Ed Stephens, Communication, Crowne Plaza, White Plains, Events

Here is a quick description of what you will find there:

"[…] a volcanic crater – 1000 m (3300 ft) in diameter and 200 m (660 ft) deep – with a 569 m (1,867 ft) high peak, the Pico de Bandama, to which you can drive up. This peak has an observation platform, from where – despite its relatively low height – you can enjoy breathtaking views of the entire north and east coast and towards the mountainous centre in the west. With a clear sky you might even get to see the neighbouring island Fuerteventura in the northeast."

If you would want to read some more about it, you can certainly go ahead and check out Centre Tour - Caldera de Bandama, which provides a quick, short description of what makes that place special. And once you are done with it, here are the couple of videos I have shared earlier on today where you can see how every now and then I get to go there, just to chill out and admire the work of nature. Like I said, stunning!!

Gran Canaria - Caldera de Bandama - Part I:

Gran Canaria - Caldera de Bandama - Part II:

(And worth while a visit if you are around… No doubt!)

Tags: Gran Canaria, Nokia, N95, Caldera de Bandama, Bandama, Volcanos, Landscapes, Hiking, Life, Balance

As you can imagine, my brain has got very few brain cells working properly after such an intensive day of meetings and the usual catchup afterwards (Thank goodness for e-mails not being one of the things to catch up with! heh), so I decided to create this entry with some light blogging to pick up the subject I initiated nearly a week ago, and which I mentioned I would eventually get to share with you every now and then. Yes, I am talking about the weekly blog post on Gran Canaria, the place where I have lived for the last four years, the place that keeps captivating me day in day out. No exceptions!

If last week I created a blog post where I shared some footage from a couple of recent video clips I recorded with my super fine Nokia N95 (Glad to know as well I am not the only one who thinks it is a really good experience!), here I am at it again, sharing the third video I recorded while nearly the very top of Roque Bentaiga, but this time around from the other side of the enclave. With quite a view, I can assure you!

If there would be one single word that I could make use of to describe such amazingly beautiful spot it would be humbling. And very much so! It’s just like time disappears, it is just you, up there, in the mountains, with hardly anybody around, facing the rock, your inner thoughts, your fears, your hopes, yourself and nature. Yes, I know, it probably cannot get better than that!

It is in days like today that I wish I had taken the day off and head over there to spend the day and disconnect from everything! It would have helped quite a bit get a new perspective on most things and I know that when coming back that sensation of peace and quiet is something that would make you feel fully re-energised and ready to go back at it! That kind of experience is Roque Bentaiga, folks. One of my favourite places in Gran Canaria to meditate, to forget about the world, to stop, breathe, relax, breathe again, and go back at it!

And you know, the best part of it all is that it is incredibly easy to reach out and access with very good roads all the way before you reach the bottom and start climbing up to the top. Yes, one of those special landmarks that even the lazy ones in all of us with our sedentary lives cannot deny going for …

So, yes, light blogging today, folks, but after watching the video (Yes, I still need to get the hangout of operating with the video camera! Not to worry, it will get better overtime!), you would understand why I put together this entry to help me escape the day that is just about to finish …

And with that, and without much further ado, here is the weekly video:

Roque Bentaiga - Part III

As you may well remember, this past Monday, 17th of March, St. Patrick’s Day, I was actually celebrating the fact that I have now been living and working remotely from one of the places I fell in love many many years ago and which I knew at some point I would be coming back. Yes, last Monday was my fourth anniversary of having moved to Gran Canaria! I guess that time flies when you are having fun, right?

Anyway, plenty of folks who have gotten to know me over the years, both in real life and virtually through the various social networks we share in common, have been wondering why I am just so crazy about this island. After all it is just plenty of sunshine and beaches all over the place, eh? Well, not exactly, there is just so much more!, that people don’t know about that, after being four years over here, I thought it would be a good time to change that perception a bit.

Yes, I know, what I am just about to announce over here in this blog may not have much to do, probably nothing, with the regular blogging activities I have been carrying out over here on topics like Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing or Enterprise 2.0 over the last few months. But I thought that after four years of having contemplated the idea, I guess it is just about time to announce that from now onwards, and, on a more or less regular basis, I am planning to share over here the odd blog post with various different references to some of the most emblematic natural spots that Gran Canaria has got to offer.

That way, you would have the opportunity to find out for yourselves why I have fallen in love with this island for its variety, amongst many many other things; after all, you don’t name such a tiny island a mini-continent for nothing, right? If you would remember, that is, if you have been a long time reader from this blog you would know how for a good number of weeks this new initiative I am trying to re-introduce again was an integral part of this blog and after a little while I stopped it for a few months. Well, now it is the time to bring it back. As a way to celebrate the four years I have been living over here and also as a way to show you what keeps me going and enjoying every minute of it.

So whenever the odd blog post on this subject would come up, I will be sharing rather a bunch of photos, probably from my Flickr stream, and / or some video footage with short clips of no longer than 2 minutes, 3 tops!, that I would be recording with my Nokia N95 and uploading it into my DailyMotion account from various different places that have captivated my heart all along and which over the course of the last few years have made me understand and comprehend some of the most impressive beauty of this island of Gran Canaria. Yes, I know, so much more than just sun & beaches!

And to get things started, here are a couple of short video clips I shoot a couple of months back, on a splendid sunny and warm day, where I decided to go to the countryside and up into the mountains to check out some of the stunning scenery you can ever imagine. The name of this place from the video clips is Roque Bentaiga, one of the most emblematic, beautiful and stunning natural spots from the entire island and one that as you come closer to it you can sense how magical the place is on its own! Just as I get to write this down I get goose bumps all over the place from thinking that a few weeks back I was nearly at the very top! And here is why:

Thus I hope you enjoy this new section, here in my blog, I am planning on updating every now and then sharing with you all some of the reasons why I may have been living over here for over four years, but I still love every minute of it and as time goes by, and I get a chance to share some more pictures and video clips, I am hoping to be sharing some of the charms that this island of Gran Canaria has got to offer!

Are you ready?

(No, not to worry, I am no