COUGH! COUGH! COUGH!

Yes, that’s right, as a consequence of having the air-conditioning of the venue, Hotel Barceló, really blown up, I have now returned back home and a couple of days later, I am almost knocked out by a nasty cold I am going through that’s not even helping me think very clearly either for that matter! Ouch!!!

And it looks like I haven’t been the only one either! A few of the folks I have connected with through Twitter after the event have also been commenting on the same thing. So it looks like the airco managed to knock us all out while at the venue! Double ouch!

What’s the immediate result of that, you may be wondering, right? Well, for me, that this is going to be the first blog post with some of the highlights from EventoBlog: a cold! And a nasty one, too! So you may need to excuse me for a couple of days while I try to recover with some hot chicken soup, hot milk & honey, some drugs (hehe, not that kind!) and see if in a couple of days I can come back up in full force with those reviews and on to my usual regular blogging.

So if you see this blog going dormant for a couple of days or so, you know why. The lovely, and apparently, very powerful air-conditioning from the venue event. And you know the worst part, that I mentioned it throughout the entire event how we needed to do something about it, and nothing happened, eventually. Oh, well … Next time, I guess…

Off now into recovery mode for the next day or so without blogging, probably. But fear not, I will be back! I will be back with those highlights entries and share with you some of the great stuff I experienced throughout those couple of days. This is just going to remain as an anecdote I am going to remember for a little while, since it’s been a few years since I had such a nasty cold hanging around!

Thus see you all in a couple of days …

Tags: Cold, Flu, Sick, Ill, Blogging, Metablogging, EventoBlog, EBE, EBE08, Highlights, Barcelo, Hotel Barcelo, Conference Events, Events, Seville, Spain

But if those vacation days were not good enough, over the course of last weekend I have actually been attending one of the most impressive, and wonderful, social computing events I have attended in the last few months: EventoBlog 2008 in Seville, Spain. Two full days packed with some stunning presentations, round tables and panels around the world of blogging that would be difficult to forget! And the networking throughout the event was just an amazing experience I am hoping to be sharing with you folks shortly.

So much so that after attending the event, two days onwards and I am still jazzed up about it! So much that I have decided that from now onwards there will be a number of changes happening with my blogging habits, one of them being that very shortly I will be starting to blog as well in Spanish, as well as English, so that I would be able to reach out to those folks as well who asked plenty of questions and commented quite a bit around the subject of my giving up on e-mail at work new reality, which was the main subject of my talk at Sunday noon.

But that would be the subject for a number of upcoming blog posts as part of the series of highlights articles I will be sharing over here shortly detailing what the event was all about. Thus stay tuned …  For now, though, I thought I would pick things up where I left them and continue further with another weekly progress report on how things have been going with not using corporate e-mail any longer.

I am already on week 39 and by the end of it I was a little bit worried about it, specially after seeing the final number of incoming e-mails, which, so far, has been one of the highest since I started this whole thing. However, when examining the actual numbers and what happened during that week I knew exactly I didn’t have to worry about it. At all. And I will explain why.

But without any further delay here you have got the weekly report, so that you folks can have a look and find out some more on what happened:

As you would be able to see, 49 e-mails is not something that I have been receiving every week and, checking out the previous weeks, I was starting to get worried, like I mentioned above, that things may be going even further along and increase further up. But then again, I was just getting worried for nothing. Why? Because most of those incoming e-mails were actually provoked by myself! And no one else!

Yes, that is right! I was the main guilty party of receiving such a high number! And I am sure you may be wondering why, by now, right? Well, thanks to the ever lovely (Not!!) calendaring & scheduling options embedded in our e-mail systems, as well as the ever confusing Daylight Savings Time (That happened over that weekend in the US), which caused me much more harm than I could ever anticipate!

As you all know by now, I co-lead a community of social computing evangelists at IBM (BlueIQ Ambassadors) and right now there are over 500 of us and every now and then we eventually get together on a conference call to share some further news with the community and comment on the various activities we are engaging with as a community.

Well, on this week, week 39, it was the time where we were going to get together again and, as one of the co-leads, I had to send out the calendar invite to everyone, so that they could all make it. And, of course, since we don’t have much choice, all of us, in this aspect, I had to use e-mail for that. And, guess what?, things messed up and pretty badly!

Apparently, when I sent out the calendar invite, the timezones got mixed up and people had the details of the call on the right date, but at a different time. So there I go with my attempt to fix the whole mess and it took me not just one more try, but two!, to eventually fixed it all up! And that meant first three days of that week a complete mess with multiple e-mails arriving asking what happened! Or even some folks who were questioning my usage of e-mail, or my lack of effectiveness with it altogether, since I no longer use it! Yes, I know, too funny & ironic! hehe (Tell me about it!)

And the rest of the week I spent it recovering from the whole total mess! Goodness, never thought that a calendaring event could cause so much harm when combined with the DST changes that happened at the time in the US. I tell you something… I have learned a big lesson on this one for next time around, I will NOT mess up with the timezones and DST changes on the same week where they are taking place! Not going to run into the same embarrassing situation anymore. I had enough with this one!

Even more so, when last week I was gone the entire week on vacation and when I got back I counted the number of e-mails and things have gone back to normal again. And this week things seem to be going even better! Phew!

I don’t know what you folks think, but I just cannot wait for the day where Calendaring & Scheduling will separate itself from e-mail and have its own identity, so I can ditch e-mail for good! It is still the main reason for which I keep getting the most e-mails: just to arrange meetings, conference calls, events, etc. etc.

I long for the day where I can come to work and schedule a meeting and somehow I just wouldn’t need to use e-mail. It would just show up right there, ready to action, and without sending a single notice. Just like out of magic! Oh, yes, wishful thinking, I know, but wouldn’t it be wonderful? Wouldn’t it be an interesting challenge for calendaring & scheduling and e-mail innovators out there? … Any takers?

Anyway, that would be it, folks, for week 39. Within the next few hours I will be sharing what happened on my 10th month anniversary since I have given up on corporate e-mail, which promises to be rather interesting since it is going to be very much tight up with the event I attended over the weekend: The mind-blowing EventoBlog 2008!! Stay tuned for more to come!

Tags: 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, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, e-mail, email, Productivity, Communication, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Holidays, Vacation, Seville, Spain, EventoBlog, EBE, EBE08, Blogging, Metablogging, Conference Events, Events, Calendaring and Scheduling, Calendaring, Scheduling, Daylight Savings Time, DST, Timezones

Yes, indeed, I am going to take a short break, from the moment I get to post this entry and till November 17th when I would be back again to work! One full week of doing nothing else than enjoy the lovely sunshine, get a very much needed rest (Specially for my heavily overused wrists!), enjoy the lovely food & friendly people around me and catch up with some very much needed work / life balance! And then back on to my favourite activity: face to face social networking! Not bad, eh? Yes, I know! Not bad at all! heh

Leo Babauta, over at the fine Zen Habits, put together just recently a wonderful blog post on the topic of striking a good balance between life and work under the title "How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life". Plenty of really good and helpful tips shared over there and worth while reading the article. For sure.

For me, it is now my own turn to find and enjoy that balance for the next few days and here you have got a couple of snapshots of how I am planning to let life win this everlasting battle of work vs. life:

Thus, if you don’t see me in the various social networking spaces where I usually hang out, you know exactly where I will be, at least, for the next few days. Because, just like Leo finished that blog post on striking a good life / work balance:

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." - Albert Einstein

Have a good everyone and see you all soon!

Tags: Holidays, Vacation, Gran Canaria, Beach, Sun, Mountains, Hiking, Fun, Balance, Work Life Balance, Rest, Life, Work, Leo Babauta, Zen Habits, Maspalomas Dunes, Maspalomas, Dunes, Landscapes, Sunsets, Spain, Photos, Albert Einstein, Wisdom

If you head over to Secure. Innovative. Careful. Agile. Ready you would be able to read further on a new initiative that Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO, has just launched and which promises to help change the world as we know it. Read that rather interesting article to see what the fuss is all about. Then I would point you to this reproduction of the speech that Sam did earlier on today as well at the Council of Foreign Relations under the title "A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" or watch the video online here.

Yes, indeed, welcome to A Smarter Planet! This is a new initiative launched today by Sam himself where he clearly highlighted a good number of challenges that we face today as a society and how we may need to start smartening up quite a bit in order to look for the next generations of business models which will have a much more significant impact not just within the business world itself, but also within our own society as we know it. Like the main article states:

"Consider:
- How ineffective our power grids are: 67% of energy is lost due to inefficiencies.
- How sick our healthcare system is: costs have pushed nearly 100 million people below the poverty line.
- How dirty our water is: one in five people do not have access to drinkable water.
- How wasteful our food chains are: U.S. consumers throw away $48 billion worth of food a year."

And then read further on about "The good news":

"Through the power of technology, there is a lot we can actually change now. For the first time in history, the most powerful computers on earth can be affordably accessed by almost any business or organization and applied to any model to analyze just about any workload. Almost any object can become digitally aware and interconnected—or "smart." And every single one of these interactions represents a chance to do something better, more productively."

So you can imagine where most of my excitement comes from, right? Just on the perfect spot, perfect timing, perfect situation, perfect background overall … for change! And it looks like I haven’t been the only one thinking along those lines. Already a bunch of good friends, and fellow colleagues, have been blogging about what this initiative would mean for us all, as knowledge workers, readying for that change. Andy Piper, Jack Mason, Aaron Kim, Kevin Aires, Bill Chamberlin, Larry Phipps (Over at The Greater IBM Connection) have already been sharing their thoughts on it, as well as a whole bunch of other folks, and it is starting to pick up momentum as well in microsharing sites like Twitter or Friendfeed.

There is even a Tumblr space, A Smarter Planet, which is already starting to capture some further thoughts and insights, as well as a good number of YouTube videos that describe what it would all be about over the next few months (Perhaps years): What are you working on? What is progress? A history of progress. And I know that a blog will be coming up shortly, too!

Yes, indeed, you can say that it is picking up plenty of buzz and I am sure it will be generating a whole bunch of conversations that, up until now, we were not having. And this is exactly what brings me into my point, which I think by now you would be able to relate to quite a bit. And if not, let’s look and see …

Don’t you think that something is missing? Something in "A Smart Planet" that would make it succeed big time? Don’t you have that feeling there is something else out there that could make it work with an even bigger and larger impact reaching out every single aspect of who we are as a society? Hummm, that’s just how I felt when I was first getting exposed to the whole initiative.

And if you have been reading this blog for a while now, like I mentioned earlier on, you will know exactly what’s missing from this particular initiative. Yes, that’s right, the people!!! Or what James Governor put nicely together in a recent tweet:

"@sandy_carter did you end up citing @timoreilly and @cshirky, harnessing collective intelligence and better information filters respectively" (Emphasis mine)

That’s what I am missing, indeed. The people! (Once again!) The glue that will make it all work. That collaborative nature in each and everyone of us that will be putting everything to the test to prove how innovative and prone towards knowledge sharing we, knowledge workers, really are. The ultimate challenge for us all: provoking the change. Ourselves!

Don’t take me wrong, folks, Technology is a wonderful thing, we all know that, but we all know that it is just that: Technology. Nothing else. It will be our ability, insights and creativity of making it work to suit our needs that will help us get through these rough times. We can have the best technology in the world, as well as the best processes, but if we don’t have the people, i.e. the right people, then we haven’t got anything!

And how are we going to make it work? -you may be wondering, right? Well, how else? Through connecting, collaborating and sharing our knowledge across with our peers. And all of that by adding into the mix, to augment those already existing interactions, social software tools. As simple as that! Indeed, that’s the big change we will all need to go through! Sooner or later, but we will have to go through it, whether we like it or not. I don’t think there is a way back at this point. Only onwards!

Penny Edwards shared, earlier on, one of the most thought-provoking, accurate and relevant blog posts that I can remember on the topic of Collaboration and she pretty much nails it with her conclusion on where I stand with A Smart Planet. It is not about the tools, nor the technology, but the people! Always has been!:

"[...]providing workers with more flexibility in how they communicate with each other, and customers, can result in new forms of cooperative action, more fruitful collaboration, faster decision-making, and greater productivity. And whilst it’s a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ companies introduce social tools, having a clear view of the driver for their introduction (i.e. tending towards efficiency or value-added / innovation) will ensure the appropriate technologies are implemented and organisational behaviours nurtured."

We already have got that driver for their introduction; now, let’s not forget where the focus should be all along and … Let’s do it!

And to finish off this blog post, I would want to share with you folks one of the multiple YouTube videos that have been shared related to this new initiative and which very clearly describes all what I have just said above, but in a little bit over one minute: Technology can’t / won’t think! Yet we do that all the time! Every minute! Every day!

Tags: 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, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, Communication, Sam Palmisano, Council of Foreign Relations, Leadership, Leaders, Technology, Tools, Processes, People, Smarter Planet, SmartPlanet, SmarterPlanet, Energy, Green, Water, Andy Piper, Jack Mason, Aaron Kim, Kevin Aires, Bill Chamberlin, Twitter, Tumblr, A Smarter Planet, YouTube, James Governor, Monkchips, Collective Intelligence, Information Filters, Filter Failure, Change, Change Management, Penny Edwards, Think, Think!

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! :-P).
- (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

For now, and without much further ado, here is the weekly progress report from week 38, so that you folks can have a look into it as well:

As you would be able to see, and like I have already mentioned, the incoming e-mails count keeps fluctuating and if a couple of weeks back I received 24 e-mails, last week that count went up to 37, which is not too bad, but then again it could have been much better. The main thing which will keep me watching over this one is that there wasn’t a specific reason why I got such a relatively high number, so we will have to wait and see this week what we will end up with.

For now though, I can confirm that this week is going to be just too funny, and ironic, because of what has happened in the last couple of days, but you will have to wait till next progress report hehe and you will see what I mean

To end up this blog post though I just wanted to share with you folks another interesting link that I have bumped into in the last couple of weeks and which I think is very representative on the stuff I am doing by moving away from corporate e-mail.

I initially got alerted about it by my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Adrian Spender, who tweeted about a recent article that Robert Scoble put together under the title of "The Enterprise Soft Spot, er, the Enterprise Email Crisis". In this particular blog post Scoble comments further on what the real issues are with e-mail at work, in fact, he calls it "The Enterprise EMail Crisis" and I thought I would just spend a couple of paragraphs on some of the quotes I found worth while noting, and which I am sure you would be able to relate to. Here we go with them:

"At one point during the presentation someone asked me what I’d do if I were trying to apply Web 2.0 techniques inside an Enterprise. I answered “every day I’d try to come up with some way to avoid using email.” I almost said it half in jest but was a little surprised when a sizeable cheer came from the audience"

Yes, I can see how he got that kind of reaction! Pretty similar to the one I have been going through for the last nine and a half months, where I have been talking to hundreds, if not several thousand, folks on what’s like not having to worry about e-mail at work anymore and still be able to keep my job and get the job done at the same time! So much so that in these last few months I have been travelling so much to various different events and customer meetings than in the 12 years I have been with the company!!

Yes, that is what I would also call the Enterprise soft spot! Showing everyone that with these new emerging (If I may say so still) technologies we now have got plenty of choices to make use of them extensively, both internally and externally, and without having to worry about pushing everything coming through e-mail. If I have found a way of doing that, everyone can certainly do it themselves, don’t you think?

The important thing, which is also something that I mentioned while at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, is that if you would want to stop using e-mail at work and move the conversations elsewhere, it is something that you should start doing! Don’t wait for your peers to get on board! It is a change in your habits that needs to take place, and not everyone else’s. It starts with you! A change where you start relying more and more on those social software tools to get the job done, just like I do! A chance to open up to new ways of collaborating and sharing your knowledge, perhaps in much more effective ways, but, unless you try, you will never know whether you would be succeeding or not.

I did that and it has worked wonders with me! Why not with you? What’s stopping you from moving away, gradually, from e-mail? Have you discussed it with the teams & communities and the various projects you are involved with? Have you mentioned to them how you would want to collaborate and share your knowledge in the most effective and efficient way for you? Have you tried going by at work one week without heavily relying on e-mail? If you haven’t raised these questions yet, you may want to get started now. Remember, we are witnessing and going through the Enterprise Soft Spot, so the sooner we are over with it, the sooner we would be moving into a new level of 2.0 interactions where you decide the kind of involvement and participation you would want to go for, as well how soon you would want to move away from corporate e-mail.

"1. When I left my job at NEC after working there for a year I left with 1.5 gigs of email. Neither I nor the company had access to that even though there was TONS of valuable data in there for my replacement."

Here, here! How many of us have been going through that situation just recently? I have a tendency to archive whatever e-mail I bump into over the course of the years and that means that I have got several GBs of data hidden away in my local mail archives in my Mac and my Inbox with the end-result that only me, for as long as I am there, can enjoy such vast amount of information and resources. As soon as that situation changes, everything will change. Not just for me, but for the corporation itself, because there is a great chance they will lose that information. Just like I would…

That is exactly one of the many reasons why I decided as well to stick my head out and Think Outside the Inbox (a.k.a. ‘TotI’), thus, as much as I possibly can I now try to share essential bits and pieces of information out there on the various social software tools where I hang out, so that all of those resources and knowledge would be available to everyone else in the company with just a simple search query and off it goes. Readily available to everyone! Now, do you think there is anything bigger than that at the corporate level? All of your information / knowledge made available to everyone, perhaps both inside and outside of the corporate firewall? Probably not! That, to me, is what "Knowledge Shared Is Power" is all about. No doubt!

"2. The “n*n” problem [...]"

While I was eventually reading through that second item Scoble mentions, I just couldn’t help thinking about this particular graphic (By Chris Rasmussen and courtesy from the Wikinomics blog) which I have used already several dozens of times (With due credit, of course!) and which I think is a very visual description of what Robert mentions in his blog post. Just another reason why e-mail is probably not the most efficient and effective collaborative tool, specially when you are about to embark on a one to many, or many to many exchange of information or feedback input. Here is the graphic, just in case you may not have seen it yet:

In short, and like I have mentioned throughout this entry, I have done it myself for the last nine and a half months and rather successfully, but it is up to you to decide where you would want to hang out within the corporate world: in Heaven or … in Hell …

(Yes, I chose Heaven, and you?)

Tags: 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, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Relationships, e-mail, email, Productivity, Communication, Re-purposing E-mail, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Web 2.0 Expo Europe, web2europe, web2expoeu, web2expoeu08, w2eb, Highlights, Berlin, Germany, Adrian Spender, Enterprise Email Crisis, Robert Scoble, Scoble, Scobleizer, Change Management, Change, TotI, Chris Rasmussen, Wikinomics Blog, Wikinomics, Heaven, Hell

Oh, something else that I think you should go ahead and check out. There have been plenty of blog posts on the topic of the Web 2.0 Expo and everything, but if I were to recommend a single one resource for some amazing coverage through live con-blogging that would be the blog from Adam Tinworth, over at One Man and His Blog. Head over to his blog and read through his posts and you will see what I meant when I wrote amazing coverage!

Also, like I have been mentioning all along in the various highlights blog posts, I have decided not to embed any of the slide decks from the event and just point you folks to the lovely piece of work from Slideshare where they have put together a nifty presentation pack, where you can watch through all of them as you may see fit. So, I am just going to embed that specific pack for the last time, so you can have a look into the various presentations that were used for Day 3:

From here onwards, I will try to detail what Day 3 of the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin was like and, to be honest, I can certainly say that it was one of the best days I have had in a long time while attending a conference event and I am just hoping this entry will try to make it some justice, because there is plenty of ground to cover. So let’s go!

To get things started with the day, the first hour and an half was dedicated to a bunch of keynote speaker sessions, some shorter than others, but all of them briefer than the usual keynotes covering a wide range of topics and thinking that, instead of me sharing with you all what they were like, since, once again, the Wi-Fi was not as good as what it could have been, I am going to make it easier for you folks and link over here to the YouTube videos that have already been shared for each of those speaker sessions (Notice as well that previous keynote speaker sessions are now available as well over here, if you would want to catch up with any of them!) and then perhaps add a line or two on each of them and see how it would go from there:

- John Lilly in Conversation with Brady Forrest: If you would want to find out some more on what’s happening around the world of FireFox and where it would go from there into the near future as our preferred Web browser in the 2.0 space!

- Tariq Krim (NetVibes): On what it means to be a Web 2.0 entrepreneur in Europe where the Internet is a saturated market already; where social attention is cannibalising media attention (revenues); and where there seems to be a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs!

- Luis Suarez on Thinking Outside the Inbox: I am sure there would be very little that I would need to add on this one (Specially if you have been following this blog for the last 9 months!), but I can certainly describe the experience as rather intense and re-energising: early morning, no slides, only 10 minutes, try to convince everyone that challenging your Inbox and moving away from it is a gradual process that you need to start (And no-one else!) if you would want to make it work. It begins with you. You are the one who has got to challenge it and make it work according to your needs and not everyone else’s! … Loved it!

A number of different folks have been blogging about such session and helping spread the message around and I could say all sorts of things about it (Thanks much!), but most of you folks already know it, so I am going to keep it short and just embed the 9 minute long video that was recorded:

- Patrick McDevitt on Tele Atlas (Slide deck here): To me describing what the future of application development and design would be like, that is, a co-creative process between developers and end-users based on the powerful interactions coming up through a community of passionate end-users engaging and providing feedback on how to improve your already existing, or new!, products! It will not get better than that! And Patrick already shared how they are doing it themselves and how much they are benefiting from the entire approach!

- Dion Hinchcliffe on There Goes Everybody: Focusing the Power of People and Today’s Network on Opportunity, where he may have hinted how we may be reaching the tipping point of creating copycats of already existing Web 2.0 applications (i.e. Twitter & its Twitter clones, anyone?) and it may well be perhaps a good time where we shift gears and start thinking about providing some real business value exploring other options or ways of integrating more of the Web 2.0 applications into the day to day, business as usual, business processes. That’s certainly where the next challenge is, indeed, as well as a huge cultural shift within the corporate world pointing towards a much more engaging and participative knowledge sharing culture.

From there onwards, we all took off to enjoy a coffee break and I had the great pleasure and the honour of hanging out with some of the folks I have been following, and admiring!, for a long while now. Folks like Dion Hinchcliffe himself (We finally got to meet up face to face after all of this time!), Martin Koser (As insightful as always!), Björn Negelmann (Ever so smart in his commentary and always preparing for the next event!), Jemima Gibbons (More on her later!) and Ronna Porter (First time we met & thoroughly enjoyed the conversations with her on the impact of social software within the corporate communications world!) are just a few! Too many to include them all in a single blog post!

However, there is one person I met on that Thursday that I am going to single out, and for many many reasons (Far too many than I can put together over here!) and that is JP Rangaswami (Author of the essential Confused of Calcuta). By now there is probably very little that I can say about JP that may not be known to those folks working around the area of Enterprise 2.0, but for those who may not be familiar with him, JP is one of those leading thinkers provocative enough to shake the ground in such a way that would make you think about a specific topic without you wanting, nor realising, about it and then getting the best out of you!

I have known, virtually, JP, for several years; I am a big fan of this blog for a long while now; we follow each other in Twitter, connected in Facebook and whatever else, yet this was the first time we ever met face to face and to me, the entire conference was worth it just to shake the hand of one of those guys who is helping us all make our jobs easier by breaking through the ground in the 2.0 space. Yes, that’s JP. That’s the impression he will leave on you. It will help you get on the right direction with just a few words!

And it is funny I am saying all of this, because this year, time and time again, we kept missing each other on various events and the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin was the one where we finally met! And I had the privilege of watching him do the next keynote speaker session on the topic of Web 2.0 vs. the Water Cooler: How Web 2.0 Has Changed the Way We Communicate at Work.

In it, JP basically drew the lines of how the corporate world operates and he did that in very very simple terms: Directories, Groups, Communications & Scheduling, all along with the growing need to search and find relevant content and connections to help get the job done! Yes, that’s right, that is basically what a corporation is solidly based on; in such simple terms. Then it is up to us to make it more complex, cumbersome, burdensome to a higher degree that we no longer know what we do and where we work. Simplicity rules!

At the same time, he touched based on the topic of the younger generations entering the workplace and providing a solid account of how they are going to change the way we operate and collaborate with our peers. You can imagine how by now I just kept on nodding rather heavily as I felt rather identified on how I have shifted myself to their model of interacting by moving away from corporate e-mail and it surely was interesting to see how I no longer felt like I am alone in this from the perspective of what other companies are doing or continuing to embark on. Very inspiring and refreshing!

I could go on and on and on detailing what JP’s session was like. Along with the one from Stowe Boyd, which I talked about in a previous entry, it was, by far, my favourite session from the entire event! Worth while attending the event just to listen to JP … and learn! If you would want to find out some more on what it was like check out what other folks captured live during the session. Stunning!

From there onwards, to me that was the end of the conference as I had already planned a lunch meeting with my team and a small group of IBM social software evangelists and we went back to the hotel. Then later in the afternoon we had a very good (And productive) meeting discussing and shaping up activities for 2009 and right after getting ready for a bus tour around the city from where I took a whole bunch of pictures I will be sharing in my Flickr account very shortly. Then dinner and drinks with them and a brilliant way to finish my stay in Berlin and attend the Web 2.0 Expo.

Mind you, there are still a couple of things I would want to mention, before I wrap up. First one is the fact that another good friend of mine, Suzanne Minassian (Product Manager from Lotus Connections) was also one of the speakers (Too bad it was at the same time as JP’s session!) and detailed quite a bit as well how IBM has been embracing social computing within and outside the corporate firewall using technologies like our very own Connections. Recommend checking it out if you would want to find out how I have managed to successfully walk away from corporate e-mail using such social tools …

Then, finally, the other session I would want to recommend, but that I couldn’t attend was the one from Tom Raftery on Electricity 2.0: Using the Lessons of the Web to Improve Our Energy Networks (Slide deck can be found over here). There is very little that I would need to say about this one, since another good friend, Andrea Vasceralli (I wish I would have been able to talk to him much longer!), managed to record it and put it up in his own blog over at Electricity 2.0 - Tom Raftery’s Keynote (Web 2.0 Expo Berlin). Believe me, it is worth while the 37 minutes it lasts!

Oh, one very very last thing, I promise. I know that plenty of folks keep asking me to explain, much more in detail, what it is that I do at work being part of that special team of social software evangelists that Gina Poole (Along with Wolfgang Kulhanek, my direct manager) has been leading for a while. Well, instead of me detailing all of that, I am going to take a different approach this time around…

I would go ahead and ask you to go to Jemima Gibbon’s blog, once again, and read Inverting the Pyramid, where you would be able to go through an interview Jemima did with Gina where she gets to explain what working for the Social Software Programs & Enablement team is like. Then you will understand, perhaps, a bit better what I meant, a bit over a year ago, when I wrote that I was just landing into my dream job!

What a perfect way of finishing up the series of blog posts on the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin. Yes, I realise there are far too long blog posts, but I am hoping they will help serve as a taster of what it was like being at such an amazing event as the Web 2.0 Expo itself. Hope you enjoy reading through them just as much as I did capturing all of these thoughts, as well as experiencing it live! And from here onwards, regular blogging will resume as usual, but for now … till next time! …

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: 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, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Communication, Web 2.0 Expo Europe, web2europe, web2expoeu, web2expoeu08, w2eb, Highlights, Travelling, Business Trips, Twitter, Live Tweeting, Berlin, Germany, Flickr, Pictures, Slideshare, Stowe Boyd, stoweboyd, IBM, Gina Poole, Walk the Talk, Thinking Outside the Inbox, No-email, Re-purposing E-mail, Adam Tinworth, One Man and His Blog, Coverage, Live Con-blogging, John Lilly, FireFox, Mozilla, Brady Forrest, Tariq Krim, NetVibes, Entrepreneurship, Patrick McDevitt, Tele Atlas, Co-Creation, Dion Hinchcliffe, Martin Koser, Frogpond, Björn Negelmann, Jemima Gibbons, Ronna Porter, JP, JP Rangaswami, Confused of Calcuta, BT Design, Simplicity, Suzanne Minassian, Lotus Connections, Connections, Tom Raftery, Electricity 2.0, Andrea Vasceralli, Wolfgang Kulhanek, Dream Job

Finally, if you are interested in checking out some of the pictures I took during the course of the event with my Nokia N95 you can have a look at them in my Flickr account. I have already started uploading a bunch of them and tag them appropriately, but if you feel you would want to contribute into that tagging effort, by all means, go ahead and do it. More than happy for folks to do that to help me identify most of the folks coming up on each of the snapshots.

Thus with all of that said, here is the embedded presentation pack so that you can refer back to it as you may see fit:

And now, without much further ado, here are the highlights from Day 2 of the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, starting with the various sessions I attended during the course of the morning & early afternoon:

- Better Media Plumbing for the Social Web with Stowe Boyd

Without any doubt in my mind one of the best sessions from the entire Expo and not only, because of how innovative the topic is, but also because of how provocative it was. Stowe, in a very clear and concise way establishes the ground of where the next generation of blogging will be going. And believe it or not, it’s not going to be in the Blogosphere! Funny enough, if we have all been saying that Web 1.0 would need to evolve into a much more participative and engaging medium, it looks like with the way things are going in the 2.0 blogging will have to do its own bit to move along.

And that’s just what Stowe went through on his session. Basically touching ground on the concept of FLOW, which is where social computing would be moving into. Provoked more than anything else by the biggest success factor in the adoption of social software, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall: communities!

Yes, that’s right! The next generation of blogging will need to evolve to become even more conversational and go with the flow (Never better said!). Conversations are starting to converge in multiple social networking sites and as such applications like Twitter or Friendfeed (And a whole bunch of other microsharing sites) are the ones gaining ground from this concept of flow.

Does that mean that blogging as we know it is going to have trouble? Probably not. I still see the opportunity of blogging evolving somewhat some more before turning into that flow, but you can already start getting some early signs that you need to start moving on once your blog stops getting comments and people discuss your posts in those flowing social networking sites! Get ready!

Stowe’s session eventually changed my mind about Friendfeed, where so far I haven’t been a very heavy user of it, thus I am planning to give it another go and see if it would stick around this time. We shall see…

- A Web Interface to the Real World: How We Made MOO - Stefan Magdalinski

Moving on into the next session, I decided to attend Stefan’s session on MOO, as I have always been a big fan of everything MOO. But what I didn’t realise till I was at the session was how much the company has evolved over the course of months going from just a single product to 23!!! And always taking into account an amazing user experience and quality of their products! And all of that for a truly global company! Fantastic!

I can certainly recommend you have a look into the slide deck he put together, because he describes the entire transformation process that MOO has gone through, and much more importantly, how they have managed to be very successful! Incredibly inspirational to say the least and with plenty of stuff to learn by everyone who will be starting small, and build up from there! That seems to be where we are heaving in the 2.0 space and MOO is a living (And leading!) example of that!

I am now even more fond of making use of MOO products than I was ever before! Yes, that’s the kind of effect that this particular session can create!

- IBM: Web 2.0 Goes to Work - Gina Poole

This was probably the session that I knew the most of! More than anything else, because I do work for Gina Poole! And all of the stuff she talked about during the course of the session is the stuff I am involved with on a daily basis! (Yes, I know! I told you I was landing in my dream job!).

She just basically covered much of the ground of how IBM is making extensive use of social software, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall, to help its knowledge workers collaborate and share knowledge much more effectively not only amongst themselves, but also with customers and business partners alike. You can grab a copy of the slide deck over here, at the same time that you can go through my extensive live tweeting over here about her own session.

One thing that I was very excited about throughout the whole session and during all of the time I have been working on this program to help accelerate the adoption rate of social software within IBM is that Gina, VP Social Software Programs & Enablement, doesn’t only talk to people about Enterprise 2.0 She actually does it as well! She walks the talk! Having multiple spaces where she hangs out with her social networks and you can get a glimpse of what she is up to is not something that I can say / see about most VPs I know. Yes, I know, refreshing!

And she is on Twitter, too! How cool is that?!?! (Oh, wait, my entire team is on Twitter, too! How cool is that, eh?)

(Oh, before I move into the next session I attended, let me point out to you another one I was really interested in, but which I couldn’t make it, because of a conflict: Niche Online Social Networks FTW with Lee Bryant from Headshift. You can find the deck over here and I can tell you that from what I heard and read it surely made an impact! Thanks much, Lee, for that lovely dinner with CJ! I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to the next one, too! )

- A Conversation with Martin Varsavsky & Tim O’Reilly

Unfortunately, this session, like the ones following up, was taking place on the main auditorium from the Web 2.0 Expo Congress Centre in Berlin, so you know what happened then. Wi-Fi was just too erratic to keep up with some meaningful live tweeting, so I decided to just listen and put everything away!

The conversation itself was good, although perhaps a bit too short, but it surely was entertaining from the perspective of absorbing a few tips on what being an entrepreneur in the 2.0 space is like, specially during these special times we are going through… But, like I said, a bit too short, in my opinion.

 - Keynote shorter speaker sessions’s - On a spree!

The following chunk of sessions were actually like jumping on into a roller-coaster! Too much stuff to digest in just a little bit of time and still struggling with the Wi-Fi connectivity, so here is a little bit of what I remember from those sessions:

Rather inspirational presentation from Saul Klein, where he explained that the real challenge for Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 starts now with the current financial crisis as it would help businesses & startups become much more smarter and innovative in their approach to reach out to larger audiences and make a business out of it. In the current environment, where plenty of things seem to be rather negative, Saul’s positivism was just fantastic! Very much needed!

In Case of Turbulence: Open Source Hardware’s Next Challenges: As provocative as it may  sound, from the title and all, I must say that Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino surely put together the next challenge for us to dive into. If we have been having Open Source software for a good number of years, can you imagine having Open Source hardware? Well, I couldn’t. Well, I may have changed my mind. Like I said, thought provoking and one to keep an eye on over the course of the years and see how much it would differ or not from Open Source software…

Redesigning Drupal.org: An Exercise in Open Source Design : In this particular session Leisa Reichelt just basically touched based on what I strongly feel as the near future, if not a reality altogether nowadays, of what software development & design would be like from now on: a co-creative activity driven by your community of passionate users (Yes! I know, who would have thought about that, eh?)

Suw Charman-Anderson, once again, as ever inspiring as usual, dived into the world of The Email Problem and How to Solve It. There is very little that I can add to that, other than as enlightening as usual and hitting home very close with my giving up on e-mail at work new reality. But more on that later …

And, finally, Ben Hammersley wrapped this set of short keynote speaker sessions with plenty of food for thought sharing his thoughts on how Web 2.0 could make a difference, moving beyond from just the fun and cool (silly) 2.0 applications, to those which can have an impact and change us and our society as we know it! … And the challenge is ON!

From there onwards, right after lunch, I didn’t get the opportunity to attend any of the other sessions scheduled for the rest of the afternoon, since I had to take some time off to go through those press interviews as well as do some more serious social networking activities catching up with folks. However, the outcome of one of those press interviews was this one with the fine folks from We Magazine. The rest we would have to wait for a little bit till they are up and running, available online.

And that would be it for the highlights on Day 2. The evening was spent having a lovely & peaceful, but equally energising and inspiring, dinner with a couple of folks where, funny enough, we talked about everything but 2.0. Yes, I know! Shocking! But loved it!

Now, let’s go for the final blog post on the highlights for the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin … Day 3 … Stay tuned!

(Oh, my … I nearly forgot to mention it … You may have seen how I didn’t mention Rafi Haladjian as part of that set of keynote speaker sessions, right? Well, that’s because Rafi kindly reminded me I still need to get for myself a Nabaztag! Do you have one yourself? I am *so* getting one! (Then I would know what the true meaning of "Let All Things Be Connected" would be all about! ))

Tags: 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, Social Networks, Networking, Conversations, Dialogue, Connections, Communication, Web 2.0 Expo Europe, web2europe, web2expoeu, web2expoeu08, w2eb, Highlights, Travelling, Business Trips, Twitter, Live Tweeting, We Magazine, Berlin, Germany, Flickr, Pictures, Slideshare, Leisa Reichelt, Leisa, Face to Face, Stowe Boyd, stoweboyd, Flow, Tim O’Reilly, Skills, Communications, Marketing, Business Value, Connectivity, Wi-Fi Access, Accessibility, Scalability, TechWeb, Friendfeed, IBM, Gina Poole, Walk the Talk, Stefan Magdalinski, MOO, Lee Bryant, Headshift, Martin Varsavsky, Saul Klein, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Suw Charman-Anderson, Ben Hammersley, We Magazine, Thinking Outside the Inbox, No-email, Re-purposing E-mail, Drupal, Open Source Software, Open Source Hardware, Design, Rafi Haladjian, Nabaztag