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

From Office Space to the Social Office

Every now and then you know you that you bump into one of those video clips that you realise it’s just right. Every so often, you let serendipity do its magic and someone points you in the direction of one of those videos that, as you watch through, is just such a pleasure, and such a treat, you wish it could last for a lot longer. Sometimes you come across one of those videos that makes your fingers tingle quite a bit and you just cannot help but sharing it across through multiple venues (blog posts, tweets, social bookmarks, word of mouth, etc.etc.).

Yes, this is going to be one of those blog posts that talks about an amazing YouTube video clip that clearly describes how disruptive social computing can be in the traditional corporate world. Today I’m going to be sharing with you folks one of those videos that after you watch it you won’t be the same. Inspiration, to say the least, will blow your mind!

The YouTube video was eventually put together by Amber Rae, from Leverage Software, and it surely is a wonderful instance that describes, pretty accurately, too!, the state of the corporate world in the last few decades as well as a direction in which most businesses will end up heading to eventually, as long as they start paying attention to social software, in case they may not have done that already.

Amber just used perhaps one of those key concepts that has been with us all along, although in a slightly different form, or shape. The water cooler. In this case, the virtual water cooler! In a virtual, global, distributed (Now more than ever!) corporate world as today’s, the concept of the traditional water cooler may not well be very much relevant any more. Yet, it’s probably one of those indispensable activities that every single knowledge worker takes advantage from on a daily basis. And probably not enough throughout the day!

Those informal conversations with other knowledge workers where you just basically talk and exchange knowledge, experiences, know-how, etc. over a cup of coffee, or tea, and where, out of the blue, you end up having one of those ah-ha moments that keeps your thinking for the following few days is something that perhaps we haven’t valued as much as we should have all along. Yet, you could say that it’s an essential work activity we all seem to enjoy quite a bit. And we should!

For a good number of years plenty of businesses have been neglecting what, to me, is an essential part of our daily knowledge sharing activities: our social capital. Without it, I am sure that, as companies, we probably wouldn’t have been as productive as we actually have been throughout this time. Yet, I’m sure we have seen plenty of instances where those kinds of conversations were not being encouraged amongst knowledge workers.

Thank goodness the water cooler conversations still kept thriving to the point we are today and become an essential part of how we do business. But what happens when most of your knowledge workers, your colleagues, your peers, etc., are all distributed and you don’t have an opportunity to head down the corridor to the water cooler to meet them up? Well, that’s when the virtual water cooler kicks in…

Welcome to social computing! Your virtual water cooler! That’s just exactly what Amber’s video is all about. In a little bit over 4 1/2 minutes (Under the title "From Office Space to the Social Office") and she gets to do a beautiful job in demonstrating how traditional office types of workers we have all been exposed to are starting to leave their work spaces to that new generation of knowledge workers that has continued to take those face-to-face conversations online. And still keep them going and rather actively!

And all of that thanks to this new wave of knowledge sharing, collaborative and social networking tools that help empower knowledge workers to exchange their knowledge, their know-how, their experiences, etc. etc. with their peers in an environment that tries to simulate those original face-to-face interactions. But online. Yes, I know and I do realise there is NOTHING that will substitute face to face conversations (Not even social software!), but you would have to agree with me that these emerging social networking tools within the enterprise can do a very good job at it already, don’t you think?

There is finally very little that I would need to add about this particular video clip, other than perhaps share with you folks a direct link to it, as well as the embedded version, so that you, too, can have an opportunity to be wowed, because you will. I’m sure. Thus, without much further ado, here you have it:

Just wonderful, don’t you think? Well, if you think that social capital doesn’t have any value for your business; if you think that those social and informal interactions don’t help your company become smarter; or if you don’t think that facilitated serendipity is no longer a must-have activity, but perhaps just a nice one to have over time, I would suggest that you watch the video again … and pay attention…

How many times have you been in a specific situation (i.e. a customer issue, a crit-sit, a bug in your product that needs urgent fixing, unable to find that expert, or reuse that is of information you once found, but never again, or just simply get to know your teammates, or the communities you interact with regularly) and wished you had an opportunity to address it and, perhaps, fix it right away? That, folks, is what social software can do for you and for your business!

Welcome to your virtual water cooler!

Tags: Water Cooler, Virtual Water Cooler, Amber Rae, Leverage Software, YouTube, Videos, Social Capital, Knowledge Workers, Businesses, Workplace, Enterprise, Serendipity, Facilitated Serendipity, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Inspiring, Inspiration

Getting Real about Enterprise 2.0 by Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson

My goodness! Where has the time gone to his week? Geez, I can not believe that it’s already Friday afternoon and here I am again, after a short absence, hoping to go back into my regular blogging activities. What an amazing week! As you remember, in my last blog, post I mentioned how this week I was going to go to on a business trip to Seville, where I was going to meet up with a customer to talk to them about social software and the impact that it’s having within the corporate world.

Well, I’m now back and, after a couple of days of catch up, in between meetings and various other conference calls, here I am again putting together this blog post. The customer meeting went really well, perhaps one of the best sessions I have held so far in my mother tongue, Spanish. I think I will need to start recording some of these so I can then share some further insights in upcoming blog posts, but somehow it is always a tricky situation, isn’t it? So many things to think about, including whether customers would be OK, or not, with these recordings.

Hummm, I need to find a way to address that. For instance, the conversations with this customer were incredibly powerful, and engaging, talking about the impact of Enterprise 2.0 in various key areas, such as privacy, security, time management, executive buy-in, etc etc. I need to find a way, indeed, to share some of these insights in future blog entries…

Anyway, Friday afternoon already and what a better way of resuming my blogging activities than to point you folks to one of the best presentations on Social Computing within the Enterprise that I have seen in a long while! Yes, indeed, I will be sharing with you a link to a slide deck that surely captures, quite nicely, plenty of the spirit of what is happening within the enterprise 2.0 scene all along.

It is one of those presentations that when I first went through it I couldn’t help nodding, slide after slide, about how many key valuable points it brings forward. Now, I realise how for a good number of people it may be seeing as some kind of fluffy feel-good kind of presentation, but, I tell you, if you have been involved with social computing for a while this goes beyond the fluffiness, and it’s just too good to miss out!

No, I’m not denying that fact that it may well be perceived as too benevolent in describing the many changes that enterprise 2.0 is helping provoke within the corporate world; the interesting thing though, at least the one I’ve found that most striking, is the one that details quite nicely a good number of the problems that businesses face today, and all of that, without providing a single statistical metric to prove it. It doesn’t need it! You will need to watch it to see what I mean…

The presentation was put together by both Oscar Berg and Henrik Gustafsson, from Acando, and it is titled "Getting Real about Enterprise 2.0". It has already been shared in Slideshare (Oscar blogged about it over here as well) and you can view it directly from this link. It has got 50 pages loaded with plenty of golden nuggets and precious little gems…

Like slides #5 (People as the platform); #7 (With a powerful quote from Jakob Nielsen on what social software is all about); #9 (One of my favourite slides which depicts, quite nicely, our own human basic needs…); #21 (On social capital, which we still haven’t dived in good and well enough, in my opinion as one of the various key success factors with the adoption of social software); #22 (Something I have been saying for years with regards to "hidden talent"); #30 & #31 (On knowledge and what makes us share it across with other knowledge workers); #33 (Ahhh, no comment on that one… you will see what I mean, when you see it hehe … but spot on!); #45 & #46 (With some practical lessons for both business and IT); and so forth.

I tell you, far too many insightful and thought provoking ideas worthwhile sharing across. "Getting real about enterprise 2.0" is one of those presentations that surely highlights what are some of the various different challenges facing the enterprise, right as we speak, as well as providing plenty of hints on various paths of addressing each and every one of those different challenges.

Yes, I realise, like I said above already, you may consider it’s all fluffy stuff. Maybe. I, however, would prefer to flag it as "getting down to business and provoke the change", if we would want to go through that transformation we all know needs to happen within the corporate world to survive in the 21st-century knowledge economy. And this presentation sets, quite nicely, a number of the directions we can all follow… but only if we would want to. It’s like I have been mentioning all along, is our choice to make a change. It’s our choice to make a difference. It’s just a matter of whether we would want to make it happen or continue with things as is…

(I refuse to think that’s where we would want to be in the next few years… How about you? Are you ready to leave behind your own comfort zone?)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Knowledge Workers, Social Capital, Knowledge Economy, Slideshare, Presentations, Oscar Berg, Henrik Gustafsson, Acando, Reality Check, Jakob Nielsen, Executing Enterprise 2.0, Provoking the Change, Making a Difference

The Second Coming of Blogging

At a time where a good number of folks have been validly questioning the future of blogging as we know it, and perhaps venture into what that future may hold for such an important aspect of social computing as the Act of Blogging itself, both Internet and Corporate Blogging, or at a time where most of the knowledge workers out there are starting to move into social networking sites a la Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. etc. trying to keep up with the various different lifestreams that keep coming out of nowhere, it’s always refreshing to know that what you have been doing all along still holds… And rather strongly!

Intriguing start of a blog post, right? Yes, indeed! I know. Done on purpose. For a good couple of years I have always been very certain that blogging, both corporate and Internet blogging alike, would always keep an important and relevant place within the social computing realm, despite the ever increasing trend of moving into other, more popular, social networking or lifestreaming sites. That’s probably why it keeps surprising folks that I still get to blog on a more or less regular basis on stuff I am really interested in and that I would want to come back to at some point.

My good friend Bill Ives calls it Personal Knowledge Management, a term I tend to come pretty close to in describing how I perceive my own blogging all along (Coming close to nearly six years now!). Harold Jarche calls it "Where’s your data?", a very thought-provoking article where he details the dangers of lifestraming through social networking sites you don’t have full access to, because they are all sitting up in the cloud.

I rather prefer to call it "The Second Coming of Blogging". I may be wrong about it. Maybe not. We shall see. But with the recent instances of how poor our data, effort and energy are being managed by applications like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc. I am starting to sense (From a few months back already!), how all of this lifestreaming up on the cloud is going to backslash as soon as people start getting exposed to more and more deteriorating experiences from those social networking sites. And how, as a consequence of that, they would want to still keep using social software to share knowledge, ideas, and collaborate with others in an environment where they have full control of it. With no regrets.

And that’s why very soon I am sensing we will be seeing what I have called that "Second Coming of Blogging". And the funny part is that the one and only, Seth Godin, also hints this very same trend, in a recent event whose video was recorded and distributed through YouTube not long ago. My good friend Jon Husband blogged about it already over the weekend under the title "Blogging – Still Good for You and for Organisations" and just this morning I bumped into it, as I was catching up with Twitter from over the weekend and David Gurteen tweeted about it.

Since my good friend David always shares plenty of really interesting golden nuggets, of course, I had to check it out. And that’s when it hit me. Pretty much the same way it will hit you, if you have been blogging in the past and perhaps may be thinking about quitting altogether. Well, maybe not.

Take a look and spend the next one minute and thirty-seven seconds watching this video clip in YouTube with Tom Peters and Seth Godin, and be tremendously inspired by Seth’s words. Yes, I know and I realise he doesn’t call it "The Second Coming of Blogging", but I do, because after watching that video, and after experiencing more and more frequently constant hiccups on our overall social networking sites experiences, there is something that tells me we will be back to blogging. And pretty soon! Perhaps in a new and evolved form. But it will be back nevertheless.

We need to have that personal space, where we reflect on ideas not completed yet; where we engage in much more meaningful and lasting conversations that most of the times are even better than the original article!; where going along with the flow of the lifestream every now and then we still enjoy pausing for a bit, ponder things around, come up with something really cool and move on; finally, a place where the act of writing online for yourself (And perhaps others, too!) becomes an art through your own blog. And at long last an online 2.0 space that you manage and that helps you, day in day out, improve not only your social capital skills, but also your own personal brand.

Yes, I realise this is an incomplete thought (Still thinking about it some more…), but judge for yourselves. Have a look into "Seth Godin and Tom Peters on blogging" and get ready to be wowed, because you will …

And just as I am writing this blog post in my own personal business blog, here I am as well starting to play this week some more with a rather interesting new social software tool that has caught my attention last couple of weeks and which I am going to be exploring plenty more this week and see how it may transform the act of blogging and lifestreaming (Altogether!) as we speak. Yes, welcome to Posterous!

Oh, yes, my Posterous site is over here, but guess what? I realise I haven’t started yet to share content in there, but it looks like at the time I am putting together this post, it’s down. Can’t access it. I have yet to remember when it was the last time any of my blogs were down for a period of time … Still think that blogging doesn’t have a bright future amongst us, knowledge workers, as our preferred Personal Knowledge Management tool of choice?

Think again!

Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Weblogging, Corporate Blogging, Internet Blogging, Blogosphere, Act of Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Lifestream, Lifestreaming, Bill Ives, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Harold Jarche, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Ownership, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Social Networking Sites, Second Coming of Blogging, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Jon Husband, Wirearchy, David Gurteen, Gurteen, Branding, Personal Branding, Brands, Posterous, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Knowledge Workers, Social Capital, Social Capital Skills