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

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 49 to 51 (EMail Is Where Knowledge Goes to Die)

It has been nearly a month since the last time I put together a blog post over here on how I’m doing living "A World Without Email" and, while looking into the last few weeks, I have just realised that I’m almost on the closure of the second year experiment of giving up on corporate email altogether. So I thought I would write down today the one before last blog entry for Year #2 of those weekly (Now probably more monthly) progress reports sharing some further insights on the state of things at this point, as I am about to close the second year of this my new reality.

Over at my Flickr account you would be able to see the weekly progress reports for weeks #49 and #50. However, for week #51 I am going to share it over here, so you can get a quick glimpse of what the last three weeks have been like put together in combination. So here you have it:

As you would be able to see things are looking amazingly good, since, during the course of those three weeks, I received a total number of 44 emails, with an average of 14 per week! Yes, 14 emails received per week! Not sure what you would think, but I am feeling incredibly excited that what started as 30 to 40 emails a day (Nearly two years ago), it’s now turned to 14 emails a week! Huge achievement, if you ask me, and well on target for that follow up challenge that I set up at the beginning of the year of receiving 20, or less, emails a week. Yes, I know … double w00t!!!

If you notice, you will see there has been a steady decrease in the number of emails received over the last few weeks, yet that doesn’t mean that virtual online interactions have not been taking place. Actually, quite the opposite. I can certainly share with you folks how the number of those online interactions through social software tools have tripled during that time. Specially, for my second most frequently used social software tool while at work: Lotus Connections (Lotus Sametime is still number #1, by the way).

It looks like, at a much faster pace than last year, fellow colleagues are starting to experience how powerful some of the offered capabilities behind the firewall can well be; specially, for something so trivial, yet so incredibly useful as Lotus Connections Profiles’ Micro-blogging/-sharing component. I will probably be sharing some general statistics on IBM’s internal usage of that Profiles capability, but I can certainly tell you how well used it is at the moment that I am starting to see the effects myself by spending most of the time in there collaborating and sharing knowledge with my peers.

To me, it’s like a nice catching up exercise, because I have been using that functionality from the very first moment that it became available in previous beta versions, and most IBMers are starting to see the main benefits of using such micro-blogging/-sharing component versus using other traditional tools, like email. Yes, it’s plenty of good fun seeing how after these two years, nearly, I am not that crazy weirdo anymore for abandoning email and, instead, using social software tools. Things are catching up rather quickly! Exciting times!

I know at this point in time you may be wondering what kinds of interactions do I have on a regular basis interacting through Profiles Boards, right? Well, not to worry, I am already putting together another draft blog post where I am listing a Top 10 set of activities that I come across rather often when interacting, behind the firewall, on our very own instance of Lotus Connections. However, I will share with you what’s probably the number #1 activity I embarked on through micro-blogging/-sharing behind the firewall…

… Questions and Answers! Indeed, the good old Q&A that every single knowledge worker engages with time and time again during the course of the week and, in most cases, several times a day. As you can imagine, using micro-blogging/-sharing tools for Q&A already provides me with lots of advantages to help me reduce my email clutter even more.

Oh, and I am not the only one feeling the very same thing. Did you have a look into the wonderful blog post that Jeremy Sluyters put together under the title "EMail Is Where Knowledge Goes to Die", where he references that quote I have been using myself for all along from Bill French that clearly describes why I abandoned email a couple of years back? You should read it, if you haven’t done so just yet.

In it, Jeremy gets to share a very compelling use case on how, regardless of the tool, a certain, relatively simple and recurring task, like asking a question and getting an answer, finds its place in using much better and suitable social software tools versus email, providing an opportunity to save time and effort as well as allowing a much easier, and faster!, re-findability of the content originally shared.

Pretty compelling story, I can assure you. One that, once you go through it, will surely help you understand a bit better why living "A World Without Email" has been one of my passions over the last few months and why, as I am about to head into the third consecutive year without using email at work, this is just the beginning. This is just one use case of the kind of impact and business value of using social software tools to collaborate and share your knowledge across the company with your peers. One out of several dozens of them out there. One that has allowed me to reduce my email clutter substantially and that can only be a good thing. But it’s not just the only one. There will be plenty more and I will be looking forward to sharing them all with you in its due course…

For now, an open question for you all out there: are you ready to proclaim and live by our motto on "Email is where knowledge goes to die?"… If not, what’s stopping you? How can we help?

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, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Lotus Connections, Connections, Lotus Sametime, Sametime, Instant Messaging, Connections Profiles, Lotus Connections Profiles, Micro-blogging, Micro-sharing, Q&A, Questions and Answers, Help, Jeremy Sluyters, Bill French, Finding Content

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 46 to 48 (Are You Ready for Fun?)

Three weeks ago I started what, to date, has been one of the most amazing and wonderful holiday periods I have had recently. Totally disconnected a large chunk of the time and enjoying every single minute of it! So much so I guess I just can’t wait for the next one!

Alas, three weeks later, it’s all over now. I am back at work! Back online. Back to my virtual work / personal life. Back on to catching up mode as well – as usual! Either way, it’s been fun! Yesterday, was my first day at work and I spent the entire time talking to a bunch of folks as well as trying to get up to speed with what happened since so last year! And I am now done with that catchup! So that basically means that regular blogging activities will resume from here onwards on this blog once again, as well as a bunch of other social networking related ones both inside and outside the firewall!

Yes, it’s good to be back! Fully re-energised and with your batteries fully charged ready to take on to another year of exciting activities, events and whatever other happenings around the subject of KM, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Social Computing and, of course, Social Software Adoption. On my first day of catchup I have bumped into a whole bunch of very interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring links to content that I am sure I will have a chance to share with you all in the next few days / weeks… Starting today with one of the most amazing video clips I have watched in the last few months! But one step at a time …

Before I go into it I thought I would share with you folks something else. Something you already know about (Or heard of!), if you have been following my little experiment for a while now, something that I plan to keep talking about and sharing further insights on, more than anything else, because somehow I feel that 2010 is going to be *the* year! And you will see what I mean by that on an upcoming blog entry where I will share some further details on another experiment I have just started a couple of days back and which I think most of you would find interesting, if not too controversial. But again … one step at a time …

I thought today though I would talk about the weekly progress reports of that experiment of living "A World Without Email" that I have been running for nearly two years now and which I am sure you may be curious about, since three weeks without checking email and being a massive chunk of that time totally disconnected, could have probably disrupted it quite a bit and get me in some trouble. Well, may be. May be not …

If you check out the weekly progress reports for weeks #46 and #47 you will see something rather stunning and unique that didn’t happen in the past; in fact, hasn’t happened in the 13 years I have been working in the corporate IT world! Yes, that’s right! 13 years! If you check out those weekly progress reports you will see how for those two weeks I have received a total whopping number of 6 emails for both weeks! 5 and 1, respectively! Oh my… yes, 5 emails in a single week, and most amazing … ONE single email in an entire week!

Oh, yes, I know what some folks out there are going to say, "It was a quite time of the year with most folks on holidays and everything" and they are probably right, but then again how many folks out there could state that in those two same weeks they have just received 6 emails (ONE in week #47!). Probably not many, right? But there they are; the two weeks with the lowest number of incoming emails ever (Except for one week last year where I got 3 in the entire week!) — SIX emails! Whoahhhh! Nice one!

Alas it didn’t last for much longer, because here you have got the progress weekly report for week #48:

where you will be able to see how folks seemed to have come back to work again on that week, because I went from one email the previous week … to 20 the week after. But that’s not too bad. In fact, not too bad at all! Still right on target for that follow up challenge of receiving 20, or less emails, a week. We are there, folks, we are there! Just four more weeks to complete the second year experiment of giving up on corporate email and, instead, make use of social software tools to collaborate and share knowledge with my fellow colleagues and peers.

Yes, I know I am probably having far too much fun with all of this, and you are probably right, but after the link I am about to share with you, I think that fun has just gotten started! I am enjoying it far too much and guess I’ll continue to do so for a while. After all, who wouldn’t want to go away on holidays for three full weeks (And a bit more!) and come back finding out he / she had a lovely surprise with just 26 emails received sitting in their Inbox?!?

Yes, indeed, the fun will continue for 2010, I am sure! And I am hoping to be sharing plenty more insights on the overall experience and how I am making it work for me and those I regularly work / collaborate with. But now, talking about fun, I would let you all go and watch the wonderfully delightful video clip that my good friend Chris Brogan found yesterday and who shared it over at this blog post: "Are You Ready for Fun".

It’s about a YouTube video that lasts for a little bit over five minutes, and which has got the nice and enticing title of "The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun" and that’s exactly what you will find in there… Not just plenty of great fun watching it through, but also plenty of very powerful messages on how much fun influences us all as who we are: human beings with emotions and with that unique capability of enjoying and celebrating a bit of fun every now and then. Well, after watching through the video, make that not just a bit of good fun, but plenty of it! That’s the kind of impact the video clip will have in you after you watch it. I am sure.

I can certainly recommend you stop doing everything you may be doing at the moment and click on the Play button below. Sit back, pump up the volume, relax and get ready to go through one of the videos that will surely change the way you view things for 2010. It surely has changed mine and in an upcoming blog post I will comment on it some more so you can get to see why. But for now, let’s keep the fun going, shall we?

Tags: Holidays, Vacation, Charging Batteries, Disconnected, Unwinding, Time Off, Fun, Fun Stuff, Chris Brogan, Principles, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 42 to 45 (50 Minutes a Week!)

While starting to look back into another amazing year with plenty of things happening all over the place, both on a personal and work related levels, I guess it’s time for me to start putting together a number of different blog posts on what this year has been like so far and what lies ahead for 2010. No, not to worry, *none* of these blog posts will be about the well-known, and already abundant, 2010 predictions series. Like every year, I’m planning to make it a bit more personal than just a business or industry focus. Like I said, for all of those there are hundreds of articles already out there which I am sure you may have been reading already…

So, over the next couple of weeks I am going to share a number of different reflections on what 2009 has meant for me and what it has enabled to prepare for the upcoming year. And perhaps the main major highlight that I have been thinking about throughout the last few weeks is how, once again, another year, I have managed to keep living "A World Without Email". Yes, that’s right! For the second year straight I’ve been able to carry on with my experiment of giving up on corporate email to the point where I never thought I may be able to pull it through altogether, but, here I am, coming closer to that date that will mark the third anniversary and still going strong!

It’s interesting to see how over the course of the last few months I seemed to have settled in with putting together blog posts with those "weekly" progress reports, but on a monthly basis. It looks like that’s the timeframe I keep coming back to in order to share what’s been happening. Interestingly enough, in a previous blog entry, I mentioned how I would be making use of my Posterous Web site to move those reports to. Yet, it hasn’t happened, as you may have noticed …

And judging for how attached I continue to be to this little project overall, I doubt it will ever happen. More than anything else, because I still want to keep things simple and point people to a single focal point of entry where they would be able to find all of the different progress reports without having to use multiple URLs, but just one. And besides that, also because I think the overall experiment still has got a place in this blog, at least, that’s how I feel about it and why, perhaps, I will continue to share those progress reports on a monthly basis over the next few months… Yes, I’m planning on keeping things going into the third consecutive year without using email at work! Yay!

I know that perhaps plenty of people out there bumping into these blog posts may not be rather excited about them, but, to me, it’s all about proving a point; and that’s been part of a reflection I have been pondering over the last few weeks as well: "A World Without Email" has always been associated with elsua. So why change that, right? That’s how most folks out there who have been following this blog for a while got to know someone called Luis Suarez, who nearly two years ago challenged the status quo of the corporate world saying out loud that enough was (Still is!) enough! No more email, please! Smarten up, think! and start making use of much more efficient and effective collaboration and knowledge sharing tools! Welcome to my Enterprise 2.0 world!

2009 has been quite a ride in this space, for sure! Having started the year feeling very much like I was alone fighting it all, showing and educating folks on how they themselves could move on further from email and into various other social software tools, surely has proved to be a rather exciting experience when at the end of the year I have been witnessing how several dozens of the people who I closely collaborate and share knowledge across with have managed to also cut down on their incoming email counts to the point where in most cases, and for a good bunch of them, I don’t even have their email addresses! Whoahhh!

Well, 2010 is going to continue with that trend. As more and more of my colleagues, and other fellow knowledge workers, get acquainted with a good number of social software tools somehow I sense how that third year without corporate email is going to be just as successful as the first or the second one. So if for this year I had set up a follow up challenge to receive around 20 emails, or less, a week, somehow I feel I’m ready to stretch it all out in 2010 and perhaps keep decreasing that number even more! Say between 15 to 20. Or even between 10 and 15, why not, right?

But how have I been doing over the last four weeks, you may be wondering, I am sure. Am I ready to keep things going with this experiment into the new year? Well, I think so. I hope so! If you take a look into the progress reports for weeks #42, #43, #44 and #45 you will see how over those few weeks things have been going really well (#20, #23, #12, #19, respectively, the number of incoming emails received) and since we are entering that time of the year where things are much slower than usual I can always be hopeful that I’ll be well into the new year right on target on that potential follow up challenge for that third year giving up on corporate email. W00t!

It’s interesting to see how when comparing the same periods of time from the first and second years the progression has been rather remarkable thinking that plenty of weeks I have been getting as much as half of the emails in the second year from the first one, so I keep being optimistic that things will continue going down, even though plenty of people keep saying that our corporate email usage will double in 2010. We shall see …

For now though, I’m just pretty excited that throughout these 45 weeks I have gone through without email at work I have been averaging around 24 emails per week. Yes, 24!! Which means that I have probably been spending around 50 minutes a week to process them all (Yes, 50 minutes a week!) and the rest of the time I have just been sharing knowledge and information (As well as collaborating across) in networked environments, i.e. social networks and communities, which is probably one of the best things I may have done in my 13th year working for my current employer: IBM. I may venture into saying as well I just regret one single thing from this whole experiment: not having started with it all back in 2000, when I was first exposed, and started using, social software tools… Oh well …

2010, here I come again! Are you ready?

Tags: 2009, Reviews, Yearly Review, 2010, Predictions, 2010 Predictions, Posterous, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Challenges, Experiments