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

Open Enterprise 2009 – Dion Hinchcliffe Interviewed by Stowe Boyd

I tell you, it is starting to become some sort of an unstoppable addiction checking out all of these wonderful various interviews that both Oliver Marks and Stowe Boyd continue to carry out for their on-going Open Enterprise 2.0 initiative whose results and final outcome(s) they will be presenting at the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference event in Boston in June 2009.

Latest one that I have been enjoying quite a bit has been the one that Stowe Boyd did just a few hours ago with the always engaging Dion Hinchcliffe where they get to discuss a number of various topics around Enterprise 2.0, social software adoption, case studies (Dion actually mentions quite a few examples to check out further!), Return On Investment, the impact of the current econolypse we are going through, etc. etc. Some really good and insightful stuff! For sure.

However, there are a number of other relevant topics that I thought I would share over here as well, since I feel rather identified with them. I have been sharing very similar thoughts all along since I started getting involved with the area of Social Computing a few years back. So here you have a few other interesting nuggets both Dion and Stowe covered under Open Enterprise 2009: Dion Hinchcliffe Interview:

• The role of Success Stories: … in the adoption of social software, that is; something that a few of us have been saying all along; sometimes it is much more powerful and compelling to collect anecdotal evidence through storytelling or narrative than trying to figure out hard, tangible metrics of the intangible to try establish the ROI of social software. Putting Stories to Work anyone?
• Best Practices: This was one of my favourite parts from the entire interview! How many times have you been asked “Do you have any best practices for social software for my business?”; or, better, “I love this Enterprise 2.0 stuff; how do I get on with it? What are the best practices for social software adoption?” It sounds all too familiar, right? Well, Dion’s answer to those questions would be the same one I have been advocating for time and time again: there aren’t ANY best practices on social software adoption! Main reason being? “Organizations are unique, and operate in very different ways” and therefore what may work for one business may not work for another. So next time someone comes to you and asks you about Best Practices for social software point them to this interview. Priceless!
• Tearing down the firewall: This is something that most companies haven’t event started to comprehend, yet, it is happening more and more often as time goes by. This is a thought I have started to grow very fond of a little while ago, perhaps over two years ago, when I first heard Dave Snowden saying something along the lines the the firewall has got its days numbered with more and more knowledge workers wanting to “go outside” and taste the lovely waters of ad-hoc collaboration, knowledge sharing and co-creation with their own customers and business partners and other thought leaders from the industry. Yes, I know, those hard assets, Intellectual Capital, IP Law and Copyrighted materials would still need to be stored in a protected environment behind the firewall, but the rest of the interactions and conversations will be happening elsewhere. Eventually they already are! Even between employees of the same company outside of the boundaries of that original firewall!
• Changing to a culture of sharing: This specific topic of the conversation between both of them was also amongst my favourites, because it surely touches on a subject that has been around for a long long while, way before Social Computing entered the enterprise. It is a subject very much related to the well known motto “Knowledge is power” where knowledge workers, for a good number of years have been hoarding their knowledge, because that gives them a (false) sense of becoming indispensable, when eventually we are all starting to come to terms with the fact that it is actually quite the opposite: “Knowledge SHARED is power“.

  How long can you remain the gatekeeper of the knowledge you have, before it is widely spread throughout your networks? Do you still think you are in control? Do you think you have always been in control of your knowledge?

Those are some of the rather thought-provoking and enlightening conversations that transpire throughout the entire interview on what are some of the remaining challenges left for Enterprise 2.0 to take over. And, much more importantly, what are some of the tremendous opportunities awaiting out there those businesses who are willing to dive into a new world of interactions amongst knowledge workers to help them increase their own productivity and, as a result of that, become smarter at what they do: share their knowledge and collaborate.

Like I said, if you have a bit over 17 minutes to spare, this would be one interview you would not want to miss out! So much to learn, absorb, apply … and enjoy. I surely did!

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, Oliver Marks, Open Enterprise 2.0, oe20, oe2.0, Stowe Boyd, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, E2.0, E20conf, Social Software Adoption, Business Value, Benefits, Enterprise 2.0 Blog, Knowledge Workers, Econolypse, Return on Investment, ROI, Change Management, Culture, Social Web, Dion Hinchcliffe, Success Stories, Case Studies, Business Cases, Anecdote, Storytelling, Narrative, Firewall, Dave Snowden, Ad-hoc Collaboration, Culture of Sharing, Knowledge Is Power, Knowledge Shared Is Power, Hoarding Knowledge, Work Smarter

A World Without Email – Year 2, Week 10 (Is Email Really Dead?)

You may remember my last blog post on the topic of the weekly progress reports of living “A World Without Email“, where I mentioned how I was in the process of putting together an article where I would be able to share with folks how they could kill over 85% of the incoming emails they get on a daily basis. Well, it is proving to be a little bit of a challenge to eventually share it out there, because there is just so much that I want to include in that current draft (#3 at the moment) that I doubt it would fit in within a single entry. So I keep re-editing it, hoping it would see the light one of these days… Hang in there though, I am sure it will eventually be available for everyone to read very soon!

So, what happened last week then, you may be wondering, with regards to my weekly progress report on giving up email at work, right? Well, it looks like things are becoming steadier by the week and may have settled down around the barrier of the 25 emails received per week thus far. From my follow up challenge for this year of 20 or less a week. Getting there, I suppose; slowly, but steadily. Here is the snapshot from Week 10:

As you would be able to see, it looks like there wasn’t a single day last week where there was a substantial increase, for whatever the reason, like it happened in previous weeks, which I guess is a good sign of things going back to normal. Like I mentioned, my new mission is to eventually get under 20 emails a week and so far seeing how close I am from that target already is, for sure, some really good news!

Talking about good news … Over the last few hours I have been getting lots of offline interactions from various folks who took the time to listen to Episode 11 from The Sweettt Podcast and make some interesting comments, specially around the subject of my conversation with Matt Simpson on re-purposing the way I interact with email and how for the first time a couple of folks hinted what I have been trying to achieve all along: that is, how I am not very much in favour of killing email per se altogether, but more on fragmenting the number of interactions, or, even better, diversifying the conversations I have coming through my Inbox and make a much more appropriate use of other collaborative, knowledge sharing and social software tools that could fit in a better purpose than an email.

Yes, indeed! That’s all I am trying to do with this living “A World Without Email“. I have never said that email is dead nor that it will disappear any time soon. In fact, I still see plenty of benefits for email, specifically for 1:1 interactions. However, email is perhaps not the best of knowledge sharing and collaborative tools. Quite the opposite!

And that’s just what that upcoming article I mentioned above will be about. Not how to kill email, nor how to make it disappear from your daily routine, but certainly how to reduce over the 85% to 90% of noise that is currently coming through it. What I am trying to show everyone is how we need to think before we send that next email, because there is a great chance there may be a better tool to share that information / knowledge than through an email. In most cases there usually is!

So there you have it. The prelude of the upcoming article I hope to be sharing with you all pretty soon that will probably help you change or adapt some of your daily habits in how to get in touch and connect with your peers to share what you know. And in most cases avoiding the tool we all know doesn’t always fit the right purpose all the time. Email.

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, The Sweettt Podcast, Sweettt, Matthew Simpson, Matt Simpson, The Sweettt Tertulia, Modern Salon, Tertulia 2.0, Podcasting, Podcasts, Episodes, Think!, Think, Fragmentation, Diversifying, Re-purposing Email

The Sweettt Podcast – Episode 11 – Information Flow (Part II)

I haven’t been very successful today trying to join the superb 24 hour online event from Corporate Learning Trends and Innovation on “Conversations about Learning in Organisations” that I blogged about yesterday. It looks like Elluminate doesn’t get along well with my Mac apparently, since it keeps crashing consistently ever single time I try to access the online event (And I don’t seem to be the only one either!); so I guess I will have to try again tomorrow and, if that doesn’t work still, I suppose I will be catching up with the various recordings that will be made available at a later time.

Moving onwards then!

Yes, folks, it is that time again! The Sweettt Podcast moves on further along and I am happy to bring you over here our next episode (Episode 11), where both Matt Simpson, my good friend and co-host, and yours truly spent a few minutes talking some more around the topic of Information Flow (Part II). You can download or play the podcasting episode from this location. And here are some show notes of what you may expect from listening to it that Matt already mentioned in the corresponding blog post:

• “What is more important, quality or quantity?
• Who you are in your blog is very different than who you are in a microblog.
• What constitutes a valid blog? Can a blog be trivial?
• When does your Twitter become a village? – See Laura Fitton
• How do you enter a online social village and navigate its streets?
• To achieve flow in the information space, how do you sample information?
• What is the alternative to managing content within the information space?
• How do you choose which new technology to use in the information sharing space?
• What kind of people try technology first? What does a bleeding edge early adopter look like? See Chris Miller
• How do you keep track of your new technology?
• What’s the ideal amount of technology for the majority of us?
• Which is the predominant future trend, increased technology fragmentation with more tools, or consolidation of technology into fewer tools?
• If services become specialized and exploited in other contexts (other web sites), what will be the incentive for the service to be provided, especially if people are not going to the homepage?“

And, of course, you will notice as well how we spent some time as well talking about living “A World Without Email” and our growing need to diversify our email inboxes; to fragment them so that it does fit a specific purpose versus all purposes, which is what is happening at the moment. Some fascinating conversations, indeed, which developed into other areas we will be exploring in future podcasting episodes.

Oh, yes, it is good to be back! Hope you enjoy the episode, just as much as we did

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