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

The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections – On the Misuse of Email

I am not sure whether you may have been listening to the CBC radio show Spark interview I did with Nora Young earlier on this week, and which I have blogged about it over here, but, if you have, you may have noticed I have tried to explain how all along, during all of this time living "A World Without Email", I don’t have anything against it per se, as a system to help people communicate with one another. In fact, I still think it’s probably one of the best tools out there for 1:1 communications.

A different matter would be email as a collaboration tool, although that’s perhaps the subject for another blog post at some point in time. What I have been up against all along, throughout all of these months though, is not email as such, but how we keep misusing it (And abusing it!), over and over, for the daily tasks that we know we could use better tools for, in the first place, but that perhaps we don’t because email is just way too easy.

To follow up that statement with an example, I would love to point out to you a YouTube video that one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Jean Francois Chenier, has made available and which has been so incredibly popular inside IBM with hundreds of views and downloads that by that same popular demand it made it into YouTube itself, and the best part is that it won’t be the last one!

Go and have a look into The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections; a short, incredibly accurate, and hilarious, video clip of a bit over three and a half minutes that describes the painful experience of going through such a relative easy task / activity of sharing files with your colleagues using what we have been using for years: yes, indeed, email! (Funny enough, if you would ask me for the number #1 misuse of email file sharing will be it, by far!; hummm, well, perhaps followed closely as well by Reply to All !)

You will find plenty of humorous commentary that describes pretty well (Too well at times!) the scenario that we go through every time we share a file through email. Pretty much along the lines of what Chris Rasmussen detailed not along ago with this graphic, but this time around showing it with an amazingly funny animation.

The rather interesting part of the video clip is from minute 2:14 onwards, where you will be able to see what a difference it would have made making use of a social software tool for file sharing. In this particular example, it showcases IBM’s Lotus Connections (The Files component, to be more precise, which is by now one of my favourite social software tools behind the IBM firewall! And I am sure you will be able to see why after you go through the video clip).

I tell you, indeed, after you watch that last part of the video you will see the huge difference between both approaches and you will see as well why I’m so keen on living "A World Without Email", specially when someone decides to send me a 10, 20, 30MB large presentation just because they wanted to make things really easy. Really? Do you think so? Specially, after going through that video clip? I am not sure what you would think, but I don’t think so!

A special big thanks to Jean Francois for putting together in a wonderful video clip the struggles we go through with relatively simple tasks just because we didn’t want to start Thinking Outside the Inbox! Well done! Thanks for showing us the way, Jean Francois!

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: CBC, CBC Radio, CBS Spark, Spark, Nora Young, YouTube, Videos, Jean Francois Chenier, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Chris Rasmussen, Files, File Sharing, 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 15 to 21 (#e2conf Update on “Thinking Outside the Inbox!”)

While I am going through a number of different blog posts sharing some of the major key highlights from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston a couple of weeks back (Already!), I thought I would go ahead and share with you folks an interim article on my (weekly) progress reports of living "A World Without Email"; more than anything else, because it’s been nearly two months! (Yes, 2 months!! Goodness!), since the last entry I shared over here on this very same topic was quite a while ago.

And it would be even more interesting since it ties in, quite nicely, with one of the many highlights for me while being in Boston a couple of weeks back at such special event. But let’s start one step at a time. Last blog post I shared I put together a report that ended up with Week 14, so I am sure you may be wondering what happened ever since, right? Whether I have been able to keep it up, or give up on it altogether, I am sure you are wondering what’s been going on all this time. I have been sharing in my Flickr account all of the different weekly progress reports (Week 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20), adding some further thoughts along the way, but here is the latest one for week 21 (As well as all the others):

As you would be able to see, things have been going on really really nice, to the point where last week it marked the 2nd lowest number of incoming emails for this year with a wonderful 17 emails received! Great news, indeed! And for the rest of the other weeks things have kept a good pace of staying under control between 20 to 25 emails a week, which is rather close to my follow up challenge for this year on 20 or less a week. Thus getting there!

The interesting thing is that during those few weeks I haven’t shared the progress reports, lots of things have happened: recovered from the phishing attack in Facebook (Which was quite an interesting experience putting to the test my online reputation, like why would Luis send me this awkward link? Not to worry, I won’t!); was on the road again for another business trip; then the Enterprise 2.0 conference event itself and the usual stuff at work. And yet the number of incoming emails has been getting lower and lower, but still interesting as busy as ever through social software tools. I tell you, if things continue like this throughout the year, I expect to have gone well below the follow up challenge I set myself for at the beginning of the year. Remember 20 or less emails a week! Slowly, but steadily!

Ok, moving on! Hopefully, next weekly progress report I will share it won’t take two months for it to come through, since I already got a bunch of interesting links I would want to share with you folks that touch base on this very same topic of re-defining and re-purposing how we make use of email while at work and finally how we can, successfully, diversify our Inboxes. But that would be the subject for another blog post.

For now, allow me to put together over here the connection with one of the main highlights of Enterprise 2.0 in Boston a couple of weeks back. Remember Ulrike Reinhard and the wonderful interview she did with me while I was in Berlin for the Web 2.0 Expo on the topic of Thinking Outside the Inbox? Well, our paths crossed each other again while in Boston and Ulrike kindly invited me to do a short update / interview, where I could detail some more how the experience has been like of living "A World Without Email" and what I have been learning throughout all of these months (17 months and going!).

Of course, I couldn’t reject such a lovely and kind offer, since I thoroughly enjoyed the first interview back in October. So we went to the lobby of the Westin hotel and she hit the record button and right away we were talking again. And Update on "Thinking outside the Inbox!" is the actual outcome of that interview. A video that lasts for a bit over 22 minutes in which I touch base on what it is like having ditched corporate email for good; how much I rely now on the nurturing of my various social networks; how they help me collaboratively filter what I need and how I try to keep them as healthy as I possibly can so that I can trust them to help get the job done throughout the day, just as much as I am contributing myself as well.

Here is the embedded version, so you can start playing it right away. Or, alternatively, the direct link to it is here.

As you would be able to see I got to share plenty of details as well about how I decide to follow people across the board, whether internally or externally, in the various social software tools, including Twitter, which also provides an answer to those folks who have been asking me for a while how I eventually make use of such micro-sharing Web site.

Again, a big special thanks! to Ulrike for another very enjoyable interview that I had the pleasure to participate in and, even more, when such interview, and a couple of other things, sparked a superb conversation on something that’s been in my mind for a while now. Unfortunately, I can’t share many more details just yet. Other than it would involve … Gran Canaria (Thanks ever so much, Ulrike!)

(Oh, in case you may have missed the various installments from the Enterprise 2.0 conference highlights I have been sharing already, here are Part I, Part II and Part III so far… Flickr picture shared above courtesy from Andrea Baker, a.k.a. @Immunity)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0 Conference, e2conf, Boston, Flickr, Ulrike Reinhard, Video, Video Interviews, 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, Progress Reports, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Gran Canaria, Andrea Barker, Immunity

Seth Godin Explains Why You Need a Tribe by Loic Lemeur

And since yesterday was a rather long blog post, I thought today I would share with you folks a shorter one. A much shorter one, actually. But a rather interesting, compelling and enlightening one. One that would take you about 14 minutes to digest, but keep you thinking for a long while! I am sure of that! At least, it has had that effect with me.

Check out this interview that Loic Lemeur has shared over at his blog of a recent 12 minute interview he did with Seth Godin where he gets to talk about his concept of tribes; marketing done right; leading the way through community involvement, driven by empowering community members to thrive on through their (And your!) common passion(s) / mission; on doing what you are really good at and stick with that!; on reflecting why you shouldn’t jump into every single social networking tool there is out there just for the sake of it (Incredibly inspiring that part of the interview, by the way!); in short, how you can (And should!) define your own social software adoption strategy to make you better at what you already do excel at!

Yes, indeed, one of the best short interviews I have seen in a long while! Really enjoyed that informal flavour they gave to it as well, with plenty of knowledge nuggets to chew on that, like I said, would make you think about plenty of the stuff you are heavily involved with at the moment. Thus without much further ado, here it is:

Seth Godin Explains Why You Need a Tribe

Now, is that the reason why I have been relatively quiet today in Twitter? Hummm, some further food for thought in there, I think… Oh, and listen up to some of the amazing stuff Seth also talks about with regards to one of my favourite topics as of late: re-purposing e-mail to communicate, share and collaborate with others!

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, Loic Lemeur, Seth Godin, Marketing, Tribes, Passion, Excelling Behaviour, Excelling, Twitter