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

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

Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 52 (On Reply to All – Again!)

As I am about to finish with another Monday, on another busy week at work, I thought I would share some of the excitement of what I have been going through over the last couple of weeks. Yes, indeed, it is time again for that blog post with information details on the weekly progress report about my quest to giving up e-mail at work, but this time as well reflecting on a major milestone I will be sharing shortly with you folks.

If you have paid close enough attention to the title of the blog post you would realise that the post I’m putting together relates to week 52, yes, week 52!! of this particular experiment, which I would say is more of a new reality for me, and that means that last week it marked the one year I have been giving up on e-mail altogether! Yes, one year without e-mail at work! Yay!

Well, to be more precise, the actual date of when I started with this quest was February 15th 2008, so I still have got a few more days to enjoy such exciting anniversary. I never thought I would be saying this, but I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since I decided to make that blunt move and give up on e-mail altogether!

A lot has happened since that date and over the course of the next few days, and in between other blog posts, I am going to share a number of different insights on what the whole experience has been and what I plan on doing for the second year as my next challenge. Thus stay tuned for some more to come, as I am sure you will find it rather interesting.

For now, though I thought I would share with you folks the progress report from last week, week 52, which I can tell is a rather interesting one, because it is highlighting one trend I am starting to see repeat itself more and more. But without much further ado, here it is:

The incoming count of e-mails is settled on the usual average I have been getting over the last few months. This time around on 36 e-mails. The interesting trend that I see coming up is how both Mondays and Fridays seem to be the quietest days of the week in terms of e-mails received whereas the rest of the week, they are not. To the point where last week they triggered me to tweet the following nugget:

"Confirmed: Mondays people *do* some work; Fridays they prepare for the weekend; rest of the week they overload you with emails! #toti"

It is a trend which is going to be a rather interesting challenge; to see whether I can confirm if it is the case or not, but so far it feels like it. And pretty much so! Let’s see how it goes from there.

For now though, I am going to share with you folks an interesting couple of links, talking about the same subject, which I am sure is going to grab your attention. I first got alerted about it by my good friend Livio Hughes, Director and co-founder of Headshift, through one of his tweets; then I got another alert from a fellow IBMer, and good friend as well, Ed Brill, who blogged it at "TechCrunch: Nielsen Deletes Reply-To-All Button". Livio’s tweet pointed me to this piece by Dylan Stableford: "Dunder Mifflin Alert! Nielsen to Disable Employees’ ‘Reply to All’ E-mail Functionality".

Both articles talk about a rather blunt move by Nielsen, where from a specific date onwards, January 29th 2009, the (in)famous "Reply to All" button was going to be disabled, so that no-one would be able to make use of it any longer! Talking about bold moves, eh? This would pretty much nail it, as far as I can see.

You would be able to see the reasoning directly from either of both links mentioned above, including the communication that got sent out announcing such initiative, but one thing that I have found interesting, and rather fascinating, is the negative response of the commentary throughout, thinking that it may have been just far too bold by itself. Well, in my experience, i.e. not having used e-mail in the last year, I can certainly confirm that I would be more than happy to join that initiative and forget about the "Reply to All" button altogether! The amount of wasted time, unnecessary increase of incoming e-mails and the overall abuse certainly makes me feel that such button, along with that one to attach files, are the two biggest time wasters from every single e-mail conversation you may engage with!

What would be interesting to see, and witness, is, for such initiatives as that one from Nielsen, what it would be like running it for a short period of time, say, a week or two, and see how people would react and interact. I bet it would achieve exactly what I have been trying to say all along: think before you send that e-mail, because there is a great chance there would be better ways to share the message across!

Thus well done, Nielsen! Great to see how you pushing the limits and, although you may not go that very far, seeing the dependency some folks seem to have on their e-mail systems, I surely want to take this opportunity to thank you for challenging our traditional methods of work within the enterprise, because you have certainly shown us there is a problem, and we need to do something about it. Or, at least, try!

Are you? Are you ready to challenge the way you interact at work through e-mail? Could you live without "Reply to All" for a week? If your answer is Yes!, why aren’t you doing it then?

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, Anniversary, Livio Hughes, Headshift, Ed Brill, Dylan Stableford, Nielsen, Bold Move, Think!, Reply to All, Attachments