A Century of Progress

I am sure you may have noticed how the last couple of days this blog has been a bit quiet. If you have been following me recently on twitter, you would know that I have been away on what promised to be the last business trip for me for what is left of this year. It was a trip to Madrid to meet up with a customer and conduct a workshop on social software adoption, especially sharing further insights on what my team has been doing in that area over the last couple of years.

Lots and lots of great discussion, as well as very thoughtful and straight to the point questions from the participants that made it very very interactive, helping me realise I would have never thought I could talk for that long around this topic, but I guess that 6 1/2 hours can give you plenty of time to talk about lots and lots of different things. Specially, if you’re passionate about them!

Anyway, I won’t be able to share the slides that I used with you folks (Although if I sanitise them enough I may be able to, so I would need to look into that! Will keep you posted…). However, I am already working on another draft post where I will be sharing some thoughts around another slide deck from one of my team colleagues (Josh Scribner) who recently presented on this very same topic of social software adoption at a conference event in the US. Thus stay tuned for more information details to come through …

For now, and in order to resume back my regular blogging activities, I thought I would share with you today a rather short video clip under the heading "A Century of Progress" that I think you would be interested in. Intriguing title, I’m sure, you may be wondering, right? Well, not really so.

At a time when most of us can’t probably imagine any longer working for extended periods of time for the same company (Yes, a lifetime career is what I was thinking about … hehe), due to the new reality of the corporate world and our society as well, I suppose, here comes this video that portraits IBM, the company that I currently work for, celebrating its near 100th anniversary. Yes, I know! Nearly 100 years "working for the world"… Amazing!!

Well, it gets much more astonishing! At a time when, according to the latest statistics, knowledge workers hardly ever, anymore anyway, work for a company more than five years in a row, here I am pointing you folks to this video about IBM, where, doing some quick math, I just realised I have been working for this company for nearly 10% of those 100 years. Whoahhh! Who would have thought about that, right? Someone who, nearly 13 years ago, started working for that company while he was on vacation in the Netherlands for just two weeks before heading back home …

I know, I know, it is just unbelievable! Here I am putting together this post highlighting this rather interesting video clip as I just went through my 10th year anniversary with IBM as a full time regular employee (November 1, 1999), and in a couple of months I will be celebrating again the fact that on January 1997 I will be celebrating 13 years that I first started working for IBM in the first place.

WOW!!! I guess time does fly when you’re having plenty of good fun! It surely has been quite a journey, one I am rather proud to have experienced it to the fullest so far and one that I would have plenty of people all around to be grateful for, mainly, for helping shape up who I’m today. To all of you out there, you know who you are, don’t hide away!, a big special Thanks! for being there and for making that journey ever so much more enjoyable! Quite a learning experience! And still going strong …

Time and time again I get told I’m lucky for working at the place where I work, and do the job that I do, and mix and mingle with an incredibly amazing pool of talented people who are not just passionate about what they do, but they also make it contagious, which is probably why I really enjoyed the rather inspiring ending quote from that YouTube video as well: "When people think, the world wins".

Yes, maybe lucky, or privileged, or both! So here’s hoping I will make it for another 10 years, Why not? After all, it’s IBM, right? 😀

Happy 10th anniversary to yours truly! And Happy nearly 100th anniversary, IBM! Thanks a lot for allowing me to share this wonderful journey with you all along…

Tags: IBM, Anniversary, 100 Years, Century, Innovation, Think, Changes, 10 Years, Progress, Josh Scribner, Social Software Adoption, Loyalty, Grateful, Achievements, Work, Life, Work Life Integration, Benefits, YouTube, Videos, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management