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ELSUA ~ A KM Blog by Luis Suarez

A blog about Knowledge Management, Communities, Collaboration, Learning, Social Computing and Work/Life Balance

Trip to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, to Present at the Dutch Innovation PlatformNovember 27

Last couple of days have been a bit more hectic than usual, probably due to the holidays coming up (Happy Thanksgiving to those folks who may be celebrating it!), as well as myself preparing and getting ready for what’s supposed to be my last business trip of the year (And what a year!!!) and which will take place next week Monday for most of the week itself. This time around, and for the second time this year, I will be heading to Rotterdam, The Netherlands, where I will be arriving on Monday afternoon and be leaving on Thursday noon as well.

The purpose of my trip to Rotterdam this time around would be to meet up with a couple of customers to talk about Social Software and what IBM is doing in that specific area, both internally and externally, with a specific focus on the social and cultural changes ha

Oh, No!!! Have I Become a Mac Fanboy?November 25

Well, I surely hope not! Or, at least, not yet!! The truth is though that, earlier on today, I went to the candy store, errr, I mean, to the Apple Store (One of its official providers, actually!) here in Gran Canaria and look what I got for myself while spending a few minutes in there:

Giving up on Work e-mail - Status Report on Week 40 (How to Get Rid of e-mail)November 24

And, slowly, but steadily, we are back in business! Yes, indeed, folks, last week, you would remember, was a quiet week over here due to yours truly being hit by a severe cold caught while attending one of the best 2.0 events in Spain at the moment (And probably one of the best out there in Europe, too!): EventoBlog 2008. And even though I am still not 100% up and running, things have improved tremendously and I am getting back, slowly, into the swing of things once again.

As you may have imagined, regular blogging activities will resume this week again, and while I am preparing the three blog posts with some of the highlights from such a wonderful event in Seville (i.e. EBE08), I thought I would pick things up with, yet again, another weekly progress report from my giving up on e-mail at work, which is going to become very handy as that was also the subject of the presentation I d

A Smart Planet - Why Think?November 6

Incredibly busy day today. One where I wish I could clone myself to be in multiple places attending some of the really cool events happening all over. Alas, not going to happen, so I better get going with something really really cool that has just launched earlier on today. It is coming from IBM (Usual disclaimer kicking in, by the way, before anyone wonders about it hehe). It is HUGE! It is incredibly EXCITING! It is MASSIVE! … But, it is also missing something … Something that if you have been reading this blog for a while you would be able to sense a bit what it is. But let’s see. One step at a time…

If you head over to Secure. Innovative. Careful. Agile. Ready you would be able to read further on a new initiative that Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO, has just launched and which promises to help change the world as we know it. Read that rather interesting article to see what the fuss is all about. Then I would point you to this reproduction of the speech that Sam did earlier on today as well at the Council of Foreign Relations under the title "A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda" or watch the video online here.

Yes, indeed, welcome to A Smarter Planet! This is a new initiative launched today by Sam himself where he clearly highlighted a good number of challenges that we face today as a society and how we may need to start smartening up quite a bit in order to look for the next generations of business models which will have a much more significant impact not just within the business world itself, but also within our own society as we know it. Like the main article states:

"Consider:
- How ineffective our power grids are: 67% of energy is lost due to inefficiencies.
- How sick our healthcare system is: costs have pushed nearly 100 million people below the poverty line.
- How dirty our water is: one in five people do not have access to drinkable water.
- How wasteful our food chains are: U.S. consumers throw away $48 billion worth of food a year."

And then read further on about "The good news":

"Through the power of technology, there is a lot we can actually change now. For the first time in history, the most powerful computers on earth can be affordably accessed by almost any business or organization and applied to any model to analyze just about any workload. Almost any object can become digitally aware and interconnected—or "smart." And every single one of these interactions represents a chance to do something better, more productively."

So you can imagine where most of my excitement comes from, right? Just on the perfect spot, perfect timing, perfect situation, perfect background overall … for change! And it looks like I haven’t been the only one thinking along those lines. Already a bunch of good friends, and fellow colleagues, have been blogging about what this initiative would mean for us all, as knowledge workers, readying for that change. Andy Piper, Jack Mason, Aaron Kim, Kevin Aires, Bill Chamberlin, Larry Phipps (Over at The Greater IBM Connection) have already been sharing their thoughts on it, as well as a whole bunch of other folks, and it is starting to pick up momentum as well in microsharing sites like Twitter or Friendfeed.

There is even a Tumblr space, A Smarter Planet, which is already starting to capture some further thoughts and insights, as well as a good number of YouTube videos that describe what it would all be about over the next few months (Perhaps years): What are you working on? What is progress? A history of progress. And I know that a blog will be coming up shortly, too!

Yes, indeed, you can say that it is picking up plenty of buzz and I am sure it will be generating a whole bunch of conversations that, up until now, we were not having. And this is exactly what brings me into my point, which I think by now you would be able to relate to quite a bit. And if not, let’s look and see …

Don’t you think that something is missing? Something in "A Smart Planet" that would make it succeed big time? Don’t you have that feeling there is something else out there that could make it work with an even bigger and larger impact reaching out every single aspect of who we are as a society? Hummm, that’s just how I felt when I was first getting exposed to the whole initiative.

And if you have been reading this blog for a while now, like I mentioned earlier on, you will know exactly what’s missing from this particular initiative. Yes, that’s right, the people!!! Or what James Governor put nicely together in a recent tweet:

"@sandy_carter did you end up citing @timoreilly and @cshirky, harnessing collective intelligence and better information filters respectively" (Emphasis mine)

That’s what I am missing, indeed. The people! (Once again!) The glue that will make it all work. That collaborative nature in each and everyone of us that will be putting everything to the test to prove how innovative and prone towards knowledge sharing we, knowledge workers, really are. The ultimate challenge for us all: provoking the change. Ourselves!

Don’t take me wrong, folks, Technology is a wonderful thing, we all know that, but we all know that it is just that: Technology. Nothing else. It will be our ability, insights and creativity of making it work to suit our needs that will help us get through these rough times. We can have the best technology in the world, as well as the best processes, but if we don’t have the people, i.e. the right people, then we haven’t got anything!

And how are we going to make it work? -you may be wondering, right? Well, how else? Through connecting, collaborating and sharing our knowledge across with our peers. And all of that by adding into the mix, to augment those already existing interactions, social software tools. As simple as that! Indeed, that’s the big change we will all need to go through! Sooner or later, but we will have to go through it, whether we like it or not. I don’t think there is a way back at this point. Only onwards!

Penny Edwards shared, earlier on, one of the most thought-provoking, accurate and relevant blog posts that I can remember on the topic of Collaboration and she pretty much nails it with her conclusion on where I stand with A Smart Planet. It is not about the tools, nor the technology, but the people! Always has been!:

"[...]providing workers with more flexibility in how they communicate with each other, and customers, can result in new forms of cooperative action, more fruitful collaboration, faster decision-making, and greater productivity. And whilst it’s a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ companies introduce social tools, having a clear view of the driver for their introduction (i.e. tending towards efficiency or value-added / innovation) will ensure the appropriate technologies are implemented and organisational behaviours nurtured."

We already have got that driver for their introduction; now, let’s not forget where the focus should be all along and … Let’s do it!

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And to finish off this blog post, I would want to share with you folks one of the multiple YouTube videos that have been shared related to this new initiative and which very clearly describes all what I have just said above, but in a little bit over one minute: Technology can’t / won’t think! Yet we do that all the time! Every minute! Every day!

Web 2.0 Expo In Berlin - Day 3 HighlightsOctober 31

After the brief hiatus from yesterday, where life won the everlasting battle of work / life balance, here we go again with the next blog post from the series of articles on the highlights from the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin that I attended last week. In this case Day 3. Day 1 and Day 2 can be found here and over here, respectively. I have also shared a number of pictures on my Flickr account and later on I will be putting together the rest of the snapshots I took while I was in Berlin. Thus stay tuned.

Oh, something else that I think you should go ahead and check out. There have been plenty of blog posts on the topic of the Web 2.0 Expo and everything, but if I were to recommend a single one resource for some amazing coverage through live con-blogging that would be the blog from Adam Tinworth, over at One Man and His Blog. Head over to his blog and read through his posts and you will see what I meant when I wrote amazing coverage!

Also, like I have been mentioning all along in the various highlights blog posts, I have decided not to embed any of the slide decks from the event and just point you folks to the lovely piece of work from Slideshare where they have put together a nifty presentation pack, where you can watch through all of them as you may see fit. So, I am just going to embed that specific pack for the last time, so you can have a look into the various presentations that were used for Day 3:

- Tariq Krim (NetVibes): On what it means to be a Web 2.0 entrepreneur in Europe where the Internet is a saturated market already; where social attention is cannibalising media attention (revenues); and where there seems to be a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs!

- Luis Suarez on Thinking Outside the Inbox: I am sure there would be very little that I would need to add on this one (Specially if you have been following this blog for the last 9 months!), but I can certainly describe the experience as rather intense and re-energising: early morning, no slides, only 10 minutes, try to convince everyone that challenging your Inbox and moving away from it is a gradual process that you need to start (And no-one else!) if you would want to make it work. It begins with you. You are the one who has got to challenge it and make it work according to your needs and not everyone else’s! … Loved it!

A number of different folks have been blogging about such session and helping spread the message around and I could say all sorts of things about it (Thanks much!), but most of you folks already know it, so I am going to keep it short and just embed the 9 minute long video that was recorded:

- Patrick McDevitt on Tele Atlas (Slide deck here): To me describing what the future of application development and design would be like, that is, a co-creative process between developers and end-users based on the powerful interactions coming up through a community of passionate end-users engaging and providing feedback on how to improve your already existing, or new!, products! It will not get better than that! And Patrick already shared how they are doing it themselves and how much they are benefiting from the entire approach!

- Dion Hinchcliffe on There Goes Everybody: Focusing the Power of People and Today’s Network on Opportunity, where he may have hinted how we may be reaching the tipping point of creating copycats of already existing Web 2.0 applications (i.e. Twitter & its Twitter clones, anyone?) and it may well be perhaps a good time where we shift gears and start thinking about providing some real business value exploring other options or ways of integrating more of the Web 2.0 applications into the day to day, business as usual, business processes. That’s certainly where the next challenge is, indeed, as well as a huge cultural shift within the corporate world pointing towards a much more engaging and participative knowledge sharing culture.