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

It’s an interview. A delightful short interview of a bit over 8 minutes done by Melissa Pierce with one of those guests you know you need to be ready with something to write down in fear you may lose it along the way. You can sense all of those golden nuggets you are about to witness, learn and enlighten yourself with. Yes, of course, never a disappointment, I am talking about the one and only: Seth Godin.

Like I said, it is a video interview, and an old one since it was first published in December 2008, yet, nearly a year later, it’s just as fresh and relevant as ever! Check out an have a look into "Seth Godin Wants to Know What You Are Doing With That Duck". It will be worth while every second of it, and I am sure it will not leave you standstill. Quite the opposite!

Oh my, I bet you may be wondering what the video is all about and whether it would be worth while for you to go through or not, right? Well, let me help you with a couple of teasers and see if they would help change your mind and watch through it…

The video starts with an introduction from Seth himself on what he does, what he has been up to and what he thinks are some really good principles to operate in this world… To name:

• Treat people with respect
• Customers have more power than ever
• Great ideas spread

From there onwards, and based on those principles, he comes to state how Leadership is the new marketing; how leading people, connecting people, mixing all those three elements will get us all a new kind of leadership, that one of the 21st century leaders, where we no longer take or accept average products from average ideas. Quite the opposite!

Right afterwards he shares some wonderful stories as references to the concept of the Long Tail by Chris Anderson, where the main message from this excerpt that wasn’t there before in past years is one of my favourite ones: choices.

Choices that will help continue provoking that revolution with lots and lots of components, one of them connecting people with each other, where the cost of transfer of an idea is nearly down to zero; pay attention to this part of the video where Seth gets to share a story that is very descriptive of the whole movement and which has got to deal with something as relatively simple as a T-shirt and how to sell it. Just brilliant!

Not bad so far, eh? Well, it gets better. Way better! I know that plenty of people out there don’t buy into the generations argument within the workplace, but I would encourage you to check out this video with Seth, because in it he reflects on some beautiful insights on that very same generational divide, specially, on how basically the different generations see each other. Striking would be a mild word to describe how powerful these messages are, mainly because of their accuracy. And not just the youngest generations, but all of them in equal terms. I tell you, you would need to watch it…

Finally, I thought I would move on from there into another one of my favourite parts from the video interview, which I am sure you are going to enjoy quite a bit, specially this particular quote that I feel is rather descriptive of who we are as social beings trying to conduct Social Business:

"Life becomes a series of interactions to get you better at creating ideas, spreading ideas, engaging with people with respect, so they wanna help you next time; understanding how to use new tools, so that when further new tools come along they would not be afraid of them [...]"

Whoahhh, indeed! It’s all about building a set of experiences that could help you advance further; that could help you build up that brick wall that will become your life… And what a brilliant way of ending up the video other than asking you what you are doing with that duck?

(I will stop here now, hoping those very few insights will give you a better chance to judge whether you would be spending those 8 minutes of your time going through it and see whether you could answer the question to that last comment from Seth himself… )

Here is the embedded version of the video:

Tags: Matthew Fairlough, Jemima Gibbons, Monkeys with Typewriters, Books, Melissa Pierce, Seth Godin, Duck, Respect, Trust, Customers, Ideas, Great Ideas, Leadership, Leaders, Management, Managers, Management 2.0, Managers 2.0, Leaders 2.0, Chris Anderson, Long Tail, Stories, Anecdotes, Choices, Revolution, Social Business, Life, Interactions, Innovation, Pushing the Limits, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity

However, the long answer has always been a story of how a good number of us had been using social software behind a firewall for a while and how, in 2005, we all got together around a wiki and started working over the course of a couple weeks on the initial IBM Blogging Policy and Guidelines document. Yes, that’s right! A bunch of bloggers gathering together to define what would be the blogging policy and guidelines for an entire corporation. Talking about blunt moves!

From there onwards, the guidelines were sanctioned by both Corporate Communications and Legal and the rest is history: years went by and those user guidelines pretty much "regulate" how IBM employees make the most out of blogging. Then, in 2008 we went through a revision of those very same guidelines. Again, a bunch of incredibly active social software evangelists and enthusiasts who, through a good number of various different social tools (Lotus Connections Files, Cattail, Blogs, etc.) finalised that revision (Got the approval from both Legal and Communications again) and we had today’s IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines.

Well, I think it is time to take things into the next level. Although still dealing with that IBM governance model of the user guidelines for social computing tools, I am really glad to point you all to a recent tweet to my good friend, and fellow IBM colleague, Adam Christensen, shared in the last few hours:

"Have you seen the new education companion to the IBM Social Computing Guidelines: http://bit.ly/2SBUlt ? Thoughts? There’s more 2 come"

Wonderful stuff! What Adam announced yesterday through Twitter was the availability of a new video that talks about governance models, and, in particular, IBM’s social computing guidelines. If you head over to the main link you will see now a new section on the right side titled "Best practices for social computing" with the following text underneath it:

"Many clients and organizations have expressed an interest in learning more about IBM’s Social Computing Guidelines and how we communicate them to employees. Here’s a short video example of one of the ways IBM’s online community educates itself about these guidelines"

And, of course, from there, the interesting part is the link to the video itself, which would launch an interesting webcast featuring Harriet Pearson (IBM’s VP, Security and Chief Privacy Officer) and Adam himself. Over the following few minutes you would be able to go through plenty of sound advice ("Common sense guidelines", as Adam mentions in it already) that both Harriet and him share on what it is like engaging in the social computing space, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall, while being aware of three key main areas:

• "Confidential Information
• Privacy
• Disclaimers"

From there onwards, both Harriet and Adam get to explain, very nicely, some of the fundamentals behind each and everyone of those key areas with some very common examples on "good practices" that clearly match the values from the company, as well as some other interesting data. All done in very simple, yet, very effective terms. The clip doesn’t last much more than two to three minutes, but it is certainly indicative of how important those social computing guidelines are for all of us, as IBM employees.

I know that a good number of companies have been leveraging and reusing some elements from the original guidelines and I’m sure they would also enjoy this new one. And the good thing is that this is just the beginning. There will be plenty more to come! So whenever folks would ask me about what IBM is doing in the area of governance and compliance with regards to social software and social computing my answer is probably going to be not just the guidelines themselves, but also, from here onwards, this short webcast, as well as the story behind it all, probably, because it is just as worth it, don’t you think?

Tags: IBM, Blogging Policy and Guidelines, Social Computing Guidelines, Policy, Guidelines, Compliance, Advice, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Software, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Adam Christensen, Common Sense, Business Conduct Guidelines, Webcasts, Good Practices, Lotus Connections Files, Cattail, Blogs, Wikis, Social Software Enthusiasts, Social Software Evangelists, Harriet Pearson, VP, Security, Chief Privacy Officer, CPO, Confidential, IBM Confidential, Privacy, Disclaimers, Customers, Clients, Governance 2.0

I am sure most of them do not know it, but through their insightful writing, their always interesting podcasts, their truly inspiring presentations at conference events, their timeless engaging, and equally fascinating, conversations when you meet them face to face, in short, through their sempiternal willingness to share with others what they know, has pretty much shaped who I am today.

They are the ones who initially talked to me about something called Knowledge Management. They were the ones who told me to get involved with it around 2000 to 2001, indicating how it is probably one of those disciplines that will be difficult to bore you at any given point in time. They were the ones who told me that there would be a number of different "comings" of KM, each of them presenting new opportunities, as well as challenges, but always worthwhile exploring. Therefore making it always worth while engaging with …

They are, in short, the group of people, who, over the years, have become, probably without them even knowing it altogether!, my KM mentors. And, for that, I would always be eternally grateful, because most of what I know originates from each and every one of them. And that’s just a tiny fraction of the knowledge that I have been getting exposed to myself! Sometimes I wish I just could move fast enough to keep up with their thinking… I bet you know what I mean.

One of those folks is KM extraordinaire, and good friend, Dave Snowden. He is probably one of the KM fathers, already deeply immersed in that field way before most folks were probably even thinking about KM itself a few years back. Dave has got one of the most insightful and very thought provoking KM blogs you can find out there on the Internet blogosphere (Highly recommended to subscribed to, if you haven’t done so already). One of those blogs with plenty of juicy meat to digest; in fact, one of those blogs whose many articles will shake, pretty badly, plenty of the key, and fundamental, business procedures that we have been using for decades, amongst several other key business areas.

And, every now and then, he does some stellar video appearances that are really worthwhile watching every single second of it. So, today I thought I will blog about one of those short video clips he has participated in. Be prepared to have your business world shaking a little bit. Because it will.

It all starts with a rather innocent, inoffensive title: "How to organise a children’s party (Based on the nature of systems)". From there onwards, Dave asks us all to imagine what it would be like organising a party for 11-year-olds based on three basic types of systems:

• "Chaotic Systems
• Ordered Systems
• Complex Systems"

I’m not going to say much more from there onwards. The rest is just pure genius. I will just ask you to watch through the nearly three minutes that the video lasts, and which I have shared the embedded version below:

(Welcome back!) They say that one of the key mantras from social software is simplicity. Yet, if you have watched the video, it looks like the business, and, in particular, plenty of business processes, are far from being simple and relatively easy to execute. Dave nails it, rather nicely, in my opinion; it’s all about one of the main challenges from social computing within the enterprise: shape up business processes, sorting out all of the nonsense behind their complexity, and get down to basics: get the job done without wasting time trying to figure out how this or that business process really works, specially, when, in most cases, most people don’t know much about it/them. Sadly.

My good friend, the always inspiring and talented Rob Paterson (Another amazing worth while following blogger!), described it quite nicely with these very accurate questions: "Did you cringe when he reminded us of how we usually plan? Did it make sense to be sensible?". I guess that social software has got plenty of challenges within the corporate environment, as the video clearly illustrates. But perhaps there is one above them all that could certainly highlight whether we are in the right direction or not towards embracing it within the corporate world. And, that to me, is the one about how social software will eventually help us simplify most of our already-too-complex-to-handle-properly business processes.

It is a tough challenge, I know, I do realise about it. Yet, it’s probably the one that has got the most promise, because it is the one with the largest amount of work to be done, with plenty of room for improvement on our day to day business procedures. Because, after all, who wouldn’t want to have the best children’s party, right?

Tags: Dave Snowden, Chldren, Parties, Complexity, Sensemaking, Chaotic Systems, Ordered Systems, Complex Systems, Business Processes, Business Procedures, Rob Paterson, Plans, Planning, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Communication, Relationships, Productivity, Simplicity, Simplify, Simplifying, K.I.S.S.

It all starts with an email sent to my personal account by the Telestream folks, announcing that the super fine ScreenFlow 2.0 is now available for download and upgrade. Now, I probably haven’t mentioned this here before, but ScreenFlow is actually one of my favorite screencasting tools for the Mac, if not my all time favorite (Yes, I know, Camtasia for the Mac comes pretty close, too!). The thing is that ScreenFlow has been there for a while now, while Camtasia is just getting started, so over time I have gotten used to the excellent features, and capabilities, the former has got to offer.

So after checking out what ScreenFlow 2.0 has in store, including some of the features I have been looking forward to for a little while now, I decided to go ahead and upgrade to it. I was advised to check the upgrade link to see how it would work, so I did that. And that’s when the problems started. Apparently, I was not the only one who didn’t go through a successful upgrade to the latest version (A whole bunch of us seemed to have problems with it, too!).

From there onwards, I decided to check what people were saying in Twitter, and when I realized I was not the only one having such problems I tweeted it to a couple of people I follow indicating it was not an isolated problem. By then, I had already sent out a note to customer support asking for further advice on how to fix it. Usually, that have been rather responsive as well, which is always a good sign. So I decided to wait…

In the meantime, I carried on with my daily work and, all of a sudden, I get this tweet from @screenflow where they are kindly offering to help out right there. Yes, almost an immediate response to my tweets. Whoahhhh! Truly amazing! I know that if you have been out there in the Web 2.0 world for a while, as a customer or a vendor, this is pretty much common thing, but yet one has got to experience it in first person to realise the kind of impact it has got! What followed afterwards was a bunch of tweets that helped me sort out my problem and helped me go through the upgrade successfully in a matter of minutes. Goodness! And that thanks to a couple of tweets!

So what originally started it as potential problems and issues to finish off a successful upgrade of my license for version 2.0 of ScreenFlow, it turned out to be an amazing experience with regards to customer support, having helped me solve it within the same day, in fact, shortly after! I am not sure what you would think about this story folks but the people over at Telestream have managed to do something, with a couple of proactive interactions, that movistar hasn’t managed to do in over nearly a year that I have been with them: gain and retain my loyalty, as a customer.

Like I said, I wanted to share this story to also show the other side of the coin. To prove the point that there is excellent customer service out there; that there are some vendors out there that get it, that understand how things have progressed and improved over time in managing customer relationships through engaging actively in the social media space; that there is an opportunity to have an open dialogue between customers and vendors and engage in solving customer problems in the shortest time possible, because, after all, that’s what exceedingly good customer support is all about: gaining the loyalty of those customers that you would want to keep for a long while!

And that is just what Telestream (And ScreenFlow) have managed to do for me. I am a rather happy customer now, who knows he can always count on wonderful customer support from those vendors that care about what matters: their customers. I wish both movistar and Apple would understand that once and for all. Forget about your exclusive rights of distribution and the hype; get down to work, do your business properly and show you care, because right now you aren’t.

Tags: Telestream, ScreenFlow, ScreenFlow 2.0, Camtasia, Mac, MacBook Pro, Screencasting, Screencasts, Customer Loyalty, Loyalty, Customer Support, Customer Service, Customer Service Center, VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, Twitter, Microblogging, Microsharing, Relationships, Connections, Dialogue, Apple, iPhone, 3G, 3GS, Excellence, Customer Stories, Stories, Customer Experiences, Vendors, Movistar, Telefonica, Brands, Branding, Corporate Brand, Lack of Customer Service, Constructive Feedback, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Communication

I know by now you may be wondering what exactly happened. Intriguing, eh? I know. Not to worry. Done on purpose, although I can imagine how, probably, the embedded weekly progress report screen shot I will be sharing shortly may be able to clarify some of the stuff that took place and which took me by surprise a little bit as well! So I guess I better share that particular snapshot, so you get to see what I mean:

Whoahhh! My goodness! How did that happen? I mean, how can it be that for the last few weeks I’ve had a steady count of incoming emails to say between 18 to 25 and, just last week, that all went away and jumped, sky high, into the total number of 35 emails in a single week! Ouch!! That hurts!

Now, I do realise that most of you folks would probably think that 35 emails a week is not too bad; and I would probably agree with you on that about 21 months ago. However, today I don’t think it is that good. That’s right. After nearly 2 year’s having giving up on corporate email at work, it is interesting to see how sometimes that number of the emails received during the week comes pretty close to the number of emails I used to get right at the beginning on a daily basis. Plenty of progress, you would probably be saying, but for someone like myself who wants to receive less and less emails by the month that sounds like trouble ahead.

And, believe it or not, I am the one who is creating that trouble. And that’s what I mean with… the irony of things. The reason why last week I got those 35 emails was no other than myself falling back into the trap of engaging back with fellow colleagues using … email! Yikes! How could I have I done that? I mean, I should know this. I have lived through this for a good number of years. I know exactly what the reaction is going to be, and how to avoid it, yet I didn’t. The golden rule of email struck again in full force: the more email you reply to, the more email you will get back!

That’s just exactly what happened last week! Those two days you can see on the snapshot where I got 10 emails a day were actually due to three different email exchanges, where, instead of me using social software tools to engage, I gave in, oh my goodness!!, and replied back through … email. Geez!

I don’t think I have learned the lesson, have I? After 21 months, the temptation is just so… tempting, that I can’t help myself. And what happens next? People don’t leave their comfort zone, because that’s where they live in, so they bring me back into *their* own comfort zone and I am back to square one.

Oh the irony all things… it seems that if I don’t keep actively fighting my way through reducing my incoming count off emails, no-one will; with the ultimate result that if I don’t continue to put a stop to that I know I will go back to what I was over 21 months ago. And there’s no way I will be doing that. Like I have said a few times already, I have already seen the light, I have seen (And experienced!) what it is like being back in control of your own productivity (While still helping others), and, like I said, there’s no way I’m going back.

So, I guess folks should have enjoyed that moment of weakness, because it is now over. Today I got things back on track and things are looking good again. You see? It is not the first time, nor the second one (If I recall correctly) and perhaps not the last one either. But there is one thing for sure. These moments of weakness help me understand how, if I don’t get actively involved, it is going to be very hard to make it happen. Thus, here I am again putting up some fight and ensure that I can keep consistently reducing that number of incoming emails over the course of the next few months. And that way I can keep demonstrating to people how there better ways of sharing your knowledge and collaborating with your peers than good old email.

For this week I think that would be it. For now though I would just want to conclude this blog post with another thought that has been in my mind for a little while now, and which fits in quite nicely with that "Oh… the irony of things…". After thinking about it quite a bit, this is going to be my last *weekly* progress report over here in this blog. I know these entries don’t seem to be very popular in here, which, I think, is understandable. So, instead of boring you folks with these weekly reports, what I am going to do is to eventually move them out of this blog and onto a new social software tool that is making the rounds nowadays and that, funny enough, uses email as one of its main user interfaces.

Yes, I’m talking about Posterous, where, as you well know, I have got an account there that is screaming out loud to get things going and add some content to it. Well, this may well be it. One other chance to share with people how that progress is going, without clogging my main blog, and at the same time I will be making use of that account to share some further insights on the increasing number of articles that keep flourishing out there proving poor email as a knowledge sharing and collaborative tool. And as you well may have guessed already, I have caught a good number are draft entries that I will be putting together in the next few weeks and, from there onwards, we will see where things will take us.

Then every so often I still plan to come over here and post sharing overall general impressions of what it is like living in "A World Without Email". So, that way that conversation won’t disappear entirely from this blog. For now, I am almost ready to start posting into my Posterous account. If you want to subscribe to it, you can do so by going into this link, but … do it at your own peril hehe

Thus let’s continue with that meme of "Oh … the irony of things" then … Are you ready?

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, A World Without Email, Moments of Weakness, Weakness, Giving up Email, Posterous

That’s right! Yesterday we had that unique opportunity of re-launching one of the oldest internal communities at IBM. A community that has been there for almost 10 years, on and off, but that it keeps coming back time and time again. Like a phoenix. So for the last couple of months a bunch of IBM colleagues, and old time good friends, Matt Simpson, Sandy Yarchin, Bill Chamberlin, Kathryn Munda and yours truly, have been working together towards preparing that re-launch.

And yesterday was the big day! We eventually had two different online events along with their corresponding conference calls, trying to cover as many countries as we possibly could. I am sure you can relate to how difficult it is to plan any kind of global events. Time zones are always an issue. Either way, the entire day was rather exciting. We have just had the opportunity to re-kick things off again with CommunityBuilders.

That’s the name of the community. And, as you may have guessed, it’s just that, a community of truly passionate community leaders / facilitators / managers (And all those folks who are interested in general in communities) getting together back again to continue learning from one another (through collaboration, knowledge sharing, storytelling, etc.) on the fine art of facilitating healthy communities.

CommunityBuilders has been one of my passions over the last eight years. Being able to tap into a community of several hundred facilitators (Of their own communities, of course) to share experiences, lessons learned, knowhow, community building techniques, and so forth, is a privilege that very few people can get exposed to in a lifetime. And I am one of those lucky people.

These re-launch events where incredibly re-energizing, as you may have guessed, confirming, once again, the key and crucial role of communities for any business. And I mean *any* business. It was just an amazing experience seeing how much energy and enthusiasm there was all over the place. Even our own community executive sponsors were incredibly jazzed up as well. And they kept everyone going on further even more! Just the perfect plot anyone would have hoped for any re-launch. Just brilliant!

I am sure I will have an opportunity to talk plenty more about this particular community of IBM CommunityBuilders and the kinds of activities they are involved in, since plenty of those activities are the very same ones that other community facilitators out there could relate to. So stay tuned for more to come.

Thus, at this point in time, you may be wondering why I’m sharing all of this in my external blog, right? After all, it’s an internal community. Well, more than anything else because this re-launch just came about with the perfect timing. That one of having strong and healthy communities that can help accelerate, tremendously, the adoption rate of social software within the enterprise.

Indeed, for a good number of years, I have been advocating that communities, or a fully grown program on community building, would always be the major drivers of social software adoption, pushing the limits where no one dares to go to. They will be the ones that will make your Enterprise 2.0 strategy, if you have one, a real success. And with a lot less effort than you can ever imagine.

Like I said, I will be talking plenty more around this topic of communities, community building techniques and their impact in businesses’ social computing strategies. But, for now, I would like to start showing you the tip of the iceberg of what communities can really do, not only for your company, but also for your knowledge workers.

I am very pleased, once again, to share with you the latest episode from the absolutely wonderful, and delightful!, series of video clips that my fellow IBM colleague, Jean Francois Chenier, has been putting together under the title "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections". We are now on episode four and, as you may have noticed from all the others, there have been some dramatic changes, and for the better! Way better, my goodness!! It’s a completely new way of demonstrating the business value of social software and communities within the enterprise, I tell you!

The video clip, this time around, lasts for a little bit over 4 1/2 minutes. Here is the direct link, and attached you will also find the embedded version. I am not going to say much more about the video itself and its contents, other than mentioning that, if you have being reading this blog for a while, as well as follow me in various different social networking sites, you will have a good laugh. A very loud one! In case you’re wondering, I, too, belong to that very same community featured in this episode four of "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections".

After having said all of that, there is very little that I would want to add, except, perhaps, highlighting the beautiful piece of work that Jean Francois has been doing, all along, with all of these videos. You could probably say that he has got a natural talent (He certainly does!), and I’m surely glad that he has been sharing it all along with all of us. Well done, Jean Francois! Another marvelous episode to add to an outstanding series. Thanks ever so much for sharing it across!

Have a good one everyone!

Tags: Communities, Online Communities, Virtual Communities, Re-Launches, Matt Simpson, Sweettt, Sandy Yarchin, Bill Chamberlin, HorizonWatch, Kathryn Munda, CommunityBuilders, CommunityBuilding, Community Builders, Community Building, Community Facilitators, Facilitators, Community Managers, Community Leaders, Leaders, Sharing Experiences, Community Building Techniques, YouTube, Videos, Jean Francois Chenier, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Group Collaboration, Web 2.0, 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, Productivity, Mac, MacBook Pro

The title of this blog post may sound a bit too harsh, but, to be honest, it eventually falls short. And by far! What I’m about to share over here in the next few paragraphs is a story. A story featuring yours truly. A story that shows how a true loyal customer, fully converted (Without becoming a fanboy yet though), has finally had enough with not being treated as such. A customer. I know that good (Forget about excellent) customer service is very rare nowadays, but what I experienced yesterday is way beyond any kind of the poorest service you can experience … Ever!

Thus, you may be wondering how can you kill the Apple brand with a single word, right? Well, it involves movistar: the Spanish mobile carrier that has got the exclusive to distribute the iPhone in Spain. To give you a little bit of background of where I come from, take a look into this very revealing article that my good friend Dennis Howlett put together over at Irregular Enterprise under the title "The Case of the Missing iPhone 3GS’s". Quite an interesting read, for sure!

From the article itself you can see that a whole bunch of us have been waiting, anxiously, to get our hands on the latest model from the iPhone: the 3GS one. Ever since it came out in July most of us have been patient enough to wait for it to become available in the movistar shops. It never happened. At least, to the levels of coping with the demand good enough. And that’s the beginning of my story. If you’re not interested in reading further about it you can stop at this point. However, I’m sure what I am about to share is not a unique experience, so, hopefully, it may prove useful to others, as, after you finish reading through it, it’ll help you save about one hour of your time, and your frustration, which is what I went through yesterday. For nothing.

It all started with a phone call from a local movistar shop, where I was told my already booked a couple of weeks ago iPhone 3GS 32 GB was ready to be picked up. This was the seventh shop that I have been to to place my reservation. And, finally it was there. So I went to the shop hoping that I will be able to exchange my current 3G iPhone for the 3GS one, in exchange of points and some cash, perhaps. The lady who attended me was very very helpful, so we started with the procedures. And after a few minutes she tells me that she cannot go forward, because I first needed to call the Customer Service Centre and request that my contract be "unlocked" and that way we could move on.

I called them and I spent a few minutes talking to a customer representative telling me I couldn’t get the new terminal, because my contract wasn’t expired yet. In fact, I could only ask for a new one three months before the contract expired. And to date, I would still need to wait for six months. Ouch! Of course, I was not ready to wait for another three months (After having waited already for three months for the new terminals to arrive). So I was ready to terminate the contract, right there, and pay the penalty. Then I could get the new terminal, with a new number. I would be okay. Or so I thought.

After talking to the customer representative, and one of his colleagues, I eventually found out that I could not terminate such contract and pay the penalty. I was not allowed. Apparently, we are no longer capable of terminating the contracts we sign with vendors freely by even paying the corresponding fines, if applicable. We’re just stuck with them for as long as the contract is there. And mine is still running for another six months. Not looking good so far…

Thus after an interesting conversation I had over the phone and, which I’m going to skip over here (You can imagine what it must have been like…), I ended up in exactly the same position as I started: a contract still running for another six months, not being able to terminate it, even though I was very willing to pay the fine for it. And the iPhone 3GS 32 GB mobile phone waiting for me on top of the desk… Frustrating…

Okay, I decided to be a bit more creative then, and since I just have six months to go I decided to purchase another mobile number, with a new terminal, the 3GS one; so I spent the following few minutes with the lady from the shop filling in all the paperwork, and after a little while she is ready to click on the final window on her computer and she gets a lovely message telling her that I am not capable of having a second line, i.e. a second mobile phone with movistar. WOW!! Really? I can not have two different terminals, two differing mobile numbers, from the same provider, even though I am willing to pay for it? How fascinating! NOT!!!

Obviously, she cannot go any further. If I want to have a new terminal from them I won’t be able to have one till that contract of six months left expires. Now, *that* is what I call customer service! Indeed! NOT!!! So you can imagine, how, by now, I am rather frustrated, not only because I want to be able to upgrade my iPhone 3G, but mainly because I’m no longer in control of the contract that I myself signed and very willing to pay for whatever the penalty. So what’s the point? Is that how you, as a vendor, want to treat your customers? I hope not! More than anything else because movistar is already doing it! And we would just need to have one seriously bad customer service experience in a lifetime!

So, there you have it. My story. The story of a loyal customer who is no longer planning on purchasing a new mobile terminal from a company like movistar. No matter which terminal. The story of a loyal customer who is even considering, very carefully, moving away from his current ADSL provider, because it is part of the same company. So my search has started. And probably there will not be a way back! At least, not until they change and start learning what decent and good customer service is all about.

You may be wondering by now how does it affect my relationship, as a converted and loyal customer, with Apple, right? Well, after four iPods, one 3G iPhone, two MacBook Pros, one Time Capsule, and a couple of other Apple gadgets, that relationship is now destroyed. Completely. It is probably going to be a long while before I purchase any Apple product. As clear and simple as that. By the time I am "eligible" again to purchase this 3GS I will probably have a new mobile provider, with a new terminal. Hopefully, with a vendor that understands what good customer service is like. One with which I would not have got a strong feeling that I have been ripped off all along. One that has managed to earn my trust and loyalty, versus destroying it all together in 1000 pieces in a split second, just because they decided to partner with the wrong vendor. Yes, dear Apple, that’s how you have managed to destroy your prestigious brand with yours truly with a simple word: movistar.

(Oh, don’t worry, I won’t expect an answer, nor will I want it either, from you, my no longer dear Apple, and certainly not from you, movistar. You have already done a fine job yesterday in turning me away for a long while from you both, to the point where I would also be sharing these very same experiences with those very same folks who are about to make the same mistake I made over nearly a year ago. Hopefully, they won’t go that far!

Thanks, but no thanks! Hope you will learn one day how to treat your customers properly, because right now there is plenty of room for improvement, starting with making much better decisions altogether about  who your business partners should be. Perhaps movistar, in Spain, was not the best choice after all… So it’s time to put a stop to it. There’s a lesson learned there for all of us. Including you, my no longer beloved Apple, and me. I think it’s too late for movistar already…)

Tags: Apple, iPhone, 3G, 3GS, Terminals, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Phones, Dennis Howlett, Irregular Enterprise, Customer Service, Excellence, Loyalty, Stories, Customer Experiences, Vendors, Movistar, Telefonica, Customer Service Center, Customer Representative, Sales, Contracts, Penalties, Brands, Branding, Corporate Brand, Lack of Customer Service, Constructive Feedback

At the same time, I also thought I would post an entry about this subject due to the good number of articles that have emerged over the last couple weeks, and all around the recent release of the first beta from Google Wave, as it looks like plenty of people have been wondering, and questioning, whether Wave would be replacing our good old e-mail systems. Or not. So I thought I would share a few comments on that, too! Although perhaps that will be coming up in follow up articles…

Now, not to worry, I’m not going to overload you folks with a whole bunch of articles on these very same topic. In fact, I’m going to be asking you, towards the end of this blog post, or perhaps in another one, what would you think about a crazy idea that occurred to me just the other day. But let’s go one step at a time…

To get things going, here you have got the weekly progress reports for the last three weeks (Week 34, week 35 and week 36), of which I am just going to embed the one from last week. Week 36:

As you would be able to notice, things have gone rather well: week 34, well under the follow-up challenge I set up at the beginning of the year of 20 emails, or less, a week, and then the other two weeks, 35 and 36, with things pretty much steady on that very same count of 25 emails, which is not bad… Not bad at all!

Still looking good, more than anything else, because I have been comparing these numbers, per week, to last year’s, and the total number of emails is a lot less that what I was even getting last year. W00t! Hopefully, it will keep the same way from here till the beginning of 2010 and we will check what the final drop down of incoming emails has been compared to last year’s. Fingers crossed…

For now though, I think it is a good time to move into one of the articles that I would want to comment on, since it has caught plenty of attention when Dana Boyd (a.k.a. zephoria) first published it a few weeks back.

It is titled "Sometimes I Feel Like a Bitch" and you will be able to read it through if you click on this link. Dana makes some really good points as to why email seems to be the best way to reach out to her to communicate, collaborate or to share a piece of information, or knowledge, with her. She comes up with a good number of very valid reasons as to why most of the social software tools available out there don’t work out for her rather well. Quite the opposite!

She talks about information overload emerging from these social tools, a term that I’m sure we are all familiar with, and, perhaps, get to suffer from on a regular basis. However, we seem to may have forgotten the wise words from the always insightful Clay Shirky on this very same topic: it is not about information overload, but "Filter Failure". So, somehow, after reading through Dana’s article, I think that we may not have done good enough in providing relatively good filtering systems. Even better collaborative filtering systems. Somehow, judging from her thoughts, there is still plenty of room for improvement in that area, but, in my opinion, it’s the key towards making sense of all the information and knowledge that we get exposed to through social software on a daily basis, that Web of Flow (That Stowe Boyd has been talking about for a while now). Otherwise, we are going to continue suffering from information overload for a long while still… And not just from social software.

One of the other items that Dana mentioned, which I found rather interesting, was the fact that she feels she can control better the number of interactions by handling those emails versus the ones coming from social software tools. Well, I doubt it. What’s wrong with fragmentation? What’s wrong with handling fragmented interactions? Fragmentation is a healthy thing. It’s how our brain operates. In fact, we, as human beings, are capable of handling fragmented interactions much better to make sense of the information and knowledge that we’re exposed to a regular basis. I mean, if you are looking for pictures, or you want to upload your own, where would you go? Probably, Flickr or Picasa Web Albums. And what can you do in there? Yes, I know, find or share pictures!

The same thing happens with your favorite social bookmarks. If you are looking for a specific link, I’m sure you will be going to Delicious and try to find it there. You may as well have all of your bookmarks (Or a large chunk of them!) shared with everyone in that same Delicious. Yet, that’s the only thing that you would do there for. And these two are just doing some examples from the hundreds of them that are out there on the Web. The Web is fragmented. And that’s a good thing. We just need to get used to it and, as such, start treating it like a fragmented space where we go find the information and knowledge we need to be able to make an educated decision on the task(s) at hand that needs to be completed.

This is certainly a point that I would want to share with you folks and which touches base on some of the stuff that Dana mentions as well. She is stating, more or less, that people treat social software tools like another Inbox (With its private conversations, a la direct messages, for instance); in short, one that is going to replace what we had before. In a way, she’s right! We are still treating these social tools as if we just had another Inbox to work with, i.e. another space we need to go to check what has happened since the last time that I was there. And, since most people have not been taught how to effectively make use of these social tools, they go back to what they know, and what they have learned in the past by themselves, without anybody’s help: their email Inboxes! Just because they may think they know how to handle those interactions better. So, eventually, it all turns out to be just another mailbox, when in reality it could be something completely different… Alas it is not!

Which brings me to my next, final, point; one I would like to quote from her own blog post, as perhaps being the main overall problem: "[...] But I don’t know how to meaningfully manage streams of content". That is just spot on!! It is not about information overload; it is not about the fragmented Web; it is not about treating social software tools as just another Inbox,. It is just about the fact that we probably don’t know how to manage streams of content that just matter to us and the social networks we are part of. And since we don’t know, we just tend to go back to what we know, i.e. what we have been handling, relatively well, for the last few decades: email. Again!

So, perhaps, that’s our challenge for social software to make it into the enterprise world. To train and educate, through whatever the learning activities we can come up with, our knowledge workers about the shift that we all need to go through by moving away from a single focal point of interactions into multiple streams of relevant, and collaboratively filtered, content just for me. Perhaps, when we do that, we would start thinking that is not so difficult, after all, to make sense of something that has been intrinsic all along to all of us from the very beginning of time: our very own social interactions.

Tags: Google Wave, Wave, Weekly Progress Reports, Reports, Email Reports, Dana Boyd, zephoria, Clay Shirky, Information Overload, Bad Filtering, Filter Failure, Stowe Boyd, Fragmentation, Fragmented Web, Task Centric Computing, Inboxes, Inbox, Streams of Content, Managing Streams, Web of Flow, 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

However, and, probably, thanks to the emergence of Social Computing within the firewall, this kind of leadership I would want to talk about today is starting to flourish once again, and, probably, without a small chance of going back into hiding. And that’s a good thing! We need it! Very much so!

Yes, if you have been following Paula for a while now you would know that I’m actually talking about Tribal Leadership. Quite a fascinating topic, to be honest! One that I’m very grateful that she pointed it out to me, because after reading a good number of the different resources that she has been putting together already, I’m starting to sense that is the kind of leadership that we would very much need for the corporate world to survive in the 21st century.

Indeed, it has got *that* kind of impact. So, in order to help spread the message around a little bit more on this topic, I thought that I would go ahead and share with you folks a video presentation from a recent TED.com event that Paula recommended I should watch. And I did. And WOW!! "Truly inspiring" would fall short big time, if I were trying to describe it in a just a couple of words.

It is actually a presentation done by David Logan, a USC faculty member, best-selling author, and management consultant, at the recent TEDxUSC event where over the course of nearly 17 minutes he gets to talk about the five different types of tribes that are out there and that we can all relate to. In his presentation he actually talks about the different levels of tribes and mentions how we should always try to aim to be part of rather type #4 or #5 of those tribal groupings.

Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil all the fun for you. Instead of me detailing what each and every one of those tribes are like, I’m going to go for a short blog post today where I would just point you to the video itself and encourage you to spend 17 minutes watching it. It would be worth every single second of it. In fact, I would even go one step further and state that it’s probably one of those TED videos that sure is going to change the way you view things (In this case leadership and management), to the point where it’s actually going to shake about some of your thinking and make you want to have that kind of leadership within your own business. Like… NOW!

Goodness! I would want that! Actually, I think every single business out there should be looking forward to try to find that new kind of tribal leadership. More than anything else, because not only does it make sense (you would know what I mean after you watch the video), but because that’s the kind of leadership that you, as a knowledge worker, we want to have for your day-to-day job. And if that is not the case, then you are not aiming high enough. And, perhaps, you should!

I tell you, I’m going to keep this blog post very short, but watching "David Logan on Tribal Leadership" is probably one of those things that you would be grateful you have bumped into, or you will be grateful as well to Paula (Like I am! … Thanks!) for sharing the link across and help enlighten us all. So without much further ado, here you have got the direct link to the video and in case you may want to watch it right away here it is the embedded version of it:

Excellent stuff, don’t you think? I told you, "truly inspiring" falls short time and time again! Oh, if you would want to read, or listen, plenty more around the topic of tribal leadership check out this other link to the Zappos Web site where you can download (For free!!) the audio book for "Tribal Leadership"… Talking about essential resources to go through that will help shape both the management and leadership skills of today’s corporate world… And those of tomorrow’s!

Tags: Paula Thornton, Rotkapchen, Leadership, Leaders, Management, Managers, Leadership Skills, Management Skills, Tribal Leadership, TED, TEDxUSC, David Logan, USC, Tribes, Books, Zappos, Audio Books, 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