1. Flaming excuses for not posting our discussions for the past year (bonus – clean the inside of your computer screen!)
2. The iPad experience, and what it takes to achieve quality (bonus – a cartoon!)
3. Web Filtering – pros, cons, goods, and evils
4. Employee happiness as a source of quality and productivity
5. And then… Luis turns into a Robot.

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The Big Chair

Although the purpose of the meeting was for me to help him with some web 2.0 stuff, I was really limited in what I could teach him because he is just so ahead of the curve.  He’s just the kind of person who engages in everything that’s interesting.  He didn’t present the typical mind set of looking up and across the report tree to see who could impress whom.  Instead, he was much more interested in the collaborative process that was enabled by the tools we were exploring.  He was fascinated by the roles we each represented in our discussion.  Ha!  He was even on the edge of his chair as my laptop crashed, wondering what was causing it.

Would you believe it?  We were even digging into HTML syntax, going through the origins of an “a href” tag.  I love being a geek at times!

By the end of the time, I had offered him a review of 3 different email reduction tools (a la, put your files and your collaboration on the web).  He had carefully considered each one, the functions that supported his use case scenario, and the impact that his decision would have on the “greater good.”

I walked out of the meeting with my head full of things to consider during my dirve back home.

6 Main Lessons an Executive Close Encounter Can Teach You

Read Wired Cover to Cover – We were laughing it up about the bit in the latest episode where Wired says to pull that bluetooth attachment out of your ear “If Brad Pitt can’t pull it off, neither can you!”  Yes, I had caught that one, because I typically scan Wired.  But this guy had thoroughly read it and was able to reference and dig into the articles much better than I.  I can’t accept that.  I don’t mind learning something new from someone else’s perspective.  However, when I can’t even be on the same page with someone because I hadn’t read well enough the same rag we had both read… well… that’s just… oh!  Mrs. Weiss back in Alton, IL (high school literature teacher) would have made folly of me for such.

Read his Blog – He’s already a blogger, both inside and outside of the company.  On his external blog he gives career advice (which gave me a couple of valuable insights and a couple confirmations that I had been coaching myself well.)  However, his internal blog (inside our company) contains business-specific challenges.  I don’t share the same marketing and business analytics background.  But I’m going to be talking to him again in the future.  This creates an opportunity to expore and study these concepts through his blog (especially those about which he cares most), and bring them up in future discussions to learn more.  Don’t under estimate the blog.

Study our Competitor’s Product – Get to know it well.  Be able to compare and contrast our tool’s abilities to support specific collaborative patterns compared to the competition.  We already know that our tools are vastly superior.  But that’s no excuse for becoming blissful in the shadow of this abundance.  Instead, it would help to thoroughly understand the challenges that all companies face, even when they’re stuck with other tools.  I’m not a professional consultant (well, at least that’s not my title .  But situations occur when I’m shoulder to shouder, over lunch or a coffee (or a podcast with our clients and the discussion needs a solid frame of reference.

Be an Energizer! – This guy’s energy and passion for learning was contageous!  I like to think I’m the same way too.  However, I do recognize the scinical spirit.  It has entered my life, seductively, incidiously draging my optimism down over the years.  Of course it’s imporant to be bridled and realistic.  But don’t give up your intuition and your soul!  He is living proof that the geek factor and learning spirit is alive and well in executive ranks.

Think About the Greater Good – When you make a decision, don’t just think about the impact it will have on you and your work.  Think about the impact on the team around you.  Among the 3 tools we revealed, he actually chose the tool that was least convenient because he thought it would be easier for the team to adopt it, given that they were already used to a different tool.  He didn’t mind waiting a couple of months to get access to the extra utility that would make it all easy.  He was thinking of his team.

Execs are Just People Too – Okay, I already knew this one.  In fact, I kinda had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t just talking to one of my buds.  But, it’s important to respect that they are very popular, live in a bit of a fish bowl, and don’t have the time to be your new best friend.  Nevertheless, be genuine.  Don’t get in their way.  Respect their boundaries by keeping good boundaries yourself.  And, if you like the person, and you want to offer more of your time, just be available.  In other words, don’t get all freaky over their rank.

This was the experience that made my week.  It actually motivated me to get back on my blog and start writing more.  It pays to be an energizer.

I had a meeting today with a manager who thought he could create a community.  He was troubled that the community didn’t really work well.  It really made him angry.

Creation

Now, you might ask yourself, how in the world can a man create a community?  Aren’t communities made of people?  Aren’t they voluntary?  Don’t they form when people gather together and interact with one another voluntarily based on something they have in common and actually recognize themselves as members of a persistent group?  Yes, of course.

So, I asked the man, how did he do it?  He showed me.

As I watched over his shoulder, he did the most amazing thing.  He opened his laptop, sat down at the keyboard, launched his browser, and went to a web site.  At the web site, he clicked a button, which launched a form.  After filling out the form and submitting it, the web page showed the name he had chosen for the community at the top of blank page.  He then clicked some more buttons and uploaded a file to the web site.  When I asked him what was in the file, he explained that it was a list of internet IDs.

After the internet IDs were processed my this web application, he sat back, pointed at the screen, smiled, and proclaimed that he had just created a community, just like he had previously.  “Is this all you did?” I asked.  Of course, not, he explained.  He had also assigned someone to manage the community.  His major frustration was that the assigned community manager hadn’t taken his role seriously.

So, we talked a bit about the concept of communities… about voluntary membership and participation… about the self-selecting nature of the membership itself… about the need for leaders to self-select from within the membership and identify their own topics.  This is a typical flow of discussion, which, when given enough time and insight, eventually changes a person’s entire outlook… from manager to gardener.  Communities form and emerge naturally.  They can be encouraged and facilitated; But they can’t be engineered and determined.

A man can no more create a community by filling out a form on a webpage than he can make a fruit tree by taping fruit to twigs and twigs to a stump.

And the questions continue to explore:

• What is more important, quality or quantity?
• Who you are in your blog is very different than who you are in a microblog.
• What constitutes a valid blog?  Can a blog be trivial?
• When does your Twitter become a village? – See Laura Fitton
• How do you enter a online social village and navigate its streets?
• To achieve flow in the information space, how do you sample information?
• What is the alternative to managing content within the information space?
• How do you choose which new technology to use in the information sharing space?
• What kind of people try technology first?  What does a bleeding edge early adopter look like?  See Chris Miller
• How do you keep track of your new technology?
• What’s the ideal amount of technology for the majority of us?
• Which is the predominant future trend, increased technology fragmentation with more tools, or consolidation of technology into fewer tools?
• If services become specialized and exploited in other contexts (other web sites), what will be the incentive for the service to be provided, especially if people are not going to the homepage?

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For quite some time, iTunes was working just fine.  And then, for some strange reason, it all went kerfloowee.  Everyone’s subscription was broken.  And the ability to resubscribe via the iTunes Store died.  After numberous attempts to fix the problem, my faith in the iTunes Store was shattered.

Today, you can subscribe via iTunes easily.  Just click the link, Subscribe via iTunes.

How did we fix it?  We abandoned the iTunes store.  It just doesn’t work.  It’s too complicated, fragile, unreliable, and time intensive.  It sucks up all the time that could better be spent creating content.  So… Apple iTunes Store, I’m sorry, but I have to sunset our use of your service.  Don’t worry though.  We’re still promoting the iTunes product at the top of my list.

Sincerely,

- Matt Simpson

• Are we in a world that overloads us?  Are we overwhelmed?  Or, do we find ourselves in an abundant net, enriching our minds in limitless ways?
• How can we handle so much information?
• What if you miss something?
• Have your parents taught you personal twitter hygiene?
• Twitter overload, what do you do about it?  See Twitter Whore 1 & Twitter Whore 2
• Who do you ignore?  On what ground can you ignore someone?  Is ignoring something really taboo, or our dirty little secret?
• Under what circumstances will you allow someone else to control you?
• How addictive is email?  see also Roo Reynolds & Suw Charman-Anderson
• Can we be more productive?  see 20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life

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We kickoff this episode as a continuation of our August 22nd discussion, and launch into this topic by talking about Cattail as an example of an innovation that people have started to use for business purposes, yet doing so without being aware that it was only intended for research purposes.  Luis recently delivered a presentation to the IBM knowledge management community, demonstrating how to use Cattail.  During the presentation, the creator of Cattail, Jonathan Feinberg, was answering questions in the back channel chat and on the phone.

(note – Jonathan, by the way, is the creator of Wordle, the thing that creates those images we’ve been using here).

Getting access to a new technology is great.  But what happens when people want full production support for the new tool and it’s not supported?  The innovator often isn’t ready or willing to provide the level of support necessary to use the new invention for business purposes.  It’s a real problem when end users think that inventions are supported in full production when they really are not.  It puts a lot of pressure on the invention team and the full production team.  And the end users don’t get what they expect and often get frustrated and confused.

Should everyone already know that they should not trust the innovation to retain their data?  Does everyone automatically know that they must keep a local backup?  Is there anything to be concerned about while we encourage people to adopt new technology?  Should we assume that everyone knows how to take care of themselves?  Who’s responsibility is it to protect the early adopter?  Should the power users do it?  Should the system do it?  Or, should the enterprise do it?  Here are the big questions that the CIO organization has relative to innovation.

What is the relationship between the innovation team and the full production team?  Where is innovation happening, inside or outside of the enterprise?  And what is an enterprise willing to do to access it?  Must they reinvent or redeploy?

The adoption of  certain functionality and capability cannot be stopped, no matter what.  Certain things are inevitable among effective knowledge workers.

Luis also walks us through a number of reasons why blogging & social computing is appropriate and vital part of the internal enterprise workplace.  In fact, there are 5 reasons outlined in the show notes (below).

This part of the August 22 discussion finishes with an anecdote where a group of stakeholders were evaluating innovation as a closed group, but the decision to open up the reviews to a community at large resulted in high quality input.

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00:00 START

00:30 Lead in…
01:15 Opening chat… getting into the discussion… (Luis keeps typing…)
01:30 So, Mark Masterson is interested in joining us (but we really haven’t been too successful at getting him actually to join us)
01:45 Robin Carey – gets a mention
02:00 Mark Masterson signs up to join the discussion
02:30 By blogging, you develop the social relationship, which you can continue when you meet face to face.  You don’t have to begin the conversation when you meet, instead, by engaging in social software, it’s an ongoing discussion with your own neighbor.
04:45 Through social software, you develop a knowledge of the person, like a profile.
05:15 A running record of online exchanges will enable you to review your interactions with the person before you meet them face to face.  So, if you are going to a conference, and you know that certain people are going to be there, and you have been engaged with them online, by reviewing those online exchanges, you can refresh yourself on the discussion as you are about to meet them face to face.
05:30 Matt & Luis pay attention to some ideas posted on IBM’s internal microblog environment, BlueTwit.  One of their colleagues is recommending that they do a special internal podcast interview with a Senior VP.
05:45 Internal vs External discussion launches! The topic is discovered!  woohoo
06:15 What is the point of having these enterprise-internal applications when we have so many options on the internet?
07:15 Reason #1 – Internal social computing environment enables the enterprise introvert in all of us (e.g. Beehive).  Not everyone wants to be out there on the internet.  Some people feel much more comfortable working within the company, sharing their work & personal information with a trusted group or population of co-workers.
08:15 When you are collaborating and sharing with someone in the same company, there are certain things that you know about the person.  You share the same conduct guidelines, the same business goals, the same ceremonies and other cultural anchors, etc.  This leads people to trust one another more than a complete stranger on the internet.
08:45 Luis Suarez started blogging inside IBM, working in a more protected and safe zone, before he published in the big leagues at Elsua.  He regrets doing that now… regrets waiting 2 years before he started to publish externally.
09:00 Matt Simpson started by going internal in some ways and external in others.  He has always been doing online stuff externally, creating and recreating his own web site, 17 years in virtual worlds, wikis, etc.  But it took his colleagues at IBM and the creation of Blog Central to convince him of the value of the blogging & podcast pattern.
10:30 Dogear Nation forced Matt Simpson to make the transition from internal back to external, dragging him kicking and screaming.  But he didn’t like the notion of being half internal and half external.  Michael Rowe & Michael Martine get a mention.
11:15 If you are going to be on the internet, make that the focus, and don’t be internal.  One should get rid of the internal posting and references if you are going to post externally.  Trying to fuse internal and external, results in confusion.
12:00 Maybe a dedicated interview or topic for an internal podcast or blog is appropriate.
12:15 Luis Suarez tells his story about his experience posting internally AND externally at the same time.  (and he still does this by the way, cross posts)
12:45 Some people don’t feel comfortable commenting externally.  They much prefer to comment on an internal site.  So, in order to enable the most people to comment, Luis cross posts internally and externally.  There’s no reason not to cross post.
13:15 Luis writes for external audiences when he posts externally.  He shares internally so people have an opportunity to comment internally.  AND, he also writes and posts exclusively for the internal audience as well, so he can be more critical and share more internal information that he would not like to share externally.
14:00 Reason #2 – Bloggers were saying a while ago that corporate blogging is a waste of time.  They were WRONG.  Corporate blogging gives people an opportunity to have a voice within the company that they might otherwise not have.
14:15 What is the value of an internal blog for a small business of less than 100 people?  There is value.  You give people the opportunity to air certain things that otherwise wouldn’t be said.  You don’t see dozens of comments.  However, the content was significant, highlighting things that needed fixing that people were not calling out in the normal course of other meetings, memos, organizational processes.  Blogs offer one more venue, and therefore brings up more things (problems and solutions) than without the blog.
15:45 Luis tells about his internal blogging rants, where he made some significant recommendations for improvement, and others also embraced the ideas, reflecting that they also were experiencing the same things.  Blogging as a ranting tool, is really beneficial.  He advocates having a good healthy rant every now and then (inserting an mischevious laugh.)
18:15 Typical Scenario – You contact the manager in charge and make some suggestions.  The manager then asks you to put the recommendations into an email and send them.  Often, this means that they will get ignored because they are nicely contained within a private email box.  HOWEVER, when you blog about the recommendations, instead of sending the email, you can simply point the manager to the blog… that they are already documented there.  And oh, by the way, there are other people commenting there who also think the same way.  This makes the document more meaningful in the manager’s eyes.
18:45 Reason #3 – Blogging (& social computing) inside the enterprise enables expertise location.  Subject matter experts who blog about things they know end up being identified & recognized within the enterprise.
19:00 Sharing knowledge is a natural human behavior.
19:30 Social computing and online social software has eliminated the natural barriers that prevent people from posting their opinion in the enterprise.
20:30 Reason #4 – People are Less Afraid to Focus on Problems When Inside the Enterprise Than on the Internet – When people fail to disclose the things that they think, the opportunity to learn and change is missed.  If the enterprise environment normally does not allow for sharing of thoughts, then many people may be thinking the same thing, yet collectively be passive and unwilling and unable to share those thoughts.  Through the normal course of business activities, workers may fail to discuss certain things.  Blogs and other social software enable more channels to surface those thoughts so that the enterprise can act on them.
21:30 Without blogs, the emporer will continue to go naked.
22:00 Positive Speak can be the downfall of the enterprise.  We (enterprise workers) have learned to speak nicely, talk in inuendos, to avoid speaking honestly and openly to get to the root of the matter.  Blogs enable another channel.
23:30 People are often very afraid of facing problems.  However, when people allow themselves to focus on the problems, then they can get it all out of their system & get all the facts on the table so that they can focus on solutions in the best way.  It’s a natural human problem-solving process to focus on & define problems before looking for the solution.
24:45 Don’t be afraid of focussing on problems.  They are important!
25:30 Reason #5 – You Can Reach the Right Experts in the Enterprise – Social Software vs Email – Social software is out in the open.  When problem determination and resolution happens in the open, there is a greater chance that a more qualified person will come up with an even better answer.  However, if it was burried in email, the question and the first-draft solution may never see the light of day, and only be maintained within a very closed group.  That group might not be qualified to provide the right answer.
26:45 Matt Simpson tells his story about the launch of the Harvest Community, which is designed to reach out to the subject matter expertise within the company to get input on new technology (innovation) that should be accelerated into production in the enterprise.
29:00 By reaching out to a community, you are not only getting people who are interested.  You are also getting those who are passionate, those who will make time to provide the input.  This can only happen when the system is open, public, and transparent.  The discussions will be fantastic.  You can’t get better than that.
30:45 MUSIC
31:50 a special request

99% of presentations result in a tremendous waste waste of human potential, forcing 99% of the people at an event to sit in their chair and say nothing, to be passive receptacles of verbal spewing of the microphone coddler.  We’re not saying that a 55 min presentation is a bad thing.  But we are saying that failing to facilitate 55 minutes of further dialog is a modern knowledge management / enterprise 2.0 tragedy.  How arrogant can someone be to think that the audience is solely there to simply listen to the wonderful wisdom between their ears.  Instead, we propose that the audience be engaged in an open discussion in the event and invited to participate by sharing their opinion and perspective.

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00:00 START

00:30 Introduction – Continuing the August 15th recording… The Age of Conversation
01:15 Previously heard on Sweettt.com… Luis and Matt recap the KM 2.0 session by Carl Frappaolo… A real eye-opener… Tune in, Turn on, and Wake UP!
02:45 Carl was really willing and able to engage with the audience.  He was willing
03:15 He was a good synthesist, was able to include, summarize, compare, contrast, and synthesize without being defensive.
04:00 The audience is just as good as the speaker, not just taking a turn being the speaker, but really part of the process, with an opinion, and a voice
04:30 the speaker’s opinion is not better than everyone else’s
05:15 Main tent / Keynote sessions are a waste of time from a knowledge sharing point of view.
05:45 Conversations in the lobby and on the floor are much more engaging.
06:15 Keynote sessions are one way interactions, and not very engaging.
06:45 Harriet Pierson, Chief Executive Privacy Officer started her session with a conversation.  “Does anyone have any questions”
08:00 She answered all the questions before she got into her pitch.  Then she integrated all the questions into her pitch.
08:15 This kind of presentation is rated #1 in a conference.
08:45 The future of conference recognizes that the reason for being there is the audience, not the speaker.
09:00 People must be connected to online services.
09:15 Convensions need to facilitate conversations between participants, instead of preach to them.
10:15 Why are people so obsessed with PowerPoint slides?  Without your slides are you naked?
10:45 Someone who really knows there stuff really won’t need their slides.
11:00 A very embarrassing story about an executive who didn’t know his presentation and could only read his presentation.
12:00 A huge percentage of speakers are not really able to present without their slides.
12:15 Slides act as notes for the presentation.
12:45 It’s a sad statement about the knowledge and insecurity of the speaker when they have to go on stage and dominate the discussion 95% of the time.
13:15 Speakers do not realize that they are missing out on an opportunity to learn.  Instead, they are looking for opportunities to show off.
13:45 It is confusing why people aren’t more open and willing to learn when presented with an audience.
14:30 The audience is put in a position of the mythical role of student, sitting at the feet of the master.  And if no one sits at your feet, then you must not be a master.
15:15 However, it’s a myth that students were just listening to the master.
15:45 Socrates was famous for asking questions.  He didn’t lecture.
16:15 Socrates never wrote anything.  His entire means of sharing knowledge was to have conversations with students. (note – Yeah, but if Plato never wrote down what Socrates did, we would never have known)
17:00 We have not really advanced much beyond the ancient Greek scholars (in fact, we can only hope to be so good as them) when it comes to using conversations as a means of sharing knowledge (and so many other things).
17:15 PowerPoint-based presentations are really aweful.
17:30 Luis is going to be at a conference and presenting without slides.  Actually the request was to avoid using slides.
18:15 The conference committee obviously was afraid to ask speaker NOT to present with slides.  But it’s a great thing that they wanted to do it that way.
19:00 David Snowden doesn’t use slides.  People are surprised by that.
19:30 We will have to make an episode based on the terribleness of slides.
20:00 Slides are all about being BIG, with a big persona, and taking control of the room.
21:00 Sometimes slides are helpful to coordinate attention and get everyone on the same page.
22:00 Tertulia is the opportunity to have that good discussion… share the knowledge… get what you have been missing.
22:30 And Sweettt.com is another space to have this space… this Tertulia… these conversations.
23:00 We really need to figure out how to engage people and invite them into the conversation.
23:45 Please post comments to propose topics.
24:00 We really need to work on the process and the technology to engage and interract with our audience.  Is a puzzlement.
24:45 There are many ways… a forum… email… comments on the blog… video comments… we could find & use other tools…
25:30 Maybe we could do a TV show (oh god I hope not)
25:45 Keep a live chat channel going.
26:15 We need a way for people to be able to chime in at any given time.
26:30 Maybe this is a good time slot.
27:15 How in the world can we reach out to Asia Pacific?
28:15 Recording of the Introduction
28:45 Matt doesn’t know when to stop.
29:15 Logistics
29:45 Wrap Up
30:00 END