(Image courtesy - Patrick Gage)Do you read interesting books on learning and find wonderful snippets you’d like to share with your social network? Do you wish you could share far and wide? Did you ever wish you could discuss your reading experience with others? Do you like sharing book reviews? Do you like hearing from others who are reading a book that’s next on your list? Are you a learning professional looking to be part of a social experiment?If you answered "Yes" to any of those questions, then you might be interested in what I have to say.Here’s a little social experiment that we’d like to try. Who is we? By the royal "we", I’m referring to Sahana Chattopadhyay and me. So here’s the back story. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been redefining the way we read, using our Kindles. For those who follow either of us, you’ll notice that we’ve been sharing on twitter, interesting snippets from the books that we read. Here are my items and here are Sahana’s. While we’ve been doing this in an ad-hoc fashion, we thought there could be a method to the madness and our inspiration was the hugely successful lrnchat.So here’s what we’re suggesting. If you have anything to share about a book on learning, share it on twitter using the hashtag #lrnbk. Simple enough? No rules, no restrictions - just share whatever you feel is worth sharing, as part of your learning experience.Possible Questions and AnswersWhat intellectual property rights should I be careful about?When sharing excerpts from a book, please honour the author and the publisher’s copyright. Usually, sharing quotes and excerpts for the purpose of commentary, criticism, research, study and reporting are OK under the principle of Fair Use. Given twitter’s 140 character restriction, you should be on the right side of the law most of the time. The Kindle naturally protects the authors rights, by ensuring that it shares only a small section of your highlights.What kind of stuff can I share on the hashtag?Here are a few examples of what could go on this hashtag: interesting quotes from a book your observations when reading a book your questions about a book that you may or may not be reading book reviewsThen again, I’m limited by my imagination, so stretch yours and let’s see how far we can take this!How do I share directly from my Kindle?Sharing from your Kindle is very simple. Here’s how to set up your Kindle to share your notes and highlights.Do I need to have a Kindle?Absolutely not, though a reading device does make things a bit easier. If you have a paper book, feel free to share your thoughts via twitter all the same. If you wrote a book review for something you read on another ebook, just link it on twitter. The device isn’t the key - sharing is!If you want the a bit of the Kindle experience but don’t yet have a Kindle, you can download the Kindle app onto your PC or iPod. While you can’t directly tweet from here, you can add notes and highlight the sections you like. Then, you could just link it on twitter.How can I keep up with all the tweets on the hashtag?Firstly, don’t pressure yourself to keep on top of everything. Share when you can, read when you can. With that said, if you did want to know what’s going on - we’ll publish a twitter paper each week. We’ll also ensure that we publish weekly transcripts to the lrnbk blog. Fair enough?So if that excites you enough, what’s holding you back? Let’s start sharing! Want more details? Post a question on twitter with the hashtag #lrnbk. If you have better ideas, share them on the hashtag too -- we’d like for this to be as easy as possible, so bring your thoughts to the table. And if you like this idea, be sure to tweet about it -- all good ideas need word of mouth publicity.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

A few months back I received a complimentary educational license from ProProfs Quiz Maker Pro - an online quizzing engine. I haven't had the time to look at it until now and I think it's high time I repay the favour by ensuring that I can at least give you a high-level review of the tool. First things first - ProProfs seems like a really easy to use, fairly intuitive quiz engine that beats the pants off quiz engines in popular LMSs like Moodle. Here's a quick blow by blow account of what I've found in the hour that I played with the tool.User Interface and Ease of UseProProfs claims to be the world's easiest quizmaker. I'm not too sure about that, though I can say that it is very simple to use.  You can edit quiz settings and add quiz questions from a single page. The fact that the page doesn't refresh each time you add a new question, means that you can get the bare bones structure of your quiz up in minutes. I do find the rich-text editor of the quiz engine to be quite limiting though, particularly because it lacks an HTML view for power users. I understand that this is not such a big deal for most quizzes, but for someone like me who is likely to fuss about how the quiz looks - creative controls are a big plus.Quiz Authoring CapabilitiesProprofs allows you to author two types of quizzes - a scored quiz and a personality quiz. The scored quiz is what it says it is; an academic knowledge check. The personality quiz is more like the Facebook quizzes that we all seem to keep taking. Frankly, with the amount of research it takes to be able to create meaningful personality quizzes, I don't recommend this to the average instructional designer. That said, if you were keen to see an example of what I created in 10 minutes - here you go. So moving to what most instructional designers will do with this tool -- scored quiz authoring. I am particularly impressed at how easy it is to create a quiz using ProProfs. I created this quiz in seven minutes flat! A great part of the design of this tool is that the interface doesn't look like a Boeing cockpit. You have limited options in there, but they're definitely the most common options that instructional designers look for. What I would like however is more options for question types that are conscpicuously absent - such as matching and sequencing. I'm also not a big fan of knowledge checks. I like constructing assessments in form of scenarios and ProProfs does miss branching features sorely. I hope these features come up in future versions of the tool. Reporting and VisualisationsProProfs displays pretty standard, no fluff reports and visualisations for its quizzes. You can download the reports to Excel and do all sorts of manipulations with them. The tool also gives you pie-chart and bar-chart visualisations for your quiz statistics so you can get a quick snapshot of the results. In general, no much to complain about for an online tool.Interoperability and Other ExtrasAs you'll notice from the picture above, ProProfs allows you to share a quiz (or your quiz results) on popular social networks. It also gives you embed codes that you can place on your blog or website. I was particularly interested in the embed codes because I wanted to check if I could embed a ProProfs quiz into an Articulate project. Unfortunately the tool said I needed an upgrade to specify custom sizes for the embeddable gadget. I thought that was a bit strange, and I couldn't quite see the rationale. Otherwise the interoperability itself has no problems. The embeds work quite nicely on wiki and blog software. Here's a simple html page with the embed. In addition, I'm sure you've noticed the nice little certificate that you can generate for the people who take your quizzes. If that's something you wanted to generate for your students -- well all I can say is that ProProfs makes it really easy.  So that's all I wanted to tell about this new tool I've just taken a look at. While it does lack a few features, I think the pricing is quite reasonable. $9.97/ month for business and $3.97/ month for education seems quite reasonable to me, especially if they can maintain a fast pace with upgrades. The tool's free for personal use, just in case you want to check it out. I hear they're also doing a promotion so you can win a free license. I'm not sure how you can win, but I guess if any ProProfs people are reading this post - please drop the details in the comments section. If you've tried the tool, please feel free to fill in any blanks that I may have left in this review. I'm sure it'll help provide a well rounded perspective on the application.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

(Note: You see? This is what happens when you go away on holidays and your team decides to have plenty of good fun without you hehe and they embark on launching our first external blog to talk plenty more about IBM’s internal and external Social Software Adoption Program: BlueIQ, which this year will be making our 5th anniversary… Here is a cross post of my introductory blog entry over there, so you can see what you can expect from it, should you decide to subscribe to it and keep the dialogue going… I will probably be writing one or two articles per week over there, along with the rest of my team, so let the fun begin! … And thanks for reading!) One of the many things that you realise about, while you are on vacation, and something that over the course of the years you tend to come to terms with is the fact that, while you are away, life goes on, work goes on; with or without you. And that’s just fine! That’s how things go by and probably very little left for us to do on that matter anyway. So, as I am ramping up the last few hours of my holidays, yesterday afternoon I found out, through my colleagues, that, after a long while, our IBM Social Software Internal Adoption Program is now ready to transcend the firewall and go external. And, as such, a couple of days back we have now launched an external blog, called BlueIQ at IBM where, from now onwards, my team, along with myself, will be blogging every so often about IBM’s own adoption of social networking tools, as well as our full transformation, over the course of the years, on becoming a fully Integrated Social Enterprise. Yes!, folks, BlueIQ, finally, goes external! And as you may have noticed already, a couple of my colleagues (Including our boss) have already been blogging away earlier on this week setting up the stage of the kind of articles you can expect to read, and engage with, hopefully, in our team blog. The vast majority of the topics that we will cover will describe how BlueIQ works, what we do to help accelerate IBM’s own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall, and at the same time you will also find interesting and relevant articles around topics like The Social Enterprise, Social Business, Social Networking, Adoption, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Communities and Community Building, etc. etc. Pretty much along the lines of the kinds of articles I have been sharing myself on my own personal Internet blog as well over the course of time. The thing is that it’s not the first time that BlueIQ goes out there to the general public. In the past, there have been a good number of resources made available from our team on what we currently do at IBM, whether it’s our public wiki site available here, or the free whitepaper that both Jeanne Murray and Rawn Shah co-published a few months back and which covers our entire methodology on our social software adoption program (What’s worked, what hasn’t, lessons learned, program activities, metrics, etc. etc.), or the several presentations we have done at various conference events where we have been telling the BlueIQ Story. However, this is the first time that we are working our way through our first public Internet team blog, where we are surely hoping to keep sharing further stories, experiences, know-how, lessons learned, hints and tips, and whatever other anecdotal evidence on what’s worked for us with our own social software adoption program and what’s happening in this very same space out there for other businesses. However, since this is also my first entry over here I thought I would point you folks to perhaps the most comprehensive BlueIQ Story we have got out there at the moment and which would certainly help serve as a good Introduction of who we are and what we are working on… Yesterday, Rawn Shah, who, by the way, has now moved into another role within IBM as a Social Business Strategist, but you know how it goes, once a BlueIQer, always a BlueIQer tweeted about something that is pretty exciting for all of us at BlueIQ:   made Finalist for @profhamel ‘s Management Info Exchange "Beyond Bureaucracy challenge" @hackmanagement ow.ly/8rAYW — Rawn Shah (@rawn) January 12, 2012 Indeed, over at "Cutting through BigBlue Tape: Using Collective Passion to Scissor Bureacuracy at IBM", you will be able to see how our very own "BlueIQ at IBM" program is now one of the finalists on the "Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge" that Gary Hamel is sponsoring. And to say that we are incredibly eager and over-excited about the great news of even just being the final round would probably fall short pretty badly. We don’t know, obviously, who the winner will be, but to us all, on the BlueIQ team as well as our army of volunteers, the BlueIQ Ambassadors community of social software evangelists, it’s already a huge success and something to be very proud of. But for you folks out there, you may be wondering what it is all about, right? Well, like I said, on that nomination paper that Rawn submitted, you would probably be able to find one of the most comprehensive and thorough descriptions of how, when, why, and for what purpose BlueIQ came into existence nearly 5 years ago to help fellow IBMers accelerate their own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall. In a recent article I shared over on my Internet blog, I described a little bit IBM’s own journey to become a fully integrated socially enterprise, which would certainly be a rather nice complement to plenty of the historical and anecdotal evidence you would find also on Rawn’s piece of how IBM got started living social in the first place. However, what’s most interesting about that nomination piece is the various different sections that put together a rather nice picture of the kind of work we do and what triggered us to get started in the first place. So, to give you a taster of what you could find in it, allow me to include over here the headings of the various different sections, so you could have a look and read further on about them: Summary Moonshots Context Triggers Key Innovations & Timeline Challenges & Solutions (Which covers "Building an environment that fosters social collaboration", "Enabling social collaboration skills by tailoring to specific needs", "Gaining support from executives" and "Developing country-specific focus where needed") Benefits & Metrics (With plenty of anecdotal evidence, and success stories from fellow IBMers who were facing real problems and found real solutions with social technologies) Lessons (Which covers "Keep the eye on the prize", "Teach tasks, not tools, and help people learn socially", "Engage your peers", "Showcase executive participation", "Use a deliberate approach", "There is no "finish"") Credits Tags Helpful Materials" Like I said, a rather extensive and pretty comprehensive resource, no doubt, that will surely give you all a pretty good base of what BlueIQ at IBM is and perhaps get also some other ideas you folks may want to give a try for your own internal or external adoption programs, and which we would all be more than happy to help out where we possibly can. Don’t forget to check out the extensive list of Helpful Materials as well, where you can find plenty more details about our overall program. From here onwards, I would just personally want to thank Rawn very much for the wonderful piece of work done on that nomination piece and for making it into the finalists and I do wish him, and us, I suppose lots of good luck with it, knowing that we are already feeling winners just being on that final round, after checking out some of the amazing initiatives other people have been working on. Exciting times to be working on the Social Business space, for sure, and even more exciting when next week our entire team will be in Orlando, Florida, attending this year’s IBM Lotusphere 2012 event, where we hope to see all of you, face to face, to keep the conversations going about the Social Enterprise and its / our / your own adoption of social technologies. Oh, and don’t forget we will be posting several articles per week in this blog with the whole purpose of keeping the dialogue going, before, during and after the event, because as Rawn mentioned, "there is no "finish"" "Innovation never stops, and culture change takes time. Understand that victory is in the daily accumulation of social exchanges, content, and connections that lead to value. Understand that serendipity happens because the seeds of collaboration are sown throughout the organization. And understand that innovation never stops. You are not reaching an end line with social business adoption. Rather, you are creating patterns of behavior for collaborating and connecting that will transcend today’s innovations and position your business and your people for tomorrow." And if you would want to meet us up while at Lotusphere next week, to talk about adoption, enablement and share / exchange some further experiences around social technologies, here you have got some contact details from yours truly on where you can find me online, and, with me, the rest of the team as well … Luis Suarez a.k.a. @elsua Blog: http://elsua.net Google Plus Profile Welcome everyone to BlueIQ at IBM! Glad you could join us on this exciting journey!

I've often thought of social learning as a very culture dependent phenomenon. A few weeks back I read an interesting article by Thierry de Baillon, his conclusion being - we don't need more social platforms, we need more human companies. A lot of social software marketing seems to suggest that the tools will change the world. Unfortunately, as we've seen on several occasions, usable tools have nothing to do with adoption. On the other hand, I also see quite an amazing culture at ThoughtWorks. We don't have the richest infrastructure, yet we seem to juice out our humble tools. Adoption doesn't seem to take forever - it seems like you can take just about any tool, paste it on this company, and things will just work! Well, maybe things are not that easy -- but facilitating social learning in ThoughtWorks does seem far easier than other places. In today's blogpost, I want to explore why social learning at our company seems to succeed. On the way, I want to uncover a few factors that are likely to make a social learning culture tick.A Culture of QuestioningAt ThoughtWorks, no question is taboo. A company that started from our founder, Roy Singham's basement, people seem to feel comfortable questioning just about anything in the company. When I joined the company I was quite surprised to see what I thought was the apparent lack of regard for authority in this organisation. People seemed to have no fear questioning the chairman, the CEO or anyone else in the company. It seemed that no 'best practice' escaped the "Why?" question. What I thought of as a sign of disrespect in those days, is really a culture of healthy disruption. A big smell in organisational cultures, is when people follow an individual or a practice blindly. A culture of questioning is a great way to drive conversation and helps establish the relevance of a view or a practice in a specific context. In person, or online, these discussions seem to build up like magic. I must say this starts right from the leadership, who encourage questioning. I've rarely seen anyone who feels offended because someone questioned their wisdom. Questions for you to ponder over: Does your company leadership actively encourage questioning? Do people question best practice when applying it to different contexts?The Need for Complex Problem SolvingWhen I joined the company a few years back, I used to get a really common answer for every question I asked. "It depends..." most people would say. The reason for this is that we're a consulting firm and our problems at each client are quite different. The way we apply our skills and practices really depends on the context of the project. It makes a lot of sense to reach out to other ThoughtWorkers to find solutions to our problems because they're relatively complex consulting situations. That seems to be one of the reasons that our communities have a significant amount of activity. Social learning in my opinion isn't a recipe for all seasons. People collaborate only when there's a need to - the problems need to be complex enough to demand more than one head. If you're looking to consult in a relatively simple environment, maybe it requires simpler solutions. Consider elearning or training in such environments, because maybe the environment doesn't need social software.Questions for you to ponder over:Do people in your environment have a natural need to collaborate? Are two heads better than one? Or do too many cooks spoil the broth?How do people collaborate on a daily basis? How will social software support this collaboration?Inviting Diversity and FeedbackMy colleague Pat Kua writes quite eloquently about feedback. You'll notice from his recent presentation at Oredev, that feedback is something a lot of us feel very strongly about. In fact, I feel feedback is a way for all of us to grow, almost on a daily basis. Feedback is also a way for all of us to refine our ideas. Scott Page, in his book The Difference mentions how the power of diversity helps complex problem solving. By inviting feedback for our thoughts and ideas, we're inviting diverse perspectives and heuristics to solve the problems we face. By involving a diverse enough group, we're likely to reach a better solution - if you're to believe Scott Page. A social learning culture thrives when people don't fear feedback. This is when people ask other people to be part of their ideas.Questions for you to ponder over:How often do people share feedback in your organisation? What are the safety levels like?How comfortable do people feel when inviting new opinions for their ideas?Do people innovate in isolation? Or do you see groups organically coming together to put new ideas into action?Passionate People"Most writers, including myself, talk about this stuff and stress the ability of the people is really important. While that's true it misses out the fact that it's not just about ability - it's also about collaborativeness." - Martin FowlerIf there's one thing that really makes me proud to be a part of this company, it's the fact that I work with some of the smartest people on the planet. We're better known as Martin Fowler's and (more recently) Jim Highsmith's company. That said, Martin and Jim are only the torchbearers for an organisation where "You can never be the smartest peson in the room.", as my colleague Sudhir Tiwari says. While Roy's social experiment was about being a home for the best knowledge workers - a collective of smart people brings some interesting side effects. Smart people, who are genuinely passionate about doing the best they can at their jobs, naturally collaborate. Being genuinely smart, they don't feel a sense of insecurity involving other smart people. Working in a group that has a high density of smart people means that you have the best chance of finding solutions from your colleagues. Most importantly, smart people know how to learn - if being social is a way to do that effectively, they'll jump on it at the first opportunity. Our success as a learning organisation comes from the fact that we're built on more a social model, than a business model. Questions for you to ponder over:"A players hire A players; B players hire C players" - Guy Kawasaki. Are you hiring the best people you possibly can?"Yet, if we don’t have passion in our work, we will have a very hard time enduring the growing pressures that we encounter. An interesting thing happens when we pursue our passions: We actually seek out more challenges. Rather than viewing them as sources of stress, we view them as opportunities to get better faster. " - John Seely Brown. How passionate are your people about their work? Are they seeking out new challenges? How good are you at maintaining a high talent density in your company? How do you weed out mediocrity?How do your best people connect? How can you model those connections using social software?I started out thinking this was going to be a really short article. Turns out that this is one of the longer posts I've written in the recent past. I try my best to ensure that this blog is not about my employers or my current job, but in some situations I just can't help bringing in my immediate experience. I hope the ThoughtWorks story can help you find ways to cultivate a social learning culture in your organisation. I want to point out another article by Lars Hyland, that should be helpful in building the right kind of culture to support social software. And by the way, I'd love your feedback -- let me know how you feel about the thoughts I've presented in this blogpost. Did you like them? Did you hate them? Just let me know!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Yesterday was my last vacation day and today, once again, to kick off another exciting year ahead of living social, and a few other things, I am sure!, I am on the road again on what means my first business trip of the year, with plenty more to come along over the next few months! And like every year, it is time for that yearly pilgrimage to what, to me, is *the* main IBM event of events on the topics of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and Social Business and, specially, this time around more than ever. Of course, I am talking about the IBM Lotusphere 2012 event, which this time around, also comes along with the second edition of the CONNECT 2012 event. Orlando, here we come! Are you ready? The first word that comes to mind when describing what we are about to experience, those of us, lucky enough to be there in person, is probably going to be overwhelming. At best. And very much so! The amount of online resources, references, places to check out (and hang out for a while before, during and after the event!), communities to join, blog posts, podcasting episodes, live tweets, plusses, articles, various press releases, and whatever other publications that keeps popping up all over the place (And we haven’t even just gotten started!) surely don’t have anything to envy to the real life experience of being there, where this year there are going to be even more social activities than I can remember in the last 4 editions that I have been to so far! It’s going to be rather difficult and very tough at times figure out what to do and where to go to, thinking about the richness of what promises to be a great event, for sure! But that’s just fine! That’s where I am hoping that serendipity will do its magic (once again) and help out clearing up the good mess and total chaos we are just about to get exposed to. Last year it did such a wonderful job that perhaps one of these days I should describe on a blog post how I look up to these kinds of massive events without having that sense of having lost it all and lose track of everything that’s happening… But, so far, it looks like my tips for those folks going there for the first time still stand more relevant than ever before for yours truly as well: walk around with a couple of good, comfortable shoes and network! Never stop moving! The rest will come at its own pace! For those folks who may not be coming to the event though, but who would still be interested in finding out some more of what will be happening, there are lots of ways to catch up with it altogether. Let’s start perhaps with some of my favourites… Beginning with the Lotusphere Social Media Aggregator or the Social Business Aggregator, where people can follow up with all of the social media activities coming along in a single place. No need to have multiple windows open or anything; those two aggregators will help folks get sorted out right away! Phew! And thank goodness for that! Moving on with the tweets … There will be plenty of hash tags that folks will be using during the event and which have already started to get some steam in the last few hours as plenty of us are heading to Orlando to attend the events. First, we have got the general ones for #ls12, #IBMConnect or #IBMSocialbiz; then there is also a hash tag (#ls12u) for the several hundred students that will be attending the event in person as well; and another one for scavenger hunts under #ls12hunt, another one for the usual TweetUps under #ls12Tweetup and then there is this other one, #ls12ask, rather interesting, and new as well, where folks watching over it may be able to ask questions to developers and product managers about IBM Collaboration Solutions products. Yes, indeed, going straight to the source! hehe But there is more! Watch out for the #TEAMSOCIAL group. A very special group of very smart and talented folks, which includes plenty of the IBM Champions recently announced and fellow IBM volunteers, who will be making sure that this year you are the one who becomes more social than ever!, by putting together a whole bunch of different activities that I’m sure will get publicized in time for everyone to enjoy the experience to the max! There is also an official blog for the event: The Social Business Insights, where a bunch of guest bloggers will be sharing along their experiences, insights, and highlights of both events before, after and during the course of the entire week! Worth while subscribing to it, for sure! Then we move into the online communities space where there are a whole bunch of options in there already up and running. We will have the IBM Lotusphere Community, the IBM Connect Community (Notice that for these two you would need to have an account over at the Greenhouse), the IBM Social Business Facebook page, the Lotusphere Community LinkedIn community and other groups like the sempiternal PlanetLotus, which will continue to always provide lots of great insights not only on both events, but also on the overall IBM Collaboration Solutions community (Formerly known as Lotus). On the YouTube front there will be a couple of channels to watch out for. Starting off with IBMSocialBizEvents, followed by the IBM Social Business one and perhaps also the IBM SmarterPlanet Social channel, where I am sure we will starting seeing a whole bunch of video interviews, and recordings of the various different activities during the event. Lotusphere and Connect 2012 will also have a strong presence in Flickr with a couple of links that will try to capture most of the imagery from the event. Starting off with the IBMSocial Business account or the Flickr group IBMSocialBizEvents. Of course, on a face to face conference event things would not have been the same if we didn’t have our mobile devices to help us enjoy the experience even more. And this year both events come fully loaded with lots of social mobile opportunities. Going from Foursquare checkins (Even for sessions!), the always incredibly helpful LSMobile Session App, Instragram and a few other bits and pieces that I am sure will gain air coverage as we move closer to the starting time. So stay tuned for more to come along! And then, finally, my favourite resource of them all and the one that’s surely going to challenge the way I have been doing live tweeting, blogging, plussing in the past, which is the availability of Livestreaming of a good number of the keynote presentations (the Opening General Session, a.k.a. OGS), and breakout sessions which would surely give a new dimension to the entire week. The main link for the livestreaming will be over here with the corresponding replays over as follows: Lotusphere and IBM Connect. Gosh, and the list of online resources to keep up with quite an amazing week to follow both events keeps piling up on and on and on. And all of that without mentioning the social activities on the side; yes, the ones that all along have also been my favourites and which I can clearly summarise them this year with three single keywords: networking, networking, networking! Indeed, the amount of informal gatherings, parties, cocktails, receptions, dinners, drinks at the bars, etc. etc. are just simply mind-blowing! I think I would not be exaggerating much if I were to confirm that we would probably have to clone ourselves a couple of times just to make it to all of them! Going to be a huge challenge having to make a pick without going crazy! But good fun altogether, I am sure! hehe I bet I am leaving behind plenty of stuff, for sure! Hoping that, if that’s the case, folks who may have had an opportunity to absorb more of the events logistics may be able to drop by and share their thoughts in the comments adding further on some more of the activities that will be going on… That would be much much appreciated by everyone, including me!, to figure out what’s happening this year. Now, to close off this first initial blog post from the series of entries I will be putting together, to share along plenty of the highlights from both Lotusphere and CONNECT 2012, here’s the challenge I am facing this year with what I hinted earlier on about my own live tweeting, plussing or blogging experiences. If the vast majority of the keynote sessions and breakout sessions are going to be livestreamed, like they are starting off on Monday morning, what’s the point of live tweeting or live blogging, without risking the opportunity to repeating yourself, amongst several other hundred twitterers and bloggers when people out there may be able to watch the sessions online, even with the replays available right afterwards, as well as the opportunity to download the presentation materials for each of the sessions? Hummm … I am not sure what you folks would think about, but the last thing I would want to do is bore the online audience(s) to death with repeated messages or blog posts about the very same stuff they may have seen themselves through the livestream. It would sound pretty much like a "marketing" machine-gun of mindless tweets and retweets that I am sure are going to turn people completely off right from the start! Nice challenge, eh? And a tough one to come around it, I would think! So this year I have decided to take a different approach. I will be doing some live tweeting over at @elsua for both #ls12 and #connect12 but, instead of reporting live the course of events from the keynotes, as well as the breakout sessions, I will just be doing some casual live tweeting, but always trying to add some new insights on additional thoughts, with the aim to make it somewhat original and provide rather my ¢2 on what I have learned, what I may have found important, or what I would think would be of interest to those folks I have been interacting with for a while or, just simply, what may be worth while annotating without sounding too repetitive about all things Social. Then when I get back home next weekend, after the event is over, I will be putting together a series of blog posts where I will be sharing my major highlights from both events, as well as what I have learned throughout the entire week and some additional thoughts folks may not have heard or read about from what we get exposed to. I was initially thinking about doing some blogging during the course of the week as well, but knowing how challenging that’s going to be with a non-stop conference from 7:00 am till 7:00 pm, plus the extra curricular social activities, I think I’m going to spare the very little energy left that I would have (And, most importantly, the last few hours of sleep I will have!) and save it for something that time and time again I just can’t get enough from live events: offline social networking! Yes, indeed, as good as it gets! Look forward to seeing you all at Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012 … Oh and don’t be shy! Say "Hi!" whenever we may bump into each other! The week is long, the conferences are just about to get started. Let’s go! Let’s keep having plenty of good fun altogether!   PS. Big Kudos to both The Taking Notes Podcast as well as This Week in Lotus podcasts, where Bruce Elgort, Julian Robichaux and Stuart McIntyre & Darren Duke have done a tremendous piece of work through a good number of podcasting episodes to help us all get around what promises to be one of those events not to forget in a long while! Thanks much, folks!! Well done!

My blog has a focus - learning and education in the enterprise. I do my best to not divert from this focus. Unless of course, there's something I really feel strongly about. First things first, there are just 3200 odd tigers left in the wild today. Of those about 1400 odd tigers are in India - most people believe this country to have the best chance of bringing the tiger back from extinction. First things first, I'm not a natural conservationist. I'm more an inspired wildlife enthusiast. I'm inspired by my friend and colleague Chirdeep Shetty, who has spent several months in the forests doing his bit to help with tiger conservation. Recently Chirdeep did a moving presentation about tiger conservation and his message has stuck with me. The least I can do is to echo Chirdeep's words and do my individual best to save our tigers. If by the end of this article, you feel that this is important enough, do what you can to spread the word and make a difference.Why Care about Tigers?The tiger is an apex predator. If nothing, my school biology lessons told me that nature is a game of balance. To save a creature at the top of the food chain, you need to save the members of the pyramid under it. Which means that you save prey animals, plants, scavengers, insects, birds and every other piece of our bio-diversity puzzle. Let me outline a few reasons we absolutely need to care about this issue:Saving the tiger saves the bio-diversity of our forests. The moment tigers go extinct, we'll see an overpopulation of prey species, followed by a destruction of plant species, followed by several other snowball effects.Saving the tiger saves our forest areas. Tigers are territorial animals and need between 20-80 sq km of forest land per cat. Each tiger saved leads to 50 sq km of forest land saved.Saving the tiger saves our rivers. In India, 600 river sources reside in our forests. The day forests go away, the reservoirs go away too! What will we do without water?Saving the tiger helps medical research. The forests are a home to various plant species that are important ingredients in alternative medicine. When the forests disappear, where will we get new medicines from?Saving the tiger helps employment. India in particular gets millions of dollars of revenue from wildlife tourism, purely centered around the tiger. The day the tiger disappears, the money and employment from this activity will go away. Where do we employ the thousands of people working in wildlife tourism?Saving the tiger is a question of national identity. The tiger is our national animal. It makes heaps of sense to save our tigers, lest we lose our national identity.I could keep going on about this issue, but I guess I'll stop there because those are really good reasons. If nothing else, we can't let one more large predator go extinct - where's our humanity?What Threatens the Tigers?In recent years, tiger populations have been shrinking. From over 100,000 tigers in the world at the turn of the previous century we've killed most of them to leave just over 3000 on the face of the earth today. Tiger populations face several threats today, including but not limited to habitat loss, human-animal conflict and territorial fights. Shekar Dattari's amazing movie - The Truth about Tigers outlines the several issues that plague the tiger's survival today. The single biggest threat to the tigers today is organised poaching. Worldwide demand for tiger parts, where a tiger skin can fetch upto $25,000 is a death knell for the big cats. The biggest concentration of demand is in China and Tibet, where tiger parts for medicine and as a sign of luxury and status is wiping out tiger populations from all over the world, particularly India. The South China tiger is near extinct. The Balinese and Javan tigers are extinct. The Sumatran tiger as well as the Indo-Chinese tiger and Siberian tiger are struggling. The demand is so high that a poor Indian struggling to make ends meet, can earn Rs.50,000 (about $1000) in the black market for supplying a tiger skin. That's life changing money and is a big enough risk for a poor man to take. As long as the demand continues, the killing can't stop.What Can We Do to Save the Tigers?Saving tigers takes steps both at the micro and macro level. There's always the question of political will, international cooperation and the skill of forest officials, when it comes to save this magnificent beast. It's easy to believe that we can't influence such big things. That said, every large movement has small efforts that count. Here's what I think all of us can do:Be a responsible eco-tourist: It takes less than Rs 150/- (about $3) to visit a tiger reserve like Ranthambore. By discovering our natural heritage, we understand our animals better and can offer constructive solutions for their protection. Our photographs make for great stories to tell our families and to bring them into the conservation fold.Raise your voice: Repeat yourself and speak untiringly about the welfare of our tigers. It's not enough to say things once and to then let the drama unfold. Make a presentation to your colleagues, blog about the issue, tweet, talk to anyone who's willing to listen. Awareness about the issue helps our tigers in a big way. Raising international awareness stops the demand for tiger parts. Raising local awareness creates a voice that's big enough for our politicians to listen to and demonstrate their will.Donate to the cause: I'm so pleased that NDTV's tiger campaign has been able to raise enough money to buy Rapid Response Kits for almost every reserve of significance in India. I've made a donation that I could afford. Every little bit counts, so don't feel overwhelmed by the size of the problem. If you can afford it, buy the 2011 cats calendar and help conservation. There's also the Dakini Tiger Campaign. There are several ways to donate, find the one that you like.Volunteer your help: I'm volunteering a month's time next year, to any tiger saving effort that can use my time. I'm yet to receive a response, but I'm sure I'll get one by the time I'm ready. WWF India gives you a fantastic opportunity to volunteer your time to save our tigers.Be responsible in the use of natural resources: Firstly, do not buy any illegal animal products regardless of how small they seem. I've seen people wear tiger teeth and claws. It seems like a small thing, but that comes from another dead tiger. On a more daily note -- we need to find ways to use less paper. In an age of electronic media, we're in a place where we can bring down our paper usage in a big way. Let's find ways to reduce our timber usage - I understand having teakwood furniture feels good, but let's think of the trees we cut to get the awesome furniture in our homes. That leads to a smaller habitat for the tiger!Keep the faith: We can't save the tiger if we don't believe we can. We need to believe in the power of democracy to make change. We need to keep creating the pressure via our social networks, newspapers and news channels. If we can force our governments to show the right kind of will and protect the tiger, the numbers are likely to multiply quite fast.I feel very passionately about saving the tiger and I'm touched by the efforts of the Aircel-NDTV team and the amount of momentum I've seen on the Twitter stream today. I've seen a huge number of educated Indians get together as a collective for something that seems like a national event. This is the power of democracy and an example of what a large group of people can do if we can put our minds to it. If you don't feel convinced by the efforts of a certain group, please find a way to do something yourself. Just don't be an armchair critic. I want to end this post with a quote from the world's largest (and one of it's most ancient) epic - The Mahabharata. Let's remember that even our ancestors understood the benefit of saving our tigers. It's time we understood the benefit too."Do not cut down the  forest with its tigers and do not banish the tigers from the forest; the tiger perishes without the forest and the forest perishes without its tigers"  - Mahabharata, 400 BCE© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

You can surely feel the vibe and the excitement building up nicely over the last few hours. I’m already in Orlando, Florida, having had a really good night sleep and plenty of rest, probably the last one of the week!, once the Lotusphere mayhem breaks loose and chaos unleashes with no remedy and I can already see lots of buzz and people getting excited about what’s to come over the next few days. So I thought that perhaps for the potential last blog post from yours truly for a short while over here, while I get to enjoy plenty of offline social networking, it would be a good thing to share some insights around the agendas of both Lotusphere and IBM Connect that will be kicking off officially tomorrow morning and that, by the looks of it, this year they are much more social than ever before! Yes, that’s right! If there would be a single keyword that could describe quite nicely both agendas from both events running in parallel that keyword would be social. This year, more than ever, we will be seeing how Lotusphere has become more socialised than ever before and the IBM Connect parallel event that got kicked-off last year surely has improved, and tremendously!, the overall quality of the lineup of speakers and the overall topics themselves as well. It’s going to be tough to choose between one or the other, or perhaps try to attend both! That’s essentially what I will be doing this week myself. IBM Connect runs shorter, just a couple of days, versus the four days of Lotusphere so, initially, I have decided that this year I will be putting more focus on the IBM Connect event itself for Monday and Tuesday, and then for the rest of the week Lotusphere all the way! And here is why… Lotusphere itself is probably one of the most complete, varied and comprehensive conference events out there around Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and Social Business at the moment that I can think of. It combines both a rather strong technical focus, with an incredibly energising business focus that makes up for all audiences to get exposed to everything in a single event. This year, Lotusphere itself is divided in a whole bunch of different tracks, each of them capable of satisfying even the most demanding of tastes. To name: JumpStart & Master Class Sessions: The warm-up of the conference event for sure and the one that sets the stage of what’s about to happen in the next couple of days. Already started on Sunday morning and throughout the whole day, it will bring folks an opportunity to get exposed to the main themes of the conference through the week. Insights and Innovation: Tracks that "focus on the business value, implications and opportunities of new technology" and perhaps the perfect opportunity to see what IBM Research has been working all along in the last year, specially, in the area of Social Research for social computing.  Technology for Collaboration Solutions - Infrastructure & Deployment: This is the perfect track for techies out there to get exposed to a good number of IBM Collaboration Solutions covering multiple areas from traditional offline collaboration, real-time, or social collaboration. There will be a track out there for everything to meet their taste(s).  Technology for Collaboration Solutions - Application Development: Another techie track specially meant for developers out there who would want to get exposed to what’s happening with IBM’s products and their development and where folks can have a direct opportunity to interact with the developers of the products they may be using already or perhaps just interested in… Best practices: Not liking much the term, as you folks already know, if you have been reading this blog for a while, but this track focuses on sharing good practices on applying technology to complex problems, scenarios, business issues, etc. etc. to get the most out of what technology can do to help out business become more effective at what it does already. Customer Case Studies: This is probably my favourite track from Lotusphere and the one where I feel I am going to be spending most of my time attending the various different sessions from IBM customers who will be sharing their experiences, as case studies, on how they have become a fully integrated social business. This is the one that has always become my main source of inspiration for learning about what’s happening out there, outside IBM’s firewall, on what other folks are doing to push forward for innovation, open collaboration, and open knowledge sharing to become more effective businesses at what they are already excelling at! Always very inspiring to see what other people are up to and how we can learn plenty more how to leverage some of those good practices, techniques, solutions to our very own issues. After all, it’s just too scary to think how close our corporate environments are to one another! Show and Tell: The practical track. The one that is most oriented towards those folks who would want to see technology at its best, applied with plenty of good, hands-on live demos of what (social) tools can do for you. Very helpful for those folks who would want to play with the tools and learn plenty more about them while at the conference! Now, to mention and share all of the different sessions for each of those tracks would probably make it a bit cumbersome to go through all of them. So, instead, what I would like to do is to point you folks to the absolutely delightful piece of work from The Turtle Partnership, that, once again, has pretty much nailed it with the must-have, essential LS Mobile App that contains all of the tracks with all of the sessions and its full details, and a great opportunity to add them into your own calendars, which is basically what I did yesterday while on the plane and my calendar for this week looks massive, to say the least! W00t!! Can’t wait!! But that’s all for Lotusphere. Like I said above already, this year I’ll be attending the IBM Connect event as well, where the agenda itself is probably one of the most impressive ones I have seen in a long time with regards to Social Business related topics. As you would be able to see, it includes top notch, high quality external speakers like Guy Kawasaki, my good friends Sameer Patel and Rachel Happe, plus a whole bunch of IBM customers ready to share their story on what it is like becoming a Social Enterprise and its real value and business benefits altogether! It’s going to be tough to try to select amongst the various different tracks for this parallel event, but will be trying my best to select the ones that I would think would be the most beneficial for everyone to enjoy from my live tweeting that will be starting up soon, within the next few hours. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, there will be plenty of options and opportunities to follow up the various different keynote sessions, including the OGS (Opening General Session), as well as various other breakout sessions, but one resource that I thought was worth while remembering and bringing it up again would be the great and unique opportunity to livestream a good number of those sessions. You can find a pretty good and comprehensive blog post with the scheduling over at this link, put together by Constance Daglis. Worth while looking into it, specially, knowing that there will be recordings afterwards, in case you may have missed them during the live sessions. I guess that would be pretty much all of it. Like I said, I will be doing lots of live tweeting on the sides mentioning which sessions I will be attending and all to, hopefully, give you guys a glimpse of what we are about to get exposed to ourselves. But I wouldn’t want to finish off this blog entry without highlighting one of the main activities that those folks attending live should not let go by just like that. It’s probably one of the most impressive and immersive experiences you can enjoy while at Lotusphere and that is to visit AND participate in the various IBM Labs available, specially, the User Experience and Innovation Labs, along with the Developer ones where you will have a unique opportunity not only to interact with developers and designers of various IBM technical solutions, but you would also have an exclusive opportunity to check what even us, fellow IBMers, have not seen just yet: IBM Research with their social innovations getting ready to show the world what they have been working on over the course of the last few months. This experience of the Labs is, by far, one of my all time favourites, because it just gives us all an opportunity to not just witness and experience the world of social today, but also the world of social of tomorrow! Which is, no doubt, when it really gets exciting! And I am hoping to be sharing plenty of insights in this regard as well as I get to spend plenty of time with those folks learning, interacting and participating with them throughout the entire week! Get ready! Both Lotusphere and IBM Connect are already here! The buzz is already building up quite nicely, so you better prepare yourself to be WOWed and overwhelmed once again! Because you will … no doubt! And I just can’t wait for it to get started!

"We're dropping use of the word 'training.' Replacing it with learning? Training materials? Training materials? We don't need any stinking training materials Training is a turn off! Learning is what I go for. Training is what you do to me. Learning is what I do for myself I hope "training" is discontinued on an ongoing bases - requirements change. More sunset laws for training programs. What we did yesterday/last year differs from now and tomorrow."Those are some of the comments I heard on a recent lrnchat. It seems to me that training is fast becoming a taboo word. In several other conversations, I've often people quite agitated very mention of the word. I agree that a lot of training that we've seen is not just ineffective, but an absolute waste of time. That said, bad training doesn't mean that training is bad; just like a few bad cars don't make all cars bad. Now, if you follow this blog you'll know that I'm of the view that training isn't a solution for all learning problems. On the other hand, I still believe that training does have a place in the corporate world. In fact training will continue to hold it's place for a long time to come. I write this post in defense of training and to make my case for the fact that it is not a bad word. We're beating up on an old definition of trainingA lot of the criticism for training seems to stem from a very outdated understanding of what training really is. We seem to beat up on the 'sage on stage' mode of training. Frankly, most serious training practitioners adopt more of a 'guide by the side' approach. To tell the truth, some of the best training I've seen in the recent past, involves a lot more meaningful interactivity than elearning page turners. And when I talk about interactivity, I'm talking about modeling real world tasks. Now, I don't believe you can use classroom training to make sea changes in behaviour. At the same time, I can tell you that effective classroom training can raise as much awareness as some of the high quality elearning you'll see across the world. I request practitioners of technology enabled learning to research modern training methods before criticising a mode of teaching that most of us don't practise anymore.Training can be an extremely Social processAt ThoughtWorks University, we've stretched training to being a very social process. In fact, we use technology quite liberally, we sprinkle in elearning for the purposes that it makes sense. We rely on communities of practice and social learning to stretch beyond the best practice education that elearning provides. Through a blend of technology and SME led facilitation, we've simulated a workscape that lets individuals learn while at work and creating real value for the organisation. I call ThoughtWorks University a training program -- it embodies what a modern induction experience should look like. The fact is that we've evolved training to be what it can be in today's world. If there are some programs that aren't evolving, we need to help them change. The slow pace of change however, doesn't make the world of 'training' ineffective.Don't Underestimate the value of Presentation SkillsThere's no saying how valuable great presentation skills are. I write about this almost untiringly, because this is a skill that excellent trainers bring with them. When driving change, elearning and technology enabled media helps a lot, but nothing works like person-to-person contact. Short, 30-45 minute training sessions, powered by excellent presentation skills can be an excellent, low cost, yet interactive approach to build awareness. A traveling roadshow of select, highly skilled presenters can be significantly cheaper and more effective than a multi-million dollar multimedia extravaganza which may not have a huge shelf life. Think about it, your trainers are not ready to be extinct yet!The role of trainers is changing. As Jane Bozarth once famously said, "Trainers won't be replaced by technology, they'll be replaced by trainers who are willing to use technology." That's all that's likely to happen. On that note, I request that we hold back our criticism for training and realise that it has a small, yet important place in corporate learning strategy. That's my only defense for what looks like a dying competence - I hope you see my point. Do let me know what you think, by commenting on this blogpost. One way or another, I'd like to hear your views.© Sumeet Moghe, 2009

Now that Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012 are both behind us, and what a truly amazing experience that was altogether!, it’s time for me to come back to the blog and resume those regular blogging activities as before, once again. Lots to share and lots more to talk about! However, and before I get things going covering some of the major highlights from both events and what I learned from them, I would want to put together this blog entry to share with you folks one of those incredibly depressing and horrifying experiences one can get exposed to when doing business travelling: being treated, without much respect, like a mindless object by an airline company on your way home. Yes, indeed, once again, travelling for business has taken a new low for yours truly that I am not sure I would even be capable of recovering from any time soon. And this time around with a different airline from the usual suspects I have been travelling with in the past. An airline that last year was voted #1 US Airline for Business Travellers, but that this year it seems they have soon forgotten about it, including its partners. This time around the culprit is Delta Airlines. Last year I heard plenty of really good things from colleagues, friends, and fellow biz travellers, about all of the pleasant experiences they kept having with Delta Airlines advising me that the next time I would go to the US I should go ahead and try them out and see what it would be like. So this time around, as I was heading over to Orlando, Florida, for Lotusphere I decided to give them a try and fly with them. That was a big mistake. The one way trip was absolutely delightful and uneventful. The way business travelling should well be, a standard, even if too long in transit, but very doable. Very friendly staff and really good service all around. And, surprisingly, everything on time!, which, if you folks have been following my recent travelling over the course of the years is something that I do appreciate quite a bit, since it hardly ever happens anymore. However, the roundtrip was a different story. Well, actually, still is, since I’m currently travelling back home having left Orlando on Saturday afternoon and won’t be arriving home till Monday evening, marking a new record for me of an outstanding 58 hours in transit all along! Yes, 58 hours before I can finally be home! How can that be, you may be wondering, right? I mean, after all, you were flying with #1 US Airline for Business Travellers. Delta Airlines. What happened? Well, a whole bunch of misfortunes, to say the least. That’s right, the following is an approximate account of what happened in the last few hours and although I know that nothing is going to happen about it, nor that I would be worrying much about it anyway, since it was my first time, and last time!, I will be flying with it, and its partners!, I figured I would go ahead and share it along, as a way for me to keep me sane and get it out of my chest before I go crazy thinking how surreal it all was right from the start! I would probably agree with you folks that what you are about to read further on below is a rant, something that you may all find it a bit surprising altogether, since I hardly do that over here in my blog, but I thought I needed to get it out there as a liberating exercise for yours truly, more than anything else, because I am a firm believer that if you set a certain standard and a concrete set of expectations it’s the least we can expect from you, as a business, that you keep it up and you maintain it. For your own good, not just ours. Something that perhaps Delta Airlines may have lost with the change to the new year. That’s why I would also share this word of caution with you all and advise you to stop reading, should you not want to muse further on about this experience that has completely changed my perception of what business travelling should be all about. I will try to tame myself as much as I possibly can, since being angry and upset will never take you anywhere, as we all know, specially, in the written form, but there are just some things in life that we, human beings, should no longer tolerate in today’s time and age: being treated like an inanimate object you can shuffle around just like that to suit your own needs. Never mind theirs! We are all people and we should be all treated as such! And failure to do that implies that what once was a respected and trusted airline, highly recommended by friends and colleagues, is no longer the case. At least, for me. It all starts, like I have mentioned above last Saturday afternoon, when I headed over to Orlando Airport, a.k.a. MCO, to embark on the first leg of two back home to Madrid, then to Gran Canaria (This last leg on a different airline, by the way). Arriving with plenty of time is something I have already gotten used to, since you never know what may happen, so this time around it wasn’t any different. I was there with plenty of time and already with my boarding passes sorted out, ready to embark. And we did! Full airplane, all tight, still everything on time, surprisingly, till more and more fellow passengers started their own embarking procedures and the first problems arose. It looks like in the US it’s becoming customary, as of late, to board the aircraft with an overweight piece of luggage that most folks consider carry-on, but that in reality it’s just a full suitcase on its own! So when you are on a fully flight, it starts slowing everything down, because every piece of that heavy luggage needs to be towed away properly or checked back in! Which is eventually what happens. Funny enough it looks like people also learned the trick with Delta that if you take your overweight luggage with you by the gate and it weighs too much, they checked it for you for free. How nice! Not … See? First problem encountered… We left MCO about 30 minutes later than usual and all of my alarms set off dramatically thinking that I barely had another 30 minutes to make it to my second leg of the trip from Atlanta to Madrid, Spain. But I was confident. I just needed to go from one gate to the other and nothing else. I could do it. Still looking good! Of course, those were my thoughts, but reality had other plans reserved for me. When we landed in Atlanta and we were taxying to our corresponding gate we heard from the captain the news that totally destroyed what, till then, was an enjoyable experience somewhat. Apparently, another aircraft was positioned at our very same gate, making it impossible to do any other thing than just wait. And right there, that wait nailed it for me. I have just lost my flight to Madrid. Or may be not … We finally parked at the gate, or whatever you would call it, and managed to get myself on the front row to get out of the plane as fast as I could, thinking that if my flight to Madrid would be delayed by just a little I would still be capable of making it. You know, what are the chances your flight would be leaving late? Plenty, right? Well, wrong! This time around the plane left on time and you should have seen me running like crazy from Concourse A to Concourse E in just a couple of minutes! I had to make it to that plane whatever it would take! It was my last chance to arriving home by Sunday afternoon. Well, there went my hopes when I arrived at E2 (The farthest point possible!) and my flight to Madrid just left 5 minutes before. Yes missed by a mere 5 minutes!! All of that running and heavy sweating for nothing!! Why did I bother? Arrrrgggghhhh !!! The ground staff were very kind and polite in understanding my desperation and advised me to go to the ticket counter where they could try to rebook my trip for the next flight. I knew from before that I would still have a couple of options to flight that Saturday evening. One to Amsterdam and the other one to Paris, from where I could take another flight (A new one altogether) to fly directly home by-passing Madrid. So I arrived at the ticket counter and the nightmare begins… A huge queue just ahead of me, meaning my flight to Paris was already a lost opportunity, since I wouldn’t be able to make it to rebook my flight and take that one that was supposed to be leaving a short while afterwards. It took ages for the queue to clear out itself till I got my turn, by which time the flight to Paris was already on its way out. So after talking to the affable, sympathetic and rather amicable Lilia, one of the various customer service representatives, I ended up on a cul-de-sac, because she could not rebook me for the flight to Paris, for which I was already too late, and the flight to Amsterdam was already fully booked. Desperation and frustration levels on the rise! And big time! Usually, I am not too bothered if I miss a connecting flight. These things happen on a regular basis, so one gets used to it over time. But this time was different. I needed to fly out that evening to arrive in Europe on Sunday, so I could get back home on that same day as on Monday morning I would need to deliver an online webinar to 100+ fellow colleagues in IBM Switzerland and needed to be sharp and fresh for that presentation since it was going to be broadcasted to a live audience. Starting to see my stress levels on the rise as well, once more, I asked for the supervisor to offer an opportunity to make it up for the whole mess I was getting into and see if we could get something else going on. After a while I finally got to talk to her and mentioned to her that, in principle, I wouldn’t have a problem flying out on Sunday evening, as long as I would possibly manage to get an upgrade to business class, so that I could very well get a good night rest arriving to Madrid on Monday morning ready for that webinar. Something I thought would not be much of a problem, nor an issue, for Delta to arrange seeing the big mess I was getting into, because of this situation. A regular business traveller, yours truly, was at stake at this point in time to continue flying with Delta or not if things were not going to be resolved accordingly. Not a chance! The supervisor insisted that Delta would never do those kinds of upgrades and that, if anything, I would have to content myself with getting on the plane on Sunday evening to arrive on Monday to Madrid on economy and spend the night in Atlanta, after all. Oh oh, trouble ahead, as you can imagine! But then again, maybe not! All of a sudden, I remembered all of these wonderful stories about how social certain airlines have become as of late with an extensive use of social media tools, including Delta Airlines with Delta Assist, KLM and Air France. All three of them partners, as you all probably know by now. So during my conversations with Lilia and the supervisor I engaged with the airlines through Twitter as well on my iPhone (And a rather expensive wi-fi bill of a couple of hours!) and although I never heard back from Air France, I did hear back from both Delta Assist and KLM. Very friendly support, for sure, very sound in their commitment to provide support from afar but after a rather long exchange of tweets and DMs none of the two managed to eventually go the extra mile and help this unfortunate business traveller. So much hype and buzz for social media and right there, once again, it all failed for me. I was about to cry in desperation knowing that I would have ahead of me the beginning of one of those weeks difficult to forget. But I eventually gave in. Just wanted to go for a much needed rest and get out of the airport as fast as I possibly could. So I asked the supervisor what we would do then as compensation for having missed the connection and she mentioned they would find a hotel for me near the airport, but, surprise, surprise, that I would have to pay out of my own pocket with my own money! Errr, WHAT?!?!? Really? And no voucher for something to eat for dinner that evening, or toiletries to help me get through that night and the following day? Really? Indeed, NO compensation at all! Yes, that is how you treat your customers, your potential regular business travellers, with empathy and a bit of caring. NOT!! In fact, the supervisor stared at me baffled enough about what I asked for that she suggested, no, wait, she made a reservation for a 47$ per night hotel room, as I seemed to protest having to pay for my own hotel room!, in what I would probably call a motel, according to what I saw. So embarrassing that I wanted to take pictures of it, since I just couldn’t believe it, but it was just so disgusting that I refrained from doing so. And what’s worse, around 4:30am in the morning I had to call reception and protest about the huge, loud noises from people on the corridor at what seem to be quite some wild party! Right, just what I needed! Without hardly any good sleep, the Sunday morning came along and I thought I would, at least, try to advance some work related stuff, before I would be taking my flight back home in the evening. No. That didn’t happen. Apparently, the hotel free wi-fi was out of service for a couple of days due to the weather conditions and the staff didn’t have much of an intention to try to address it before I would be leaving again, so I decided to freshen up as much as I possibly could with a bar of soap and head back to the airport, where, yes, I would have to pay for the wi-fi and all, but, at least, it was working, so I could get some stuff done. And after having spent the whole day at Atlanta airport, working along, I finally embarked on my evening flight to Madrid, in economy, hoping to be in almost a half piece for tomorrow’s (Monday) webinar. And that’s where I am at this moment, while I am putting together this draft blog post. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, hoping to arrive in Madrid at 9:15am approximately (Now writing further on into the future we arrived at 9:45am … 30 minutes late! Again!), without any other option than spend the day in Madrid since my next flight to Gran Canaria would be colliding with the online event I need to host and having to book a hotel room to try to get some rest, deliver the online session, head again to the airport and, hopefully, embark on what I hope would be the last leg before arriving home. Home sweet home… 58 hours later, from last Saturday afternoon, when I left Orlando, I am hoping to be home, perhaps with a jetlag I can’t probably remember in my entire life and which is going to take me days to recover from (First time in my life!); with a much deteriorated physical and mental body and perhaps much worse with what promises to have been quite a horrifying experience for any road / air warrior out there, because throughout the whole weekend I didn’t get a single sorry nor an apology for the inconvenience, not even an understanding of the disastrous consequences of not having enough rest to deliver an online education event where one needs to be sharp and ready and not a single bit of compensation on something that they clearly messed up themselves in the first place! One thing, for sure, I no longer expect a response. Nor an apology, or a sincere token of gratitude to compensate for the damage done and incurred. It’s already too late for me. I am usually very patient with these kinds of things, since, like I said, they happen far too often, but they say you only have got a single chance to leave a first good impression on someone and somehow Delta Airlines, along with KLM and Air France, since they are all now partners and on the same boat altogether, just managed to mess it up and big time. And, even more, they have all proved, and rather well, that some times, even social media isn’t invincible or that magic solution that will get you out of trouble. At least, for me, which, as a social computing evangelist, I find extremely disappointing, since what could have promised to be quite an amazing success story, it turned out to be one of my worst nightmares to date, with regards to travelling. Thanks ever so much, Delta Airlines (KLM & Air France), once voted #1 US Airline for Business Travelers, which I can certainly start to wonder now, for proving, once again, how broken the airline industry is at the moment and why I keep longing and anticipating for a massive, much needed, reboot of the system. That same industry most of us once loved, but that we cannot longer say the same. Your days are numbered. No doubt about it after this weekend’s experience. Like I said, Delta, don’t bother to respond, engage or reply to this blog post. It’s out of my head now, and out of my body system, too, I hope. Thanks to this experience I will no longer plan to fly with you, nor your partners, in the next foreseeable future. Oh, and please, do allow me to wish you plenty of good luck on your journey to become a true social business, because, right now, you are far from it. At least, according to yours truly, your customer… As my body and intellectual soul continue to ache just half way through the ordeal of reaching home sweet home…   Oh, by the way, the whole crew from flight DL108 is absolutely wonderful, with a special mention to Rosa, who has just brought me a lovely cup of freshly made coffee, so that I could finish this blog post while on the plane, since I just can’t get to sleep due to how tired I am… Thanks much, mi muy adorable Rosa! I needed it!

It's been a great year - before I write another word, I'd like to thank you for reading this blog. For the few people that subscribe to this blog, thanks for your support. I also want to apologise for missing last week's blogpost while on holiday, but I must say the break has done me a world of good and I'll be hitting the digital space with a vengeance in this new year. Speaking of the new year, I have a wish. I wish that we can revive the age-old partnership between L&D and HR. I've always believed that to create a true learning workscape, L&D, HR and IT form a facilitation conglomerate. It takes great organisational and individual will to make this relationship thrive, with HR sitting bang in the center of it all. This is my resolution for the year as well, and in today's blogpost I want to explain why I feel that a strategic HR focus can help L&D in a big way.HR still focusses on all the unimportant thingsDon't get me wrong, it isn't that HR is incapable of focussing on what really matters. It's just that policy management, performance appraisals and transactional HR operations are the traditional sweet spot for the trade. With an absolute lack of leadership interest (and understanding), HR departments in a lot of organisations seem to revert to the steady state of doing the easiest transactions than driving a fluffy, unsupported strategy. That said, with what companies like Atlassian are doing with things such as performance reviews, it's only a matter of time before we see how little the value is in managing these heavy processes. It also irks me to see smart, forward thinking HR professionals get stuck into defining policies and managing their untiring use in the company. Frankly, most policies are a matter of common sense and when we follow protocol while disregarding common sense, Dilbert happens! For example Netflix doesn't have a leave policy and their rationale is that when they don't measure the number of hours people spend at work, then why measure how many leaves people take? By employing and retaining the best people they possibly can, Netflix promotes a culture of freedom, responsibility, innovation and self-discipline as against a culture of process adherence. Is there a way we can run our companies with the minimum amount of process possible, so HR can focus on what really matters?"There is also no clothing policy at Netflix, but no one has come to work naked lately."  - Patty McCord, NetflixThree Areas I'd really like to see HR focus in 2011As my little picture above may indicate, I hope HR can redefine their focus to being Human Resource Development than being just Human Resource Management. Smart people can manage themselves and self-organise when the need comes by. On the other hand, an organisation needs to do it's best to grow its best people, help facilitate the right culture in the workplace and do what it takes to attract new, smart people into the fold. This is crucial for L&D as this is the context that we operate in. The more we can do to assist our HR colleagues in this space, the better results we're likely to see in our own work.Strategic Sourcing"Great workplace is stunning colleagues. Great workplace is not day-care, espresso, health benefits, sushi lunches, nice offices, or big compensation, and we only do those that are efficient at attracting stunning colleagues." - NetflixIt would seem that free food, parties, and little bubblegummy activities in office will attract and retain the best people. As it turns out, the best people are the best people because they're passionate about their jobs. They do their job because they're love them to the extent that it doesn't feel like a job. It's what Dan Pink calls a state of 'flow', in his awesome graphic novel - The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. As the world moves to newer, more efficient ways of learning we need to ask ourselves if we're hiring people who know how to learn. 'Social' is the new skill for this decade. Knowledge workers need more than technical skills - can L&D help HR seek out the best knowledge workers who've mastered meta learning?Workplace CultureI can't say enough about the importance of a great learning culture. In fact, I don't say it's important - Bersin says so. OK, I wrote about this a couple of weeks back as well! I strongly believe that a strong learning culture doesn't emerge out of nowhere. It requires facilitation, nurturing and strong leadership. Over the years, I can say ThoughtWorks has been fortunate to have Roy Singham as the chairman and founder challenge us each day to learn, question, debate and be a part of shaping a progressive company. It's taken 18 years to build this culture at my organisation and at the heart of it was a conscious social experiment. Given that L&D is such a strong stakeholder in this and given that HR can be a strong partner in this endeavour, how can we help build a culture of curiousity, questioning, collaboration and learning?Talent Management"Companies that reach maturity, need to focus more on coaching and development" - Josh BersinA few months back, I attended a webinar on development driven performance management with Josh Bersin. While the focus of the talk was about harnessing the performance management process to drive organisational development, some of benefits Josh outlined were pretty clear. Coaching and development based models help in:retaining top performershiring the best peopledeveloping employeesdeveloping leadership pipelinesand developing great leadersAdd to this an enviable opportunity to influence the markets your company can compete in, the new customers they can target, the new products/ services they can innovate - you're talking about some real, tangible benefits here. Coaching and development happen to be L&D competencies, but to drive them we need HR support. As another side of the coin, we have the opportunity to think ahead of the curve with HR here. What are the development challenges our companies are likely to face in the next 24 months? What skills and competencies will we need then? What do we need to do today, so that when those challenges arrive, our people can get ready fast? How can we build a workscape that helps people grow and learn every day of their job? How can we address the development challenge HR faces each time they try to be 'strategic'?I believe we're stepping into an era of convergence. The lines between departments and different functional competencies will need to blur if an organisation has to function and thrive. L&D was traditionally a part of HR and there's good reason for people to place us there. Somewhere, with the advent of technology and the social web, we might be positioning ourselves a little too far from a place where we can make significant impact. Can 2011 bring us closer to our mates in HR? Can we create the facilitation conglomerate that'll lend teeth to our work? I guess only 2011 can tell. Best wishes and a very happy new year!© Sumeet Moghe, 2009