My friend's daughter got accused of being ADHD a few weeks back. My colleague Dinesh is keen to take his son Aravind out of school. My friend Sandeep is trying to build software that recognises every child to be a unique individual with their own little achievements. I see a growing sentiment in my friends circle about the current state of education and it's impact on young minds. I don't have a kid, but I can only dread being a kid in this climate. It's a hostile environment that teaches kids to master a curriculum but not to learn. It makes kids competitive but teaches them very little about collaborating, about being better citizens, better people. I have a few thoughts about education and I want to share them with you - it's a real scam. What is this model based on? "If Isaac Newton had done YouTube videos on calculus, I wouldn't have to. " - Salman Khan We've predicated our model of education on a system that presupposes that kids need to go to school to gain knowledge. It is based on the assumption that knowledge is scarce and you need an expert to dole it out. Except the person who your kid learns from is not really an expert. That person is a middleman. Knowledge is not scarce anymore. You could learn the guitar from a really successful, best selling artist. Using your computer. Not in school. Actually, you couldn't learn from the best selling artist in school. School is really a bit of a deterrent when it comes to learning from an expert. Yet, school is still all about that old model which isn't true anymore. Kids can learn sitting at home, using a service like Khan Academy. School doesn't teach people what our ancestors learnt - applying knowledge to the real world. School instead is preparing people only to clear the next exam. Life skills? Not a chance? Success is in the doing. And failures are celebrated and analyzed. Problems become puzzles and obstacles disappear. - Gever Tulley My nephew is 12 years old. He ranks first in class each year. Awesome eh? More information - he is overweight, he plays no sports, he can't have a real world conversation beyond his textbooks and couldn't survive if his parents were away for even a couple of days. Is that what education is supposed to mean? What about experiencing life and learning real life skills? Where are the tinkering schools of the world? Why isn't every school helping children learn like Diana Laufenberg does? We learn to succeed despite education Children quickly learn to navigate and go in and find things which interest them. And when you've got interest, then you have education. - Arthur C. Clarke I work in a job that I never received any formal education for. I'm quite happy about that frankly. Let me give you an example so you understand why. In school I was deeply interested in plants, animals and birds. But to tell you the truth, the biological names and academic knowledge behind them was of little interest to me. I could spend hours at Alipore zoo admiring the animals in my backyard but to remember a tiger as Panthera Tigris was beyond me. Unfortunately to have an education in nature, I needed to cut up frogs, fish and cockroaches in the lab which I avoided like the plague. I quit biology studies in 11th grade because I just couldn't take it anymore. Why couldn't I just learn about natural history as I do today? I've learnt more about birds and animals as an adult than I did with formal education in school. To me, my self-supervised hours in the field mean a lot more than the supervised hours I had in school. I got educated out of my interests in school and it's no wonder that I'm my current job is miles from what I actually studied to be. Children are wonderful - they have the natural ability to learn if left to their own interests, the internet and the resources they'll need to support their passion. Sugata Mitra's hole in the wall project proves it.Current schools depress me. There's great thinking in various circles about the future of education, but we're not there yet. And it troubles me that my nephews and nieces, my friends' children and kids I care for may have to go through a generation of poor education. I wonder how this'll change - I'm very cynical about this whole scam we call education. I wonder what you think. Especially if you're in India, I'd love to hear your thoughts.© Sumeet Moghe

As I have mentioned on my last blog post, here’s a follow-up entry for today where I’m going to pick things up from where I left them around some additional Productivity Tips for the Mobile (Social) Knowledge Web Worker. This time around not so much on software per se, but on hardware and, more specifically, for two different types of devices: iPhones and iPads. Over the course of the last couple of years I seem to have developed a bit of an addiction with regards to accessories for both of these types of devices, but things seem to have calmed lately now that I feel I may have found just what I wanted: Mophie, Gum Max and Logitech. Indeed, as a mobile knowledge Web worker, always on the move, one learns to appreciate quite a bit those small pleasures of staying connected to a power outlet whenever, or wherever!, you may be working, just to keep up with your productive day work. Yet, time and time again, we keep failing bumping into those pocket sockets, whether at airports, at bars, restaurants, coffee shops, at customer sites, conference venues, etc. etc. You name it. Yet we know that we need to keep things going, because we have to. It’s our job as mobile workers. So how do we do it? How do we keep our productivity levels up while on the road?  Well, in my own case, and after having acquired a whole bunch of accessories, that didn’t quite make the mark, by the way!, t think I may have landed on the Top 3 that have certainly boosted my effectiveness and efficiency, while I am travelling, to levels I probably thought in the past were not possible. Two of them are battery accessories (For my iPhone and iPad, respectively) and the last one is a keyboard / case for my iPad.  You would remember how one of the main key issues we all get to experience, and suffer from!, with our mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets, is the poor performance of the battery life from each and everyone of them. To the point where we all take for granted that while the battery would be, and should be, better, here we are, in 2012, and the innovation happening around that space is not as rampant, and fruitful as in other areas. So while we keep awaiting for that magic bullet that would revolutionalise the entire market in this area, we continue looking for workarounds that would be good enough to make us move forward.  And after such a long search I think I may have bumped into the perfect combination that has worked really well, for myself, in the last few weeks. And therefore the reason why I thought it would be a good thing to put together this blog post over here to share the experiences of what’s been like finding new tricks to battery life, as well as one of my biggest productivity boosts when using an iPad: an ultrathin keyboard cover.  That’s right, on my last couple of business trips that I have done over the course of the last few weeks I never leave home without my fully charged Mophie Juice Pack Plus, my Just Mobile Gum Max and my Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for the iPad. They have pretty much become indispensable for yours truly and I wouldn’t know what things would be like without them, as a mobile knowledge worker, because all of that stress trying to find and locate a power socket or all of that frenzy typing with your bare fingers on the touch screen are now things of the past! And very happy to report they are and haven’t walked back ever since!  The Mophie Juice Pack Plus is that super nifty gadget for the iPhone 4 or 4S that acts as a rock solid battery case that allows you to protect your iPhone from damage, i.e. if it falls down or whatever else, at the same time that it gives you a full one and a half time charge of your smartphone regular battery life, which is just tremendously powerful when you are on the road for an extensive period of time and you don’t have a power socket nearby. Not a problem anymore! That Mophie Juice Pack Plus gadget will solve it once and for all. Now, instead of charging my iPhone every single day I only have got to do it every other day, and, if I am lucky, perhaps even 2 or 3 times per week! Again, priceless, if you don’t have access to AV current right away while travelling.  But it gets better, because even if I run out of battery life both on my iPhone 4S and my Mophie Juice Pack Plus I still have got another little gadget that has transformed the way I interact with both my iPhone and my iPad: of course, I am talking about Just Mobile’s Gum Max external battery, which, although originally designed for the iPad, also allows you to charge your iPhone’s battery, should you need to. But then again Gum Max was designed to help you amplify and augment the battery life of your iPad, even the New iPad. And it rocks, just as much! Giving you "a colossal 10,400 mAh capacity, and 2.1A current", it allows you to charge the iPhone battery up to 6 times, and about one and a half the iPad, at tremendous speeds altogether, so you wouldn’t have to wait much before getting back into action. Even more so, you can continue working while charging the devices. So, as you can imagine, long gone are the times where I have to wait for that power outlet to be freed up, or to hunt down that power socket while at a conference venue, right before running out of juice. Now, it’s all back to keep things going, knowing that battery life is no longer a problem for yours truly. Both Mophie and Just Mobile’s smart and elegant solutions have helped me address and fix that growing pain of running out of battery life far too soon, at the most inconvenient of times. And if I’m traveling across the pond, it’s always refreshing to know that I will be over 20 hours in transit without noticing a single glitch of a failing battery life and instead just keep working along!  Yes, I would probably agree with you that both of those gadgets are certainly not very cheap, but I can tell you that if you spend more time on the road than what you do at your home / remote office, it’s definitely one of the best investments that you could ever make as a remote knowledge worker. Highly recommended both of them! And talking about best investments how about if we move on with what I feel has been one of the best purchases that I have done in a long while with regards to anything tech based. At least, for my mobile devices. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, over the course of the last couple of years I seem to have developed an addiction towards accessories, specially, for the iPad, mainly iPad Cases and external Keyboards. I think at this stage I may have tried out about a dozen of them of all sorts, shapes, product specs, capabilities, that you can imagine. And it is something that I haven’t grown tired of just yet. It keeps building up! Although, I no longer feel the same urge as I did before… And all of that thanks to the absolutely delightful, and incredibly powerful altogether!, Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover.  I first read about it on Twitter, of course, where folks were raving around how powerful, yet smart it was; then I saw my good friend Dennis Howlett putting together a lovely blog post where he talked about how good it was, where he also included a short video clip on it. And that was it! I knew it right there that I wanted to have it. No further convincing needed. So while I was in Boston, for the Enterprise 2.0 conference event, I escaped for a few minutes to the nearest Best Buy shop and got myself one. And, boy, did it make a difference on how I do productive work on my iPad ever since! Tremendous! Indeed, over the last couple of weeks I have been using my iPad quite extensively, even while at home!!, definitely much more than with other keyboard / cases I have tried out so far, just because of the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, because it allows me to do extensive typing away on an instant access device I can take anywhere! So now I actually get to draft entire blog posts, work much more often than ever with Evernote, or whatever other note taking App, with my photos, with file sharing Apps, mindmapping along quite happily, Twitter and other Social Networking Sites Apps, with work related Apps, too! etc. etc. Goodness, it’s transformed the way I interact with the iPad in ways I never thought I would. It’s like combining the best of both worlds: a laptop computer, and a tablet, which for reduced spaces it’s just perfect! Even when inside the plane! It just works without having to self-inflict yourself painful postures! So there you have it. As I continue to keep reshaping my mobile (social) knowledge Web worker user experience in order to get the most out of my productivity, while on the road, I’m finding out it’s a combination of both software and hardware the bits and pieces, here and there, that are helping me reach new levels of effectiveness and efficiency that I never thought I would be able to on mobile devices like my iPhone 4S or my new iPad. Thus, perhaps, it’s also a really good time to resume  that rather interesting initiative I kept going for a good while, but that I left go dormant for perhaps far too long, because I didn’t think it would prove too useful over the course of time. Well, I think I was wrong. And it’s probably a good time to confirm that, don’t you think? It’s about time that I resume again bringing up to live #elsuapps, specially, since I already tried it out, once more, in Google Plus and maybe now I have got a much better chance of sustaining it in the medium / long term, as I keep spending more and more time on the road using all of those super nifty iOS Apps, with the perfect hardware companion to make it relatively easy to roll things up again, I guess! Thus stay tuned for plenty more coolness and usefulness to come along! I am sure you will all enjoy it just as much as I am doing it myself with all of these hardware accessories. It’s like being at a candy store, except perhaps that I have already got my sweets… 

I know I haven't posted this week. That's because I wanted to spend some time on my photography. So here's what I've decided - why don't I post something about my experience this week? I took a couple of photographs this week and I thought I learnt something from each of them. Neither of them are awesome snaps since I kinda took them in trying situations and of course, I'm always learning about the craft. I think though that some of my introspection may be of interest to the at least those of you interested in photography. Let me tell you a bit about each photo. The new urban raptor Photo here. The Shikra or Little Banded Goshawk is a primarily a forest and farmland raptor. It's quite uncommon to see them in urban environs, especially residential areas. However, in recent months Shikras are becoming quite a regular if not common sighting in the city. My theory is that we may be seeing a rise in the number of rodents and the Shikras potentially are attracted to the food source. I'm no biologist though, so I can well be wrong. Now to this photograph. This is a juvenile, who came and sat right next to my balcony when I was sipping on some late evening tea - ready to head out for a run with my dog. I took this photo at f/5.6, 1/50 and ISO 1600. Here are some lessons I learnt: You never know when your next photo opportunity will arrive. A state of readiness is quite important. When I saw the bird, I was able to jump into the house, pick up my camera and get out to shoot in 30 seconds. If your camera is not at arms length, you're most likely to rue lost opportunities. Your camera is a great feedback tool. I was initially set to shoot at ISO 400. In fading light, that led to a really impossible shutter speed for hand-holding my 100-400mm lens. I kept looking through the viewfinder to adjust the ISO to a point where I was able to finally get a manageable shutter speed. Your subject deserves proper attention. While you could say this is a satisfactory shot, I actually missed a really good shot. I saw the bird fidgeting and I thought I should change the camera orientation to get a frame filling portrait. In the split second that I was trying to compose a length shot, the Shikra exposed it's beautiful belly markings, spread it's wings and took off. Had I not bothered about the new orientation, and tried to read the bird's body language, I would have had a much better shot to show you. Sometimes composition can be secondary to understanding your subject. Post processing can often help with composition, especially in nature photography. Calmness is a great virtue. I think I got too excited to see a Shikra at such close range in my colony. As a result I wasn't breathing right, I wasn't thinking clearly and I didn't balance myself well. If you blow up the image, you'll notice that there's a bit of blur and it's not really the nicest picture. Photography is like a sport - you need to have the right stance, you need to breathe normally and balance your posture. The clearer your thought process, the better you capture your subject (or so I guess). The lovable neighbourhood owl Photo here. The Barn Owl is probably one of the most common species of owls across the world. Extremely social birds, these are mostly nocturnal and I can't ever remember seeing them in the day. They have little fear of humans and often make their homes in apartment complexes, roofs of mansions, tree hollows and of course, barns. I have a family of five owls staying on top of the last house in my lane. I see them every night, but they tend to stay in the shadows and my attempts at photographing them have generally been quite bad. This time however, I saw this guy when running with my dog. He was sitting on the tree opposite the house and the street light was illuminating the scene partially. I ran back home, picked up my camera and kept praying all this while that he'd still be sitting in the same place when I got back. Here are a few of things I learnt from this photo: The onboard flash isn't a bad tool at some times. Now this isn't a great photo, but it's good enough for me to help people recognise the bird. The light was poor, I don't own any other lighting - shining a flashlight would have just made the bird fly away. I had to make a compromise and use the flash. At the end of the day, it's what saved the picture and at least I have something to tell a story around. Manual focus is not scary. Autofocussing in that light was a nightmare. When there's no contrast with visible light in the scene, cameras struggle to autofocus on the right subject. I turned that off and manually locked onto this guy. The advantage was that I not only could get my focus spot on, I could also lock it in and shoot in a burst. Other situations where I've found this useful is where I'm really treading the line of minimum focussing distance - auto focus can sometimes go right through the subject. Manual focus comes in real handy in those spots as well. Knowing the photo you want helps in a big way. I knew I had no photos of the barn owl to show anyone, so I've been looking out for opportunities everyday. My gear is always in the living room, so I can always get it quickly and shoot. Every day when I get back home, when I leave for work, when I run my dog, I look for these guys. Whenever the opportunity presents itself I know I'll be out there shooting. I still don't have quite the picture I want, but I know that if I stay focussed I can get there at some point. I usually don't post much about photography since I'm so much a learner at this - but these photos are such great learning moments for me that I just couldn't help sharing my thoughts. Hope they made sense - do let me know what you think. © Sumeet Moghe

One of the things that I am enjoying the most about the impact of the Social Web in our businesses is its innate ability to keep humanising the corporate world and be capable of getting away with it with little effort. The interesting thing though is that act of humanising our corporate interactions is happening all over the place, so it’s kind of difficult to find an area that may not have been touched by it so far and for a good purpose: that one of improving the way we collaborate and share our knowledge across to get work done more effectively and efficiently, whether internally or externally. One of those areas that I have been looking into quite a bit to see its own transformation from its current mindset is that one of delivering presentations, where it looks like we are finally bringing back that human aspect of conversing with people while sharing messages across, instead of boring them with Death by Powerpoint. And that’s exactly the topic of today’s blog post. Yes, I know, another article on the topic of Productivity, although this time around with a slightly different flavour: how can we improve the way we deliver messages through presentations? Over the course of the years I have given hundreds, if not thousands, of presentations across the board and on multiple various different topics related to Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Learning, Online Communities and Community Building and over the last few years on Social Business and the Social Enterprise. And if there is anything that has become one of my major pet peeves from the corporate world is that obsession we seem to have developed over time with regards to abusing slideware in order to get our messages across. Even more to the point where not having any slides has started to feel like you are standing in front of a large audience naked, or, even worse!, you are giving the impression to those in the room that you haven’t done your (home)work appropriately and therefore have been slacking off.  Seriously. That’s a huge problem. Our problem. Whatever happened to all of those meetings, events, presentations, seminars, workshops, etc. etc. that we use to conduct way before PowerPoint became the standard that killed the thrill of just having a conversation with your audience about a topic that you both, hopefully, are passionate about? Where did we go wrong? And, more specifically, in the today’s world of living social why do we still keep tolerating that presentation overkill where we just treat our audiences like corporate drones with an ability to listen, if we are lucky, but hardly ever interact, because in most cases rather we have lost the audience along the way, or we just run out of time by covering far too much ground. Again, seriously, where did we go wrong?  Most importantly though. What can we do to address and fix this current issue that’s managing, rather successfully!, to destroy our capability of holding and hosting conversations with other fellow humans? Shouldn’t we be aiming at addressing that productivity overkill and do something about it? I remember how a couple of months ago I challenged, over at Google Plus, that obsession we all seem to have with PowerPoint for presentations and right then I mentioned how for a good number of different events I had from that date till today I would be challenging the status quo of delivering presentations and will be conducting a little bit of an experiment: in every single event where I would be a speaker from there onwards I would try my outmost to not use any slides and, instead, just deliver a speech where I could interact with the audience, learning just as much from them, as they may learn from me. And see how it would go …  Well, a few weeks have now gone by and what can I say? I survived. I am alive and kicking! In fact, I had a total blast with that experiment, to the point where nowadays I am much more inclined towards not doing any kind of slideware and instead just delivering a speech where I can sense, experience and fully live that people-to-people conversation that I have been missing all along. It was a bit rough at the beginning, to be honest, more than anything else because of that feeling of being naked in front of large audiences with nothing covering my back, but then again, after the initial urge to shake off that addiction to slides things went pretty smooth. In fact, they taught me something that I did not expect learning while delivering those presentations and that I am enjoying it quite a bit now: get a sense of the room and the audience you are going to present to, adapt to their needs, deliver the speech, keep it short, and spend time on conversing with people. Be ready to learn from them, just as much as they will from you, if not even more, because there is a great chance that will be happening more often than not. Believe me, you will have a superb time along the way.  In order to make that transition relatively easy, allow me to share a couple of tips, and helpful resources, though, realising there are probably many many more out there already!, that may be worth while looking into as well to help you shake off that addiction towards relying far too heavily on slides for your presentations and start mastering your own self in front of an audience to share and deliver across that passion and insight you have for that particular topic. Starting off with my good friend Shel Israel and his recent book "Stellar Presentations: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Giving Great Talks" that will surely help you get off to a good start on identifying the power of storytelling when being in front of an audience, whether small or a large one. Take a look into this teaser post for what you can expect from the book itself. Shel’s main key point, amongst several others, is how we are social animals, after all, thriving to hear, and learn!, from good stories and, in most cases, the realisation is that we probably don’t need slides for that. And I surely would agree with him on that one! Highly recommended! The second resource is this absolutely delightful short video clip from Susan Weinschenk, author of  "100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People", that lasts for a little bit over 6 minutes, under the suggestive title of "5 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know about People" and which, pretty much, will shake up the way you have been looking into presentations, not only as a speaker, but also as part of an audience. Remember when I mentioned above that People-to-People flavour of conversing and sharing your knowledge, insight and experience across with others, just like they would with you? Well, that’s exactly what you would be able to find in this video gem that I strongly encourage you all to go through it and, as a teaser, here you have got the listing of those 5 things that would help you redefine the way you deliver presentations and how you engage further with the audience as part of the conversation:  The 20 minute rule Multiple sensory channels compete What you say is only part of your message If you want people to act, you have to call them to action People imitate your emotions and feel your feelings 5 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People from Weinschenk on Vimeo.   Susan introduces the short video clip mentioning how presentations should be all about informing, inspiring and motivating your audience into achieving something and after having conducted myself for the last couple of months that experiment of breaking loose from Death by Powerpoint and instead rely more on powerful stories, your own passion for the topic and the conversations you can hold with the audience I couldn’t have agreed more with her on those points. Even more so, every single presentation that I do nowadays starts with the same mantra: inform, inspire, motivate. No slides. And see if I can pull it off altogether… And so far doing pretty well. How about you? Making any good progress as well? I surely hope so! Remember, we are all humans after all and we all live off conversations, not PowerPoint slides. We may need to start acting accordingly, don’t you think?

You've perhaps noticed that I haven't posted in a while and frankly I have no excuse. I'm just slacking off - it's a bad thing to do as a blogger, but I must confess that my participation in the real world is affecting my contribution to the virtual world. For those interested in news about me - I'm back China now and I'm unsure how that'll again affect my Internet usage. In the mean time though there's really no reason for me to not share what I've learnt about learning over the last month or so. In today's blogpost I want to share some epiphanies I've had as a consequence of my experiences over the last month or so. These are only theories and I'd love to know what you think about the validity of these thoughts. There's no pace better than your own paceI'm the kind of guy that tour guides hate. I meet them with a "No" almost each time. There's a part of me that likes exploring places at my own pace. I must say though, that I've developed this tendency through my prior experience with tour guides. Tour guides have the tendency to give their standard spiel regardless of who they're with. Often this is a mouthful about the history of the place full of facts, dates and information that I struggle to remember. In the end I remember only the highlights, which are usually signposted by tourism authorities near the monuments themselves. When in China, I just got myself several pages of information on each of the sites I was planning to visit and carried them along with me on my iPad. When I thought I needed more information, I pulled out my iPad and found what I needed. From the perspective of learning and recollection, I found this to be a more effective, tailored approach than following a tour guide's pace and narration. I wonder if there's something in their about learning in general. Do we really need teachers and trainers for most learning? If most knowledge is in the public domain and people have the motivation to learn, do we really need the trainers as middlemen? I don't think the role of a trainer or teacher is dead but I do think these roles need some redefinition. Empathy is a big connector in group workThere was a point in China, where I was really depressed. Despite all the great sights and colourful culture, I think the language barrier had just gotten to me. Plus my iPad had gotten stolen, so my easiest way of communicating with the rest of the world was lost too. I think I'd hit a brick wall with how much I was willing to do all by myself. By my last weekend in China I think I was well and truly at that brick wall. When I look back at the few really memorable days in China, it was perhaps the nights that my Chinese colleagues took me out for dinners; hanging out with Dave Worthington, Anita and Adam who were foreign ThoughtWorkers like me in China and hiking the Great Wall with Emily Ghan, a fellow tourist who I befriended. I think in several of the situations the feeling of empathy was the glue that made the activity hold together. My Chinese colleagues displayed a sense of empathy towards my situation as a first time China traveler and took me put for some of the most fantastic meals of my life. Emily and I had a sense of empathy towards each other as we chatted away about China, India and our hike on the Great Wall. Even when I cramped up and fell, Emily was nice enough to give me a helping hand. And I had the best times with Adam, Anita and Dave because well, we had so much in common as foreigners working in China. Going through bucket loads of chicken wings with them was such a great experience! Now that I'm back in the country with a team of my own, I can't tell you how enjoyable the experience is. We have two Mandarin speakers in the team and four of us are of non-Chinese origin. That's a great mix to connect to the culture and learn about it while having a group that can be empathetic to each other's situations. As we look at technology to connect people, I wonder how we bring together the empathy glue that truly helps people engage with each other. There is a point where just being self driven isn't enough, is it? Strong ties are crucial for the success of a social networkI'm running a few little communities on Facebook. Two of these communities are quite interesting. One of them is a photographers group and another a group of naturalists. If you go to the Naturalist's group, it's buzzing with activity. On the other hand, the photographers group is a bit quiet. I don't believe that the photographers are any less inclined to sharing than the naturalists, but here's the deal. The core of the naturalists' group is a set of us that share a great friendship and have extremely strong ties. While there's part of the article I disagree with,  Malcolm Gladwell wrote sometime back as to how at the centre of revolutions and high risk activism you need people with strong ties. I suspect there's something similar with online communities too. It's tough, though not unprecedented to build communities on the basis of weak ties and acquaintances alone. On the other hand, communities with a core of people with strong ties is a lot more likely to attract and support weak acquaintances. Something for us to investigate further and think about as we spawn newer communities. There's still nothing that beats the real worldOne of the reasons the naturalists group has a lot to talk about, is because we a lot of us meet very regularly for nature trails and birdwatching expeditions. Every trip has a trip report that follows and requests for identifying birds, butterflies, insects, plants and fungi that we couldn't recognise. This heartbeat ritual ensures a regular channel for communication in addition to the adhoc collaboration on the group.  Had it not been for the real world activity, we would have had nothing to discuss in that forum. This is where the photography group suffers - we have little in common in terms of shared experience and while photo critique is an interesting activity every now and then, the lack of common context makes a big difference. There's something to be said about the value of real world meetings and activities, don't you think? So, I've tried to give you my view on these theories of mine. Now it's your turn. What do you think about these theories? If you agree how do you think they influence the way you design communities and learning experiences? If you disagree, what's your view?© Sumeet Moghe

As I am about to finish off my last round of business trips that I started by mid-May, and which I am completing beginning of next week till after the summer, having taken me to some wonderful cities like Rotterdam, Seville, Barcelona, London, Milan, Boston, Madrid and Seville again, I just couldn’t help reflecting on a relatively recent blog post put together by the always inspiring David Armano that I can surely summarise it as perhaps one of the best reads you will do this year around the topic of Social Business. Yes, that powerful. Why? Well, more than anything else, because it’s probably one of the best, most comprehensive reads you will do to find out where Social Business comes from, where we are nowadays and what lies ahead as our next challenge. Main key thought? A new reality: despite the good number of years that have just gone past, we are just getting started.  And we are just getting started right at the stage where most folks are experiencing a growing, and rather worrying, sense of Social Fatigue  that’s probably starting to take its toll, if you start looking into the recent news items about people on the move, away from the current Social Business scene, when, in reality, I, too, would consider, like David himself, the good fun, and the good fight!, is just about to get started when we move into the real Social Business, as I have recently blogged about under "Social Task Management". Something that, over the course of the last few years comes to confirm Euan Semple‘s hunch that the true social business transformation will be taking place over the course of time, 50 years, to be precise, at least. And I can imagine how most people would be scared, terrified and perhaps a bit disappointed that it is going to take that long, when I have always felt that this social transformation has never been a project with a deadline on it right from the start. It’s a journey, towards a final destination, we all get to define, participate in and experience in full force. It’s a living thing, a philosophy, a new mindset that will help us separate the business models from the XX century into the ones from that new Knowledge Economy that will help shape up the business world to meet the demands from the XXI century: sustainable, profitable, meaningful and purposeful growth. And what most folks may not be realising about is that we have been provided with that unique opportunity to help shape up that evolution of the business world into what we all know it can deliver and excel at: sustainable purpose of wanting to do things just right. Better, smarter, but not necessarily harder. However, and like in almost everything, no-one ever said it would be an easy transition that would not require lots of effort, energy and hard work, even understanding that there are some risks that would need to be taken into account as well, just as much. But, goodness, what a journey, don’t you think? Even if we don’t get to see the final destination, the final frontier, it would be quite an experience for most of us, driving the change, that we should treasure and nurture big time. Think of it, we are *the* original settlers. The ones who, after having planted the seeds and when the right time comes along, would be the ones treasuring those memories of where it all begun. The ones who soon enough would be able to claim "Yes, I was there! I was part of that social transformation. Yes, we changed the world, for good! Yes, we were, and still are, proud. Very proud". Now, how many people would be able to live that? Think of it. Think of why you got involved in it in the first place. You know, that initial hunch for which you know the battle would be worth it. Well, it’s been, it still is and it will remain to be! Indeed, in that very insightful blog article David Armano gets to describe what a bunch of us have been saying all along, that more than talking about a Social (R)evolution what we have been witnessing over the last few years has been much more of an evolution of what started a couple of decades ago perhaps. With some very distinctive phases, each of which have taken us to where we are today. To name, and to quote David:  "Digital: The Interactive Revolution Digital Information Goes Online Digital Business: The Transactional Era Social: The Human Web Social Media: Global, Local, Mobile Connectivity at Scale Social Business: Connected, Adaptive & Intelligent" In order to get some further context from each of the various phases I would strongly encourage you all to go ahead and read David’s article. It’s worth every word of it. In it you would find priceless quotes, golden gems, that would surely help confirm why we are all involved in this social business transformation in the first place: "[…] It is this kind of connected ecosystem which is linked to the idea of social business as well as the ability to adapt to conditions based on the intelligence a business can interpret. In the immediate years to come, the amount of data available to the average business will be infinite, however the data will be meaningless without the ability to interpret and act upon it" Or this other one, just as good, if not even more powerful altogether:  "Tomorrow’s business models must not only be able to adapt to change, they must help drive that change" Absolutely, and that’s where the Social Business Ecosystem kicks in eventually. And it’s an ecosystem that we are all rather familiar with, since it’s been talked about from the very beginning. It’s a customer centric one, shifting gears from what we have been having from the past; one where vendors, i.e. employees, customers, and business partners (Along with Industry Analysts, Alumni and plenty other thought leaders, trust agents, entrepreneurs / intrapreneurs coming together) embark on addressing and fixing customers’ business problems, instead of just trying to sell you the best next thing, which we all know is not going to come around. At least, this time around.  However, on this entire ecosystem we seem to keep missing a critical factor that I was perhaps a bit surprised not seeing it emerge clearly on David’s blog post or other Social Business reading material over the course of time, maybe because of the aversion we seem to have developed against it over the course of time: your / our competitors.  Yes, whether we like it or not, they are there. They are part of our / your social business ecosystem, they are the big elephant in the room we cannot longer ignore, nor neglect. More than anything else, because without us realising about it, they are our best allies to keep pushing the limits. To become better at what we do, to deliver better products, to provide better customer service, to keep up with that rampant innovation that never stops. Eventually, to serve better our customers. I have always found it a fascinating topic seeing how plenty of businesses keep stating that one of the main reasons why they have embarked on this Social Business journey is because they want to be out there, where their customers are, BUT also where their competitors are, so that they can cross check, participate and dive in those conversations and keep the record straight where it belongs. However, time and time again it’s those very same businesses that don’t consider competitors part of the equation and have always been rather reluctant to share openly their knowledge on the Social Web fearing that they may eventually use that knowledge against them in their next customer visit.  Very shortsighted if you ask me. Why? Well, because no matter how much of your knowledge you share out there, as a business, out in the open for everyone to enjoy, like KM extraordinaire Bob Buckman would say even today, the person or entity who / that still knows the most about that piece of knowledge is yourself. And no-one else. That all comes back to our, human beings, innate ability to be very bad documenters, so even if we would want to transmit and share all of our knowledge we would always fail to share it all: experiences, know-how, expertise, skills, connections, etc. etc. You name it. We just can’t. We just won’t. It’s a limitation of our human condition that if we would all acknowledge right from the start we would be much better off eventually. Embracing that limitation on how we share our knowledge across and collaborate would probably help us even get much more out of those social interactions in the first place. No-one is perfect. No-one should be. Thus why do I keep insisting that our, and your, competitors, should be part of the mix? Mainly, because they, too, are part of the conversation. Your conversation. Our conversation. They can certainly add plenty of insights for your customers to know that you may never have thought about altogether in the first place. They can keep you real, down to earth, they can tell you and your customers when you are selling smoke (Or set the record straight if you go out there and claim you have invented Social Business, when it’s been there all along years before already! Or when you state that you invented social software tools when they were already there 10 years before you event started thinking about such concept of social networking). [I was going to include the references to those comments, but I think I'm going to leave them out as a little game to see if folks would identify where they come from originally. Any guesses? ] But if there is anything that competitors would be good for you, and your social business ecosystem, it would be how they have become essential to help your products grow further and become better. They can help you, along with your customers, identify what works, and, most importantly, what doesn’t work. They can help you keep innovating by reminding you not to stagnate and keep providing key, top quality products and services, because if you don’t, they will take over your conversation with your customers and before you realise your are out of the equation to never come back. That’s why competitors are so important in that ecosystem. And that’s why if you look into a good number of very successful large enterprises from the last 10 to 15 years and see where they are now, one of the many reasons probably was their thinking that competitors would never catch up, but, guess what, they eventually did and big time! The truth is that we still need to do a lot of work in this area, because right now, they are not part of our ecosystems. In fact, we all seem to keep running away from them like the plague, thinking that the moment they know and understand our weaknesses, we are lost and customers will flock away. Well, that’s quite the opposite, if they know and understand your weaknesses they are, without knowing it perhaps, going to make you stronger, because through them you will be able to identify those weaknesses and work your magic to try to address them and keep you moving forward to convince your customers your aim for always wanting to improve their own experiences and address and fix their business problems, without you being right at the center of the attention. You no longer are. You never have been. Call it coopetition or whatever other fancy term you would want to use, but we cannot longer deny their key role in the whole co-creation process along with your customers and business partners.  That’s why we are all at the beginning stages of this fascinating Social Business journey that David mentioned on that article. And I’m saying at the beginning as well, because until we incorporate our competitors on that ecosystem, as being an integral part of the conversations, we are not going anywhere. They are just as critical for your business to keep thriving as your customers. Just think of it, what do you think will happen when all vendors get to provide very very similar solutions to address customers’ business problems? Where is the competitive advantage going to reside? On the products and services they can deliver or, rather, on how they are going to be looking after that whole Social Business Ecosystem where the conversations and the connections are king, yet the content not so much; where your customers are king, you not so much; where your customers will be listening to your competitors just as much as they would listen to you and you would need to prove you are worth it. Because you are, right? Well, we will have to show it and demonstrate it. Everyone. Every day. And not just to our customers, but also to our competitors! And interestingly enough that was also one of the major conclusions from the recent Global IBM CEO Study 2012 "Leading Through Connections" where partnerships, even with competitors, would be key on that whole process of co-creating the next generation of better products. And I quote:  "Over the past few years, organizations have made strides in becoming more open and transparent with employees and customers. But being open is harder with partners. "We tend to see everyone as a competitor," admitted a banking CEO from Vietnam. "We need to see them as partners. We need to find win/win solutions and share profits. But this is a cultural shift; it’s hard to change" Yes, I know, the quote itself relates a bit more to partners and the relationships you build with them, than to competitors per se, but why couldn’t we consider our competitors part of that partnership ecosystem on that Social Business work environment. Specially, if we consider the following quote from the same study as well:  "Partnering, of course, introduces new kinds of risk. In a world of increased transparency and instantly disseminated social media, organizations are often judged by their partners’ actions, not just their own. The practices of any part of a globally distributed supply chain can tarnish even the most highly regarded brands" Not sure what you would think, but in that context of openness, publicy, transparency and trust that Social Business inspires, somehow it doesn’t make much sense if we keep leaving out of the equation the one specific group that, it is true, always aims at taking the money away from you, but eventually what they are trying to do is show you your weaknesses, so you can work on them, address and fix them (If you can) and come back for more. Talking about radical leadership, rampant innovation, Open Business and transparency. There you have it. Social Business - *The* Ecosystem. 

I'm back from China and it feels great to be back home finally. China's a great place that I recommend everyone tries to visit at least once in their lifetime. That said, if you are hooked to the internet then you've got to be prepared to sacrifice some of that during your visit. So with about 30 days of no access to my blog, several of Google's apps and Twitter or Facebook, socialising on the web was a bit of nightmare. Anyways, I got back last week and went on an amazing birding trip to Ganeshgudi. In birdwatching parlance, a bird you see for the first time in your life is a called a 'lifer'. My friends Raji, Kannan, Sandeep and I lost count of the number of times we saw a bird and shouted the word 'lifer' to each other. An amazing biodiversity hotspot in the Western Ghats, Ganeshgudi afforded sightings of about a 110 different species of birds. If you're interested, you should look up my photographs. I wasn't looking at photography as a goal on this trip. I wanted to use my camera as a bit of a documentation tool for this trip. I'll be back there soon and then I'll perhaps move around with a monopod and try to get better shots. Three pillars of successful communitiesSpeaking of the birding trip, all three of my friends that came with me were folks I know from a naturalists' community that I participate in. It's been an enriching experience being a part of that group. I believe that successful learning communities are founded on three important pillars:Sharing and Altruism: The most successful communities are where people participate because they believe that sharing what they know helps others and they believe that they'll be better off if others share what they know as well.Feedback: In his Last Lecture, Randy Pausch said, "Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care." Communities that have a healthy culture of sharing feedback are likely to learn and grow better. Respect: As a fundamental value in most meaningful human relationships, respect has to be out there as one of the fundamental building blocks of successful communities. Communities that respect experience and the lack of it alike and can create safety for people to participate are likely to see a lot of meaningful traffic.As I was thinking about these three pillars, I've been thinking of three very common antipatterns I've observed on online communities that I'd like to share with you. If I'm running a community, I'll probably avoid these like the plague and I really hope that you do too.Hero worshipEvery community has it's heroes and top contributors, but to elevate these individuals to god-like status is an absolute no-no. I remember that a few days back on a birding community on Facebook an experienced wildlife photographer posted a beautiful photograph of a bird. He'd also posted a write up on the bird. Everyone had great stuff to say about the image and the write up. That being said, there was  problem. The photographer had copy pasted the write up from Thomas Jerdon and had done nothing to attribute to the great naturalist. I was surprised that no one had called him out on this. I have very little tolerance for plagiarism and un-deserved praise gathering, so I had to call him out. This however led me to notice how several of the established photographers and naturalists on the group received nothing but fulsome praise. There was hardly any useful feedback for these folks. Now this is a problem. How does someone with expertise grow and learn if they receive no feedback? At ThoughtWorks, we have our heroes in people like Ola Bini, Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith. That doesn't stop us however from sharing our views openly with them, even if we're at odds with how they think. That's what makes the ThoughtWorks community so awesome. Think about where your community suffers from hero worship. If so, you need to fix that soon.Boorish behaviourSome months back, I wrote an article about behaviour on social media. A respectful community handles disagreement and feedback respectfully. Often people will say or do things that may or may not be correct in our opinion. It's crucial though that we convey our opinions in a manner that doesn't undermine someone's intelligence and doesn't humiliate them on a public forum. Let me explain.A few days back one of the members on a naturalists' forum mentioned how he'd attracted a crested bunting by throwing food grains and then lying in wait to snag a photograph. One of the more experienced members of the forum was furious with this. Baiting is generally a frowned upon practice amongst naturalists and for good reason too. The experienced member laid into the photographer and gave him a public dressing down on the forum. I felt a bit odd about that angry response. I wrote back to this person explaining that while the actions were wrong, the photographer perhaps didn't mean any harm. I explained that by berating someone in public he'd not only insulted that individual, but made the community environment unsafe for genuine, well intentioned mistakes. After all, mistakes are a great way to learn! Thankfully the experienced member understood my point and immediately wrote back on the group apologising for his outburst and explaining why he felt strongly about the concept of baiting for photography. I'm pretty sure this made the original poster feel a lot better. This was a story that had a happy ending, but a lot of such stories end with just bad behaviour that goes unnoticed. If you're running a community, this is something to be aware of. Remember - good, respectful behaviour creates a safe environment for people to contribute and learn from their mistakes. It also creates a healthy environment to share feedback.Hoarding over sharingIf you're a member on any wildlife forums, you'll see a lot of people sharing photographs with copyright notices that look like this:"Copyrighted by _____________ and may not be used in any form,website or print media without written permission of the Photographer.For any enquiry for the photographs please contact _______________."You know my views about this. Communites are about sharing and restrictive copyrights are about hoarding in the hope of maximising value for an individual. They have no place in learning communities. I'm amazed why people even bother posting restrictively copyrighted work on online forums. Is it just to tease people with a 'see, don't touch' approach from museum culture? Are these contributors so full of their own work that they believe they're better than all of the awesome, successful people who make money despite sharing freely? This is a simple problem to solve, and yet something that's not easy. It takes talking to people individually, and high standards for sharing in the community. It's quite easy to ignore, but in my opinion this is a stink to watch out for in just about any community. Over the next few weeks I want to try a few different articles on this blog. In particular I want to focus on photography for elearning media. I've been experimenting with photography over the last few years or so and I wouldn't mind helping elearning professionals select gear, understand the technology behind phototgraphy and play around with the composition and post processing. While I've almost made up my mind to do a series on this, I'd like to know if you think this could be a valuable thing to cover on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you - either on this post or on any other channels you're connected to me on. Until next week, happy learning!© Sumeet Moghe

In the past you may remember how time and time again I have mentioned how one of the main use cases from a successful Social Business would eventually be that one of customer service and customer support, although over the course of time you may have noticed how my experiences have been very lacking in this regard. So, instead of giving up on it altogether a long while ago I decided to keep pushing for it, because I knew it that at some point it would click and that would be the day where we may be witnessing that tipping point for that use case to become a reality. Well, I think that day has arrived. Today. And that company that has finally understood what a social business is all about is one that I never expected that it would be coming around, as seen on this blog a few times already. That social business with a success story on providing excellent customer service and support is Movistar. Yes, you are reading it right. Movistar! I have always been saying that the day both telcos and airlines, along with government, amongst a couple of others, start embracing social networking for business that may well be the day where we can consider it a historic moment. A day of no return. A day that will mark a before and an after difficult to back out from. And while we are waiting for airlines and governments to make that jump, it looks like telcos, at least, one of the largest ones out there at the moment, Movistar, has just made that jump. At least, again, with yours truly, because after years of trying and persevering, it looks like things are paying off. At long last!! See? It’s all about personal experiences, it’s about putting your customers right at the centre, it’s about understanding how that customer centric approach is going to make you much more successful and profitable at large. It’s about understanding how as important and paramount as corporate brands are (Specially, in the context of B2B), it’s actually people the ones who make business. So if your business is starting to make that transition into becoming a social business you may need to start changing, or adapting, the traditional B2B and B2C perspectives into what some of us have been saying all along is the one that will function as the main core engine of how business gets done nowadays: P2P. People to People.  Indeed, that’s just what’s happened to me in the last few hours and as much as I have been blogging, and on a regular basis, every time that customer support and customer service are lacking for whatever business that claims to be a social business, I am also determined to share the success stories from those same social businesses whenever they come to deliver and, specially, if it has happened in a big way! So the following blog post is a story of what customer service and customer support should be all about in the world of digital and social networking for business in general… It all started with yours truly being embarked on his last business trip for the summer, to Madrid, then to Seville, to participate on a couple of internal workshops on living social (in Madrid itself) and a summer course at the University of Pablo de Olavide, in Carmona, Seville, on the topic of "La Empresa y la Administración Pública en la Era de las Redes Sociales". While on the first leg of the business trip, I decided to give it a go, once more, and see if I could finally get my problem fixed with my 3G USB Novatel MC996D modem, provided by my current employer, since it was driving me a bit crazy that I have been having it working for a good couple of years, but in the last few days it stopped working, all of a sudden, and since I’m on the road on a regular basis it was starting to cripple my ability to remain productive while on the move. So I tweeted this, after another couple of tweets of being ignored, but that I cannot longer find since Twitter ate them up, as usual, thanks to its wonderfully, and utterly useless search engine:    .@movistar_es Hola chic@s, parece ser que .movistarpro_es no responde(n), algún teléfono al que llamar para solucionar pb con 3G modem? Thx! — Luis Suarez (@elsua) July 14, 2012 Notice how I already knew where to direct that tweet, since I have been trying multiple times in the past to receive some other customer support, but to no avail. This time around though, since it is a company issued 3G USB modem I was re-directed to @movistarpro_es as a focused group working on these issues for knowledge workers. And, once again, I was ignored… I didn’t receive a single response from that corporate brand handle and I was eventually back again to square one. Or so I thought…, because, shortly after, I bumped into this particular tweet from Manuel Richter:   @elsua no has cambiado nada? Actulizado algún sw? @movistar_es — Manuel Richter(@manuelrichter) July 14, 2012 Which may have alerted then Emilio Rodríguez (Movistar’s external Community Manager) at the same time, for that matter. Because, shortly after that tweet I got this other one from Emilio himself:  @elsua @manuelrichter @movistar_es ¿q modem es Luis? la SIM funciona en otro terminal?, si no puedes solucionarlo, envíame por DM tu numero — Emilio Rodriguez (@emirodmen) July 14, 2012 So we got together, followed each other and we embarked on a rather interesting and fascinating DM exchange, which I am going to keep just that, private, to respect Emilio and our interactions as such. I guess I could ask him to make the exchange public, but I don’t think it would be necessary, since, you know, some things in life should remain just that: private. The great news is that, after I mentioned to him how I needed to aim for a speedy fix for the problem, since I would be needing the 3G USB modem connection tomorrow in Carmona, Seville, he passed on all of the details to the folks from Movistar’s technical support and a couple of hours later, while I was having dinner, on a Saturday evening (Important to note this as well!), I got a phone call from one of his colleagues who wanted to figure out what was happening and what the problem may well be and how we could fix it. So we spent about one hour trying to do some extended problem determination and having worked myself over 4 years in technical customer service I do know and fully appreciate the extended patience, understanding and perseverance from Emilio’s colleague to help out. Alas, we couldn’t solve the problem, for whatever the reason. And he mentioned he would note down the reference number and have someone call me in the morning to confirm whether it was a problem with the modem or the phone card itself. I confirmed with him to get a call at around 10:00 am and lo and behold, right on time, I got that phone call.  And this time around, another technical support representative, José, as his first name, spent another 45 minutes doing some extensive problem determination for the second time, following up further on where his colleague left it the night before, and, finally, after having him confirmed with me how the 3G USB modem I am using is *not*  compatible with Mac OS X (v. 10.7.2 and above - I am using v 10.7.4), not sure just yet what happened but he managed to make it connect to the Internet and ever since I have been a happy camper, once more!  Now, I know that at this point in time I may need to have the modem replaced, if I would want to have full support from Movistar, if I run into problems again, but this time around José’s dedication, patience, wit and smarts, resilience and politeness got me going, and really happy, because not only did he help me get connected, he also confirmed with his support and phone calls how online customer service and customer support, that is, Manuel’s and Emilio’s efforts paid off and big time!  Indeed, they did plenty of active listening out there on the social streams, they reached out, they engaged in a very professional and polite manner (Just like we are all entitled to, even if it were through the phone!) trying to understand what the problem was and how we could fix it. They provided extended value and additional feedback connecting the dots with the right folks from technical support and instead of having to go through the lifeless corporate brand, here I was interacting people to people with those folks who could help me and who eventually did successfully. Absolutely brilliant! I do fully realise that this is just one single instance on excellence and brilliant customer support, from beginning to end, from active listening, to eventually address the problem, take ownership of it from me, and do their outmost to fix it, which they did eventually! But I am hopeful it won’t be the last one. People are people. And once you do business with them as people that’s all what remains. As a result, of course, though the corporate brand benefits, but I can honestly tell you that right now, Movistar is very lucky to have folks like Emilio, José and extended their contacts, because they came along big time proving it’s possible to make that shift from Business to Business into People to People.  And that’s just the beginning of becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise. The dream come true for any other business out there who may have embarked on this journey of embracing Social Business. Movistar is just one giant leap closer to it and I am, for once, very excited to share out there with the world something I never thought I would say: I’m a happy customer of Movistar.  (And that will show even more next time I drop by the Movistar local shop to upgrade my paid services with them)

This week is Diwali in India. An extremely colourful festival of the country - one that celebrates the victory of good over evil; I believe it represents some of the greatest inequalities of our nation. Don't get me wrong - Diwali is like Christmas for many Indians. It's a time for family and a time to be happy. At the same time it shows what a great divide exists in our society. While one part of the society showcases its opulence by lighting fireworks worth thousands of rupees, another part of society still sleeps hungry and earns less than two dollars a day. While some children spend all evening in new clothes and launch fireworks into the sky, several Indian children have been slogging away in the same factories that produce these fireworks. While society brandishes its wealth by causing noise and air pollution this year, we lose several plants, birds and insects to this rampage by human kind. As you can tell, I have a very different perspective to Diwali from most Indians. Anyways, let me get to the point of this blogpost. Last week I reached out to a very respectable wildlife photographer and made him a request. I noticed that his pictures had really huge watermarks which he'd placed to protect his work from copyright infringement. I asked him if he could consider opening up his work a little more and he revealed to me what he was apprehensive of. His concerns were quite valid and as an amateur photographer I'd like to share them with you. In addition I'd like to share some other concerns I've heard from photographers who've been reluctant to open up their work. But before that, let me explain some basics about intellectual property.Copyrights and LicensingA copyright as the word indicates is the exclusive right to make copies of a piece of work, to distribute it, to modify it and to create derivative works. When you take a photograph, you automatically gain the copyright for it and it's upto you to share those rights with others. No one can use your photograph until the time you either grant them the right to do so. You can grant people all or some rights by using a license. There are three traditional ways around this :Now quite often you'll give people the entire picture which means that you've shared all your rights. You could give them the picture with an informal agreement, in which case if there is an infringement you'll have trouble explaining your agreement, especially if you have no legal skill.You could use a custom license, and while this has it's advantages, it increases complexity, because you need to understand the legalese behind it.The simplest way out however is to use a Creative Commons license. You can retain whichever rights you want to retain and give out the remaining rights. I won't get into the details of the creative commons scheme - you can choose a license that suits you by using the Creative Commons license chooser. At the heart of the system though, is the one thing that most artists care for - credit and attribution. Every creative commons license requires the licensee to give you credit for your work. With that basic information in mind, let's look at some of the arguments people have against openness.Argument 1: People have copied my work and given me no creditI've heard this complaint often and here's what I'll say. Jerks will always be jerks. Regardless of how much you watermark and protect your pictures, it's very easy for theives to steal your work if they want to. Take a look at this one minute video to see how easily I removed the watermark from the above picture. Also be mindful of the principle of fair use. Anyone who is using your picture for the purpose of research, criticism, teaching, commentary, news reporting or other such purposes are fully entitled to use your picture without seeking your permission as long as they attribute back to you. By placing a watermark on your pictures, you make it difficult for the rest of human kind from using your work for such purposes. Given that people will steal if they need to no matter what you do, does it make sense to make fair use difficult?Argument 2: I'm not required to use a Creative Commons licenseAbsolutely - you could just keep all rights reserved and let people ask for permission each time that they need your pictures. Do remember though that this only creates friction. The more the barriers to use, the less your pictures will be used. Now you could argue this is good, but again remember that only if your pictures can go far and wide will people actually know you.  Most geeks know Linus Torvalds - there's a good reason for that. It's because Linux and Git are open source and they take his name far. But even with photography, you don't need to go far - Trey Ratcliffe, Jonathan Worth and Kalyan Varma are great examples of people who are popular because of their openness. The advantage of choosing a creative commons license is that this makes your approach towards sharing explicit. You can be very explicit about what people can do with your photos and what they need your permission for.  For example, people can use, share, modify and redistribute my photos as long as they attribute back to me and they don't use my work for commercial purposes. I wouldn't mind earning some money, so if there's an opportunity for something like that I'd love to have a share.Argument 3: But what if I want to use my work for a commercial purpose?This is the beauty of the creative commons scheme. You can reserve the rights that you consider important to yourself. If  you'd like to preserve your work as is, you can reserve the right to make derivative works. You can reserve the right to commercialise your work. You can share a low resolution version of a photo liberally and reserve the high resolution version for commercial printing. It's a very flexible system. As you can see, thieves shouldn't deter you from sharing your work with the world. The Internet can be a much better place if photographers in particular share their creative representations with the world without fear. If you are a photographer or create digital media of some kind, please read the power of open for inspiration. If you haven't been sharing openly, you'll surely find some stories that strike a chord from that book. And by the way, don't be scared to visit the link - it's a free book. Do you have other fears about sharing your work? Please post them in the comments section of this post and I'll do my best to answer them for you. Thanks for reading!© Sumeet Moghe

Now that I am done with my last business trip for the first half of the year, and will be taking a break from travelling till the second week of September, I guess it’s time to reflect a bit on what it has been like and perhaps share a few insights here and there on things I have learned, events that I have participated in, (keynote) speaker sessions I have done, workshops I have conducted, seminars and panels I have participated in, conversations and new ideas I have been exposed to and everything else in between. There is just too much to share out there and so little time, so we better get things going … And to get us started how about sharing a couple of thoughts on what, to me, has been the Social Business event of the first half of 2012? Not bad, eh? Well, indeed, that event took place in June, in Milan, and it’s the Social Business Forum that Emanuele Quintarelli, along with the smart folks from OpenKnowledge, put together doing a fantastic job and managing to raise the bar so high that hardly any other conference event held thus far has come even close. Specially, in the area of Thought Leadership 2.0. Yes, that good.  I am sure that by now most of you have been exposed to the couple of blog posts that have been shared across that contain all of the presentation materials, and video recordings from the entire event. Perhaps you may have watched already a few of them altogether. But, just in case you may not have, take a look into this particular article, where you will find all of the video recordings from all of the keynote speakers, or this other blog post, where you will be exposed to the video recordings of 40, out of the 65, speakers. Yes, 40 videos for you to enjoy and learn lots from! And covering a wide range of topics, too!, from case studies of companies that have already embarked on their Social Business journey and that are willing to generously share their key learnings on the experience, to multiple discussion panels and various presentations from thought leaders on different 2.0 topics (like online community management, social CRM, customer service, etc. etc.). Like I said, lots of superb content to digest. In small chunks, one at a time, perhaps, but not to be missed! So where do you start then? Well, allow me to give you a fast forward introduction on what I think would be some of the most compelling sessions for you to dive into from the comfort of your computer or whatever other device. Starting, for now, with the keynotes, I would strongly encourage you all to go through the Social Business Manifesto by Emanuele Scotti and Rosario Sica which is a must-watch to get some perspectives on what Social Business should be about! Over the course of time I am hoping to bring forward over here to this blog a good number of the topics they shared with us, during the opening session, that would help spark some additional conversations, I am sure. There is just lots of meat to digest just alone on that particular session. But then I would encourage you all to watch John Hagel‘s presentation ("From Stress to Success - Pragmatic Pathways for Social Business") as well to internalise what are some of the various different challenges that linger around Social Business to become successful in the corporate world today. Not to worry, I am not going to spoil this one much, since I would encourage you all to spend 22 minutes to watch it on its entirety. It will be worth while your time, I can guarantee you that!  From there onwards, move on to Ray Wang‘s keynote speaker session on "Enterprise gamification to drive engagement" to see how gamification and gaming in a business context can have a space and, most importantly, how it can be done just right, without having to infantilise your knowledge workforce, which is what is, unfortunately, happening nowadays out there with plenty of vendors who are making the very same mistakes we have consistently done for over 18 years when we tried, and failed!, to gamily Knowledge Management. Priceless insights from Ray, for sure!  Now, fast forward to the other couple of rather inspiring keynote sessions that we had the privilege of listening to and watching and that have definitely left one of the better aftertastes from the overall conference. Starting off with Knowledge Management and Radical Management extraordinnaire, Steve Denning, who wowed and inspired the audience with a rather provocative talk with an even more controversial heading: "Transforming the Workplace with Radical Management". This is the one keynote session that I would strongly encourage all managers and leaders to go and watch. And find out more about what’s coming their way sooner rather than later and how they may need to be prepared …  Finally, my other recommendation for one last keynote session to not have missed is that one from my good friend Esteban Kolsky under the suggestive heading "Social, Connected, and Collaborative - Will Employees and Customers Build the Future Enterprise Together?" where over the course of about 25 minutes he comes to disrupt, and pretty disturbingly, our own perceptions around the social enterprise, the connected enterprise and stick around with what’s left … Yes, indeed, the collaborative enterprise. Another must-watch without a single doubt!  Like I said, pretty tough to eventually pick up the keynote sessions that I have enjoyed the most, but, if I were to choose, the ones I have mentioned on this blog post so far would have hit the mark and big time! However, if you do have the time I would certainly recommend you go through all of the remaining ones, too!  Now, on upcoming blog posts I will be sharing further insights and additional recommendations on breakout sessions that I feel you should also have a look into as perhaps some of the most compelling ones and the ones, where, in my opinion, I learned the most around Social Business. However, for now, and since a whole bunch of folks out there have asked me in the last few weeks a few times whether there was a recording of the session I did on online community management, or not, and whether I have shared my presentation out there on the Social Web, I thought I would close off this article sharing the links to both of those resources, since they are now available to everyone.  Indeed, my good friend Emanuele Quintarelli invited me to be one of the speakers on the Online Community Management track to talk about "Becoming a Jedi Master - The Secret Art of Cultivating Online Communities", where in a rather practical session I could share a whole bunch of hints and tips, use cases, lessons learned, experiences, know-how, practical good practices, etc. etc. around the subject of managing, leading, facilitating or stewarding online communities. Trying to make it very informative, pragmatical, fun, engaging, somewhat inspiring so that when folks would come back to their communities they would have plenty of ammunition they could make use of. And I think we did!  I am saying that I think we did, because when I started putting together the piece of work for the session I didn’t attempt to, once again, reinvent the wheel. Instead, I went back to our internal and external IBM communities and asked around trying to gather our overall collective experience of having done online community building for decades, having started with the good old IBM VM Forums, back in the late 60s, and perhaps, specially, in the last 15 years with the huge boost on community building that we have witnessed throughout. The end-result then is not myself having gathered those insights alone, but through the collective piece of work of a whole bunch of brilliant community facilitators (Included on the Acknowledgements - slide #2), who have been putting together over the course of time what I would consider "Communities 101 - The Essentials".  Thus, with all of that said, and with a special thanks and a sincere token of eternal gratitude for having the privilege of co-leading such a wonderful group of online communitybuilders, I would love to share with you both the presentation materials that I did *not* use and the recording of the breakout session I did. Yes, indeed, it may sound weird, I mean, the fact I didn’t use any slides throughout the 30 minutes, but when you go through the recording, you will see what I mean and why I thought it was a much much better idea. Why? Because it gave me a unique opportunity that I have been enjoying tremendously on the last few conference events that I have participated in: engage directly with the audience! Something that I will reflect on in an upcoming blog post I have got in the making, but, for now, here’s the embedded code of the slides, along with the embedded code of the video recording. Hope you folks enjoy it just as much as I did consolidating the slide-ware and conducting a rather interactive session from which I learned much more from the audience than whatever I could have anticipated and which perhaps marks a new beginning for yours truly on what, to me, it means being a speaker in front of an audience, but that’s another story for another day …  Becoming a Jedi Master. The secret art of cultivating online communities Luis Suarez View more PowerPoint from SocialBizForum   Becoming a Jedi Master. The secret art of cultivating online communities - Luis Suarez from SocialBizForum on Vimeo.