The social chatting culture has been quite rampant and people seem to love an online discussion with 'tweeple' as they are known. Or is that term old already? Today, I chanced up on lrnchat on Twitter in a time that I could attend and quite enjoyed the conversations. The dexterous manner in which planned questions for a topic were put forth and people responding with quick thoughts itself was really enjoyable and overwhelming. I think some of the key things to note in an online conversation is the spontaneity of the answers and often every one has a valid point. The answer often comes without much thought or speculation and is very instantaneous and I believe it is this quality that makes it interesting.We have similar social chats on Fridays in our organization and they're quite fun too. Such sessions give employees an outlet to express how things can be improved, what they think is important, and overall build a conversation that has a capacity to bring out what people have in mind in an informal manner. The outcomes can be interesting as people are uninhibited as they might be in formal meetings; they joke chat and contribute whatever comes to their mind, and you automatically have some excellent points made in the end. Overall, every one enjoys a brainstorming session on a topic with some guiding questions to carry the discussion forward to a possible outcome. In addition, they have an ability to help you network with like-minded people or people who share your interest areas.Some tips for planning a social chat:Choose a topic that appeals to a larger audience using voting or polls.Choose an organizer who can plan how this topic can be discussed or guided.Assign moderators to help the main organizer and act as guides during the session. Schedule a time and date for the discussion to take place. An hour of discussion is the ideal amount of time. It can be less or more depending on the volume of participants expected, and capacity of conversation that the topic can initiate.Have the organizer prepare a short excerpt of the goal of the discussion, why it is important, and what will the key points in question.The organizer may share this information with the moderators and use some of their feedback.Find ways to pass on this information to the larger audience by tweeting to groups, setting up an event, writing on your website or blog.It may be a good idea for the organizer and moderator to be an expert in the topic but also be open to new ideas and feedback.Tips to Organize the session:Have the organizer write a welcome note and ask all participants to introduce themselves.Initiate the conversation in any fashion deemed suitable. A question a picture or video to look etc.Once the conversation is on, the organizer should keep an eye on the time and initiate the next question or point for discussion. In the end, thank people for participation, ask them to share links, feedback, or suggest more topics.Finally, publish a transcript of the discussion for the benefit of the others who wished to attend but could not.I would recommend anyone to attend social chats simple to experience the value that they can bring if done right.

It has been a while since I was first figuring out how social media works and how it could benefit my job and organization. It was easy to see what I was able to do with social media, but hard to imagine how an organization as a whole would reap the benefits.When I first started blogging and thinking about social media influencing learning and improving performance on the job, it was slowly sinking in and I think today I have a lot more clarity. I have changed teams within the same organization and dealt with people with a very old school of thought versus people who though are not big fans of social media but are quite open to it when I talk about the benefits. In my previous team, no one really thought much about it except a few managers who added the activity in my goals to make sure I find ways to benefit the entire team. People with not open to try a new way of communication and wanted to hold on to traditional email for everything. A basic thing as finding your remote team counter-part online itself was an issue. On being asked they responded saying they don't 'like' to be online so the best way to contact them was email. That was not an effective solution for a team distributed globally. It made things very complicated. I tried giving people suggestions to blog and share their knowledge about a product area on the wiki and use the forums instead of email. I sent invites over our internal networking site and also tried to encourage people to use tweet but participation was poor, and it was hard to show any substantial benefits. The thing missing then was the enthusiasm to look at a new way of communicating. I can empathize with that thought as I realize it was even hard for me to explain how everyone would benefit from participating. Once I moved into a different team I made it a point to share my interest in social media and my blog. My team was more open to the use of certain other tools like tweet and instant messaging. That was a good start. A team of over 100 people used tweet as a medium to receive updates on the status of a product environment, uptimes, downtime etc. It quick and hassle-free. Given that I had already earned the reputation of being an advocate of social media, I'd have people question me about the use of various tools. Things do get easier when people ask questions, because then you know that they want to learn. Even if some were mildly resistant to the idea, I managed to come up with a few examples of using certain social tools and benefit from them when compared to the current way people were doing them. I had to clarify the bigger goal these tools aim to achieve and the fact that they are not perfect but constantly evolving.In a more recent instance of a similar conversation amongst my team, I was able to push out the benefits of using a white board in conferences for brain storming and aiding a group discussion. I was happy with the positive reactions. Later on today, I was contacted by someone from my previous team. He conveyed that they were planning to use social media to help technical writers do their job more easily. He asked me of what I thought about it to improve the quality of technical documents. He had reservations like so many from the old school of thought about things like, what if information on social networking sites is inaccurate? I surprised myself with my clear response to his queries. My response made the following points:Our company has a bunch of social networking and business collaboration tools that one can use. Blogs are available both externally and internally.Imagine a community of employees from various product teams collaborating with customers and partners, about the product on the company blog. A plethora of information is shared over time. Implementations experiences, customizations, problems faced, workarounds, solutions, best practices, tips and tricks....the list is never ending when there is a community.So, if an individual has to blog 'inaccurate' information they will soon realize they have a greater responsibility to the community. When someone blogs they are in the glare of the public eye. Experts and novices will read the information and validate if they found it useful or not. If someone's information is not satisfactory, they automatically receive less traffic and someone in the community would let them know about their view of the content. So generally everyone would try to give their best rather than their worst. Your blog or profile becomes your public image and people know and respect you for the thoughts you share and the value you add to the community. Moreover, blogging what you know helps you organize knowledge you've gathered over time in a meaningful fashion and clarify several areas you may be in the process of figuring out. What is nice is that you're able to keep a record of what you thought and how your knowledge evolved over time.For large corporations where knowledge is distributed in unknown pockets, social media can be the medium of discovering that wealth of knowledge and putting it to good use.Today, the fact that I feel so much more confident handling questions from colleagues and friends, whether positive or cynical, is simply because I am an example of the evolution I'm talking about. I can slowly coax people into participating and getting a glimpse of what is going on. I can empathize with those who do not see the benefits because it is almost impossible to see it without being a partner in crime. Social Media needs your participation for you to see any benefit and only when you participate will there be a community, and when there is a community is there scope for collaboration, conversations and innovation!!

Instructional design provides a gamut of principles and models that enable you to train people effectively in various areas of expertise. The role of an instructional designer is essentially driven by a need to find appropriate solutions by applying instructional design strategies and models to transfer information to users who use a particular product or service to perform their jobs. Changed Learning MethodsAs time progressed and technologies evolved, the role of the instructional designer as we understood it several years back, underwent a paradigm shift. In spite of client demands to create conventional elearning courses, the fact is that the way people are learning today has changed phenomenally due to the increased access to social media tools and advanced mobile devices. Twitter, blogs, wikis, and discussions have become the new age learning methods. Learner's look for relevance and access information only when it is needed. The concept of reading everything that comes your way and conventional ideas about increasing knowledge generically have phased out. Learner's now search for what they want, skim through to establish relevance, and move on if the information is irrelevant. The attention span of today's learner is short and they want quick and easy access to information. Working smart is the code word and learner's will only use resources that enable them to do so.In such times, we can no longer talk about the standard learning deliverables, like elearning and instructor-led training materials in isolation. It has now become important to understand the factors influencing the learning process. The solution lies in viewing the job of an instructional designer more from the perspective of convergence of discrete learning entities that were created earlier and new ones that have evolved. It is also important to be aware that the concept of learning styles of a learner were never proven or found beneficial when designing learning content. The extensive variation in learning styles of individuals and lack of proven theories in the area, have automatically eliminated the need to talk about learning styles any more.The New Role of IDs When I listed the skills sets of instructional designers, I tried to be a generic as possible, but today I would not like to classify them only as skills sets any more. The way conventional instructional designers used to think about designing learning content needs to change.Here are some things we can do to change the way we have been planning the creation of learning content: Look at an IDs role as a supplier of information to audiences who are consumers.Understand that learners have matured and are capable of finding what is relevant to them, while deciding on the value of the information available.Appreciate that learning will be influenced by several information resources due to the learner's access to social media tools. Leverage available information resources and help organize them effectively for the learner. Plan learning in a manner that assumes the use of social media resources like wikis, social groups, blogs, and tweet as part of the learning process. Start looking at learning as an ongoing activity that does not just end with a training. Identify the need for performance support on the job and create modular content that is accessible when ever a user requires.Stop assuming users read course materials and user guides sequentially. Break content into smaller independent learning units targeted at an audience role, ensuring you accommodate those learners who may access learning content using mobile devices.Employ strategies to make the content searchable and increase the relevance of information to the task the user is performing.Design content solutions that are specific to an audience and the tasks the role is expected to perform.Design models that address the needs of constantly changing information. Plan learning deliverables in various forms to make them accessible from intranets or centralized content management systems. Present information succinctly rather than beat around the bush in the name of overviews and long winding introductions.Applying the above, does not de-emphasize the underlying principles of instructional design:Know your audience.Thoroughly understand the tasks they perform in their jobs.Employ appropriate learning strategies to improve learning.To me instructional design has always been a guideline of the mental process of creating any kind of content that a learner will consume. It is therefore imperative that we stop thinking of elearning or instructor-led training as the only learning deliverables. Being aware of the fact does not undermine the value of these traditional learning materials, but rather helps you identify the gaps and think about how to reorganize the existing models to make learning effective.Quoting from Harold's blog on social learning for a business:Tacit knowledge is best developed through conversations and social relationships.Training courses are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and connections were few; that time has passed.Social learning networks enable better and faster knowledge feedback loops.

I never thought I'll write about learning games and mobile learning until I bought my Android. People have asked me, why Android phone? My answer has been that I love Android as it is breaking new ground for mobile computing and open technologies. Android is versatile as it is not limited only to mobile phones, but it can be installed on various devices. Android gives developers the opportunity to leverage their development skills, while also building an exciting and active community, just as ground breaking as Java. Just thought of adding this: "When technologies don't restrain you, they enable you to innovate." I truly believe open technologies are the future!I couldn't have written this post without experiencing the real thing. I had set aside to buy my Android (Nexus S) after some expenses were out of the way. But my 5 year old Nokia gave in and I had no other choice but to buy my Nexus immediately. I am extremely happy.Having the power of a smartphone , I am now always connected irrespective of my tight deadlines at work. Oracle Fusion is on its way to the first release and the Information Development team is busy, extremely busy. These are exciting times and the Nexus was just the icing on the cake!I started off a couple of weeks back, very cautious initially about randomly installing apps fearing security issues and malware. When i inserted my sim card, the phone just configured everything like a breeze. Everything started working on a simple 2G connection. I didn't even have to call my service providerTo start off, Twitter and, Facebook were safest bet.I was soon reading articles and blogs voraciously as it was so much faster that logging into my laptop, opening the browser, and using a mouse. This was smarter and everything I wanted was accessible using my fingertips. The feeling was amazing. I missed tweeting and following up with news so frequently before. A phone had changed the world for me. I was even replying to my manager's emails immediately during the harrowing time to renew my passport.The world was at my fingertips and I felt empowered. I was managing my time better now despite my deadlines. Not that other phones don't have such features, but what makes the Nexus S special is the user experience and the speed at which I'm able to complete the same tasks. Being in Information Development I have a lot to take back to my job from these experiences.I have also been skeptical about computer games and NEVER got hooked to one till now. I saw Jane Bozarth tweet on #lrnchat last week about Angry Birds teaching you Physics. Today I can admit that I'm hooked to it for the following reasons:- Incredible user experience.- It's ability to teach you using experiential learning.- Shows how there are multiple solutions to a problem. - The game teaches you strategy.- Ensures you remain motivated.- Encourages and rewards you interestingly.- Last but not the least, the birds are so very cute.- Jane Bozarth also mentioned it instills love for nature. I think compassion too.Moreover, this is my first blogpost from my Nexus S! And I've finished writing it in exactly 45 mins! Now that's a record for me. I'm now motivated to blog more! Get the message? :-)

I have been through this battle of encouraging people to use social media for learning and knowledge sharing. I will admit my style is subtle and not aggressive. But that's also because it doesn't work by being aggressive. What does help is empathizing with the users and their various styles of social interaction. Just because someone is not on social media sites often doesn't mean they are not social or don't want to share information.This calls for us to stop thinking run-of-the-mill. Yes, over selling social media is becoming run-of-the-mill! We need to get back to the basics and think again. I can give examples from my team of people who are collaborative by nature and achieve the same results by meeting people face-to-face or over web and video conferences. They are some of the most brilliant people in their jobs and communicate effectively. They are always happy to share their knowledge for the benefit of our team. Such people will always excel in communication whatever means they choose. But they are not necessarily the most communicative on social media sites. They just have their own style of doing it and I respect that.The value of personal meetings as well as eye contact is immense in effective communication. Our goal must be to encourage information flow in whatever way is effective.Yes, I agree I have learned a lot due to social media websites and they have greatly increased my reach. But that is me and others have done the same differently. It is for us to choose what works best for us as individuals or teams and stick with a strategy until we know a better way. Remember that tools can only enable us but our personal styles and attitudes dictate how we choose to communicate and how we ensure we do it effectively. I don't think a single social media tool can facilitate the various communication styles or can ever be accessible to a large section of the 7 billion people in the world!

It looks like this is the year of Transformation, of Change, of Thinking Forward -out of the box- in terms of what may well be awaiting us in the next 5 to 10 years, within the corporate world, trying to figure out what next. Or, better said, where to next. You would remember how at the beginning of the year I decided, for myself, to start making the move away from Social Business into Open Business, and how, just recently, I also decided to move further along from driving adoption of Social Business into facilitating the adaptation to Open Business. Exciting journeys so far, for sure, more specifically, from the perspective of how both concepts (Although not necessarily rather new) are already starting to catch people’s attention in terms of how organisations could as well be provoking their own business transformation just like it is happening in our very own societies, all around a single key concept: The Era of Open. Indeed, it is undeniable how the whole mantra of being open, specially, in a business context, is starting to catch up plenty of steam and a whole lot of attention , more than anything else, perhaps, as a reflection of what’s happening out there with a good number of global (or local, for that matter!) events, where more and more knowledge workers (AND citizens) are demanding a whole lot more openness and transparency in terms of how organisations across sectors and industries actually function around their day to day business operations. It’s been fascinating to witness how the current financial econoclypse, the social unrest, the massive workforce shift and those very same global events I referenced above are leaving a profound mark in terms of how it may well be about a good time now for the corporate world at large to re-gain back that social responsibility towards society through becoming more open and transparent in how they operate as well as how they communicate. Open vs. Closed. That’s it, really. That’s what it is all about. "Connected, messy, loose and open", as my good friend, Harold Jarche, wrote about brilliantly a couple of months back. It’s essentially what the Open Social Web is helping provoke on a scale that’s going to be rather tough to stop, but also to ignore, or neglect, specially, seeing the huge impact those open collaboration platforms will have over the next couple of years, if not already. And I am sure that, at this point in time, you may be pondering about going a couple of steps even further and start thinking about Radical Transparency. Or Radical Openness for that matter.  I can imagine how a good number of people out there may have just gone, a little bit, into panic mode when reading above about radical transparency. The thing is that we don’t know (yet) whether it might help out the business world to come back in good shape aiming as sustainable growth, or to help re-define a whole bunch of the business operating models (and processes) carried on from the 20th century that would help us address a good bunch of the business problems we still face today. Take, for instance, employee engagement: still the number #1 business problem in today’s corporate world.  The thing is that Radical Transparency can be really good for employee engagement, as David Zinger wrote nicely about earlier on this year, picking up from a piece from HBR under the rather enticing and suggestive heading of "Why Radical Transparency Is Good Business". The challenge, as I have written about a couple of times already, and I am sure most folks out there would be thinking along these terms, too, by now, is How Open Is Too Open? Ahhh, the limits and the limitations. They always have to be with us, don’t they? The constraints that little by little keep regulating and overruling our lives, whether at work or on a personal level. Those constraints that once they start being part of our own comfort zone(s) it’s almost impossible to get rid of them in order to keep evolving along. That’s what’s stopping us at the moment from progressing further into exploring that whole new Era of Open. Jacob Morgan pretty much nailed it when he recently blogged about it and what it would mean. To quote:  "We talk about openness, transparency, and sharing, but how far would we be willing to go with it? Would you feel comfortable working in an all glass building where people can see everything you do and every move you make? I do believe that organizations need to be much more open and transparent but there’s a balance that needs to be struck here" Yes, indeed, there may well be a need for a balance at some point, in terms of how open and transparent you would want to become over the course of time. The thing though is that I have always believed that people should not be transparent. It’s organisations the ones that need to be transparent. And the more radical they are in that approach, the more each and everyone of us would benefit from it. This is essentially all about how much you would want to protect and hoard your own knowledge as an organisation understanding that what may have worked relatively well in the 20th century does not guarantee it will work the same in the 21st century. In fact, it won’t. That’s why we need to provoke that mindset shift from sharing knowledge on a "need to know" basis into "default to open" or, basically, sharing publicly everything by default unless you have been told otherwise.  That being told otherwise pretty much refers to what I think is the only one use case scenario for which organisations may still want to hoard and protect their knowledge. That is, when that piece of content truly is confidential and of a rather sensitive nature. Mind you, you should still challenge it a great deal, if you feel that what may have been flagged as confidential in the past, may not necessarily mean it needs to be in the present or near future. Remember, the more that you may be able to share out in the open, the more visibility, the more re-findability, the more reuse your content will go through. And that’s a good thing.  That’s essentially why I am such a huge fan of both mantras "narrate your work" and "working out loud", without forgetting for that matter "Observable Work". In my new job role, the rate of confidential, rather sensitive information I am exposed to on a daily basis has increased quite a bit from my former role, yet, time and time again, I keep challenging my own assumptions and those of others in terms of opening up and what it would mean for our overall efforts if we do. Vast majority of times I have discovered how the reason why people may not want to share their knowledge and information is not necessarily because they may not want to, but more because of inertia taking over with mutual agreements along the lines of "Yes, that’s how we have been doing business over here for a while and we never thought about questioning or challenging its status quo, because we thought it was all right. It was working". Well, obviously, it’s not. Because if it were, I could guarantee you that we would not be having the good number of the business problems, challenges and what not we keep facing day in day out.  Jacob, later on in the article, quoted: "Being open and transparent is a scary yet interesting thing but as with everything else there needs to be a balance" and I keep thinking that perhaps that balance needs to be a bit unbalanced after all. Yes, of course, it’s going to be scary. After all, it’s new ground, within the business world, that we  are trying to cover over here, right? I mean, when was the last time you heard of an organisation, the larger, the better, whose main mantras were to become more porous enough to permeate throughout on both openness and transparency? I haven’t heard of many so far, when trying to strike that balance. Yet the potential for that unbalance is massive, and here I am thinking that perhaps one of the things we could do is to get started with it and aim for radical openness instead. The one Jason Silva shares across in this absolutely exhilarating, inspiring, refreshing and thrilling short video clip:    "RADICAL OPENNESS" - for TEDGlobal 2012 by @JasonSilva from Jason Silva on Vimeo. What do you think? Ready for some yet?

I have always sought simplicity in every learning solution that I develop. As our products evolve to simplify more and more complicated day to day problems, the learning solutions must be simplified as well. My post about the Future of Organizational Learning was a thought in this direction but on a broader scale. Now I'm thinking of a granular level of learning that can be developed and packaged with the product. Large enterprise products solve complex domain specific problems. Learning about such products becomes equally complex. Hence our role as learning designers calls for us to be specialists. We must be able to design learning so it can be seamlessly interspersed within the product.Imagine a newly installed enterprise solution with many of pages, regions, dashboards, etc. The user who is a domain specialist and probably familiar with related products in the domain must be able to log in and use the product without having to undergo a rigorous and exhaustive learning regime before using the product. Its pointless if we strive to solve a complex problem, but learning to use the tools itself becomes a challenge. Learning must be interactively available in the context.To start with the product itself must be designed with superior user interface that anyone can easily use. So we don't have to create learning for that. That solves one part of the problem and leaves the domain learning issue to be addressed. Someone familiar with the domain should be able to find familiar names on the UI and instantly be able to understand what to do next. Here comes the scope for creating embedded learning units.Each learning unit is self contained, simplified content that can be in any format:Conceptual information on concepts related the the actions on the toolbar or page.Information about the relationship of the UI object with other areas.Impact of selections user interface choices on related features or objectsThe underlying principles of certain choices made.Decisions to consider when making choices.How to do something?This list can evolve, however the key here is that it takes more to 'learn' something that is naturally complex.Considerations while designing simplified learningThe reality is that the learning designer must know the domain deeply and work very closely with subject matter experts to come up with the simplest way of explaining it to product users. A thorough grasp of the product and domain is an invaluable asset in designing such a granular and interactive learning solution. The learning units can be layered over the product layer based on licenses and be available on request or via a setup option.Despite this we may still have a demand for advanced learning solutions. Advanced learning can be instructor led or highly interactive simulations. From a cost-benefit ratio perspective ILT is practical but this is something for me to start thinking about as well.

Social Analytics. Don’t you just love it? Oh, metrics, what would we do without you in the business world, right? They are the main reason, apparently, of our mere existence in a corporate environment. And, lately, attempting to measure the Return On Investment of Social / Open Business has been grabbing most of attention in the last 3 to 5 years, but perhaps for all of the wrong reasons altogether, since time and time again we just seem to keep focusing on "measuring what’s easy as opposed to what’s important". Just like with technology, we seem to have developed, over the course of the last few decades, a fetish for trying to measure everything, and I mean everything, that happens around us, specially, in a business context, because, apparently, that’s the main only criteria we are using in order to improve the thing we are measuring in the first place. And it’s been rather interesting to see how over the course of that time, and more vehemently as of late, we seem to have dropped the whole topic altogether on measuring the ROI of social technologies, which is quite intriguing on its own, since it seems to confirm it’s been pretty much useless all along, since it is no longer possible to revert back on our Adaptation to Open Business practices. They are here to stay and it’s just a matter of when, not anymore about how, what or why.  Yes, I know, change is inevitable, after all, and the only thing we can do, eventually, is delay it. That’s probably the main reason as to why very few people are continuing to question the value of social networking for business. It seems like everyone has finally come to terms with the fact that, whether we like it or not, Social / Open is here to stay. But things weren’t always like that in the past. In fact, there have been numerous different articles, insightful blog posts,  inspiring dissertations and what not, that have attempted to come up with a good, smart way of hinting how we may eventually measure the effective use of Social / Open Business. Pretty much like we did with Knowledge Management over 18 years ago and that we still haven’t managed to get it right, after all of that time. Somehow, I keep making the connection that perhaps we have attempted to measure what we shouldn’t have in the first place and instead we should have put our efforts in helping out, plenty more, with that adaptation to Open Business.  As usual, Seth Godin, in perhaps one of the top blog posts from 2013 (Yes, I know, that’s how good it is), pretty much nailed the whole argument around what has been the current state of affairs in terms of measurements within the business world. To quote:  "As an organization grows and industrializes, it’s tempting to simplify things for the troops. Find a goal, make it a number and measure it until it gets better. In most organizations, the thing you measure is the thing that will improve." Not much that I can share across after such brilliant reflection, other than perhaps add further up one other key element that seems to describe, pretty well, what may drive that kind of industrialised mentality: inertia. As in why change what has worked in the last few decades, right? Well, wrong. That’s the problem, it hasn’t worked out all right, because more than anything else what’s happened is that we have diverted our attention away from the real thing and just decided to muse on what’s easy, i.e. the low hanging fruit, what we can quantify in an effortless manner iteration after iteration. But Seth states it much more beautifully with this brilliant conclusion that I half referenced above already. To quote again:  "Measurement is fabulous. Unless you’re busy measuring what’s easy to measure as opposed to what’s important." So, what can you do then? What’s important? Well, lately, to me, for a good number of months, it’s been down to two things: Results and Relationships. As you may have noticed, none of those really focus on measuring the use of the digital tools at our disposal, which seems to be what most social analytics efforts focus on at the moment. Somehow I suspect we need to perhaps level up the game and start focusing on what kinds of measures, if any, at all, we would need in order to quantify the effectiveness of not just using social tools, i.e. the low hanging fruit, but the bigger challenge: the modelling of new behaviours. That adaptation to new ways of smarter work I have been mentioning for a little while now and which I think would be much more relevant.  That’s exactly what I am focusing on at the moment, at work. Not necessarily on measuring the easy bits, in terms of adaptation and enablement, but more on trying to identify how the power of storytelling could help us provide a much more meaningful and empowering method to quantify and measure those results and relationships. How? Through sharing of stories, of insightful anecdotal evidence of how knowledge workers have been capable of transforming the way they work by addressing business problems and fixing them adapting to new social / open gestures while getting their day to day work done in an effective, productive manner. The fascinating thing about this shift is that over the course of the last few months I have started to notice how business storytelling is starting to make (big) waves into the corporate world in terms of how it’s helping organisations understand what an effective method it is not only to facilitate knowledge transfer or innovation, or to give meaning, or to improve employee engagement, or to progress further, but also to capture such knowledge in a much more noteworthy manner that could help out everyone make sense of it all in much more profound ways through a key element that I am incredibly excited about seeing it emerge time and time again lately: Narrative.  Every single business out there needs one. And perhaps if there is anything good that Open Business is facilitating at this stage it’s that huge opportunity to help inspire the creation of that narrative that employees cannot only identify with, but breathe it, as part of their new fabric, their DNA on how they work, eventually, something that I am 100% sure doesn’t just happen with the low hanging fruit metrics. Why? Because we can’t relate to numbers and figures out of context. We can relate though to people sharing their stories, connecting, collaborating, sharing their knowledge openly with one another, to eventually produce better business outcomes by working together smarter, not necessarily harder.  Networked and hyperconnected.  Oh, and if you are interested in the whole topic around Narrative, please do allow me to point you to one of the First Thinkers on the topic who, just recently, put together, a series of 3 blog posts that I can certainly recommend everyone to go and spend some time reading, and reflecting further along, on the huge potential impact of narrative in the business world. Neither of those three posts would leave you indifferent, I can tell you that. Here you have them Aspects of Narrative Work: Part I, Part II and Part III by the one and only: Dave Snowden.  [Thanks ever so much, Dave, for generously sharing them along with us!]

Last week at work was, perhaps, one of the most excruciating, rather annoying and frustrating weeks that I can remember in my 16 years of work with my current employer and it was not because of the sheer madness, rather hectic and busy work schedules, you know, those are business as usual and quite good fun still (Already having crossed through the second month on the new job!), but more because for the first time in a long while I got to experience what I think is the Achilles Heel for Knowledge (Web) workers in this digital age. Specially, for those of us who are working remotely, away from the traditional office. Yes, indeed, last week I experienced, in full force, what it would be like having an intermittent connection to internal networks, through VPN, as well as the Internet in general, through my ISP. And I tell you, it wasn’t pretty. At all. Indeed, like I mentioned above, it was one of those dreadful experiences that clearly reminds us all how fragile remote knowledge (Web) workers are in terms of the dependencies on the availability of a good, reliable and accessible VPN and Internet connections. Most folks out there know by now how, thanks to the "Life Without eMail" movement I started over 5 years ago, I have now been successful in having moved over 98% of my daily work to the Web, whether on the Intranet or the Internet. Yet, last week was perhaps one of the quietest times I have gone through that I can remember. Why? Because I was offline for the vast majority of it. Both my VPN connection as well as my local ISP were having continuous issues helping me remain connected and eventually ended up in me putting a bunch of extra hours at work just trying to catch up with things when they would become more stable. And some times they did, and some others, they didn’t. But right there I realised how when you are working from the traditional office space things are relatively good in terms of connectivity. You know, everyone working along through the same pipes, so to speak, and if the Internet or the Intranet goes down, that’s just fine, it’s down for everyone, so you are in equal terms for that matter and might as well enjoying a coffee or two while the system goes up to support back again several hundreds of office knowledge workers. However, when you are a remote knowledge worker, who depends on the Web for the majority of your work, things are much different. As a starting point, you are alone. You are, typically, in the middle of nowhere (my closest IBM office is about 1,200 KM away from where I live / work), trying to get connected to the rest of the world that flies passed by you at a lightning speed, and that you hope to jump into the bandwagon which is the Internet, so that you can catch up. Well, last week, my train never showed up, helping me understand the challenges of what it would be like if, all of a sudden, remote knowledge (Web) workers, get to suffer from intermittent (Or permanent, for that matter!) connectivity issues in order to carry out their digital work. It just won’t happen. And, you know, work won’t stop. It never does. It will just keep carrying on and piling up, which means that, as a remote employee or knowledge worker, your dependency on a good VPN and ISP connectivity are going to be critical. Otherwise, it’s just like one of those dead tentacles you can just chop off and no-one will notice. And while I can see how that may well not be too worrying for companies and businesses, since it’s just an isolated case or two, perhaps a few hundred (tops), the reality is that for you it’s like the whole world just collapsed and decided to stop spinning around. Yes, I know, I realise I am putting a little bit of extra drama on the huge impact of network connectivity for remote employees, but is it really that much of an exaggeration? Because, somehow I feel it’s not, specially, if you consider how, unless you live in a rather large urban place, you, as a remote worker depending on the Web to get your work done, are doomed and big time. And, most probably, no-one would even notice. And, let’s face it. We are entering the stage where broadband penetration, at least, in (Western) Europe, is pretty much a good myth, specially, if you don’t live in big cities. If you live in relatively small towns, or rural / remote areas, that pervasive connectivity is non-existent, which comes to fight the argument that the Web keeps us all hyperconnected and networked no matter what. Well, it matters, connectivity, at least, in Europe, is not as pervasive as what most folks feel, and if you have been reading my recent business trips across several European countries, it’s more of a wider issue than anything else, not necessarily related to a specific country or local region. It bugs me. I tell you, it bugs me quite a lot, actually, because, last week, I realised how I was no longer capable of accessing the most precious thing that makes the Internet a wonderful thing: free information. And I don’t mean free as in you don’t have to pay for it. I mean it from the perspective of no longer being capable of accessing free flows of information to allow me to get my work done in an effective and efficient manner. Never mind the good amount of conversations I could no longer have in terms of nurturing and continuing to build my personal business relationships, including blogging away over here, which I couldn’t, as some of you have well observed through offline interactions. Ugly. Very ugly state of things, if we have to keep depending on that reliability of connectivity for that major shift of the knowledge workforce that’s already well underway, where more and more people are becoming remote employees, or even no longer attached to companies but doing freelance work, and still needing to have that connection to the Web. That shift is not going to change, nor disappear, but to accelerate greatly over the next couple of years and seeing how urban places are starting to become more jammed and overpopulated, it’s going to be a huge issue if those remote workers from small, rural places can’t keep connected in a reliable manner. Or if, all of a sudden, ISPs decide to sacrifice their quality service to reduce costs or companies decide that good, robust VPN solutions are not worth the investment anymore, therefore forcing their remote employees to trash off the flexibility they once had and return back to the traditional office, no matter at what costs. Of course, we have got email to fix that problem. I am sure you all have been thinking about that very same thought all along while reading this article, and, to be frank, no, we don’t. Email will not solve the problem, because, yes, you can work offline through your mailbox and everything, but you still need the connectivity to send those emails across and when exchanging large rich media files, or presentations, proposals, status project reports and what not; you are going to have a need for a rather fast and robust network connection. We are no longer in the mid-90s where a regular analogue line could get you through the daily email in a matter of minutes. Plus, I am not sure I would want to venture to state that email is safe in the current workplace just because we don’t have enough broadband capacity or a rather robust VPN set of solutions. It would be just totally wrong and for a good number of reasons. We need to step up, we need to level up the game and start embracing the fact that over the course of time, the vast majority of your companies’ work is going to be executed, done and dealt with by people who are not working at the traditional office anymore, and, as such, we would need to ensure they are reliably connected to the Web to get their work done. As more and more of us progress further away from firewalls and internal protected networks into the Open Social Web, I guess we would be saying good-bye to VPNs, but then again, if you have been watching the news over the course of the last few months, and, lately, in the last week or so, you would know how some conversations would still need to take place in a secure, private, protected space, although still open and accessible to everyone concerned (i.e. employees, customers and business partners, for that matter). So the need for ISPs to understand how freelancers work remotely and how much they rely on that network connection for a whole lot more than just sending an email, also correlates to the need from businesses to understand how critical good, reliable VPN connections are to allow those employees to stay connected in a world that’s become more virtual, distributed and remote than ever. Upping the game will get us all there, eventually. Not doing anything, though, thinking things will be all right, after all, will help us go into a Dark Age I doubt we’d ever be able to recover from accordingly. All of us. Now, imagine if all ISPs, while they are going to become more under pressure over time, decide to take us through on to those dark ages … for good. Imagine, if, all of a sudden, after seeing last few weeks’ global events all over the place (Take your pick as there are a lot of those to choose from!) things just collapse. Just like that. Well, don’t imagine it. Let’s just work really hard on not making it happen any time soon, because somehow the trend keeps showing how we are heading towards that collapse, without remedy. I know, I know, I don’t plan to finish off this article with a negative thought of what might happen. Instead, I would want to finish it off with a rather outrageous, optimistic and heretic trend of thought on what’s at stake at this point in time, so please do allow me to leave you with this absolutely stunning, rather inspiring and incredibly thought-provoking presentation from one of my favourite thinkers of the 21st century that I just can’t have enough of in terms of showing the way of where we are heading, not only in the business world, but in our society. Check out Manuel Castells‘ recent RSA speech on "Networks of Outrage and Hope", which will also confirm, for that matter, why social networking is here to stay and for a good few years, not only as matter of expressing yourself, but perhaps altogether as a matter of finding a new purpose, a new focus and a new meaning altogether: a better world for all of us. No exceptions. 

Over the course of the last few years, and with the emergence (AND convergence) of social networking tools for business, cloud computing, big data and social analytics (amongst several other buzzwords and hyped concepts), we are starting to see that growing trend of shaping up one other key concept from today’s business world: our own economy. It seems to be it’s starting to take control of our collective mindset, of our conversations, of our interests and attention, to the point where we are beginning to have no more time than to talk about just that: economy. And that’s understandable, seeing the current financial econoclypse we are going through, and still with plenty more to come! But what if there would be something else? What would happen if all of a sudden we would be able to switch from our traditional concept of economy into something much more meaningful, purposeful, refreshing and rather inspiring altogether? How about if we would start focusing quite a lot more on the Connection Economy instead, to eventually have a bigger impact beyond just focusing on the money, the power and the greed?  In the recent past, we have seen plenty of various different people, including myself, blogging about the Circular Economy, the Semantic Economy, the Simulation Economy, the Hacker Economy, the Locust Economy, the Passion Economy, the Freelance Economy, the Attention Economy, the New Patronage Economy, the Post-Job Economy, the Content Economy, the Digital Economy, the Collaboration Economy, the Knowledge Economy, the Knowledge Networked Economy, the Creative Economy, the Sharing Economy, the Sustainable Economy, the Experimental Economy, the Gift Economy. Goodness gracious me! It looks like there is no end to the huge amount of economies we have got out there! Stop it! Seriously, once more, stop it!  Never mind the main two economies that keep coming up over and over and over again. Such as the Sharing Economy and the Collaborative Economy, which a whole bunch of smart folks have been talking about extensively over the course of a good number of months through insightful blog posts, news articles, dissertations, and what not. At this point in time, we may as well just go ahead and kill the economy for all that matters. Something tells me that we may be much much better off altogether!  But then again, serendipity does it magic, just like that, and it helps me bump into this particular video clip over the course of the weekend, from the one and only, Seth Godin, raising the bar big and helping introduce what I, too, think is at the heart of the matter in terms of helping our own global economy flourish, once again, but this time around through sustainable growth and focusing on what it is all about: connections and relationships. Indeed, welcome to The Connections Economy! In a superb short video clip of nearly 4 minutes long, Seth gets to talk about what, to him, the Connection Revolution is all about as the Industrial Economy is fading away. And he gets to describe, in a very powerful manner, what are the main fundamental pillars of such economy. To name:  "Coordination Trust Permission Exchange of Ideas"  From there onwards, he gets to build though on two additional underpinnings, two traits that make it all worth while, and that, for what matters, are essential to us all human beings, specially, in terms of what we can deliver. Generosity and Art. Yes, once again, it’s all about the givers and a rather inspiring and very refreshing notion of what art is all about. To quote him briefly: "Art is the human act of choosing to connect; the human ability to do something for the first time. Something that might not work". Whoahhh! Powerful words, indeed! Stunning!   I couldn’t have agreed more with him when, towards the end of the clip, he quotes as well how "we crave connection". It’s in our genes. Its part of our DNA. It’s about our ability to find that hidden connection through sharing our passion for a particular topic and for wanting to learn plenty more about it, based on those interactions and all of a sudden expose it all in full force out there in those open networks for others to benefit mutually from such connectedness.  On another short clip, from the same SAPPHIRE NOW event, he gets to talk on what I feel Open Business is all about, while relying on social networks, as key components from that Connection Economy, as the glue that ties in everything altogether: caring. He then develops the thought that in that same Connection Economy adjusting while failing along, fast, is going to be critical altogether, more than anything else because we are already transitioning from an age of scarcity into an age of abundance, abundance to connect, to make a difference, to follow, and what not, by how it scales to … tribes. Another piece of brilliance!    And to top it off there is a third short video clip where he gets to expand on how we can all enable others for success which is also priceless watching it through in its entirety, because he concludes with a killer sentence that I think needs to become our new mantra in terms of how we do business in that new economy: it’s not really about whether you would be able to succeed or not, since there is a great chance that you would, but whether you care enough to matter, after all. Goodness! I doubt it would get any better than that, as to what our focus and purpose should be like on how we need to keep pushing for that transformation that Open Business will unleash as we move forward. The interesting thing is that, for the first time ever, and thanks to social networks, it’s all going to be based on something we never had before, that is, the intangibles, those connections; in short, those personal business relationships that will confirm how The Connection Economy will eventually rule them all.  And that’s a good thing. Actually, it’s a wonderful thing altogether!  I just can’t wait for it to unleash its full potential, and you?  [Oh, and if neither of those three wonderfully refreshing and rather thought-provoking video clips got you going off to a rather inspiring start of another working week, here's a bonus video clip, highly recommended as well, from Seth Godin himself, once again, from a recent event that he participated in at CreativeMornings where talked about "Backwards" and for which I am not going to share much more about it, but will just let it surprise you big time. It's probably one of the best 20 minutes you would be spending on this whole year, I can guarantee you that! From now onwards, you would eventually be thinking completely different around the whole concept of clients, including your own … bosses!] 2013/05 Seth Godin | Backwards from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.