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.

If you’ve followed this blog long enough, you’ll remember that I’m no big fan of stock images. No, I don’t hate them - in fact I use them quite often. That being said, I think there’s significant disadvantages to stock photos - my primary gripe with them being the fact that they’re so inauthentic. People just aren’t as pretty as they look in stock images, except of course you lot that’s reading this post. And then again, they don’t strike cheesy poses. Most importantly, stock image models are so far removed from the real world that the credibility a real colleague’s photo brings just doesn’t come through with a stock photo. In my presentations and learning programs I’m using more and more of my own photography and I can imagine this could be a really useful thing for other elearning designers too.Over the next few weeks I’m going to do a few posts on basic photography that’ll help you take high quality photographs for your learning materials. Of course, I don’t proclaim to be an expert and well it’s going to take far more than my posts to be a really good photographer. I’m sure though that learning about the art and science of photography will help you develop the craft in case you have an interest for it. In today’s blogpost, I’ll show you how to select a new camera - after all, that’s a prerequisite to awesome photographs!The best camera is the one you already havePhotography geeks can keep going on and on about the best equipment. Is the A77 the best DSLR ever? Or is it the monstrous 46 megapixel Sigma SD1? Well no one cares. I for one don’t have the budget to buy the best gear on the planet. And then again the deal with photography is this - your existing equipment is good until you run up a limit. So if you have a point and shoot and you need more creative control on your images then you perhaps should get a prosumer camera. On the other hand if you’re looking for lightning fast response then you may have to choose a DSLR. Often you may be already shooting with a DSLR and you need to capture a small object with all its details. You may then need to upgrade to a macro lens. All this said, if you have to always remember - if you don’t see a problem with the results you’re getting, your existing equipment is just good enough. I am however going to tell about the different types of cameras in the market so if you did have to purchase a new one you can make an informed decision.Equipment GeekeryI like to look at cameras in three different categories. Let’s take a look at each of these:Point and shoot cameras: Compact and pocketable in size, these are the cameras that a lot of us have. I have one too. They take decent pictures and are meant for exactly what the category is called - point and shoot. Your cellphone cameras also fall under this category. Most people will say that these cameras aren’t meant for serious photography, but hey - look at these photographs from the iPhone 4! For a lot of photography, a little pocket device is adequate. The downside of these cameras of course is that they aren’t really versatile for various purposes and because of their small imaging sensors, the image quality often isn’t as good as you’d like it to be.Prosumer cameras: Prosumer cameras are a little more advanced than compacts. They essentially have similar or slightly larger sensors and theoretically are capable of producing better images. More importantly, some of these cameras allow you to shoot in the camera’s native format a.k.a RAW which gives you a lot more control to tweak your images after the fact. This apart they’re equipped with more versatile glass that can zoom into far away objects or often shoot really wide landscapes.Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras (SLRs): SLR cameras start to go into the realm of serious photography. The ability to shoot at rapid pace, to choose from a wide range of lenses and accessories and to be able to come up with high quality, tack sharp images is something a lot of photography enthusiasts prefer. Amongst DSLRs there are full frame cameras that are fitted with image sensors of the same size as good old 35 mm film. This means that if you were to put any lens on top of these cameras, your picture would be similar and true to the 35 mm film format. These large sensors help you reproduce vivid colour and detail and well that makes these cameras quite costly - anywhere between $2000 and $8000. There are also what we call crop or APS-C format cameras which have smaller sensors than the full frames and produce a cropped image in comparision to those big guns. They’re still pretty good and I own two of those. You can get your hands on one of these for as little as $450. There are also newer variants such as the mirrorless micro-four-thirds cameras and the single lens translucent (SLT) cameras. I’ll leave it to you to find out about those.If you’re looking to buy a camera for your elearning photography, I suggest you go for a DSLR. I’m a Canonista and I strongly recommend the EOS 600D as your first camera. I’m pretty sure Nikon produces good cameras too - I just don’t know about them. The advantages of the DSLR are aplently. The fact that there’s only one moving mirror which projects to an optical viewfinder, you have a WYSIWYG experience with photography. Plus you can keep adding equipment to the base system as you want to expand your photography repertoire.Beware of the mythsIf you’re buying a prosumer camera or a point and shoot, do remember that there’s a scam in the market. I call it the megapixel and optical zoom scam. You can guess what I’m referring to. Manufacturers, regardless of whether they’re well meaning or not, need to have some way to keep selling you new models of their devices which don’t necessarily add much value beyond what you already have. Don’t believe me? Check out the story of stuff. Now with cameras, technology doesn’t really change by much each month. Yet there are new models in the market every month. The one way that camera manufacturers can lure you into buying something new is by providing you a quantitative metric to evaluate your purchase. The easiest one is the megapixel count.Now remember I told you that point and shoot cameras and prosumers have very small sensors in comparison to DSLRs? Think about it. Pixels are finally dots on your final image. To reproduce these dots as they appeared in real life, you need to lay out several mini-sensors on your sensor area. Therefore as you’ll notice from the diagram above, while a DSLR sensor area has these mini sensors laid out quite comfortably, the point and shoot has them fighting for space. The more megapixels you pack into a point and shoot, the more mini sensors you need. The more mini sensors you pack in, the more squished they will be. The more squished they are, the more they’ll interfere with each other and produce poor images. So if you’re picking up a new point and shoot camera or for that matter any other camera, be mindful that more megapixels doesn’t always translate to better pictures. For all you care, you’re likely to get better pictures from a camera with a lower megapixel count!The other scam that camera companies run is that of optical zoom. Remember those numbers you saw at the store - 4x, 10x, 15x? Does a 15x camera lens have a better zoom reach than a 4x camera lens? Not really. X here signifies the ratio between the highest focal length of the camera lens, to its lowest focal length. So a camera that goes from 20mm to 300mm is a 15x lens. Now let me tell you that several wildlife photographers use the following professional lenses for super long reach:100mm-400mm; just 4x200mm-400mm; just 2x400mm, 600mm, 800mm primes which are just 1x!As you can see the x value is nothing but a hoax to make you buy a new camera and doesn’t really mean anything without knowing the focal length of the lens on the camera. Also remember that it takes great engineering to build lenses that operate at various focal lengths. This is the reason that most professional lenses are either primes or 2x or 4x. A camera lens that operates at a focal length multipliers of 15x, 18x and 30x is surely cutting corners with image quality.There’s perhaps heaps more technicalities to know about with photography. In my next post, I’ll try to clarify some of the technical jargon you’ll hear thrown around in the space. After that we’ll start getting our hands dirty with some neat stuff. Deal? See you next week then.Camera image credits: Individual manufacturers. Title photo credit: FOTOCROMO© Sumeet Moghe

Over at StrategyFocusedHR, Ron Thomas put together, just recently, a rather interesting and intriguing blog post, under the suggestive heading "Once Upon a Time: Remember When We Could Tell a Story Without Slides?", that I can certainly recommend everyone reading through it, specially, if you are a public speaker, and, more importantly, if you like storytelling with a business purpose. But perhaps even much more highly recommended if you feel that slides have taken over your public speaking world and, eventually, they may have become the "crutches" for your narrative. It’s a rather thought provoking read, because, in a way, it’s going to help you challenge the way you use slides for your public speaking gigs to the point where he questions whether we should be using them rather heavily, or, instead, use them as a simple guide, but no more.  I guess at this point in time, we are all sensing what he really means and we probably have got an affirmative answer to his reflections; the fact that, whether we like it or not, we pretty much rely on telling stories by using PowerPoint presentations. And perhaps we shouldn’t. At least, we shouldn’t depend on them as much as we do nowadays. Ron is essentially launching a call for action to stop relying so much on slides and instead focus on sharing some good stories to get your messages across.  I can see his point. In fact, I have probably abused myself that Death by PowerPoint a few times already, far too many, perhaps, that I would care to remember, as I have blogged about in the past, but if there is anything that I have learned in the last 6 months or so, after having been a (keynote) speaker in multiple events, is that sooner rather than later, even you, the public speaker, will burn out from PowerPoint Overload and eventually tune out. And that’s exactly the stage that I am at at the moment. And so far, although I didn’t expect it this soon, I am enjoying it quite a bit! More than anything because, as Ron mentions on his blog post, it’s allowed me to discover a new facet as to why I’m enjoying it so much more doing all of this public speaking at various different events that I never thought I would be able to experience again anymore. Probably because of how much automation and industrialisation we have incorporated into the overall process altogether when we do presentations that we hardly leave any room, nor space, for something that we are all, human beings, really good at: telling good stories. That’s why, back in May, I reflected on my Google Plus profile on a new experiment that I thought would be worth while going for to explore how much further along I could bring forward my own creativity when doing presentations, so knowing how buzzing my travelling schedule would be for the following couple of months I thought it would be the perfect ground to take on that new experiment: go and present in a number of various different public events without using any slides, and just delivering my speech trying to capture my main points of interest for the audience in the shape of stories, and see how far creativity would take me along without any of those "crutches for my narrative" (i.e. Slides).  Little did I know that what eventually turned out to be quite an interesting experiment it developed into something I didn’t expect at all, to the point where it managed to break up my addiction of using slides as a way of protecting my self, my overall presence, my messages, my stories. And it was something so relatively simple, yet so powerful, that it blew off my mind when I realised about it, just as much as it does today: A new learning experience (in real time). Indeed, there is a lot to be learned on How To Do Everything Wrong In A Presentation, as Mitch Joel would say, but there is a whole lot more to learn from doing a presentation just right and that only starts, as far as I am concerned, and based on plenty of recent experience, on how well you engage your audience. Because in most cases we don’t. I mean, how many times have we been attending a masterly presentation from a speaker only to find out that he / she has run out of time and we, the audience, don’t have a chance to engage, ask questions, share our key learnings, perhaps our very own stories, AND interact? Far too often, I would admit, and I would be guilty as charged, because I have suffered from that myself far too many times, far too often even, as a speaker. Till May 2012.  That’s when I decided that the main reason why I was running out of time in the vast majority of cases was because my stories, my narrative, were solely based on the visual aids that I was making use of, and perhaps that’s the reason why it took that long to deliver them. Yes, I do know and fully realise that relying too heavily on your slides is not a good thing, not even a healthy one, but we have to admit that we all pretty much overdo it time and time again. So the last couple months of running this experiment of not using slides in public speaking events have taught me a couple of things: 1. Not doing slides for your presentation is Ok. No-one is going to complain about it, and if anything, they would love you for it. That’s how far we have gone into PowerPoint Overload so far… What really matters is your message, your narrative, your stories, even your own charisma as an individual; basically, what you would want the audience to walk away with when you are done, and what method you use for that it won’t matter much, as long as you deliver.  2. Once you engage with your audience it’s adrenaline you just can’t ignore anymore. This was the major takeaway for me for the last few events that I have participated in, including the very last one I hosted, a full day summer course at the University of Pablo de Olavide, in Carmona, Seville, on "La Empresa y La Administración Pública en la Era de Las Redes Sociales" where I, finally, came to realise what I enjoy the most from public speaking. Not being in front of the audience, not being on stage, not enjoying that public flair, but, essentially, and that’s the kicker, learning from your audience. Because in most cases they are much smarter than whatever you could be. That’s exactly right! That’s the new drug that I have gotten so used to in recent times that I can no longer neglect it, nor ignore it. That’s why whenever I am on my way to provide another speech I hardly ever look into putting together slides, but more I try to find out as much as I possibly can what the audience would be like, to then tame my messages, stories and narrative through plenty of scripting, mindmapping and reflection in order to meet their needs. Yes, I know it takes a whole lot more time, effort and energy, but it is totally worth it every penny you spend on such preparations. Basically, I decided that I would want to, on purpose, learn from the audience, just as much as they can possibly do from me, if not even more! Eventually, those presentations have turned themselves upside down from that masterly delivery of a speech, into something that’s just so rewarding that I can certainly encourage everyone to go and experience: open true dialogue. Utterly refreshing and incredibly reenergising.  Once upon a time, as Ron would say, I used to remember what it was like doing a presentation with slides… Nowadays, though, I prefer to be there on stage, actively learning from the audience, engaging in meaningful dialogue, sharing some terrific stories that I am sure you would all agree with me that we all have deep inside ourselves, after all, we are all born natural storytellers, and eventually finish up the presentation much more energised than when I started it in the first place. Why? Well, because right there, in the audience, there is always going to be that great leader, or leaders, who "throughout history had the power to move people by telling stories. Success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move people". And it looks like I have decided a couple of months back to be moved by people, as my main method of learning as a public speaker to the point that whenever I go and speak at a public event it’s no longer the audience privileged to have the presence of the speaker, but more the speaker is the privileged one to have the unique opportunity of learning from the audience through those interactions that usually happen before, during and after the session.  And that’s how I feel, and I may well be way beyond my call of duty, that we need to transform conference events and public speaking events to become truly social events where we all do what we know we can do best: share our knowledge, tell our stories, collaborate with one another, learn from each other through conversations, storytelling, open dialogue. Not sure what you would think, but I sense it’s time to re-define the way we engage as speakers with our corresponding audience(s). I think it’s time we ditch for good our masterly slides and, instead, we put to the test our masterly skills on listening, engaging, and interacting with those who we share a common passion with in the first place. And keep up with the learning curve… After a long, much anticipated, last, I am way all up for that … and you? 

Between the last post and today, I had a great time at Thattekad - one of India's finest bird sanctuaries down south. I can't say it was the best photography tour - grey weather, rain and dark clouds never make for a good mix. I did have a fascinating birding trip, having spotted 110+ bird species during those three days. Along the way, I got some good photographs but not too many to be frank. I'm hinging my photography fortunes on the next few trips this winter - hopefully my luck will come good somewhere. Coming to the topic of today's blogpost, you may remember that in my last blogpost I'd explained how to choose a new camera for yourself. In today's blogpost I'll follow that up with what I consider the most crucial part of photography - exposure. Simply put, exposure indicates the total amount of light that your camera receives during the time that you record a photograph. When your picture is optimally exposed, you get a great picture. In photography parlance, an underexposed image is usually dark and conversely an overexposed image is usually too bright and white. Well, not all the time - but we'll come to that later. Let's first look at the three different parameters that actually affect the exposure on your image.ApertureAperture on your camera lens indicates how wide your lens is open when receiving light. The wider open your lens, the more light it can take in - the narrower the opening, the lesser the light. Simple? Your camera indicates your aperture setting using what we call an f-stop. The confusing thing to remember though is that the larger the number, the narrower the aperture. This is because we express aperture as a fraction of the focal length. f/1.8 therefore is wider than f/5.6. Now why would you like to control aperture? Firstly of course, a wider aperture gives you more light for your frame which is always a good thing. That aside, adjusting your aperture gives you the opportunity to play with the depth of field on your picture. Depth of field refers to the depth of the picture after which the camera blurs out the details. Remember seeing those pretty portraits where the background is a beautiful blur? This is a result of playing with the aperture. So here's the trick - a wide aperture will usually result in a shallow depth of field. A narrow aperture on the other hand will capture a large part of the image in a sharp fashion. So for portraits you can go with wide aperture. With landscapes and interiors you could go with a narrow aperture. Take a look at the above pictures for reference.Shutter SpeedShutter speed refers to the amount of time a camera's shutter is open when you capture an image. Think of a tap and a glass to fill. If you opened the tap fully your glass will fill in a jiffy. On the other hand if you just let the tap drip a drop at a time, it'll take you much longer to fill the glass. This is the relationship between aperture and shutter speed when it comes to aperture. If your tap of light is fully open you can go with a fast shutter speed. If your tap of light is down to just a drip you'll need a longer shutter speed to fill your glass of light. Simple?Here's why you may want to control your shutter speed. When you shoot at a high shutter speed you freeze action in that split second. When you shoot at a lower shutter speed you get the opportunity to capture details in the poorly lit scene or capture motion using creative blurs - like the silky smooth waterfall in the above picture. The above pictures will help you see how shutter speed can help you capture different kinds of photographs.ISO or Sensor SensitivityWhat if your tap was down to a drip and you still wanted to fill your glass quickly? You'd have to cut some corners right? You could potentially fill the glass with sand such that it takes only short amount of time to fill the glass! Yes, yes you make the water dirty - but you do fill the glass, don't you. This is how ISO works as balancing factor for exposure. ISO defines how sensitive your imaging sensor is to available light. So ISO 100 indicates low sensitivity while ISO 6400 indicates very high sensitivity. Where could adjusting the ISO come in handy? Think about a situation where you're shooting a cityscape at night - handheld. If you shoot at low ISO, you'll need a very slow shutter speed. Here's the catch - slow shutter speeds introduce blur because very few people can keep their hands steady for more than 1/60th of a second! In such a situation, if you shoot at ISO 100 you just won't get a sharp picture. On the other hand you can go with a sensitivity of ISO 800 and you'll most likely get a sharp picture.Now here's the other catch - remember the sand in the glass? The higher the ISO, the lower the quality of your image. In the film days you'd notice this in the form of what they called film grain and in the digital world you see it in the form of image noise. So the bottom line is this - a high ISO is the arrow in your photography quiver which you want to use only if absolutely necessary.How do you control Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO?While most serious cameras have a manual mode where you control everything, it's usually not the best idea unless you're shooting in a very controlled, studio type setting. You're best off controlling either Aperture or Shutter speed and letting the camera control the other. If you're using a DSLR, then you'll perhaps know the modes to control these as Aperture priority (A on Nikon, Av on Canon) and Shutter priority (S on Nikon, Tv on Canon). All you need to do is pick the parameter you want to control, select the ISO you're willing to live with and let the camera help you along from that point.What mode do I shoot on? Well as most photojournalists would say, "Aperture priority, f/9 and stay there!". Well not quite - I select modes based on the need of the photograph, but for the most part I shoot in Aperture priority since that allows me to control how much of the picture stays sharp and how much blur I need. A Photo Case Study - Ceylon FrogmouthsFor the last year or so, I've been waiting to see the Ceylon Frogmouths. These birds are some of most elusive species to spot in the wild. In fact, I was looking up Wikipedia and found that from the Batrachostomus genus only bird that they have photographs for, are the Ceylon Frogmouths.  These birds have excellent camouflage. They're hardly 23 cm in size and they choose their homes in dark, thickly forested, leafy areas. Since they look like dry leaves and branches they completely blend in. You could be a meter from them and still not be able to see them. The reason why we can actually find them in some spots of India is particularly because some birders know their roosting spots and end up guiding folks like me. Now to this photograph - the tropical forest was very dark. We were struggling to see the frogmouths with naked eyes - through the camera it was even tougher. I proceeded to shoot at the widest aperture my camera offered. However at f/5.6, the shutter speed of 5 seconds was just unmanageable with a big lens, handheld. I kept upping the ISO until I reached a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second and then pressed the shutter. At an ISO of 6400, the picture isn't as sharp or as high quality as I'd like it to be, but I want to think it was the sharpest I could have got in that environment. I could have perhaps gone to ISO 12800, but that would have brought down the picture quality even further. In any case I hope this adventure of a photograph helps you see how ISO, shutter speed and aperture play together to help create the right image.I hope today's blogpost gives you a basic sense of exposure for your photographs. I am mindful that I'm not focussing on elearning-only situations with my examples and that's deliberately so. I'm guessing that if you can use your camera effectively in a life situation, the ability to do so for elearning will come automatically. In the next blogpost, I'll touch upon some simple tips related to colour and format choices in photography. Stay tuned until then - cheers! Is there other stuff you'd like me cover on this blog? Let me know by dropping your comments on this post.© Sumeet Moghe

If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you would know how one of my favourite terms / concepts around Social Business that I have grown to become rather fond of over time, to the point where not only do I talk about it on a regular basis, but I also wear it extensively, is that one of Wirearchy ("Redarquía" in Spanish, for those who may be wondering…), that my good friend Jon Husband coined a few years back and that, still today, in 2012, is now more accurate than ever. In case you may not have heard about that concept just yet, allow me to offer over here Jon’s description of it, as an introduction of what the workplace of the future will be all about… starting today: networks and communities, vs. traditional hierarchies and rigid structures, getting work done. Indeed, as Jon himself wrote over 13 years ago: "In an increasingly interconnected world, a new organising principle is emerging…" "Wirearchy is a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on: Knowledge Trust Credibility A focus on results enabled by interconnected people and technology" I am not sure what you would think, but those are some very powerful messages that surely have got enough traction to provoke a change of our mindsets and a shift of habits of how we have conducted business over the last 40 to 50 years, towards a working environment based on merit, trust, confidence, honesty, values, openness, transparency, authenticity, agile, reputation, effectiveness, efficiency, learning, empathy, etc. etc. A shift that, if you notice, has got very little to do with technology, specially, social networking tools, since they are just that, enablers to help you achieve certain tasks and eventually it’s all about that cultural mayhem that happens when ideas take over hierarchies. Fascinating stuff, if you come to think about how wirearchy is slowly, but steadily, challenging AND changing the way we do work, questioning even whether we do eventually need managers after all or, perhaps, we should start embracing the move towards nurturing and cultivating the next generation of Leaders, as I have recently blogged about over at "Social Business - Where Bosses and Managers Become Servant Leaders", who will master wirearchy vs. hierarchy alone. And this is where ideas kick in…  But instead of me explaining how critical and paramount ideas, and sharing of ideas, is in this whole concept of Wirearchy, as an integral part of Social Business, I’m going to take the liberty of pointing you folks to a video clip that I bumped into from a recent tweet from Vala Afshar, that will be worth your time watching it through altogether:  Steve Jobs talks about managing people [video] youtu.be/f60dheI4ARg @allthingsd #leadership #management — Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) July 23, 2012 Indeed, in a little bit over two minutes, here’s a rather short, sharp, but superb interview snippet with Steve Jobs (Yes, I, too, miss him more than whatever I ever thought I would!!) where he shares that absolutely inspiring epiphany of how ideas will keep fighting the hierarchy till they eventually overcome it to establish a new status quo of how organizations get work done in the 21st century and how, inevitably, we no longer even have a choice, regardless of what some other groups out there may be stating as otherwise. If not, judge for yourselves, here’s the embedded code from the interview, so you can play it right away:    Yes, I know and do fully realise how Steve doesn’t mention the concept of Wirearchy per se, but after you watch it you will see how close he gets to it when he explains fully a good number of its key concepts: like collaboration, like startup mentality (Disruptive not only bottom up, but top down alike, too!), like teamwork, like trust in those who you work with to deliver their part, like autonomy, like intrapreneurship, like problem solving, like lowering the centre of gravity and decision power, like, essentially, that wirearchy that runs through the veins and the DNA of any  business as part of that soft and hard tissue that makes a whole unit: The Brand. The People. No longer a hierarchy on its own, because as Steve himself quotes, "You have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy" and that’s probably as essential as it would get for all of those businesses out there currently embarking on that so-called journey of becoming a Socially Integrated Enterprise, i.e. a successful Social Business.  Who would have thought that one of the most perceived risk averse companies towards the whole concept of Living Social has been driving such social business transformation deep at its roots for themselves and for a good few years already without relying too much on social technologies to make it work? I am not sure what you would think, but I bet that from here onwards we are going to start questioning, and rightly so!, the status quo of how much hierarchy should be trumping ideas overall to the point of drowning them altogether vs. giving them a fair chance, through Wirearchy, to keep up a good fight and help redefine the workplace of the future according to how work gets done nowadays… through networks and communities, of course. Where else?

I've always thought of this blog as just a place to air my thoughts. Turns out it's a bit more than just that. I'm sure some of you've noticed my absolute laziness in posting to the blog in the last couple of months. While there are reasons for it, I also feel really grateful about the number of people that emailed or DM'd me on Twitter admonishing me for my laziness. I guess, this blog does mean a little more than a place for me to ramble. So let's see if I can turn over a new leaf and do a bit of a reboot on this site. For starters, let me get back on my weekly posting schedule - and if nothing I'll do my best to post a short update. Today is unlikely to be short though.This past month I was on a 1000km door-to-door drive from Bangalore to Pune. On the way, I was able to photograph two beautiful raptors - a black shouldered kite and a white-eyed buzzard. Note this - I wasn't on a photography trip and most people won't be looking for photography opportunities on Indian highways. All said and done though, the opportunities did present themselves and I have some decent photos to show for. Photography is quite like that - readiness is a big strength. They say that luck is when preparation meets opportunity and this couldn't be truer for photography. If you want great photographs you need to have a camera with you. If your camera is always at home, you'll miss a lot of photo worthy moments. And mind you, it doesn't always need to be your entire camera kit. Even a phone camera is often a great tool to have for photo-journalism. Just remember to carry it with you; so when the momen presents itself, you're always ready. As an elearning developer or an instructional designer, you'll perhaps notice a lot of photo-worthy moments in the office that are worth preserving. I can't tell you how many candid photographs that I've randomly taken in the office came out to be useful in presentations, courses and in-person training sessions.In today's otherwise short blogpost I want to discuss shooting in RAW vs shooting in JPEG. This is quite a subject of debate amongst photographers and I'd like to present my perspective on the issue. Of course, you can choose to disagree and that's the joy of talking about photography. So let's begin.If you own a decent camera, you need to shoot in RAW(Click for a larger image)Take a look at the before and after on this picture. Remember that not every photo opportunity will give you brilliant light in the right direction, with a very cooperative subject. This barn owl is my neighbour. I see the family every evening when I'm out for a run with my dog. The big problem though, is they're owls - they're nocturnal. In particular, I've never seen this family during the day or even in the twilight hours. I only see them at times when the light is poor. Now what should I do if I see this owl come and sit in the light of the street lamp, on a fairly good perch? Not take the shot? So well, I took the shot but as you can see, it wasn't much to write home about. Thankfully I was shooting in RAW. Before I tell you what I did, let me tell you what a RAW file is.RAW formats are your digital negativesDid any people you knew from the film generation have a deep interest in photography? You might remember the days of the 30mm, 36 shot film. If you remember, you'd get a film negative at the start of the development process. After that it was a lot of magic in the darkroom. People would then play with different chemicals and techniques to enhance the default negative image to produce masterpieces like the ones the great Henri Cartier Bresson created. Now granted, that Bresson himself wasn't great at cropping and processing film - he generally outsourced the activity to give himself more time to shoot. That being said, all his shots did actually go through a post process. The problem with the digital era is the fact that you can produce pictures for sharing right out of your camera - the JPEG format. That's a problem because you aren't really giving your pictures the tender loving care that they need - the little extra zing before you actually share. So what's wrong with a JPEG - after all, you can use Photoshop to enhance your JPEGs and even tools like iPhoto and Picasa give you some tools out of the box. The problem is that the JPEG file is just a snapshot of a moment in time - nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't capture any information about the light available for you to be able to make changes to the exposure of the scene or the colours without actually deteriorating the quality of your image. So each change that you make from the time that you start editing your JPEG file results in some loss in quality.On the other hand, the RAW file is an information heavy format. It's a proprietary format that changes from manufacturer to manufacturer. In addition to the snapshot that the JPEG also captures, the RAW file captures a lot of information about the light in the scene. While the camera does a little bit of work on your JPEG file by increasing the saturation and vibrance and adding a little bit of sharpness to your shot, the RAW file usually looks pretty drab out of the box. However, you get the opportunity to make a number of tweaks to the vibrance, saturation, sharpness and exposure of the scene without dramatically reducing the quality of the shot. Nice huh? Do remember though that all this flexibility comes at a cost. RAW files are pretty huge and fill up your memory cards and hard-drives quite fast! A few minutes of loveThat's all your images need really. Take a look at the above video. It takes me less than four minutes to rescue what you could call a hopeless picture to start with. Most pictures aren't going to be such a hopeless job and all you're going to need is  few little tweaks that don't take away the detail in your image. RAW files help you do just that. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and give you a bit of a build up to my talks at the Learning Solutions Conference 2012. I'm still undecided on the exact stuff I want to put up on the blog, so let me play it by ear for now. But let's see how this goes - keep reading and thanks for the encouragement.© Sumeet Moghe

If there is one topic out there in the field of Social Business that has been bugging me for a long while, as perhaps one of my strongest pet peeves ever, way even before we first started using the concepts of Social Business and Enterprise 2.0, that would be the one on Employee Engagement. More than anything else, because all along I have always felt that employee engagement is a myth. A huge one, actually! It’s a one way lane that has been imposed over us by the business world as perhaps the Holy Grail  of social networking. Essentially, the main reason why the corporate world is looking into social networks as the next big thing, because there seems to be this notion that social networking empowers knowledge workers to be more engaged, therefore happier, more motivated and committed, resulting in happy employees delighting happy customers. How wrong!! My goodness! Why have we let employee engagement take over the entire conversation in the Social space, when it doesn’t even exist in the first place?!? Yes, indeed, you are reading it right. Employee Engagement, as we know it, does not exist. It never has. It never will (Well, maybe … Read further on to see what I mean with maybe…). But the most worrying thing is that it will never become a reality unless we shift gears with regards to our mindsets in jumping forward on to what it would really mean nonetheless: a dual-lane highway of engagement between knowledge workers and their employers. And, for certain, we are not there yet, not even close! And here is why …  Like I have just mentioned above, there has been some extensive and rather comprehensive coverage around the topic of Employee Engagement all over the place that I have been lucky enough to follow up over the course of time and build a pretty good research index of good quality reading materials that would keep you all busy going through for a while. You would have to excuse me this time around for including all of these various links to those articles, blog posts, reflections, analysis, dissertations and whatever else on the topic on this blog entry, but, like I said, it’s been one of my pet peeves for a good few years and if you go through all of those research articles you would probably be capable of venturing why I’m stating out loud that fact that Employee Engagement does not exist. I am including them all over here, so that it would give me a chance, over time, to cover some of the various different articles more in depth. A little bit like my own personal knowledges sharing system on engagement. So, no, don’t worry, this is not that odd article where I’m going to bash against Social Business, or Enterprise 2.0 or Engagement for that matter. I’m seeing it more as a touch with reality, i.e. a touch with what is really happening out there, in the hope that we would have a good chance to revert the tide and get things back on track on what Employee Engagement should be all about, and towards the end of this article I’ll be hinting what’s the ultimate goal of that so-called concept of (employee) engagement.  But before we do that, let’s go and cover some of the ugly bits. Let’s talk about how an employee’s work life can be utterly destroyed in no time or find out further what are some of the main reasons as to why knowledge workers keep quitting their jobs, even in today’s tough environment where we are facing an unprecedented econoclypse and where you would expect that those knowledge workers would stick around with their jobs, because they would need to. The reality is that they aren’t. It gets even uglier when you get to read stunning blog posts like this recent one from Matt Monge under the rather provocative heading of "Stop the madness" where you will be able to find golden gems like this one:  "[…] Unless you’re ready to commit to the sort of change your employees are clamoring and longing for, just stop. If you’re not really, truly prepared to invest the emotional and mental energy into cultivating an engaged workplace, then don’t even pay it lip service […]" See? That’s one of the many many reasons why Employee Engagement does not exist. Mainly, because knowledge workers would eventually give out their emotional and mental energy to re-engage themselves into the workplace, if given the chance to so, but when the second half of the equation needs to kick in, that is, when employers need to do their fair bit of walking through that dual-lane highway to meet those employees there is a huge lack of emotional and mental energy from their side that comes up with a rather insurmountable drawback: cynicism from knowledge workers. And before you realise it you end up having one of the largest issues we keep facing today in the corporate world: disengaged employees, utterly demotivated, rather cynical and skeptical AND fully loaded with a voice using all of these social networking tools to keep up with the dialogue that employers never cared to listen to in the first place. And then it still surprises folks when business keep blocking the use of these social networking tools… And what you eventually thought would help you address some business problems all of sudden it’s turned out to be *the* biggest problem you ever thought you would never be facing again: talent wars. Talent wars, here they come! Here you have them snapping away your best talent into those other businesses that have shown how caring, nurturing and cultivating an engaged workforce is one of the key essential traits to become a successful social business. WOW!! Can you see the spiral effect, downhill, from employee engagement done wrong? Well, it’s happening. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow! And this is exactly what I mean with all of us needing to make a quantum leap within our mindsets and start shifting gears towards embracing a change that we would no longer be able to stop: if you do care for your employees, if you would want to empower and treasure happy workers, you would need to earn that merit, their merit, and work your way through it just as much as they do for you. If not, be ready to face little facts like that one that claims that only 29% of employees are truly engaged (Yes, not even 30% of your employee workforce is engaged, right now!, at work for what they do today!). Under the title "The Facts on Engagement" Mark Toth highlights beautifully the 6 E’s of Engagement: Envision, Empathise, Enhance, Empower, Evaluate and Encourage as perhaps that magic formula that you could make it work to revert the change, and I am thinking that we would probably be much better off as well if we would start addressing, AND fixing!!, some of the various different reasons why Mark himself mentioned employees are ready to quit their jobs, and see whether those 6 E’s would eventually be able to make the cut. To name those reasons briefly:  "Limited career opportunities Lack of respect Money Lack of interesting / challenging job duties Lack of leadership Bad work hours Unavoidable reasons Bad employee relations Favouritism Lack of recognition" I bet you would be thinking by now that those 6 E’s would probably be able to address the vast majority of those reasons, although I am finding it incredibly fascinating how both intrinsic AND extrinsic motivators come up really high on that list altogether. I mean, who would have thought that limited career opportunities, lack of respect, and money would be ranking amongst the first, don’t you think? I know what you are now thinking though, yes, but extrinsic motivators, as Dan Pink described beautifully on "The surprising science of motivation" no longer make the cut with regards to keeping your employees engaged. You would need to focus on intrinsic movitators as well. Hummm, it looks like that’s no longer the case, if Money comes up 3rd as the main reason why employees quit their jobs today, don’t you think? Plenty of food for thought on that one in today’s financial turmoil that surely is helping everyone focus more on Maslow’s Hiearchy of Needs, specially, the primary ones, than anything else. And understandably. Very much so. So, we are back at square one, that is, employee engagement, or the lack of, seeing how employers keep failing to deliver on that emotional and mental energy, probably because at this stage most of them are thinking that employees are just happy to have a job, giving today’s circumstances. Well, how wrong again! Remember, talent wars? They are coming, and fast! In fact, it’s going to be one of the biggest issues we are going to face in the business world in the next 20 years where, according to some statistics, only in the US, every second there would be a single knowledge worker turning 60. Every single second for the next 19 years! Imagine for other older countries what that ratio would be like. Where is all of that knowledge and expertise going to go if you are not capable of retaining your younger talent as your mature knowledge workers start retiring in the next couple of years? See? This is the main reason and biggest issue why most companies are talking about employee engagement as a way to retain their talent, but why they also keep failing to deliver, because they aren’t capable of coming through to meet the needs of that social contract.  We are starting to witness though how a good number of companies are offering various different perks that fall outside of the usual kinds of benefits you would expect, and I am certain we are going to continue seeing plenty of those in the rise as a growing trend, if they would want to keep attracting younger talent to be that new blood for that existing business; the challenge still remains though on how to sustain that engaged employee over the course of the years without being forced to seeing them let go, because you could no longer commit further to them. Right now, there isn’t a single indication out there for how businesses would be able to keep up with it in the long run… Till you meet up Issac Getz, who, just recently, gave one of the most inspiring, thought-provoking and mind-boggling TEDxTalks that I can remember at TEDxESCP under the incredibly refreshing title of "Liberate your company!".  The presentation lasts for a little bit over 14 minutes and, I tell you, it’s worth while every single second of it. It’s short, sharp, witty, humorous, insightful, unprecedented and a completely new and refreshing manner of looking into how employee engagement could be made a reality. Yes, that good! Here is the embedded code you can watch it right away:    In that short speech, Isaac comes up to state the purest definition of what I would consider a true knowledge (Web) worker nowadays: every employee [who] is free and responsible to take any actions he / she decides are the best for the company. WOW!! Can you imagine that? That’s probably the final frontier for employee engagement right there: total freedom for the knowledge workforce to act accordingly for what would be of mutual benefit for the company AND for the employee him/herself. It just cannot get better than that, I am sure. Well, it does … because further on into his presentation Isaac gets to introduce the topic of how you eventually get to build such companies where that freedom rules over everything else. He builds up further into it by talking first about the % of engaged employees in those organizations that he researched over the course of 5 years and to him that number is a whooping 27% (He calls them the roosters!). Then there would be an alarming 59% of *not* engaged employees (What he calls tired dogs) to then develop even further into a more alarming % of the knowledge workforce: 14% of *actively* disengaged employees (He calls this bunch the foxes). But things were never like that from the beginning, so what happened? Where did things go wrong for that 73% of disengaged employees to take over the corporate world? And most importantly, what can we do to liberate every company from them?  That’s essentially what Isaac gets to develop towards the second part of the presentation; to him, it’s all down to liberating your company in three easy steps:  Intrinsic Equality: take the initiative, because you are competent and trustworthy enough to get the job done effectively. Personal Growth: build an environment where knowledge workers can learn to become better at what they do. Self-direction: build an environment for it where you trust your employees to do what they know best. Excel. Now, I am not going to spoil all the fun from his pitch while he gets to describe each and everyone of those simple steps towards liberating your company, instead, I would strongly encourage you all to have a look for yourself into the video clip, sit back, relax, and prepare yourself to be WOWed big time. Because I am sure you will! At this point in time, you would probably agree with me that we still have got a lot of ground to cover to realise that golden dream of Employee Engagement. At this point in time, you would probably also consider that employee engagement still is a myth, even today, and that we would have to do plenty of really hard work, from both sides, employees and employers alike!, to turn the tide upside down and start moving things forward slowly, but steadily. The good thing is that we are not starting from scratch. We already have got some great examples from businesses out there that are truly pointing us all in the right direction towards realising that dream of keeping their employees engaged, motivated, focused, recognised and appreciated, amongst several other things. And right now, at this very moment, one of my all time favourite leading examples is that one from Lenovo, that earlier on in the week were in the news, although not as big  as I thought they would!!, when they finally got rid of one of the biggest, most negative, demeaning and demotivating influences of ill gamification in today’s corporate world: bonuses for executives. That’s right, earlier on this week, Lenovo announced how the company’s CEO, Yang Yuanqing, spread the wealth of his $3 million bonus to 10,000 lower level employees as a token of gratitude for their hard work and engagement shown so far this year. Goodness! Talking about intrinsic (AND extrinsic!) equality, personal growth and self-direction! It probably cannot get better than that as far as employee engagement is concerned and as far as I know that would be, to me, the new standard under which I would consider true employee engagement for any business. Anything else would be, most probably, a waste of time, resources and energy, like it’s been over the last few decades, if you come to think and ponder about today’s % of disengaged knowledge workers in the current market.  I wonder which other companies would be going up next, showing us, and demonstrating it at the same time, what employee engagement is all about and how we need to move away from engaging employees to engaging networks and communities alike, so that instead of fighting against one another, like it is happening today, we eventually grow up into helping each other at becoming better at what we already do. From the individual to the collective, from hoarding and protecting your knowledge and position to caring, sharing, and demonstrating empathy and respect for those who have been working really hard on liberating whichever company through their own engaged employees. That’s the new standard for employee engagement. The fight worth while battling for. The one and only worth it. Forget about the rest. 

For a good few weeks I had on my pending to-do list that action item of watching, I was told, one of of the most inspiring and thought-provoking TED Talks in recent times that would certainly not leave you indifferent for a long while. Yes, I was advised that it was that good. And I must admit that, after having just finished going through it in its entirety, having noticed as well how it’s been all over the place in the social streams out there, I wasn’t disappointed at all, on the contrary. Mind-boggling would fall short by far in describing how good it is. I would even go one step further and state that the Hippie 2.0 movement is alive and kicking. And I am, for sure, very grateful about that! More than anything else because of a single key concept that permeates throughout the TED Talk and which I have been advocating for a long while as one of the biggest advantages of making use of social technologies, whether for work or for personal use: Openness. Indeed, I am talking about the recent TED Talk from Don Tapscott under the suggestive title "Four Principles for the Open World", which lasts for nearly 18 minutes, and which talks quite a bit around some of the major key themes from social networking for business that have become some of my favourite topics as of late in the realm of Social Business: Openness and Collaboration in new, more powerful ways.  Indeed, in that rather inspirational presentation Don brings up lots of wonderful insights and powerful messages around digital natives and digital immigrants, and our growing sense of no fear of technology which will certainly help inspire a good number of open interactions that perhaps in the recent past were not taking place. Now, I never bought personally into the whole argument behind digital natives and immigrants since I have always thought it was all about working styles and how you, as a business, could help accommodate accordingly, for those various different generations getting work done. Together. As a network, or as a community, interacting and collaborating with one another. But nevertheless his perspective is quite an interesting one, for sure! What’s really fascinating though about Don’s TED Talk is how, over the course of nearly 18 minutes, he gets to talk about 4 core principles from social networking for business that would resonate, quite strongly, not only within the business world, but also within each and everyone of our societies, within each and everyone of us as human beings, and this is essentially what makes this presentation just delightful, but equally inspiring.  Don’t worry, once again, I am not going to spoil the fun and share with you folks a summary of what Don talked about throughout that time. I would rather encourage you all though to go through it and watch it, but you probably will need to be ready to experience shivers going through up your spine, because I can surely guarantee you that you will have plenty of them! So without much further ado, here’s the embedded code of the Talk so you can start watching it right away:    Not too bad for a Friday afternoon, don’t you think? Actually, not too bad for whatever time in the week you go ahead and watch through it. Absolutely brilliant stuff, to say the least! Now, as you can see from his pitch he gets to talk about 4 different core principles that are influencing rather strongly, not only the business world, but also our societies for that matter. And if there is anything that I have enjoyed the most from watching the video clip is the fact that, right there, you probably have got some of the most compelling reasons as to why we have passed, a long time ago, the point of no-return with regards to social technologies and how they are impacting the world.  Thus I thought that to close off this blog post I would focus on quoting those 4 key principles and what I learned about them, as I watched Don go through his presentation. Basically, my own take as I feel you may be wondering what I think about each of those key principles, specially, in the context of Hippie 2.0, right? Now, the funny thing is that if you have been reading this blog for a while you would notice how this is not the first time that I have talked about each and everyone of those principles, so it would be interesting to see how Don’s pitch has changed my overall perception of those key themes. Let’s go! Let’s do it!  Here they are … The Four Princples for the Open World: Collaboration: Essentially, we are consciously evolving into a new business world, as well as a society, where there are no longer any boundaries in / throughout organizations, where the firewall (Even our very own personal one!) is soon going to become extinct and where hiding behind it is going to continue being frown upon as you would have something to hide, therefore not becoming trustworthy enough, which we all know of is not good for business. Talent is no longer inside of your organisation, but also outside, and, in fact, ALL OVER the place! So why neglect it or ignore it any longer when we are all starting to understand how the most powerful component of collaboration is that concept of co-creation? With your customers, clients, business partners, even with your own competitors. Remember? Social media, and social technologies for that matter, are all about social production where the main benefit is no longer on creating private value alone, but on creating a public one that will benefit everyone as part of that entire ecosystem. That’s why collaboration, specially, virtual collaboration through social networking tools is becoming so critical nowadays in a world that’s now more distributed and virtual than ever before. Still think your organisation could live by without breathing a collaborative corporate culture? Hummm, I don’t think so. Maybe 10 years ago that was possible, but definitely not today. And, most definitely, not tomorrow! Transparency: This is a big one. A huge one, actually. Indeed, as Don mentioned institutions and organisations are getting naked, whether they like it or not. It’s no longer about providing good value and good products, but about having core values. Values that the entire organisation can live by every single day. Values that, without them, you won’t be able to build trust. And we all know how critical trust is in today’s day and age where without it we can no longer get work done. Do you still work the closest with people who you do not trust much? … I doubt it. And rightly so! I truly loved a particular quote that Don mentioned on this part of his speech and which are true words to live by in the Era of Transparency: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and we need a lot of sunlight on this troubled world" (Somehow, it reminded me of wearing sunscreen, basically, be prepared before you go naked remembering who you are, what you do, what core business values you have and live them. Walk the talk…) Sharing: This is probably one of the toughest to comply with, embrace and live through principles that Don talked about. Specially, in the business world. He basically talked about giving up on your (business) assets, your intellectual property. Think beyond the personal private business benefit into the more general, public one. The social good. Indeed, the original definition for Social Business. Failure to do so will represent a massive problem and a huge challenge not just for that business, but also for the overall humanity. And his account of what’s happening with the music industry as one of the worst examples of not being open to sharing, along with the pharmaceutical industry, are just mind-blowing, not only because of the impact upon themselves, but because of the overall impact in our society, specially, in the latter case, where, if they would want to survive themselves, and all of us, for that matter, they would need to share their assets in the commons before it is too late, looking out for that social good, which in this case would relate to giving up those assets for the well being of humanity. Some pretty serious stuff that would unfold in 12 months, according to Don. 12 months and the clock is ticking …  Empowerment: And, finally, one of my favourite principles: Empowerment, which, in a certain way, would be pretty much related as well to Engagement, which has been one of my preferred topics to talk about lately, specially, after my last blog post on the topic. Don comments how both knowledge and intelligence are power, and how as they start to become more distributed thanks to the extensive use of social networking tools, (Yes, where "knowledge shared is power") it will bring up something that it still amazes me that we are in 2012 and we don’t see enough of it all over the place: Freedom. And in all senses of the word. Very powerful messages in here from him for sure on how networks and communities, the good old wirearchy we are all already pretty familiar with, will be driving the emergence of that freedom in everything that we do, collaborate on, share across and participate in. Essentially, help us redefine not only how we do business, how we get work done, but also how we live as a society. Yes, I know what’s going through your mind at the moment as you read through these words… Hippie 2.0 overload!! Oh, yes, I know! I love it, too! And about time, don’t you think? From there onwards, Don takes us all towards the end of an amazing presentation with a delightful and very beautiful trip down the memory lane of us, human beings, as a culture, as a civilization, and over the course of centuries by stating what openness meant for all of us in each of the various different stages, and which we may have forgotten already: The Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age, and what he calls the Age of Networked Intelligence. The latter being of vast promise. The new power of the Commons, the one for which we no longer can see the point of no return. The one from which we just can’t go back, nor get off the train. Far too immersed on it.  And this is the point when beauty and an unprecedented sense of wonderment got on stage, because right then Don talked about the whole concept of "There is Leadership, but not one leader" as he showed the absolutely stunning example of immense flocks of starlings, up in Scotland, preparing to roost at dusk, which is probably one of the most beautiful reminders of the true power of nature that we have got the privilege to witness and enjoy every single day that goes by:    Yes, indeed, there is leadership, but not one leader. Nowadays, more than ever, there is a strong, growing, real sense of interdependence, amongst all of us, whether doing work together, or whether we all are part of a single unique society, us, human beings, where we are also finally coming to terms with a key message that we just cannot ignore anymore in today’s financial econoclypse: "Business can’t succeed in a world that’s failing"… Think about the kids of today, i.e. your kids, and think where you would want them to be tomorrow. Couldn’t we create some kind of collective intelligence, that we share together, creating that global awareness and consciousness that would help build a much better, sustainable, generous, respectful, caring, transparent, collaborative, sharing and empowered world for them? Think of it, what will be the legacy we will leave them with that they will talk about in say 30 to 50 years from now? Today’s world, or tomorrow’s networked, interconnected, brilliant future?  Our choice to make. Not theirs. 

If you've owned a prosumer camera or a DSLR/ SLT,  you may have seen the histogram display on your camera. It may have even left you confused. One of the more ignored tools in your arsenal, the histogram is a great diagnostic for your image. Taken step further, it's also a pretty awesome guide to post process your image. In today's post I'll explain this really useful graph to you. Don't worry - you don't need to be a scientist to understand this. It's quite simple.So what's a histogram really?In simple terms the histogram displays the distribution of blacks, whites and middle greys in your picture. The key mnemonic to read a histogram is this 'dark to light, from left to right'. The left half of the histogram shows the distribution of shadows and the right half displays the distribution of highlights. The x axis of this graph starts from a pure black and goes on until  a pure white. Everything in between is a shade of grey. Not all histograms look like a bell curve as you see in the above picture, but what you should try and ensure is that  you don't have too much of pure whites or pure blacks in your image. Why is that? That's because the textures and play of light in real life ensures that situations in which you see a pure black or pure white are unusual. The situation when you have a lot of whites (also called 'highlights clipping') indicates that you may have over exposed your image. As a corollary, if you have too many blacks (shadow clipping) that may mean you've underexposed your image. Makes sense? There are situations when you'll have both shadow and highlight clipping. These are very tricky. Usually this happens in awful lighting situations where you perhaps need to underexpose to overcome the highlight clipping and use artificial lighting to bring out the detail in shadows. Unfortunately these situations are difficult to post process as well. This is one of the reasons it is a good idea to get the right exposure out of camera. Here's a video explaining the concept visually. Post processing - Creating a high key or low key photoOne of the great things about a histogram is that it tells you exactly what you need to do to give your image a professional pop. The easiest thing you can do is move the middle grey slide in Photoshop (any other tool will give you a similar interface) to either darken the shadows or lighten the highlights further. If you move your slider too far to the right, you'll get a low key image (eg: here) and of you move it far left, you get a high key image (eg: here).Post processing - Improving tonal range using LevelsOne of the most useful images you'll see on Photoshop is the Levels tool. Before you understand how to use it you need to understand histograms - which you already do to a great extent. The key to a good image is that it should ideally have a range of greys in the shadows and highlights with no pure whites or blacks but almost every other shade. So, the wider your histogram, the more contrast in your picture. Now you will also have a lot of contrast if you had a lot of highlights and shadow clipping, but this will mean that you'll get a very black and white image! So you need to avoid that one.In a lot of photographs you may be able to go with some amount of shadow clipping because extremely dark places usually will show up as pure blacks. In rare circumstances - and remember they are rare - you might be able to live with some highlights clipping too. But for the most part, the levels tool should be able to help you modify your histogram and shift the white point and black point inwards. By doing this, you're effectively spreading your original histogram over the entire tonal range from white to black, thereby increasing the contrast. Take a look at this video to see how you can create a nice, pleasing, contrasty image with the levels tool. It really helps add a professional pop to your image. And by the way, you should be able to use similar tools on any other post processing package.So, try this tool as the basic post processing on your images and also as an in camera diagnostic for your exposure. You'll notice that being able to read the histogram is a really useful skill. Hope you enjoyed today's blogpost. More to come in the next one.© Sumeet Moghe

You may have noticed how over the course of the last couple of weeks I haven’t been much active on the external social networking tools out there that I usually hang out at, such as Twitter, Google Plus or LinkedIn. There are a couple of reasons for that, but one in particular is the one that’s impacting me the most at the moment, since I’m still being affected by it and there is no easy solution to it. And the way things are looking up it seems that it’s going to be like that for a few more years to come. Personally, I am doing just fine. At least, for now. So those folks who may be wondering whether I’m ok, yes, I am. Thanks much for the recent concerns shown upon out there through various social channels. It’s very much appreciated. However, the trouble is that really close friends of mine are starting to suffer, in the first person, and pretty dramatically, the various different consequences from the financial econoclypse we have been experiencing over the last 4 years over here in Spain resulting, eventually, in yours truly not engaging in social networks as much as I used to as the focus has moved elsewhere altogether. Mind you, the following blog entry is not meant to be negative around the world of social computing and social networking for business (#socbiz), since both my enthusiasm and social evangelism efforts are still intact, just as much as it is an open, out loud reflection of what I have been seeing and noticing over the last few months on the state of social networks out there and how they are consistently detaching ourselves from reality. Our day to day reality. And that’s exactly why over the course of the last weeks I have been reflecting, once more, on what role all of these social technologies should be really playing on how I interact both online and offline. But let’s see first some of the reasons that have triggered, in my mind, the title of this article under "The Fallacy of Social Networking" and see how far off I am. Or I think I am. Like I said, this post is not meant to be negative nor indicative of my lack of enthusiasm around social networking; it’s more a wake-up call from reality which I guess I was very much due to go through at some point in time… And it all happened only last week. Traditional Hierarchies inside Social Networks - Not So Much an Oxymoron Anymore  Somehow I am worryingly starting to show not so much interest in seeing how everyone keeps proclaiming consistently how social networking tools are taking the business world by storm changing the way we work, as well as our societies in the way we live in, to then be confronted with realities like the ones expressed on this absolutely stunning interview with Manuel Castells or this other rather interesting and fascinating reflection from Vincenç Navarro on the real issues at stake with how the world is being currently run. Seriously, if you would want to find out who is rescuing whom from today’s financial turmoils, as an example, that article is an absolute must-read one. It won’t leave you indifferent either! Now, I do realise that both links I mentioned above are in Spanish, so you would probably have to rather have them translated or polish your Spanish skills, but I just couldn’t help thinking about Manuel’s reflections on what’s really happening in today’s world to explain why that financial econoclypse may well not be what we think it is. If you still think that social networking has got anything to do with it all, you would have to think about it, once again! It’s on another level altogether. On that interview, just to give you a glimpse of what it is all about, he gets to talk about power, about the real power. Not the authoritarian one, but the power of the mind, which gets organised by communication networks, our social networks, stating, quite clearly that, whoever controls communication, controls the mind, and therefore controls the power, which reminds me of the recent speech by the always thought provoking John Hagel at the Social Business Forum earlier on this year in Milan, on the challenge for all of us knowledge workers to fight that well known maxim of "Information is power" and the reluctance from those who have got the information to release that power, specially, in the management and executive layers all the way to the top. So we are starting to see how a good number of hierarchies in social networks are emerging where there are two different types of social interactions: knowledge workers interacting with one another and executives and top managers doing the same, but in a meaningful way just amongst themselves, clearly demonstrating how they are still clinging to their long time standing command-and-control mentality of not releasing that information, therefore, that power, because of fear they may get displaced along the way with the democratisation social networks have been enjoying all along. Talking about that much needed shift on Leadership, don’t you think? Manuel’s interview would also be a must-watch one if you would want to find out plenty more about the #15M or #Ocuppy movements and what they would mean for all of us in the long term, coming pretty close to a reflection that I shared in the recent blog post "Four Principles for the Open World by Don Tapscott" under this quote: "there is leadership, but not one leader". Truly fascinating learning how both physical and virtual social networks will be changing and shaping up our perceptions of the role of politics in our society as a result of Netizens 2.0 taking over the online conversations AND the offline actions. His account of the current political system, including the voting system, within Spain and the USA, is incredibly thought provoking on its own! And something that in most cases those folks very much pro-democracy would find shocking, if not too disturbing to watch altogether. To finish off with that brief summary of Manuel’s interview, and moving way beyond disturbing to describe what he talks about, would be his dissertation of the financial turmoil we are currently going through, what provoked it, how did we end up where we are today 4 years later and which affects, quite clearly, the ill-doings from the finance sector where somehow it looks like there hasn’t been much about both ethics and morale, never mind responsibility, even from the political parties and government(s) in place that are supposed to represent us at the same time, and whose main aim, apparently, according to Manuel, is just to keep their own jobs, so that they can continue doing their business due to their own shortage of skills, wit and talent to go into the private sector. WOW!!! I’m currently using lots of patience while I am writing down these thoughts to try to contain the rage, but I must confess it’s quite tough on its own, given what you will learn from his insights through the second part of the interview.   And this is where things will get very very interesting from there onwards, because he gets to talk about the role of the Internet on how it manages to provide us all with a window of opportunity to be in the know, to find out what’s really happening, to share our information and knowledge across with others, so that we can smarten up in building our very own opinions through massive critical thinking exercises, because we are no longer getting it through traditional mainstream news media thanks to the censorship from both governments and financial institutions… Does it sound all too familiar in other countries? This is probably as good as it gets when you put it in perspective of what a whole bunch of various different governmental entities have been doing over the course of the years to try to put a circle around the Internet and how we use it. Define it whichever way you would want to and you will be right on! Yes, I know what you are thinking … Once again, here is my Hippie 2.0 hat coming out once again hehe and I guess this time around I won’t be taming it down too well. Rather eye-opening that interview from Manual Castells on this aspect, for sure! Specially, how he describes in a very inspirational manner one of the activities that we seem to be very good at in the world of the Internet: build an Information Mosaic around us through critical thinking, i.e. checking various different news sources, our social networks, our tippers, etc. etc. so that we can form for ourselves much better, and more educated opinions altogether. All of that thanks to that fight of keeping the freedom of the Internet as that: our freedom. And, yes, there is hope at the end of the tunnel: rebuild democracy with people right at the centre of it!   With a Little Help of Friends Now, that reflection I have just shared above has helped me tremendously to see things in a little bit better perspective, specially, after what I have been witnessing in the last couple of years See? I even finished it up with a positive, moving forward, flavour that we are at the point of no return, past beyond the tipping point of how the Internet is defining who we are as a society, and what purpose, meaning and focus we bring on to the table with it. I guess that’s what blogging / writing does to you. And I am grateful. I am sure by now you are sensing what’s the second reason why I haven’t been much active in the social networking spaces out there in the last couple of weeks, right? More than anything else, because all along I have felt it’s just far too important to ignore it, nor neglect it and I am hoping folks out there who were expecting from me to live social as if nothing happened would understand why I took the decision I did and take some time off to prioritize where I wanted to place my efforts and energy. That second reason, indeed, is that the vast majority of the time that I used to dedicate to external social networks is now dedicated to help those local friends, my offline social networks, any which way I can to get them back on track with their personal specific circumstances, whether financial, family or whatever else related, and that means we have got to get a few things sorted out.  Now, things are looking up already, thank goodness!, and I would probably say that they are all back in good shape after a couple of rough months with the odd scare here and there, but I must confess that helping them out has been quite an eye-opening experience to help me redefine, at the same time, my overall presence on virtual social networks versus my physical / offline networks: instead of spending plenty of time reading through the typical mumbo jumbo me, me, me and how great I am with my social networking insights for business and whatever else that we are all exposed to, I have decided to ditch those loud speakers blasting out their own marketing messages who add very little into the mix and focus much deeper, instead, just on what I feel I can do with my ¢2: help others in need where I possibly can. Life is just too short to have to spend a large chunk of it listening to those social media experts and gurus, or whatever other fancy term that’s used nowadays, who just want to get into your wallet without asking for anything in return. And then, after they get it, they walk away for their next victim… It’s thanks to those interactions with my offline social networks when things were getting tougher and dire that one realises how it is now probably a good time to find that purpose, meaning and focus on social business networking for work or for personal use. And that’s just what I have done in the last couple of days. I have gone into my Big Three social networking sites, specially, Twitter and Google Plus, and have moved those gurus into groups and lists away from my main timeline, in an exercise to do some social networking hygiene, reduce the growing noise ratio and incorporate back into the mix the signals I would want to keep inspiring me to do what I do on a daily basis. And so far it’s been quite a refreshing exercise to witness much closer how absorbing it can get following up with what you know, over time, is not going to bring you much business value, or purpose altogether.  I am sure there will be plenty of folks out there who would realise I may have unfollowed them in either of those networks. It’s nothing personal. I’m hoping that I will be able to bring you back into my social timelines some time soon, but for now I am sensing that the value I used to get from your social insights is no longer as worth as I thought it would be today. So it’s time for me to put them all in quarantine for a little bit, i.e. Twitter Lists and specific Google Plus Circles, to re-evaluate whether I would want to keep up with the interactions or, instead, move on. Feel free to do the same with yours truly. Like I said, it’s nothing personal and I totally understand if you no longer feel I am providing you the business value in our interactions that we once used to have. Perhaps that’s also part of this critical thinking exercise from yours truly to re-evaluate for myself how I keep using these social networking tools to participate in conversations, adding my ¢2 and whatever else. Social just for the sake of social is now dead. Social for the sake of just showing you are out there and want to be noticed is also dead. At least, for me. I had a great time, but it’s time now for me to move on…  Probably after the summer I will follow-up with another blog entry detailing what the experience has been so far, but one thing for sure that I can tell you right now, is how liberating it’s been to move away from that noise, along with the technology hiccups of catching with that volume of interactions and instead focus on those areas where I feel I can truly help with my knowledge, expertise, know-how, and whatever else. In the offline social networking world, just as much as the online one.  Social Networking Sites Need to Grow Up into the 21st Century. Thank you very much Finally, one last reflection to go through… Thanks for sticking around this far. It’s greatly appreciated! Now, I have just mentioned how incredibly tiring it was trying to catch up with the technical issues, hiccups and additional hurdles of keeping up with various social networking sites, and their own technical specifications, where the simple sheer volume of interactions details how ugly things are turning around at the moment, provoking an effect I’m not sure I would want to put up much with anymore: spend the whole day in social networks, just because they feel we have got all of the time of the world to spend it inside each and everyone of them! No, thanks! That doesn’t quite work like that, I am afraid. I am not sure what you would think but I am beginning to wonder whether Social networking sites are starting to behave in exactly pretty much the same fashion that Instant Messaging clients and IM protocols behaved like over 10 years ago and from which we are still recovering today: IM protocols still don’t talk to each other, fragmenting the networks, the interactions, the conversations. It looks like social networking sites don’t do that either, for that matter, and they are not going to get started now if we look closer into what we are seeing with Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or even Google Plus themselves. Walled gardens are the new black, apparently. And the funny part is that for those folks who may want to spend their time whole day long hopping from walled garden to walled garden it may well be a good, fun activity. However, I am not sure I would want to walk away that thin line of investing far too much effort, energy, and time in a social networking site that could disappear tomorrow or be acquired, to then be terminated the day after, like we keep seeing in recent times… So much for interoperability of federated, open standard social networks, eh? Where did we go wrong? What happened to us? Do we need to show and demonstrate those external social networking sites, once and for all!, what’s been the number #1 factor of their own success? That is, their end-user base making the most of the social technologies, whether developers or early adopters or mainstream end-users to get the job done? Because if that’s the case, I’m more than ready to remind each and everyone of them to remember what’s the single one must-have requirement for those social networking sites to not only flourish, but also to persist over the course of time: end-users sharing their data, their time and their effort for free (Remember we all are the product) over an extended period of time… Thank goodness, we still have got blogging. Perhaps the purest form of federated social networking out there on the Social Web today that we still have got available to each and everyone of us. A social software tool that’s matured quite nicely over the course of the last 18 years and that I am really excited to see it coming back (Despite what some studies have shown recently) into the Social Web scene and rather strong as you can see from a whole bunch of rather prolific bloggers sharing their insights as to how we are coming back to basics with it all.  Perhaps it’s the time for us to show and demonstrate all of those social networking sites out there that there is a life outside of their world and immediate reach of influence. Perhaps it’s now a good time to confirm with each and everyone of them whether we could live without them for an extended period of time, or not, just resorting to blogging to share your thoughts and insights out there with an audience eager to keep learning, just as much as we all are. After all, what are you going to do when all of those social networking sites that you spend several hours per day disappear into thin air, where are you going to go to then? Yes, where are you going to go the day when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Slideshare, Tumblr, etc. etc. are all gone, because you know that’s going to happen at some point in time, right? Here’s the only one certainty that I have grown to learn and treasure over the course of time and which has caught me big time in the last couple of weeks: your own personal / business blog will always be there, no matter what.  After all, your own blog will always remain your personal voice, your own opinion, your critical thinking, your brain, your personal and inner reflection time, unbiased; in short, your own personal knowledge sharing and learning system or whatever else out there on the Social Web that you would want it to be in the first place, like it has over the last 18 years and counting … And, whether they like it or not, they can never take that away from you. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

Yesterday Anvitha, a young schoolgirl and an avid birdwatcher reached out for help to rescue a black kite from what could have been a slow and painful death. I'll let you take a look at the two messages - one with her call for help and one with how she actually managed to gather people and eventually rescue the bird. First messageHi, just now while coming from school I saw a black Kite that was caught by a thread in a tree. What can be done to help it? The tree is quite high to climb and to cut the thread. Is there something I can do as my house is quite close to my school?Second messageI went to that area where I saw the bird. The bird was still struggling. I asked help from my aunt who was near by and one of my teacher. We thought of climbing the tree and cutting the thread but the tree was too thin and long to climb. We took a stick to remove the string but the stick was short. Seeing us trying to help the bird many neighbors came and one of them brought a long stick and thread. We joined the 2 sticks. One of the bike riders seeing us stopped by and helped us. He was tall and so he stood on a long chair and tried removing the thread. We were holding a blanket to catch the bird if it falls down. The thread was cut and the bird fell on the ground. It hopped a few times and then flew away. At first it flew in the ground level and then was able to fly high. It was a memorable movement for me. I was happy to see the over whelming response from the neighbors. Many actually saw it but thought it was dead. After carefully seeing those innocent eyes blinking they came helping :). One of the things what I saw was - at first when i saw the kite while coming home, many black kites were trying to push the bird. Did they do that to help the bird? Children are capable of wonderful things. Uncorrupted by our desire to compete, win, think way too far into the future - children are capable of demonstrating maturity, given half a chance. Anvitha herself is a passionate nature lover. Her knowledge of birds can put an adult like me to shame. Did this happen as a consequence of her school curriculum? I doubt it. Did it happen due to the right context and her own passion - I suspect so. Education needs to give children credit for the fact that they can choose their own paths. So should schools be more about creating context than imparting knowledge? Is knowledge really scarce in this world? If so, then how does Anvitha know so much about birds? Can you really bind down a kid's human ability to create, think, dream, be sensitive to curriculum alone? What role do parents play? These are important questions.Kids don't surprise us - we just haven't given them a chance"Learning between grown ups and kids should be reciprocal. The reality, unfortunately, is a little different, and it has a lot to do with trust, or a lack of it." - Adora SvitakWe often term kids as doing something 'beyond their years'. I believe that to be a truly discriminatory way of thinking. Yes, kids do need guidance. Yes they do need exposure and context setting. From that point on though, it's really about letting passion and the human desire to learn and create to set in. I love the fact that young Tom Suarez (above) got the opportunity to set up an App club in his school. That even if programming iOS apps wasn't part of curriculum his parents and school gave him the opportunity to pursue his passion. At 12 years old, he's a developer that's looking to expand his skills to program on both the iOS and Android platform. We have adults here who'd die for that opportunity. I'd really love for schools to give children this ability to try, fail, learn, succeed than to confine them to the realms of curriculum. For what it's worth, we adults have perhaps more to learn from them than we give them credit for.© Sumeet Moghe

It looks like the blog post I put together on "The Fallacy of Social Networking" seems to have hit a chord with a large number of folks out there and while I am still catching up with plenty of the conversations that have sparked as a result of it, including some pretty compelling commentary on the article itself (Thanks much everyone for those lovely comments! I will be getting down to them shortly, too!), I thought there was one in particular that pretty much caught the overall sentiment of the blog entry itself that I thought was worth while bringing it up again over here to try to describe what John Hagel himself states pretty accurately under his famous quote "We all live on the edge […] specially, under plenty of mounting pressure", as we have been experiencing over the last 4 years and counting: "So now the fight is really on!". That quote is coming from the blog comment of my good friend Jemima Gibbons that she left yesterday and that I thought would be pretty much descriptive of where we are with regards to Social Business and the real impact it’s had within the corporate world over the course of the last couple of years. To quote her:  "A friend recently reminded me of the tendency of organisations to "co-opt and neutralise" any kind of dissent - that’s exactly what’s happening with social media now - big business is appropriating it and trying to quash it. Of course it is! So now the fight is really on" Goodness! And that’s only the beginning, because just recently you may have noticed how those kinds of awkward situations are on the rise and perhaps far too often laying out a landscape that I am not too sure we would want to dive into too much, although if you have got some additional ones you would want to add further along let us know, please, in the comments. We would very much appreciate it. My latest favourite example though, which has happened to be all over the place at this stage, on mainstream news media, TV, radio, social networks, blog articles, etc. etc. is the one from Guy Adams which ended up eventually on what I feel is the quote of the year so far with regards to the real power of social networks, beyond just the business world and well into our society as a whole for that matter:  "As a journalist, you know you are doing your job properly when you manage to upset rich, powerful and entitled people who are used to getting their own way. And you know you’ve really got under their skin when they pursue censorship, the avenue of last resort since time immemorial" That quote on its own clearly reminds me as well of Manuel Castells’ interview that I shared over here, where he was talking about censorship happening quite extensively within major mainstream news media (Mainly paid by governments and financial institutions) and how only decent journalists, as individuals, would be capable of standing up and fight out for what they know is the right thing: freedom. As Guy himself nicely quotes: "The internet era is meant to be different". Yes, indeed, it is different. Much different. And while reading through a bunch of different resources reflecting on the implications (That piece from Jeff Jarvis alone is absolutely stunning and worth while reading through it on its entirety!), while I am still pondering on the day before yesterday’s article on the topic of that fallacy of social networking, I just couldn’t help thinking of the absolutely inspirational speech from John Hagel back at the Social Business Forum, in Milan, which would fit in quite nicely as an additional follow-up to what we are currently witnessing and that Jemima described beautifully on her commentary. Here’s John’s full dissertation if you would want to start watching through it right away:  From Stress to Success - Pragmatic pathways for Social Business - John Hagel from SocialBizForum on Vimeo. The video recording lasts for about 22 minutes, and it would be totally worth it your time going through it, but if you would want to hold it, allow me to share with you what I learned myself from having listened to him live when he delivered that mind-boggling keynote and what other thoughts I have been building over the course of the latest happenings out there on the Social Web. It will help provide lots of background on where we are, specially, in a business context, and describe, hopefully, where we are heading altogether. So here it goes… John starts his presentation by sharing a bit of background about where the business world is at the moment, suffering from that ruthless mounting pressure that is compounded by social technologies in full force working with practices, technologies and institutions built from previous period(s) and how the latter are facing plenty of new challenges in today’s more than ever complex, networked and interconnected world. [Ohhh, excuse me for a minute, that's all what it would take me... Please do allow me to go for a little deviation on this reflection and share with you this brilliant one minute long insightful commentary from Carmen Medina on the changing role of leadership and how it is affected by social technologies, amongst other different elements, specially, in the area of decision making]:    Ok, back on track! Like I was saying, John described pretty nicely all of those various different pressures that business have been exposed to over the course of the last 3 to 5 years. And he also mentioned how the use of these new technologies will help address some of those challenges, although he admits there are still a number of obstacles, stating how those who overcome them will seize huge opportunities. And eventually succeed as Socially Integrated Enterprises. However, these social technologies can’t just be simply inserted in today’s organizations. To implement them we need to commit into full frontal organizational change, not only within the business world, but also in our societies, our governments, our education systems. Our selves. That’s how deeply rooted it needs to go before we can start ripping off some of the various different benefits of shaping up organisations to survive through the 21st century and beyond. There is an interesting point that he makes though, and that’s just the fact that we need to understand and fully embrace how the key to it all is that most of these changes will fail, only a third will succeed, and that is because of the implementation of these social technologies as a rational process. However, John claims, and rightly so!, if I may add, that change is a political process, not a rational one. It involves enemies, whose main interests are deeply challenged by change and threatened by change itself at the same time. Along that way as well, there are some champions for change, who would need to be strengthened as well or they will fail altogether, because the enemies of change hold the power and that’s ultimately the challenge of any large scale organisational change. WOW!! Too many challenges and obstacles right there!! Truly fascinating! And a tad scary, too, don’t you think? However, it gets better, because over the course of his presentation John gets to share as well the key to make it all work and that is all about how do we strengthen the champions and neutralize the enemies. We need to start thinking along those terms, if we would want to succeed. "Information is power", as I quoted in the day before yesterday’s article as well. Institutions are designed to provide some participants with some unique information and that gives them their power. However, here comes the disruption. What do these social technologies do? What key role do they play in the whole power, political, bullying dynamic within organizations? Well, they amplify flows of knowledge and information, inside an organisation, but across organisations, too! They involve an ecosystem of institutions of participation in these flows of knowledge, like I have blogged about a couple of weeks back, as the main core engine for how business gets done nowadays.  It keeps getting better, because, according to John, organisations themselves know how their positions of power and influence are now being undermined. So how do we confront that power? What do we do to achieve the change we have been envisioning all along? He talks as well, as part of the mix, about the power of social business and the role of evangelists (those champions) along with the power of social technologies and the use they make of them for their day to day workflows. Evangelists have got a natural temptation, apparently, one that I didn’t know of before listening live to John, so it was a new learning experience for me as well: they put a lot of money, invest a lot of money, knowing it will take time, but everything will change eventually; however, we need to invest on it now to make all of this information readily available out there. That’s where Community, Relationships, Creative Conversations are coming back, like they used to by the late 90s and early 2000s and, once again, we are, essentially, putting the enemies of change on notice; we are telling them what’s coming in terms at one level they are not going to understand, because business is business after all. Community is what you still do after work… And I am sure that if you are an online community facilitator at this stage you would be nodding your head in violent agreement feeling how that description is scarily and soaringly rather accurate altogether. Indeed! And that’s where the passive resistance comes along, with plenty of plotting around all over. At a time of mounting pressure, John adds, that passive resistance is even more furious, so that organisations and those enemies can remain within their comfort zone of what we do today, and therefore refuse the urge to change. We see fragile pockets of success, but often, the potential of impact is much reduced because of such resistance. And that’s why we may be perceiving today, right as we speak, how we are not as successful as we could have been from day one. I guess you can never get enough of it, right? The more, the better.  Well, this is where it does get even more interesting from Johns presentation, because from there onwards, towards the end of his dissertation, he comes to describe a couple of rather pragmatic pathways to avoid direct confrontation with those who are reluctant to change:  Focus on Metrics That Matter: That is, focus on the operating metrics, the essential KPIs of each and every business. Address the pain points in whatever the business operations area and inject whatever social software component(s) to try to address and fix that pain point. Don’t focus on figuring out the Return On Investment (The good old known ROI) of Social Media and the overall use of those social technologies, because that’s pretty much a distraction imposed by those resisting the change, so that they can win plenty more time while everyone else tries to figure out what we just simply don’t need to. There is a great chance that, eventually, focusing on those core operating metrics there would need to be very little investment in most cases, since it just tries to address a single pain point or two, so there won’t be any leap time. There will be, however, a good measure of progress by tracking how business operations are improving overall, demonstrating tangible performance improvement(s). Yes, John is spot on with regards to this one, since the enemies of change themselves are going to have a tougher time to object since you will be demonstrating how social technologies can affect key business operations that will impact them altogether right where it benefits the most: business growth. Even if you are an skeptic. Starting on the edge: The good old known mix of pull vs. push and how you could turn mounting pressure on improving overall business performance into something positive through social networking tools, community, relationships, creative conversations, etc. etc., pretty much like you can do with judo when you get to maximize your overall performance based on the strength of your opponent by using their force to your advantage as you swing along. Something that I can relate to pretty well, by the way, if I come to think about "Thinking Outside the Inbox", back in the day, to then living "A World Without Email" and, finally, in 2011 / 2012 landing in "Outside the Inbox - The Documentary". Indeed, what are the chances … Not too bad, eh? I know! Just brilliant, altogether! That’s pretty much an overview of some of the major key points you will be able to immerse yourself in by watching John’s 22 minute long worth while watching presentation. Perhaps that’s essentially what we would also need to do and embark on: re-find that purpose, that meaning, that focus on what Social Business can do to help accelerate better business outcomes and truly delight customers by not focusing on the low hanging fruit alone or whatever other silly battles, but eventually figure out a way to help us seize that "opportunity of minimizing the power of the enemy and maximizing the power of the champions", i.e. the evangelists. I didn’t know it back then when I put together that rather controversial blog post under the provocative heading "Dear Social Business Evangelist - Where Art Thou?", but I guess that’s the exact role I would be looking forward to seeing Social Business Evangelists embarking on from here onwards… "So now the fight is really on!"

It wasn’t going as I’d planned it. Sahana had dropped out of the trip at pretty much the last moment. This meant that we’d have just four people in our group to Nameri and Kaziranga as against the planned five. On the face of it, this didn’t seem much of an issue, except it hiked up the costs that we’d divided across five people. I like being meticulous in the way I plan, so this was a bit of a hiccup. As it turns out, some hiccups are for good reason.Onward to AssamSo on 21st Feb - a day I’d been waiting for months, we set out on our journey. Raji picked me and Chirdeep up, we reached the airport well in time, met Sudhir over breakfast, got into our flight and then made an uneventful trip several hundred miles away to Guwahati. Our first stop was going to be Nameri Tiger Reserve - a quiet forest tucked away not very far from the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. Nameri is known to be a birdwatcher’s paradise and we’d planned to stay at the forest department’s Kanyaka Lodge. While the roads from Guwahati to Balipara were OK, the route from that point on was nothing but an absolute nightmare. We’d made quite a few stops on the way - a few times for lesser adjutant storks, and once for some tea at the NH52 Dhaba. So, after a five hour bone rattling drive, we made our way into the lodge and were able to stretch ourselves.Rolling into NameriNameri is not short of accommodation options despite the limited footfall it receives. Nameri Eco Camp is the most popular property in the neighbourhood and is run by the Mahseer Conservation Society in the region. I haven’t heard very good things about the Jia Bhorali resort (Email: jiabhoraliwild@yahoo.in / joyda49@yahoo.in Mobile: 9435101614 / 9859262831), but I can’t believe it’ll be absolutely awful. We however couldn’t get accommodation in the Eco Camp, so we decided to go with the Kanyaka Forest Lodge which at Rs 800/- a night per room seemed like an absolute steal. Located right next to the 134 Eastern Planters unit which is part of the Indian Army’s Eco Task Force, the property is a good, no-frills wildlife enthusiast’s accommodation. Mr Sarat Sarma who runs the lodge on behalf of the forest department is a funny man who has limited knowledge about birds, but more than makes up for it with his enthusiasm. That first night, we slept really well - it’s funny to think how just sitting through a long flight and a long drive can tire you out.Exploring the WildernessThe next morning we were up early. The plan was to go rafting down the Jia Bhorali river. If you stay at the Kanyaka lodge, be sure to speak to Mr Sarma and have the boatmen either stay over at the lodge or come really early in the morning. The rafting point is about 10 kms away at a point called the 13th mile and an early start at 0630 AM gives you a good chance to spot birds. On that first day we were late, but the Jia Bhorali didn’t let us down. Ibisbill, Mallard, Ruddy Shelducks, Black Stork, Black Necked Stork, Pratincole… we found birds faster than we could call out their names. A part of me felt we were on a birding roller coaster. Be mindful though that rafting down the rapids is not an easy way to take photographs and while you’ll spot many birds on the way downstream, you’re quite likely to come back with no pictures.Post the rafting trip and a pit stop for breakfast at the Potasali camp we set out on a forest trek with Meenaram Gogoi. At Nameri Tiger Reserve, birdwatchers need a permit to explore the trekking routes along its peripheries. You’re usually accompanied by an armed guard just in case you run into an aggressive elephant or bison. Now, it pays to have a guard who is a birdwatcher and knows the forest well. Meenaram Gogoi is one such man. From Kaziranga, he’s what you’ll call a born wildlifer. As the birds whizzed past on the canopy, he would operate without binoculars and help us identify exotic species that we hadn’t ever seen before. A little pied flycatcher flew by, as did a blue throated barbet. A streaked spiderhunter perched itself in an unusually high spot. As we went ahead redstarts and bulbuls dotted our path. A crested serpent eagle played hide and seek while a buzzard and a booted eagle soared high above us. You don’t expect to see this level of activity at 11am, but Nameri was truly a different kettle of fish.As we trudged ahead and reached the Oubari camp, Meenaram started to get more alert. He had his mind on a more prized sighting - the white winged duck. You wouldn’t think of a duck being difficult to find, but these guys are shy and super elusive. They choose small ponds in the middle of the forest as their habitat and come noon, they go up on the trees and rest unless disturbed. We tiptoed to a haunt that Meenaram knew of. "Don’t talk, when I point out a location, look there without saying anything." And that’s exactly what we did. As we approached the pond though, we startled an otter. The otter lunged into the water and off flew some of the most beautiful ducks I’ve ever seen. We’d seen the white winged duck, but had no chance of getting a photograph. Damn!Over the next two days we spotted over a 100 bird species and trekked through some of the most beautiful woodlands you would have seen. Mr Sarma played eager host, Meenaram the astute guide and Jaykumar the caretaker was a wonderful cook who rustled up some simple, yet tasty food. If you’re a birdwatcher, then there’s nothing quite like birding in these evergreen forests. As we went down the Jia Bhorali for our last trip almost all of us felt that Nameri needs a lot more time than we had planned for it. Had we stayed longer and not had a hard stop to the trip, we could have come back with some pretty decent photographs. We didn’t, so I’m sure I’ll return there at some point to photograph the avifauna of the region. Until then, I’ll live with memories.Travel TipsHere are a few points that’ll help you plan your trip to Nameri:To get to Nameri, you can hire a taxi at Guwahati airport for about 3600 INR.To book Kanyaka Lodge, call Mr Sarat Sarma (the forester in charge) at +919435381990. He doesn’t operate by email but will mark out your name in his diary.The ensuite rooms are 800 INR apiece, though for hot water you’ll need to share one of the common bathrooms. You can also opt for a deluxe room with a TV and that costs 1000 INR each night.Food is usually simple and consists of local vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Jayakumar, the cook is quite obliging with requests and is usually willing to do what it takes to please you.Rafting and trekking require separate permits and cost 280 INR and 320 INR respectively. Mr Sarma can help facilitate this.The boatmen’s charge for the rafting trip is usually the bigger amount - 3240 INR for the trip. Each boat can accommodate upto 4 people. So in hindsight it wasn’t too bad that Sahana couldn’t make it. It helped all of us be together.You’ll also need to hire a vehicle to carry your raft to the 13th mile and to pick you up from the end of the trip. This usually costs 1000 INR.Apart from birding, there’s also the pygmy hog breeding center to help in the conservation of this endangered wild pig. Well worth a visit and I also saw some pretty interesting butterflies in the area.I hope you visit Nameri soon - it was leg 1 of what’s been my most productive birding trip by far. Our next stop was Kaziranga - more about that in my next post. By the way, for this post and for this trip in general I tried using my iPhone as an alternate camera. I was quite pleased with the results in several cases. I'd love to know what you thought. So please, please, please - do share your feedback. I'm guessing you'll be able to make out the ones I shot with the phone, won't you?© Sumeet Moghe

Over the course of the last few weeks and months you may have noticed how there seems to be a growing trend of concern with regards to where the world of social networking and the Social Web, in general, is heading and how the original premise of wanting to change the world for the better seems to have now been forgotten, or neglected, by almost everyone, specially, those very same social networking sites (And I know I am using that term rather loosely nowadays) that once claimed to be changing the world according to those terms and make it a better place for all of us. But in reality what we are seeing is how platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, etc. etc. are showing what they were really after in the first place from day one: our own personal data for free to then make business, their business, with it at our very own expense without asking, nor giving, anything in return.  Yes, indeed, the good old mantra of "If a service is free, you are the product". Well, now more than ever, we are seeing that taking place and on a far too frequent basis helping diminish our own perception of how wonderful social networking tools for business can well be. And if you look into recent examples of wrong-doings by Facebook, Twitter or even LinkedIn that we have seen all over the place we may be starting to think that we are all in big trouble. Plenty of folks have been talking about the consumerisation of IT and the corporate world for that matter, and yet what we are seeing, more and more often, is the industrialisation of what we once knew as social networking (sites). Now, this on its own would be rather problematic, specially, in the context of Social Computing and Social Business, and even more so if the focus would have been, all along, on technology itself, because, indeed, I would tend to agree that we would all be doomed and big time seeing how those platforms are starting to show their real intentions as to what they would want to do with our data.  Yet, social networking has never, ever, been about the technology, nor the social tools themselves. All along, and from the very beginning, over 18 years ago, they have been just that, enablers, allowing us to do the job, but never meant to be the end-goal  or the end-result. Their main advantage being that they have made our jobs a lot easier by empowering us into working smarter, but not necessarily harder. But again, they are enablers, not what our business goals should be. So, what’s social networking been all about then, you may be wondering, right? Well, it’s been, all along, about culture, corporate culture, about organizational change, about change management (i.e. How do you manage change in today’s more complex than ever business world), about all of those soft competency skills and abilities to facilitate a much more open, public, transparent and agile business, where hierarchies themselves no longer rule alone, but initially merged and blended with wirearchy, and all in all with the main aim of improving overall business performance, and sustainable growth by delighting your customers.  Thus Social Business has never been about technology, i.e. all of these social tools we have been making use of over the course of the years, but about delighting your customers by providing them with excellent products and a superior customer experience. And if there is anything to add about that is that we still have got plenty of ground to cover. We are only getting started, but it’s also true that we should not lose the focus and the purpose of why we have started this journey to become successful social businesses. And this is where I just couldn’t help thinking about the Social Business Forum event that I attended in Milan, in early June, where I had the great pleasure of seeing live (And talked briefly, too!) Steve Denning giving one of the most inspiring keynotes from the entire conference event, and perhaps the whole year so far under a rather interesting and thought provoking title: "Transforming the Workplace with Radical Management": Transforming the workplace with radical management - Steve Denning from SocialBizForum on Vimeo. On that 23 minute long presentation (See the video recording above) Steve shared with us lots of very insightful thoughts and ideas as to what makes companies successful and not so successful nowadays. The main key differentiator, apparently, and I couldn’t have agreed more with him, is whether businesses are prepared to delight their customers or not. If they are, they will succeed, if they aren’t, they would be struggling. In both cases he shared a good number of firms that have walked either way, and it surely was interesting to see as well how he sees the world of Social impacting that vision of improving customer experiences as perhaps one of the most powerful methods.  Yet, he also talked about how fragile Social is, specially, from the perspective of what we have got today, in terms of both technology and corporate culture issues that seem to stop us from achieving that goal of going the extra mile for our customers. Mainly because of two of the three basic modes of human interaction that permeate throughout the corporate world. To name Authority and Money. The third one is Social and as you can imagine, and according to Steve, I couldn’t have agreed more with him, indeed, Social is allergic to both of them in equal terms.  And this is where it gets really fascinating, because he continues to postulate something that I also read a little while ago on his highly recommended book on "The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace of the 21st Century", as well as the good number of conversations that we both carried out online a while ago on the topic of Leadership for WE-Magazine and that folks can access over here, thanks to the wonderful Ulrike Reinhard: that 20th century management has always been based on both money and authority, whereas 21st century management would embrace more the model of Social and Social Flows. To the point where he gets to describe two completely different ecosystems that would go as follows:   And, of course, the one on Radical Management:   His description of both types of management, specially, the latter one on Radical Management is priceless, more than anything, because through a good number of examples and a thorough description of traits and corporate values he gets to describe, and quite nicely, too!, what a Social Business would be like moving beyond that particular focus on technology alone and tackle the key issues to become such a successful social enterprise. To name:  New Goal: Delight your customer(s) where you need to ensure you provide a new role for managers, one that we have talked about over here a couple of times already, by the way, that is, Servant Leaders, along with new coordination mechanisms, a crucial and rather critical shift from value to values and, of course, a new way to communicate, and collaborate altogether. New Manager Role: From controller to enabler, specially, from the perspective of being capable of acting as a servant leader, enabling that opportunity of creating self-organising teams instead of continuing to live through that command-and-control micro-management mentality.  Coordination: From bureaucracy to dynamic linking, where, as I manager, you understand and fully embrace that you are part of the flow, even the information and knowledge flows, no longer protecting and hoarding the existence of silos of information, but also with one single unique goal: delight your customer.  From value to values: Radical Transparency, where you, as a manager, make the successful transition from preoccupying yourself with efficiency and cutting costs into inspiring human values that build trust, specially, transparency, because that’s what’s going to be at the heart of the matter when interacting directly with your employees, as well as with your customers and business partners.  Interactive Communication: Conversation, where you eventually come to terms with the fact that you are no longer in control of the message, nor the corporate brand, not your employees ability to communicate and share their knowledge. Where you transition from a top-down driven set of interactions to what human beings are really good at: conversations.  All in all resulting on a very similar formula that we have seen already in the past, but that we were not executing all of the various different elements all at once as one of his final slides suggests brilliantly and rather accurately, too!:  Thus, as you can see from his rather inspiring presentation, there is a lot of work that still needs to get done with regards to help provoke that transformation into becoming successful social businesses; and we may have well noticed how some of the social networking tools available out there may have gone ashtray on their ways and have started to show us what they were really going after, disappointingly, in the first place. Yet, our mission and aim should be higher. We cannot afford losing track, focus, meaning and purpose from our core initial mission: embarking on that journey to become Socially Integrated Enterprises. And for that, as Steve himself mentioned during his keynote we need to "be the strategy" (not support the strategy), we need to "master leadership storytelling" (As I have mentioned as well over here not so long ago with "Once Upon a Time … the Power of Storytelling for Business"), we need to educate our bosses (This is, certainly, going to be toughest one ever! But, hey, who doesn’t like having a good challenge ahead that will take months, if not years, to master and resolve?), we need to join with others, thinking that we cannot longer do it alone, so building strong personal business relationships and partnerships with other change agents and social business evangelists is going to be critical, to then, eventually, do what I think is the main reason why we have all embarked on this fascinating journey to shift and change the workplace of the future to face a new reality: our reality. That one where we "take charge of our future".  And that, folks, is why the opportunity for Social Business is still intact and why I feel that not only are we just getting started, but that we have got a lot still to accomplish that wouldn’t have much to do with social technologies, but with changing the way we do business, because as Steve quoted another Steve wonderfully:  "Your time is limited: don’t waste it living someone else’s life" - Steve Jobs Amen!!

I have to tell you - I haven't been doing much reading in the last 6 months or so. Tell me, with a 12 hour work day and birding to do in free time and a life to lead on top of that, where's the time for this? Anyways, I'm going to learn from an author today. John Maeda the author of Redesigning Leadership is keynoting the conference this morning. I'm curious to know what the talks going to be all about - very exciting stuff since I'm always kicked about learning and I'd love to be an effective leader. Heidi says John can speak to us as a colleague but also someone who can bring views from a different sphere. Currently he's the president of the Rhode Island School of Design. And so the keynote begins! John was mersmerised by Heidi's intro because it was about us and not about him and that's important as a leader. John is very interested in the idea of how to lead - he sees it as a practice. It began from his curiosity - eg his discovery of the lingo of financial terms. He did an MBA online to decode that lingo. He was a professor by day and a student by night. Leadership comes through living it and it's quite uncomfortable. Leadership has four stages/ aspects:Start from foundationsCraft the teamSense ActivelyFail productivesWe're living a lot longer than we did 30 years ago. So a four year college education or the two years masters add-on doesn't cut it for our evolution in this world. So you need to keep learning.Build the foundationsYou can't be afraid to get your hands dirty. MIT was a very clean place for John - RISD is a very dirty place that way. People want to understand and play around - a very elegant thing in John's view. John just got super-promoted and was at the top job of the school very quickly so he didn't really know how to do his job. So he bought a lot of books and he's been learning all the time. He's gotten to learn about art and design at the very core. Take a look at who the Alumni is. In the first year at RISD, people are supposed to unlearn what they know. For eg: they know how to draw, but the first foundational course is to break it down into drawing simple shapes such as black and white polygons. It helps all the artists understand their craft better by coming down to the foundations. Maeda is talking about knowledge starting from direction moving to concepts but then experience going to change concepts and affecting direction. So while the first direction is about mastery, the second is about originality. This creates what the human race is all about - innovating and improving all the time.Craft the teamFiguring out the team thing is quite a strange task. Maeda refers to the American basketball team which had Michael Jordan and the first two times the American team dominated, but then they couldn't get gold. What was wrong? You look at some oriental buildings in Japan, made of wood and these last several hundred years! In modern construction things don't last even a decade. The secret is in the materials they use by selecting the right wood from the mountains. In your team, the materials are the people. There's no I in TEAM. There's a lot of I in INDIVIDUAL. There's a WE in WELCOME. John is talking about someone at the omelette station at the breakfast buffet and that server made him feel welcome with his omelette! That kind of power is human power - doesn't come from a dialog box or hashtag. It was because someone believed hospitality and wanted to live that value.He brings up Marshall Ganz's book about the Power of WE. The book talks of a spiral emanating outwards - every leader leads about stories that lead outwards. It's not about autopilot; it's about engaging. Marshall's book calls leadership a practice. It's a practice that starts with Self - identifying yourself. Then there's the story of US - the connections in the group. And lastly there's the story of NOW, where the SELF meets the US and there's a task to complete. Every leaders story fits this very simple pattern. The only time you need leaders is in times of uncertainty. Story is a critical component in this - they can't hear you if they can't feel it. Sense ActivelyArtists are always doing a wrong thing at the right time! He talks about people wanting to fly kites - what good is that? Well a good thing there is to see and feel the wind. Also it's a good way to experience what it's like from the wind's perspective to see the person flying the kite or the kite itself? If you look at growth in the last 20 years. Median family income is increasing at a linear pace, but cost of medical care and education has increased exponentially. So the ability to be educated is diminishing given that our capability to fund is becoming more and more difficult. So we need to sense this and find other ways to learn. If you look at the monopoly in information with the number of printed books. The monopoly of universities such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale until 2000, their monopoly increased considerably. But post that, it fell quite a bit? Is there a disruption there because of the long tail? It's not longer a heirarchy in organisations these days - it's more an organisational network. The bigger thing is now a trans-organisational network. You're friends with your competitors.Fail Productively"Courage lies somewhere between fearlessness and recklessness"-AristotleJohn is showing us some of the scenes created using circuit boards. You've got to see this to believe it. It's art created with circuit boards - showing deep situations like a single fathers, CEO-ness and possession; a guy showing off his new smartphone. He talks about an experience in London - a workshop that involved drawing on sand. He met people from various walks of life. People had several problems and varied situations. There are two frames to leadership - Traditional and Creative. One being a symbol of authority, other being a symbol of inspiration. Traditional is about Yes or No. Creative is about 'Maybe' - the world is complex and you can be wrong. "If you manage a team of 10 people, it's quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviours. If you manage an organisation of many more it becomes quite impossible." - Ben HorowitzWhen you're an A player, your median is quite high on the other hand your median as a leader will be quite low given all the mistakes that you'll make and you've got to be willing to make.John's book is about an honest recount of what it's like being a leader. He describes it as leading without all of the answers and being open to the critique. It's been a fairly inspirational talk and I enjoyed some of the ideas he threw out though the points I noted down were a poor replacement to his talk. The point John makes right at the end is that the economy is at a downturn in America. The innovations we're looking at come from Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM). But a lot of the innovation also needs to come from Art. Yes we have more technology - it's everywhere. We're in a strange race with ourselves. We've always been in this evolution. We used to have a technology called the coffee table. This was before the TV. After the TV, coffee tables became defunct - now people stopped sitting around the coffee table, they sat around the TV now. And in the computer and mobile age, everyone's got a television in their face. It's the reality of the world. Technology realises progress at light speed. Electrons travel at light speed, people don't. We're stuck in a bit of a loop. When computers came first, they were awful and then there was the amazing invention of the CDROM - ability to store and share full colour images; great sounding audio and then movies on your computer. Then we had the web, and the web could do everything in the browser that we did everything we could using the CDROM. And then the mobile came and went through the same evolution as computers and the web. The evolution pattern is the same, culture hasn't moved forward though.When Maeda compares his time at MIT and contrasts his time at RISD with it. He looks at the combination of Design (making solutions) and Art (making questions). Artists are bold to be cultural entrepreneurs. The intersection is where cool stuff happens. Design is about balancing form and content. John shows the word FEAR written in different typefaces and it's quite amazing how the form changes the way we perceive the content. And then there's art. Art is harder - by definition it is. People who don't 'get' art are actually getting it because they recognising it is hard. It's about questioning authority. Artists ask 'Why' or 'Why not'. Why would you make art out of glass than drink from the glass? Why would you paint every day? Why not? By forcing us to think and question, we evolve our culture. VUCA is how the world feels today - volatile, uncertain, complex ambiguous. The anti-VUCA is visioning, understanding, clarity and agility. It's the new VUCA. A new creative way of thinking that changes the way we approach life.Scientists and artists both ask big questions, but they have different inflections. Both types of questions put together create powerful combinations. Artists are often inspired by scientists to see anew. There are artists who are scientists and vice-versa nowadays. There are designers who are scientists too. Designers are helping us see patterns in complex data. Art is merging with science. Policy makers need artists to help with sense making! Innovation is the combination of Art and Design. STEM needs to become STEAM with the Art popped in between. Check out http://stemtosteam.org© Sumeet Moghe

It’s that time of the week, almost the weekend!, where we could all do with a bit of an Inspiring Video of the Week, don’t you think? The last series of blog posts that I have put together over here in this blog in the last few days have been on the long side of things and while I do appreciate everyone going ahead, reading through them and leave behind some wonderful comments (Thanks much for that, indeed!), I think most folks would also appreciate a shorter blog entry every now and then with a clearer, sharper, insightful message being shared across, right? So how about this one: THINK, about making the world work better.  Indeed, that’s the title of a 10 minute long video clip that has been shared, a little while ago, over in YouTube by IBM (So the usual disclaimer would apply in here, before anyone starts wondering, I happen to work for that company for over the last 15 years) and which I think would make for a rather interesting reading, if we would want to venture into figuring out plenty more about that "Circular Economy" that I have covered in the recent past a few times already. IBM itself calls it Smarter Planet, but I think it would be much more suggestive and inspiring altogether going ahead with that mantra of what’s behind the Circular Economy and how it helps us focus on just simply making good, healthy progress. Either way, I wouldn’t want to extend myself for far too long, other than to mention how the main theme behind this rather inspirational video clip is all about something that seems to be lacking nowadays in the world out there, in general, and that we probably need to bring it back very soon, and pretty badly, if not already!, if we would want to keep progressing nicely as sustainable, profitable businesses, as meaningful cultures and as societies representative of the human nature: sustainable growth through critical thinking, based on these key elements: "seeing, mapping, understanding, believing and acting". Amongst others …   Not too shabby, don’t you think? I am not sure whether you may have read it or not, but the video clip reminds me of a superb, rather short blog post from my good friend Euan Semple under the heading "What I think" which would nicely summarise what I actually meant above when I said critical thinking and how we seem to be lacking, generally speaking, those key skills, specially, in the world of the Social Web, when you would imagine that it wouldn’t be like that, given the chances and the many opportunities that we nowadays have to connect, collaborate, share our knowledge, converse, learn and innovate together through a good number of those social technologies. But Euan himself describes it much nicer than what I could possibly do myself, and I am going to take the liberty of quoting a couple of sentences and leave the rest out out to you to head over to this blog entry to read the rest …  "We all have the ability to think seriously. We all have the right to say what we think […] We are on the brink of working out new ways to productively combine what we all think […]" Perhaps, we should all start doing a bit more of that critical thinking that I have mentioned above, in order to try to solve some of the most urging problems we keep bumping into as a society, instead of figuring out why we cannot longer make sense of the Trending Topics of, say, Twitter or why Twitter closed off the door for things like LinkedIn or Instagram. Seriously? Don’t we have better, more impending issues to work on as a collective through using these social technologies to think AND act? I think so. I know so! Thus we better roll our sleeves and get down to make the world work better… It would be about time, don’t you think? Have a good one everyone!

I'm sitting in a Mobile Learning session with one of my favourite people and authors - Connie Malamed, so forgive me for being extremely nice with my write up if that's what happens by the end of this talk. Connie's had a journey learning about apps on Mobile. She wanted to create a performance support app for instructional designers. It's called Instructional Design Guru. You should check it out. In today's talk she's going to tell us how you can walk through the design experience before you hand it over to a programmer. As instructional designers we have the skills to do this, it's just a question of thinking through each of the decisions that we're going to be party to.When designing for mobile it's important to think of the context. Connie talks about the journey in a few steps: 1. Define the problem 2. Research and Ideate 3. Define the Solution 4. Develop the AppEveryone has ideas about apps! 5.9 billion mobile subscribers in the world. 1.2 billion of them are mobile web users. 63% more smartphone users in 2011 whereas laptop growth has been just 15%. So why mobile? First things first - it's convenient. People almost always have their phones with them. It's very relevant and contextual to the experience that someone's having at the time. People are always out there with their phones and helps with content generation. There are varied devices and mobiles do reduce friction by bringing down barriers. There are mobile collaboration tools and mobile is a far reaching phenomenon. In Africa for example mobile penetration is far ahead in comparision to computers. And lastly, mobile gives you the ability to design for either push or pull. Which is a great thing for learning design.There are several approaches for learning on mobile: * micro-learning: self paced mini lessons in varied media. eg podcasts * synchronous: virtual classrooms using mobile webinar tools * assessments: tests, surveys, polls * social media learning: enabling networks for learning * learning games: challenges and simulations * performance support apps: references, job aids, collaboration, social, augmented realityWe'll focus on performance support. The key here is a few interesting things: * it's just in time - the ability to quickly get information in the context of work * it's part of the workflow and is seamless with the act of doing something * it occurs when needed * it uses a pull model * the learners can apply the skills immediately - great for cognitive load since you don't need to remember heaps before you perform a task.There's a fair range of things you can do with mobile learning and mobile performance support: * queries to PLN - no need for an app here * QR codes - used widely in marketing, but you can get people to get to information in context here * Automatic text message reminders can be great as in context prompts * Checklists, references, job aids are also interesting tool - that's the territory Connie's explored * Augmented reality is a good in context training approachConnie talks about a doctor receiving surgery advice on SMS. Quite amazing when you think that it saved someone's life. It's performance support too! Mobile performance support needs to fit within the overall learning and mobile strategy for your organisation.In any case when you think of performance support, you've got to address the 5 moments of need: 1. When learning for the first time 2. When wanting to learn more 3. When trying to remember or apply 4. When things change 5. When something goes wrongMobile helps in particular with the last three situations! Think of tools like HVAC calculator. Or iBartender to make fun drinks when you don't know how. eMocha is another interesting data collection app for healthcare.Design ConsiderationsNow how do people use phones? People mostly use them on the go. They're usually distracted - so remember they don't have your full attention. People use it in context - eg: Maps, Layar, Foursquare. 40% people use phones in the bathroom. People use phones when they're bored! People use them at their desks - it's a good way to impress them. People use them for micro-tasks - running an errand, paying a bill, watching a video. People use phones when they're relaxed and in a varying set of emptional states.So the conclusion is: * Short bursts of activity * One handed * Simple features first and complex next * Text messages are hugely popular!So what tools do you want to use? You want to figure out the use case scenarios. eg: You're at a museum you want to look up information about the artist and the painting. Or you're doing repairs - you have a complicated situation you need help with.Second, you want to research similar apps. What other apps are out there that do similar things like your app? It can be fairly time consuming and by the way you need to spend money!Third, what gestures will you need? This is not your grandma's mouse! The mouse is an intermediatary while playing with touch devices is quite intuitive. Even a kid can do it as Connie demonstrates. So think of taps, pinches, flicks, drags, presses and the stuff that actually happens in the mobile world. Luke W has a lot of stuff here about how to design for mobile. Take a look at his gesture reference cards.Fourth, what hardware will you use? You'll have several different types of media that you may want to use but will your hardware support it? Does your hardware support geolocation if you're trying to use that in your design? The phone camera can be quite a useful tool. There's the accelerometer as well as is near field communications using RFID technology. So two phones close to each other can share information with each other. iPhones don't support this but you can work around using bluetooth. Be careful to focus to on the primary task.So how do you communicate your design?Three important things to consider: * Write you specs * Diagram the structure of your app * and be absolutely sure to wireframeWhen you're writing specs for your app, you have several ways of doing it. You could write detailed requirements specs or you could even do user stories. There are definitely other things that you want to specify, such as personas, programming language that you prefer, web or native, task diagrams, your overall vision of the apps functionality, etc. Be sure to diagram the structure too. There are three general structures: * Flat, no heirarchy * Tabs * Tree structure which has a fairly complex heirarchyThere are several wireframing tools available on the internet for this kind of stuff and well, you can just do Powerpoint, Word and maybe just pen and paper.The other thing to thing to think of is visual design. What icons will you use? What will your touch target sizes look like? What metaphor will you use? For example the Compass app has a real world compass metaphor. If you do pick one metaphor, be sure to follow it all the way through.Technology DecisionsNative apps of course are faster give you access to the phone's hardware, etc but the cost of programming is high and you get very platform specific and you've got to conform to the marketplace rules. The web on the other hand is portable, cost of development is lower and works on various platforms. Also it's easier to prototype this. The disadvantages however is that you're internet dependent and then you don't get the speed and hardware functionality of your native apps. You can of course create hybrid apps using stuff like Titanium. Do also be mindful that you need to use native languages to program for mobile platforms - so your programmers need to know the specific languages. There's quite a few mobile authoring tools out there as well, but be sure to check on native compatibility and the publishing structure there.© Sumeet Moghe