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Opinions about the most effective ways of learning differ. And, although we speak about blended learning approaches and differences in preferred learning styles there are limited evidence-based learning approaches available. Both in education and in corporate learning professionals are doing their job based on impressions, trends and old habits. In the Dutch Financial Times there was an article of Prof. Maassen van den Brink about this issue. She wrote that innovations in education often are implemented without proper knowledge of the effects of the implementation. Examples are the so-called ‘new learning’ approach for more competency oriented education instead of the ‘old’ knowledge orientation. This is heavily criticized since students now lack the body of knowledge needed to apply their competencies in the right way (simply speaking). Also the reduction in class size aimed at by the government with massive funding is no success. McKinsey research has shown that this has no effect on the quality of education whatsoever. They indicate that the quality of the teacher still is the most important factor (you probably don’t want to pay the McKinsey fees for this conclusion). The article raises the need for Evidence-Based Education. Not only the scientific stuff, but soft and hard research to support practices. When you don’t limit the focus on Education you can see that the same applies to Corporate Learning and HRD. We tend to jump from the one hype to the other. From knowledge management to e-learning to talent management. The focus is on the labeling and the surface and not on the fundamental and evidence-based practices that work in different situations. In the end still most learning is ‘delivered’ in 10+ groups by trainers or via electronic page turners labeled as e-learning. The only evidence we have is that there practices do not deliver the results we aim for. In my opinion evidence-based learning would be a good approach for corporate learning and HRD as well. Again not only based on hard scientific research, but softer industry research and practical questionnaires can bring a lot of value as well. Evidence-based learning can be of great help for all trainers and HR staff trying to facilitate learning in their organizations, so let’s get things started!

I know that plenty of folks out there are probably waiting for the next blog post in the series of #e2conf 2011 Highlights from the Enterprise 2.0 conference that took place in Boston, MA, a few days back, by yours truly, but the truth is that in the last couple of days I have been distracted by what seems to be raving the Social Web as of late: Google’s attempt to get social with Google Plus. A bunch of people have asked me to share across what my ¢2 worth of commentary would be like on that new social networking site and while I am working on that blog post already, I can certainly share with you folks that so far I feel, rather strongly, that it could well be the integrated, pervasive and circling around user experience I have been waiting for to kiss good-bye to all of the others. Including Twitter, which, for those folks who know me, would come as a big surprise, I am sure. But so far on the first iteration of G+ I can see how all of the issues and bugs that I have been experiencing with Twitter over the years are now long gone! Forgotten altogether! But anyway, that’s not the purpose of today’s blog post. I thought I would go ahead and resume the #e2conf 2011 Highlights posts with this one where I will be sharing My Top 10 Reasons as to Why I Enjoyed #e2conf, this year more than never! The purpose of this entry is to capture all of those loose ends about the conference, before I go ahead and dive into the actual content of keynotes and breakout sessions, which is what the next series of articles would be about. So let’s go and do it! Let’s see all of those reasons… The Conference Venue: In the last few years, the #e2conf event used to take place at the Westin Boston Waterfront hotel and although the venue may have been rather appropriate, by moving it this year to The Hynes Convention Center, the difference has been tremendous! As a starting point, a lot more space to mix and mingle, or have private conversations as you may see fit; then closer to downtown, which means having proper food for lunch while still networking with attendees, or for those lovely walkabouts feeling you are *in* the city! Hosting an event in such a large venue allows for participants to feel there are plenty of folks, but without that sense of being overwhelmed, in fact, at times, it was quite the opposite! That all was quite a nice change from previous years and I, for one, welcome the switch for future editions as well. Did I mention as well how the conference venue was just right opposite the Apple Store? hehe Yes, I know, you can’t beat that either, if you are an Apple Fanboy/girl!  The Wi-Fi: You would remember how last year the wi-fi worked really really well and provided us with a unique experience of staying connected to the event itself and not only those who were present with us, but also engaging virtually through our favourite social networking sites. Well, this year we had a new venue, so we were all, probably, a bit too skeptic that it may not work as designed / expected… The end result was phenomenal though! It worked rock solid for the entire conference event and it surely gave us all, conference attendees, a huge opportunity to share the excitement with those who couldn’t be with us in real life. Just wish Twitter would stop being so silly and not allow us to keep track of hash tags and previous events through the search engine, so that folks would be able to check the life tweet that went on throughout the several days it lasted. Thank goodness for the wonderful piece of hard work done by Jim Worth, who managed to capture all of the live tweeting that went one during that time and shared it across over at the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Social Web Coverage June 20, 2011. Like I said, over time, one learns how to survive without wi-fi connection, while at a conference event, but when you have it, boy, does it make a difference in providing an immersive online learning environment where everyone benefits from?!? The Keynotes Format:  That’s right! The Keynotes new format was probably one of the most refreshing changes coming along from #e2conf and a clear sign the conference organisers are listening and engaging actively, because last year the feedback was rather brutal on the ill effects that vendor-driven keynotes would have for the audience. So this year they changed the format to make the keynotes less vendor-driven, much shorter!! -15 minutes maximum!, although I would have loved for 20 minutes; that’s probably the ideal format, in my opinion, for an engaging keynote without deviating too much into off the track talk and demo pitches.  One of the other things I really enjoyed about the keynotes is that they are all recorded and made available at The Brainyard and open / public to everyone to watch. Some of my favourites that I would strongly recommend folks to take a look at and watch through those precious little gems of 15 minutes would be: John Hagel, Mike Rhodin, John Stepper, Sameer Patel, Andy McAfee, Bryce Williams, Lee Bryant, Ming Kwan, Sara Roberts, Ross Mayfield, Bert Sandie and Deb Lavoy.Not to worry, on my next round of blog posts I’ll be putting together some further thoughts on the content shared during these keynotes as well as what I learned from them, where I will include full links to their online presence, if you would want to follow up further with any of them. Stay tuned, but overall the content of those keynotes was just outstanding! True love and passion for the subject! (And I will come back to this point later on …)  The Quality of the Breakout Sessions:  While I was in Boston, and throughout the entire week, I kept mentioning how the quality of the presentations was incredibly high; the highest I have seen in the several years I have been there. To the point where some of them were the best of their kind in the last 3 to 4 years! So to make them justice I will be blogging separately about each and everyone of those breakout sessions that I thought were wonderfully engaging learning experiences so that you could have a glimpse on what was shared and discussed further along. Another key item that surely highlighted the success from the overall quality of the breakout sessions was the fact that there were a bunch of different tracks that certainly helped orient folks better on what to attend and what not: Analytics and Metrics; Architecture; Business Leadership; Community Management: Engaging External Audiences; Community Management: Inside the Enterprise, Governance, Risk & Compliance; Mobile Enterprise; People, Culture and Internal Communications; Sales and Marketing; Social Apps and Platforms; Sponsored; Technology Leadership and Video and Unified Communications. Yes, I know you could say there was a bit of everything for everyone, which, I guess, is what every conference event should be aiming at eventually, don’t you think? The Big Shift: This is probably one of the main reasons why I enjoyed the #e2conf event this year; more than anything else, because it, finally, showed good, strong, healthy indicators of maturity within the industry and how not only the technology is maturing, but also us, as knowledge workers, and the companies we work for. From a technology and social tools perspective to a pure social one, one where culture and other business related issues were almost omnipresent. All over the place!Thus during the course of the week we saw how we have been shifting from that mentality of "What is Enterprise 2.0?", to the "How do we do Enterprise 2.0?", to this year’s "Why does our business need to live social? What business problems are we trying to address eventually? How can I benefit the most from Enterprise 2.0 to help my business thrive in the 21st century by going social?". Indeed, quite refreshing, if you ask me! And about time, too!!Now, we need to move further on with that prediction I did at the beginning of this year, where I mentioned that by 2012 we would all stop using terms like "Enterprise 2.0″ or "Social Business" to just call it Work! Because that’s essentially what we are doing: smart work through social networks and communities. The Networking: Well, after the first of the series of blog posts I put together with these highlights, which you can catch up with over here, if you haven’t read it just yet, there is very very little I would probably need to add, for sure! It was quite an experience, this year, like no other! Not only from the perspective of meeting up some good old friends with whom we all keep sharing our favourite war stories on Enterprise 2.0, but also new friends whom we could share our experiences with and learn from theirs! My favourite part of it though? Well, something that doesn’t seem to be happening at other conferences … The lack of competition and showing off you are doing things better. Just a pure sharing and learning experience on all things 2.0, although that may well be my own perception… what do you folks think? The Extra-curricular Activities:  It was rather interesting to see how, this year, compared to other occasions, the number of cocktails, receptions, after the conference day local gatherings, dinners, parties, pub crawl activities, etc. etc. had gone up sky high! At times those of us who were attending the event were even triple or quadruple booked for a single afternoon / evening! To the point where you would need to split up your presence in between events, so that you could hang out for some time without disappointing everyone. Tough to do, I know!, but GREAT fun! Although after I came back from Boston I realised I may have had far too much fun, as I keep trying losing those extra few pounds I brought back with me from the US But from here I would want to share a special and warm thanks with all of those folks who hosted such events for us and made them all lots of great fun! I can assure you we had plenty of good laughs, good food, great company, and even better conversations! And you all know who you are … if you can still remember, right? hehe The Amazing and Immersive Learning Experience: Was, indeed, bigger than ever! Now, I can imagine how most folks would think very fondly of the Enterprise 2.0 event as the place where they would go and find out more about what’s happening in the industry, talk to their already existing customers and new prospects, see what other vendors are doing in this 2.0 space, listen to what industry analysts would be talking about, network quite a bit with other conference attendees, etc. etc. But, to me, it’s all slightly different. To me it’s that yearly pilgrimage to meet up with fellow 2.0 practitioners, share back and forth our own experiences in helping drive social computing within the enterprise, AND as a result of it, learn and absorb, A LOT!, what other folks have done so that you could reuse it and re-apply it when you get back! That learning experience is priceless. That, to me, is what makes it worth while going back to Boston, and Santa Clara, year after year. It’s those first hand exchanges of experiences with people who know exactly what you are going through that makes it all worth while. Yes, I know that plenty of people would say it’s a lovely echo chamber and everything, but, I am actually probably one of the very few who may feel very grateful for such echo chambers, because if there is anything out there that they are very good at is recharging your batteries, so when you come back in full force it would last you for a few months no end to keep gently pushing and become that trust agent who keeps aiming at making a difference at the company you work for! It’s that adrenaline rush you know you need, but never dare to ask too often, because you may like it a bit too much. I actually did this year and I had a total blast, even though it took me a couple of days to recover my own voice as a result of it! Totally worth it, though! Good to Be Back in Boston!: Of course, who wouldn’t, right?!?! I have been coming back to Boston to attend Enterprise 2.0 a few times already, but this year it was rather special. The weather was just stunning (At least, for the first couple of days), encouraging everyone to be out there, mixing and mingling with people, hanging out on the streets, at the local bars & restaurants, watching the world pass by, thinking how we may not be that different all of us altogether from one another. The fact that the venue was very much downtown surely made a huge difference in enjoying a good couple of summer days in Boston! I also spent Sunday afternoon at Harvard, with a couple of good friends, and we enjoyed one of the most pleasant walks-around-town I can remember! Pictures, of course, will be shared shortly at my Flickr account. But don’t worry, later on in the week Boston showed us all the other side of things, when it wouldn’t stop raining for a day or two! Goodness! Hope next year it will hold up for a little bit longer! Boston in the summer can surely be as gorgeous as they say! The Love Fest Atmosphere:  And, finally, something that I may have hinted in a good number of the reasons I mentioned above, but which I think still deserves its own space over here. Heading back to Enterprise 2.0 every year has become that massive love fest of 2.0 practitioners who embark on that "fantabulous" activity of group hugs, lovely cosy dinners, pub crawling to interesting places, etc. etc. whenever they bump into each other, wherever that may well be! There is no competition; there is no show-off; there are no intentions of diminishing one company over the other’s business; there is a fair amount of knowledge sharing, collaboration and learning, without ever asking anything in return; there is no knowledge hoarding where you try to absorb and suck on everyone else’s knowledge and experiences instead. I am not sure whether I am alone in living that perception, but, I, for once, appreciate it very much, because even if your competitors, customers and business partners are there, that whole aspect of open knowledge sharing, collaborating and learning, will make us all better, much better, at what we already do. And that’s something that, on its own, makes it totally worth it for me the over 30h+ of travelling, back and forth, time and time again.  Thus, as you can imagine, and after another one of those massively long and meaty blog posts, I will surely be looking forward to the next #e2conf event that would be taking place in Santa Clara, in November, even though I won’t be able to make it there I’ll be following it virtually, in anticipation for next June, when I will be heading back to Boston and revive an overall even better conference experience! From here onwards, folks, we will be moving right into the overall content of the event and what I learned during those 4 days. Thus stay tuned for more to come! We are only just getting started!

One of the topics that has been in my mind at the moment, within the context of the Social Enterprise, has been that one of Leadership and how, through the use of social software tools, we are now going through that rather exciting phase where traditional management / leadership, i.e. the hierarchical organisation, is starting to mix and mingle with a new kind of networked, interconnected leadership of wild ducks, trust agents, i.e. intrapreneurs, to perhaps help facilitate and create a hybrid of what could be defined as the Leadership of Tomorrow. One that Carmen Medina nicely defined as full of Optimism, Outrageousness and Smarter Sense-Making. A few days back you would remember how I put together a blog post around the topic of Leadership as Servanthood, as part of some of the highlights from the wonderful IBM THINK Forum event hosted in New York City not long ago. Well, today, I am coming back for more, as one of the short speeches from the event has been making the rounds quite a bit talking about some of the traits from that new generation of leaders that is emerging at the moment in the current workplace. This time around the pitch is coming from Carmen Medina herself (Former Director, CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence), where, over the course of a bit over 4 minutes, she comes to talk about some of the lessons she has learned throughout her career about being a leader within a knowledge organisation. Some pretty powerful stuff in there, for sure! Priceless quotes like how optimism is probably the greatest act of rebellion, or how each and every organisation or business out there has always been having a whole bunch of heretics who they couldn’t do anything about. Not even today. How instead of trying to put down those heretics companies would probably be much much better off listening and understanding them better, as they are very willing to help fix their problems as an organisation. Her second priceless lesson is one of those that when you first hear or read about it certainly would make you think about things twice, more than anything, because of how brilliantly it challenges and questions the status-quo. If not, have a look. Here is the exact quote as she mentioned it: "The only way to make an impact in an organisation is to be really outrageous", which, when combined with lesson #1 (Optimism), can surely be rather powerful and engaging. Lesson #3 is actually even more provocative. On the topic of making sense of today’s complex knowledge world to try to make and reach the best decisions, as a leader. But I am not going to spoil it further for you folks out there, you would have to watch the remaining of the video to find out some more. And while you are at it, I would also like to point you in the direction of a recent blog entry that she put together at the Building a Smarter Planet blog under the heading "[...] On the Importance of Sensemaking" where she lays, quite nicely, the main challenge for today’s leaders as follows: "The contest is not between competing camps of knowledge workers or between us and the machines that we construct. Instead, the contest is between the reality we have and the future we might attain, and sensemaking will be one of our most important aids in making progress. So our future depends on the ability of leaders to transform the organizations they lead as quickly and effectively as they absorb powerful new technologies-and in sync with the capabilities of those new tools. Goodness! That’s quite a challenge, don’t you think? So right there it looks like Carmen has put together three different key lessons about leadership in today’s complex workplace, and societal environment: optimism, outrageousness and sensemaking. But what I find really fascinating from her speech is the fact of how such a traditional knowledge organisation as the CIA has always seen, and embraced, the key paramount role of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, and collaborating through the use of social networking tools!, as one of the most powerful methods out there to help make better informed decisions to tackle and fix specific problems. Thus, if the CIA has been capable of proving how critical the role of social networking is, both internally and externally, for those knowledge sharing activities, what’s our excuse? What are we doing to help facilitate the leaders of today become the networked, interconnected leaders of tomorrow who would inspire the remaining of the knowledge workforce in this Knowledge Ecology that seems to have become more and more prevalent by the day? Why do we keep forbidding the use of social tools behind, and outside, of the firewall, or why some of our leaders of today are somewhat scared of jumping the shark and joining the conversation? It’s just as well as if we had invented the telephone just today , and people would want to keep forbidding its use, doesn’t it?, but a few decades later still remains a critical, unquestionable tool for communicating and collaborating together. Well, guess what? Social networking tools should be no different. For any knowledge worker out there. Even for our leaders. Maybe, we / they need to be a bit more optimistically outrageous, don’t you think?

As I am about to enter my last week of holidays, before I head back to work for the first time this year, I just couldn’t help thinking about a recent piece I read over at the NYTimes by the always witty and rather insightful Pico Iyer under the rather suggestive title of "The Joy of Quiet", where he muses extensively about that almost forgotten, and sometimes forbidden (in today’s times, specially!), pleasures of treasuring the time to think, reflect, unwind, disconnect, see the world slowing down, charge your batteries, re-energise yourself with what really matters and perhaps come back for more. It’s a beautifully written article where he’s on a mission to help us all re-think the purpose of our online (inter)connectedness and to challenge, in a rather healthy, and very much needed, way, whether we do really need to be connected all the time. Or not. He calls it the "The Joy of Quiet" and I call it "The Joy of Choice". Indeed, for a good number of years there have been plenty of us, knowledge Web workers, who have been craving for having such an exciting, exuberant and abundant environment like the Social Web, as we know it nowadays. You know how it goes. We, news-junkies, can’t get enough about being constantly on the know of what’s happening around us and the rest of the world. We, news-junkies, can’t get enough of being exposed to a rampant learning curve that never ceases to stop more and more by the day, and get rather upset when technology falls short and continues to fail on delivering what we know we can get through it time and time again. We, in short, cannot longer live in isolation, it looks like, nor is a state that most of us could probably aspire to in the long run. But is it really so? And, most importantly, can we do anything about it at all? What do you think? Pico puts it rather nicely, and very provocatively as well at the same time, in this short paragraph, when he states that we may not be able to do it because we haven’t been educated on how to make it through in the first place: "The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual" I can imagine that it may well be so for a good number of folks out there, but then again I can also see how there may well be plenty of other people who, over the course of time, have learned to tame, and educate themselves, not only on how they live their connectedness, but also how they may live along without it altogether and do just fine. That’s when something that we haven’t had for years on the Web to the extent we have got today, but that nowadays is just too critical to ignore, kicks in nicely to our rescue: Choice. Yes, indeed, now we do have a choice and that just basically means that we need to decide how we best plan for that joy of quiet without sounding like an hermit or some other kind of weirdo who doesn’t want to reach out and feel connected while everyone else is. That’s why during the course of my holidays, and as I continue to reflect on the last few months, specially, after that frenetic and rather hectic year end with work related activities and whatever else, I self-discovered, through that thinking and reflection time, how something so wise as your own physical body learns to protect itself from everything that may try, or attempt to, harm its wellbeing. Even if that involves the brain itself. Now I know why for some periods of last year my brain was rather keen on being out there on the Social Web, reaching out, communicating, collaborating, sharing and learning from others, and yet, my body decided to switch priorities and dedicate itself to what it knows best: taking care of itself. Yes, I guess that’s when your body starts sending some of those subtle and gentle signs telling you that you are about to max out and enter a very dangerous road of perhaps not an easy return. That’s probably why, just recently, you heard from plenty of your friends, colleagues, and other networks how they have started to take up sports once again, or to lose those extra few pounds, or to spend numerous, endless hours reading a good book while listening to their favourite music as one of their preferred evening activities, or perhaps to start some yoga and live healthier lives or maybe move out of the city into a rural, quieter place where things seem to have slowed down for a while and where conversations happen more face to face than virtually. I bet within your own networks you may have bumped into such accidental discoveries and keep wondering why people keep doing it. Well, wonder no more. Their physical bodies have finally taken over and decided to take a stand as to helping the mind figure out how long and for what purpose should they remain interconnected online and when to find that appropriate time to disconnect for a while, think and reflect on things. On the things that matter. On those little things we all know are out there, but that we keep ignoring them for far too long and when we realise about it, it’s already too late. Now, when looking back into retrospective from last year’s events and activities, I realise that was probably the reason why, back in July, I decided to become healthier again; that’s probably, while I am buzzing around during the course of the work week with plenty of business travelling, my weekends are sacred longing for extensive periods of disconnect where I basically just disappear. That’s maybe as well why I have now successfully built up the daily habit of doing my workout, where I just take with me my favourite music, hit the track for an hour and think about nothing else than just that beautiful Joy of Quiet. That’s probably why I now know how both my brain and my body are starting to be in sync when making the best choices as to when to go and slow down on the communication, collaboration and broadcasting fronts (And instead become more of a thinking force) and when to come back for more within one’s own social networks after those disconnecting periods. That’s when one comes to realise it’s all about having a choice, but not just having it for the sake of it, because I know that in most cases we would be ignoring it and eventually keep doing what we are busy with on the Social Web front, but also acting upon it, which I guess is the point Pico makes quite nicely throughout the entire article and which I have learned to treasure myself during the second half of last year through starting to listen to those body signals that one knows have a second, or even third meaning, behind them. Listening to them, knowing when and how to react and, most importantly, learning how to set the right expectations not only for you, but also for those around you, becomes a critical success factor of how we can learn to come to terms with the fact that yes, as wonderful and as brilliant and as energising as the Social Web is, we cannot ignore the choice of looking, and finding!, proper times to disconnect, to unwind, to ponder about things, to question, through critical thinking, what we are doing, where we are heading and what we would want to leave behind. Our legacies. Our purpose. That’s what we are here for. Being In Action. In constant action. Whether it’s out there on the Social Web, creating and consuming top quality content with our favourite social networks, or whether it’s happening in the offline world. Being In Action means what my good friend, and fellow IBMer, Laurie Friedman tweeted just a couple of days back as a beautiful quote from IBM’s recently appointed new CEO, Ginni Rometty:   Advice from IBM’s new CEO, Ginni Rometty, on her first day on the job? "Don’t ever stop reinventing yourself" #leadership — lauriefriedman (@lauriefriedman) January 4, 2012 Call it Living Life as a Perpetual Beta, if you wish to as well, but I think Pico’s conclusion, although referring to our children, could surely blend in rather nicely with what would be, perhaps, our main challenge for 2012 and beyond: "The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential" Indeed, figuring out what’s essential is about having a choice, i.e. when to stay connected, socially networked online, but also when to disconnect, when to look for those quiet times, helping those around you understand that as much as you appreciate the social interactions, there is still a time when you need it to reflect and think further what’s happening around you, so that they, too, can get exposed to the better you. So next time you see some of your networks have gone silent for a period of time, not to worry, they are not gone entirely, they haven’t abandoned you either, they are just taking their very much needed time off to reflect and ponder about things, they are taking their time off to figure out what really matters to them, before they come back in full force, once again. So we better start treasuring those silent periods, because something tells me we are going to have plenty of those coming along in the next few weeks / months and that’s a good thing! The Social Web needs time as well to slow down a bit sometimes, reflect about both its impact and true legacy and keep moving further along once again… So just hang in there, the choice is ours, finally, after a long last. The important thing to remember though is to act upon it. After all "We create our own distractions and just need to learn to manage them". And that will always remain our choice. Not theirs. So we better make good use of it and they better get used to it, too. They will need it …

There used to be a time when I was very much in love with Twitter. It was my favourite social networking tool by far. It was quite an exhilarating experience being constantly exposed to some of the most amazing conversations and informal learning at its best. To me, it was *the* place to provoke plenty of facilitated serendipity to take place and keep in the know with all of that stuff one gets passionate about over the course of time. But then, after a short while, I started hating Twitter. Perhaps a bit too harsh of a word, maybe loathe could do. Over the course of just a few weeks Twitter managed to destroy, in a very pernicious manner, not only the overall user experience, but the entire ecosystem as well that made it a success in the first place: Third party apps. And it totally hit me when I saw my all time favourite Twitter client (Nambu) disappear into thin air just because of that series of misbehaviours. Fast forward to the end of 2011 and I am back in love with Twitter again, not because of all of the various different new features and capabilities they have been putting together, but because I have finally found The Best Twitter Client On The Net: Janetter. Yes, that’s right! It surely looks like Twitter continues to be keen on destroying not just the Third Part Apps ecosystem that made it incredibly popular in the first place, but also some of its own desktop clients like Twitter for Mac or TweetDeck, where the latest upgrades have deteriorated the user experience for both of them tremendously altogether! Or so I am told. The thing is though that ever since I started making use of Janetter my overall user experience has seen quite a profound transformation. It was through my good friend Rachel Happe that I first heard (Of course, on Twitter!) about this very special Twitter client that works both in Windows and on the Mac. She liked the experience and right away I thought about giving it a try myself, after having been actively searching for a good substitute for Nambu throughout all of this time playing with a bunch of other Twitter clients whether on the Mac or on iOS devices. And right off, within the first few hours I knew that Janetter would be my new, much preferred, default Twitter client on the Mac. What a beautiful experience, indeed! I realise most of you folks would notice how I hardly ever get to talk about (Productivity) Tools and such on this blog, since I have always thought that they usually come and go and it’s very hard to get attached to any of them over the course of time, because you never know when they will go ahead and disappear. But since a bunch of people have been asking me what I like so much about this particular Twitter client why not put together this blog post and share some of the most compelling reasons why I have been enjoying it since day one that I installed it. At the same time, there have been a few other folks who have tried it out themselves, after I mentioned on Twitter myself how much I enjoyed it, and they didn’t like it at all. They actually thought it was a horrendous experience, so perhaps this article would help me share across some of the main reasons why Janetter is, to me, as good as it gets with regards to Twitter clients on whatever the platform. Hopefully, with that input it would give you a pretty good idea on whether you may want to give it a try or not. So here are some of the most compelling reasons why I heart Janetter as my all time favourite Twitter client, even way above than Nambu, from back in the day: Cross-Platform: Indeed, no matter whether you may be using Windows, or Mac, it would work in both just beautifully! Time and time again I kept finding it a challenge recommending a Windows client that would not be TweetDeck, which is, I guess, what most folks tend to use at the moment. And now we have got a pretty good and rather impressive rival: Janetter. (Yes, I do realise there isn’t a version for Linux users at the moment, so those folks may need to continue using whatever tool they may have at the moment) Scalability: You could probably say that I’m a power user of Twitter, and perhaps of several other social networking sites, too, and one of my favourite features from Janetter itself is how scalable it is! It’s amazing! I have been using it rather heavily over the course of a few weeks now, with large networks and rather complex searches, and not a single glitch to be observed with the overall performance of the application or the machine altogether, which is not the same I could say about a bunch of other Twitter clients or even other social networking sites’ Apps. That’s a winner for me, specially, if you are a heavy user of Twitter yourself. Worth while a try just for that! Reliability: Another one of my favourite features from this Twitter App. Like I said, I use it daily rather heavily and, probably, in the most extreme of circumstances hacking different behaviours and I have yet to see, and experience!, the first crash on the Mac! And that’s been weeks of long and lasting use already! Like I said, not a single one!! Not sure what you would think about it, but that’s what reliability is all about in my books, don’t you think? The Look & Feel: This may well just apply to Mac Fanboys, but one of the things you would very much like from this Twitter App is that it behaves and works in pretty much the same way than any other native Mac App, which is a lot to be said for an application that’s developed to work cross-platforms. The time dedicated to make it look and feel like a native Mac App is just priceless. It doesn’t give you the impression, at all!, that you may be using a Windows copy! No way! A big Yes!! Customisation: This is an area that I know most folks would not care much about it, but I love it. Being capable of customising my own user experience of what I see and play with is just a tremendous bonus! The wide range of Skins with multiple colours, displays, fonts, etc. etc. and the extensive User Preferences to tame the experience to your own likes and dislikes, needs and requirements surely is quite a treat! And something that you hardly ever see on Twitter Apps at all these days. Like TweetDeck: But … without the hassle. That’s pretty much how I basically describe Janetter when people ask me about it. It’s like TweetDeck but without all of those issues that keep crumbling the overall experience of Adobe AIR Apps (I had enough of the Kernel Panics, so I no longer use AIR on my MacBook Air and everything running smooth again!). Any kind of problem or issue you can find in TweetDeck it’s fixed in this Twitter App, for real! Seriously, if you are looking for a pretty impressive alternatively to TweetDeck on the Mac, or on Windows, take it for a spin and see how it would work out for you. I can probably guarantee you won’t be back ever since… The Timeline: I guess at some point I should probably go ahead and put together a short screencast of how I use the Twitter Timeline to quickly scan through tweets and pause through those I would really want to digest and muse further about and when to speed up and move on. But if you try out Janetter youself you will see what that experience looks like to me at the moment. As easy as it can get and using something so relatively simple, yet so powerful as keyboard strokes to advance on reading tweets, as well as natural scrolling (Up or down or both!) without seeing the application come to a hault! No matter how fast you go! Just brilliant! The Groups: This is probably the one single feature that most folks who use TweetDeck today, or any other Twitter client that allows you to gather twitterers by groups, would enjoy very much and by far! Creating groups in Janetter is just such a breeze! Groups as in Twitter Lists, obviously; if you have created them already, it’s just as simple as displaying them and they will stick around pulling a bunch of initial updates to let you know how things are going, and then move from there. You can mark them all as read, if you would wish to as well, and you can have a whole bunch of columns without a single glitch on the overall performance itself. Very powerful and strongly recommended for power users, for sure!  The Mentions: If you have been following me on Twitter for a while, over at @elsua, you would probably know how Twitter Mentions is my most simple, and long standing, grieving of my overall Twitter use. I have been complaining about how poor the accuracy of the Mentions is overall and time and time again we have seen how Twitter itself seems to be not very keen on wanting to address the issues and fix them. Well, no longer needed. Janetter did just that for me, allowing me again to catch up properly with those Mentions by not missing any of them! Pretty consistent and rather reliable! Not sure how they do it, but it just works! And thanks much for that!! The Searching Capabilities: Whether you are searching for specific terms, whatever those may well be, even with complex searches, or following a particular hashtag (Like I am about to do with #ls12 and #connect12 when I get back to work - More on that soon!) Janetter’s searching capabilities and real-time searches are just superb! Not matter how busy the Search timeline may well be, it will keep up with it and provide you with all you need. Just like that. No need to figure why this or that search doesn’t work, or why it doesn’t pull off updates. It just does it and beautifully! And in columns, too!! Which means that’s rather easy to keep up with them in a single view without having to go click, click, click. Following Conversations in Context: For those of us who have always considered Twitter one of the hottest places out there in the social networking sites realm for holding conversations on a wide range of topics, this Twitter client would be incredibly helpful and very powerful, because as you engage in conversations with other twitterers you would have an opportunity to catch up with them without having to go elsewhere. They are right there, embedded as part of the tweet stream, and in a rather beautiful and elegant manner, which is certainly everything, but disruptive, and that is what it should all be about! No longer will you be missing out on conversations in context while you are tweeting away! Fantastic and very much needed altogether! An ecosystem on its own: Where viewing and displaying Twitter related data from other Twitterers, like their profiles, their latest tweets, the following, etc. etc. or the pictures and videos they keep sharing along works like a charm; embedded right there within the same window and with an opportunity of, once again, not having to go anywhere else, which means you can keep tweeting along without having to worry as to which window you were at at that very moment. Love how it takes tweeting in context into a new level altogether! Muting Options: Yes, I know, I know, plenty of times I have been enjoying some serious rounds of twitterrhea myself, specially, when I am live tweeting conference events, and time and time again folks keep wondering how to mute me for a (long) while. Well, Janetter offers that opportunity, right there, in the Application itself and with a good number of options. So if you ever need to mute any of your social networks it will do the job just beautifully, which means you can keep your focus where you would want it to be, instead of getting distracted unnecessarily. Priceless, don’t you think? Support of Multiple Accounts: Ohhh, and if you have multiple Twitter accounts, this App would help you manage each of them rather elegantly as well. Now, I now longer need to worry about that one myself, but if I were, I would surely make use of it, instead of having to go for more costly options to try to achieve the very same thing. Very nicely done altogether! Local Cache: This is perhaps my all time favourite feature from any of the Twitter clients I have used over the course of the years. From what I know it’s not even available for the vast majority of them, but, to me, it’s become an essential key feature I cannot longer live without. We all know that it’s almost impossible to keep up with the Twitter streams, so we eventually get to dive in every so often to see what’s happening. Well, Janetter takes that into a new level. It allows you to cache all of the tweets, so you can catch up with them, if you would want to!, at your own pace and rhythm. If you have got a special group of twitterers that you would always want to read all of their tweets this client would allow you to do that easily! I love it particularly when I’m travelling, or away from the computer for an extended period of time, and would come back wanting to learn what’s happened on my Twitter streams and there it goes… all of them (In the hundreds, or the thousands!) available with a single scroll! Yes, I know you are not supposed to read them all, but sometimes, whenever time allows you to, you do, and it’s just such a treat having an App that fully supports it that overtime it’s become the one single main reason why I couldn’t live now without Janetter to keep up with those folks I’m keen on following up with.  Really powerful altogether to give you, the end-user, the ability to decide how much you would want to dive into your tweet streams without going crazy, but having a good grasp of what’s happening. Can you imagine Twitter allowing you to do that natively on their Apps or the Web interface? No, indeed, not a single chance! Massive kudos to Janetter in this regard, for sure!! And, finally, perhaps the one single key favourite feature of them all. After all of what I have mentioned above, all of the reasons, features, capabilities and huge potential it offers to us heavy twitterers, I still find it quite amazing that Janetter is made free, as in FREE!!, for all of us. No doubt, even if they would ask us for money I think it’d be the best money spent on any Twitter client out there by far, I would buy a copy of it in a split second and without thinking too much about it!, but the folks behind it have made it available to us all free of charge, which is just probably as good as it gets! That’s about it, folks, here you have got in a single blog post the various many reasons why I’m now back in love with Twitter, not because of Twitter itself, or the technology behind it, but because thanks to the absolutely delightful user experience of Janetter I’m capable of doing something that in the last few months I kept struggling with time and time again: following, digesting, and learning plenty more in good context from the tweet streams of my favourite social networks, which, eventually, is the main reason of why Twitter exists for most of us and I am happy to see how this Twitter App is making that possible. At least, for me. Hope for you, too! If you have found this blog entry useful enough to take it for a spin, let me know in the comments what you think and whether it’s helping you transform the way you interact with Twitter, like it has done with me so far and big time …   Ohhh, and in case you may be wondering what would be my favourite iOS clients for both iPad and iPhone, for when I am on the road, away from my MacBook Air, that would be Osfoora HD for the iPad and the native Twitter for iPhone client. But, once again, they are not the same as the real thing, which is why I do seriously hope that some day we would be able to see Janetter entering the iOS world helping us redefine that mobile Twitter user experience once again! I very much look forward to that!

As I am about to enjoy my last day on vacation, since tomorrow morning I will be heading over to Orlando, Florida, to embark on the regular yearly pilgrimage trip to attend IBM’s event of events around the world of Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing and the Social Enterprise (Of course, I’m talking about the one and only: Lotusphere 2012), I just couldn’t help putting together this blog post about an article that, when I first bumped into it, I found it incredibly innovative, rather refreshing and very re-energising, but after finishing it up I just thought… "Gosh, that’s a given! Why are we not doing it in today’s corporate world on a wider scale?" … "Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days" may sound all to unrealistic and utopian at best, yet, to me, it’s the ultimate goal for any employer out there around Employee Engagement: Trust your employees to do the right thing! Indeed, in a rather inspiring and incredibly thought-provoking article, Joe Reynolds (From Red Frog Events) shares the story of how over at his company (Red Frog) they celebrate vacation. They encourage it and they ensure that once work is done and you are covered you are happy to take as many holidays, as an employee, as you would want to. And interestingly enough he comments that this new system has never been abused so far. Surprise, surprise. Well, not really. Why should it? I mean, last time I brought this subject up, perhaps not over here in this blog, (Although I think I may have hinted it earlier on over at "Reflections from 2011 - Is Employee Engagement Still a Myth?") but certainly in multiple conversations all over the place, unless you are a rather special business, you have always got a tendency to hire the smartest of talent out there; truly hard working networked professionals who know exactly what’s expected of them and how to excel at their jobs. I know that most of you out there would get a good giggle out of this one, but last time I checked no-one out there is hiring jerks nowadays, and, if you are, you certainly have got a rather problematic issue with your own HR hiring process that needs fixing really soon, that has got nothing to do with social networking tools nor how people use them, by the way. It’s more of a fundamental, organisational issue altogether. So considering that you have got a whole bunch of hard working networked knowledge workers, why wouldn’t you allow them to take as many holidays as they would want to? It’s not surprising, indeed, that the system won’t be abused, as Joe mentions on that article. On the contrary. If your knowledge workers are truly motivated, and rather passionate, appreciated, recognised and rewarded for their exceedingly good jobs, not only are they going to be willing to take their extended holidays, but there is also a great chance that they would come back to work sooner than expected! That’s what passion does for you. You can’t think any longer whether work is holiday, or whether holiday is work. It’s no longer about striking a good balance between work and life, but more moving things into the next frontier: work life integration. Yes, that’s right! It’s all about finding that flexibility of doing your job in an effective manner, when you need to do work, and treasuring your personal life when you would need to do so as well. More than anything else because, as Joe mentions, the traditional concept of office work (From 9:00 am to 5:00 pm) is now a thing of the past! Things have moved on and we are at the stage where more and more employers are starting to lower down their own center of gravity, and the power of decision, and leave it down to employees to make the right decisions for the work they are doing. Main reason why? Well, as a starting point, they are beginning to trust their employees much more than whatever else in the past. And this is an important matter, because we are seeing, finally!, that social transformation where knowledge workers are no longer treated like sheep, as in sheeple (and, as such, they no longer behave like sheep either!), and, instead, they are treated as what they are: people with enough motivation and passion for their jobs to want to go the extra mile, if you offer to go the extra mile yourself. So why not offering that opportunity of unlimited vacation days then? It does make plenty of sense, right? Of course, it does! If not, have a look into the main reasons that Joe mentions why this rather creative initiative is working out really well for them: "It treats employees like the adults they are It reduces costs by not having to track vacation time It shows appreciation It’s a great recruitment tool" Plenty of common sense altogether, no doubt! But perhaps this quote from Joe’s article is much more accurate in describing why such innovative policies will be key, critical, and essential, to attract and retain top talent in a world where we are starting to see plenty of fierce competition on the subject: "Through building a company on accountability, mutual respect, and teamwork, we’ve seen our unlimited vacation day policy have tremendous results for our employees’ personal development and for productivity" Both of my good friends Beth Laking and Paul Gillin pretty much nailed it a few days back as well when they tweeted their thoughts about this very same article:   Trust your staff and they will reward you…Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days bit.ly/wSbQN1 @IncMagazine — Beth Laking (@bethlaking1) January 6, 2012     From Inc.: ‘Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days. It’s true. Ppl take fewer days if you don’t limit them. ow.ly/8o8Rk — Paul Gillin (@pgillin) January 10, 2012 The rather interesting and exciting thing though is that Red Frog is not the only company doing this. One of my favourite people, and really good friend, the always insightful and rather smart Maggie Fox, has been doing that at Social Media Group for a good couple of years now and has been having tremendous success with this initiative highlighting how it exactly works out for all of them. She wrote about it a while ago under "Why we decided to offer unlimited vacation at Social Media Group" and it’s even more surprising how the only negative reaction towards that initiative is that most people, specially, new hires, don’t believe that there could be such a thing! Goodness! If that’s all, perhaps we also need to start shifting gears ourselves, knowledge workers, thinking that it is also possible working for employers who truly respect and very much appreciate us, employees, to do what we do best, i.e. our jobs, and be rewarded with that much deserved extended holiday break. After all, it’s thanks to that flexibility, passion, engagement and commitment to our jobs, in keeping excelling at what we are already pretty good at, that clearly demonstrate how not only do we love what we do, but also how we love our lives even more, like Elizabeth Lupfer talked about over at The Social Workplace just recently in a beautiful blog post, which I would highly recommend you go ahead and read through it all, to ponder further and digest on some golden nuggets like this one, which clearly sets the stage of how the corporate world is, finally, starting to come to terms with embracing that new concept of Social Transformation of Your Business - The Workplace of the Future: "Organizations that create cultures that value balance, and assist employees to achieve life balance will be rewarded with highly engaged employees. Work-life balance does not mean  that employees are not loyal, nor committed to their organizations, it means that employees want to lead whole lives, not lives solely centered on work" To me, replace "balance" with "integration" and we are already there! Don’t think about striking a good balance between work and life, because you will never achieve it (Work will always eat that balance up any given time, before you even notice it!), but more a full integration of your personal life into work and work into your personal life. That’s the key, the sweet spot. That’s what really matters. I just had one of the most amazing holidays I can remember; mostly disconnected, unwinding from everything online, re-charging my batteries fully, getting plenty more energy levels, full again of optimism and outrageousness, and yet, I can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow, on my way to Orlando, Florida, to attend Lotusphere, even if that happens over the weekend… Already looking forward to seeing over there lots of smart friends and customers wanting to Live Social. Do Business.