Next08 – Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 14

Half way through the "See the Light 2.0" road show here in Germany, that I have been doing over the last couple of days, and which is going to be very difficult to forget for many many moons to come!, it is only now that I am starting to have some more free time to share with you folks some further thoughts on what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. I think it is kind of pointless to actually continue working on my draft blog posts while you are driving through the Autobahn, if you know what I mean 😉

So while I am still here in Köln (Beautiful city, by the way!), I thought I would go ahead and share some more of the highlights from the Next08 event (Probably the last blog post of the series, for the time being) I attended a couple of weeks back in Hamburg (And of which I have talked about already over here a couple of times); at the same time that I share with you all the weekly progress report from my giving up on e-mail new reality, moving on from where I left it before going on the road again: week 14.

Main reason why I wanted to continue talking about Next08 is because of the good amount of comments and offline interactions I have been getting from people to share a specific blog post where I would just point out to the presentation I did, which you already have, but more interestingly to the video recording that a few days back has already been made available on their site. Yes, that is right, something that I mentioned already elsewhere over here, but since it was a bit hidden with some further commentary, I think it would make sense to mention it briefly, once more.

Just recently we all got a notification where it was mentioned how all of the videos from Next08 were already up and running; ready to be watched! Including mine. Unfortunately, I will not be able to embed it over here, so you will have to head over to the main programme site and scroll down till you bump into it. But it is there. In it you will be able find out how over the course of a bit over 30 minutes I cover some of the background of where I am coming from with this new reality of giving up on work related e-mail, where I am heading and trying to achieve, as well as for what purpose(s), and in the end I get to talk about a little bit more hinting the various social software tools I use the most on a regular basis.

So far the feedback I have been receiving has been very positive, but I would certainly like to continue encouraging you all to watch it and provide some further feedback or comments you may have overall on it. Time continues to move forward and as such so has my presentation on "Thinking out of the Inbox", specially after these last few days on this Enterprise 2.0 / Social Computing road show. Quite an eye opener that I would be able to share with you whenever I am done with the overall event in the next couple of days… Thus stay tuned for more to come!

And now that I got that done with, I thought I would share with you the weekly progress report from that week, which would be the 14th consecutive week that I have given up on e-mail at work. Coming closer to the four months already at the time and now that I am just about to hit on the fifth month I can tell you that the results are even better! So here it is:

As you would be able to see I had a peak of 40 e-mails for that week, which although not too bad, it surely was an indication that I couldn’t move away some of those conversations about (conference) events, like I mentioned I would try to do. They were still coming up my way through my Inbox. I am not going to share with you just yet what happened in the following couple of weeks, since in each of them something really remarkable has taken place, so one step at a time, but as you can see, it is still looking good. Very doable and tripling the kind of online social software interactions I have been having thus far, which is helping me stay connected with people and feel that even though I am on the road travelling on a regular basis I can still contribute towards helping others. And not using e-mail!

And, finally, talking about people, if there would be a single key element that I could talk about from the Next08 event in Hamburg, it would be the fact that it is one of those special events where lots and lots of emphasis is placed on the social networking activities. It surely was an amazing experience, both from an organisational perspective as well as from a participant / presenter one. There were two things that immediately caught my attention throughout. One how everyone got a chance to come over and share their thoughts with their favourite speakers. That is how I got to know plenty more Stowe Boyd, Steve Rubel, Markus Angermeier, Tina Pickhardt, Sarik Weber,  Matthias Schrader, of course! (And his entire team! Well done, guys!!!) and many many more, including a whole bunch of IBMers (Yes, yes, you know who you are! 😛 heh). I know I will be keeping up with them in various social computing tools, like Twitter, whenever it would be working properly again. But one thing, for the sure, the first face to face contact has been made successfully. The rest will be coming along through nicely as time goes by and till the next event!

The second thing is to re-discover how healthy Web 2.0, along with Enterprise 2.0, is becoming in Germany. I already knew from my various interactions that Germany was on the right track, and to be honest, during that particular event I had the certainty of diving into conversations with an incredibly smart talent who are not only exploring the limits of Web 2.0, but they are taking them to the extreme to see where they can push them within the corporate world! And, not sure what you think, folks, but I am incredibly excited about it, because it comes to prove that it is not just America and Asia doing some really good things in this space, but also Germany, along with the UK and a couple of other countries, like Italy, where things are starting to turn around in the right direction: our direction!

Thus I am not sure about you, but I am surely looking forward to Next09. Will you be there? I hope I will. For sure! 🙂

Tags: IBM, See the Light, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Conference Events, Hamburg, Köln, Autobahn, Germany, Next08, Next 08, Twitter, Stowe Boyd, Steve Rubel, Markus Angermeier, Tina Pickhardt, Sarik Weber,   Matthias Schrader, Next09