Last couple of days have been rather intense, specially at work, preparing for another business trip next week, lengthy customer workshops on Enterprise 2.0 and Social Software Adoption, ramping up activities from my daily work for what’s left of this summer and so forth. Which is why I didn’t get a chance to put together a blog post yesterday and why I am going to take a short break today from my series of articles on the Enterprise 2.0 conference highlights in Boston. But not to worry, I will continue with them shortly as well once again.
If you have been reading this blog for a while now you will know that for the last few years I have been living, and working remotely, from Gran Canaria, while still at IBM, my current employer. Yes, I know, there isn’t a single IBM office anywhere near me, closest one is in mainland Spain, but yet, I do have an IBM office in here, i.e. my own home office 😉
Plenty of folks wonder how I can keep working productively in such remote environment when both of my bosses are thousands of kilometers away from me; they keep wondering how I do keep in touch with my peers, customers, business partners, various other thought leaders in this 2.0 space; they keep questioning whether teleworking can be a realistic solution for the corporate world of the 21st century. You know the usual stuff most Web / knowledge workers working from home remotely get asked every now and then. Like where is your water cooler, Mr.?, or, like some of them would say over here, at this side of the pond, where is your coffee corner, my friend?
So far I have been able to share some of my thoughts on this subject, and several other similar ones, in a couple of blog posts I put together a little while ago under the titles "The Future of Work by Luis Suarez (Goodbye Cubicle, Hello Couch)" and "Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 46 (Living without Email – One Man’s Story. Are you Next?)", respectively. Well, it looks like now I have got another one to refer to. And this time around having done a live face to face interview with another good friend of mine, who came to visit a few days back: Andrea Vascellari. (Funny how I have met more people who do related work to what I usually do over here in Gran Canaria than when I was living in The Netherlands for over seven years! I wonder why … heh)
That’s right! A few days back, Andrea was over here in Gran Canaria, in Las Palmas de G. C., to be more precise, on vacation and we eventually spent a good afternoon enjoying the little pleasures this island has got to offer on a splendid summer Saturday afternoon. A couple of beers and an incredibly good conversation can do that to you!
Thus, as a result of it, we recorded a follow up video interview of nearly 27 minutes where we discussed a whole bunch of topics that he has put together in a lovely blog post over at "Luis Suarez – VMC Video Interview". To give you an idea of what you will find in it, here you have them once more:
"Questions & Discussion Topics:
- What do you do at IBM?
- How does it feel to work remotely for IBM from from Gran Canaria?
- Some examples of social software implementation at IBM
- Which is the response from the client’s side on the use of social software?
- Did the need of adopting social software come from the clients of from IBM?
- Do you think that social software could/can speed up communication processes within certain groups?
- Which are the problems you are facing at IBM when trying to implement new tools/solutions?
- How’s the feeling of working in a transparent environment?
- How to overcome cultural roadblocks to innovation?
- What do you think about Google Wave?
- The more we move on the more skills are needed to get the best out of social software/tools
- A world without emails
- A world without emails – How was received by IBM?
- The future of communications"
As you can see, plenty of ground to cover in those nearly 27 minutes on some of my favourite topics, including, of course, living "A World Without EMail" and what it is like not using corporate email any longer at work! (Although this week, I can tell you, it hasn’t been pretty, but more on that one later on!); so I am going to keep things short on this blog post and just point you to the interview itself, which I have also embedded below:
From here onwards, and to wrap up, I just want to send across to far, far, far away Andrea a big and special Thanks! for wanting to meet up while he was enjoying his vacation over here and for offering and doing the recording of one of our conversations. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope you will, too. Many thanks, Andrea, and till next time we cross our paths or you may venture into coming back home 😉
Keep having fun!
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, e2conf, Boston, Highlights, Future of Work, Future of the Enterprise, BlueIQ, Social Software Adoption, Communications, Marketing, Marketing 2.0, Social Media Marketing, Transparency, Openness
Always nice to talk with you my friend…
Un abrazo y hasta la proxima!
Andrea
Ciao Andrea! Thanks a lot for dropping by and for the feedback comments, my friend! I had a great time, indeed, and I surely hope to see you soon again, so we can keep it up. For now, it will have to be out there, virtually and distributed! Keep having fun and appreciated the opportunity! Look forward to the next one! 🙂