Goodbye Email - Week 3 - A Confession

Sep 30, 2008 Email

Confession:  I am using you. As if it wasn’t obvious, but I am.  Each time I start to send an email I think, “Oh no.  That will be one more way and I have to report it out.  Isn’t there some other way to do this.  A better way?”  So the fear of reporting out a high number to you, of faithful mentor, helps remind me to use another - better - way.

Keeping it low.  1/2 to 1/3 less.  This makes me happy.  Not my lowest, but close.

What am I doing differently?

1. I use Twitter more.
2. I actually pick up the phone or walk to someone’s desk.
3. In order to avoid email I find that I need to complete another couple extra steps - be a little more prepared - and then message someone through a wiki or blog or forum.  This causes me to be on top of things a bit more than I previously would have.
4. I wait and either let it pass (and ignore it) or let it play out before acknowledging it.  This has proven very helpful.  Instead of jumping in on things, I let others try to work them out.  If they go astray I can jump in, but I don’t NEED to.
5. I use IM more (now I might need to get an unlimited IM plan on my phone :-(  )

It isn’t a habit yet. It needs to get to that point where email is not my default mode of conversation.

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Tags: Email

How to Sell Social Learning to the Powers that Be

Sep 26, 2008 Selling Social Learning, Verbs of Social Learning

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I am often in the position of talking with others who somewhat get what social learning is. They know enough that it would be good for their organizations. They see the benefits. They can inherently feel that this will help their groups. But they would be hard pressed to explain what it is, it’s benefits and why the company should use it.  I used to be as speechless as the Thinker myself —->

The way we know we really know something is by explaining it to someone else. But it isn’t until we can articulate our thoughts and knowledge to others that truly begin to understand it. We must be able to verbalize what it is we are thinking before we can really say that we know a topic.

So, how do YOU articulate social learning and explain it to others? Most importantly, how do you explain it to the executives who are sceptical and have heard rumors of how evil anything that starts with ‘social’ is? How do you explain to the babyboomer who is on the front line what social learning is and why it would benefit them?

I have found that it isn’t until we can do this – and do it well – that we’ll be able to implement social learning. This is the first step to the world outside of yourself.

Over the next several posts I will be going through what it takes to explain social learning to others.  Its not an easy task, but I have found some things that help.

So, a question for all.  When asked to concisely explain what it is and why a company would want to use it, what do you say?

Tags: Selling Social Learning

id.10t errors

Sep 25, 2008 Social Learning SIG

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The other day my 13-yr old son asked why he wasn’t able to make something work on the computer.  I jokingly told him it was an “id.10t” error.  He didn’t get it.  I had him write it down, then he got it - an “idiot” error.

Well, we all make them, as I just did.  In setting up the October webinar I didn’t put the correct link to register:

https://admin.acrobat.com/_a791885149/octslsig/event/event_info.html

See the previous post for webinar details.

Come join us on Friday, October 17th:

Informal Learning in the 21st Century

Tags: slsig, webinar

October Webinar: Informal Learning in the 21st Century

Sep 22, 2008 Social Learning SIG

Join us for the Social Learning SIG’s October Webinar

Title: Informal Learning in the 21st Century

Description: There’s a true transformation happening on the Internet. The passive read-only experience of static web pages is changing into active participation via the read-write web. Our children are on Facebook and listening to podcasts on their Ipods, and every day we hear about blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and the like. We know the online world is changing. We know that an interactive web will have profound implications for us as learning professionals - but what does it all really mean?

In this session you’ll get a guided tour of how new rich-media and collaboration technologies are changing the face of the web, and how learning organizations are leveraging these technologies to better serve their customers.

Host: Cascadia Chapter of ASTD

Presenter: Bill Bruck of Q2 Learning

When: Friday 17 October 2008, 11:00 AM - Noon, Pacific

Audio: The audio is Voice over IP (VoIP) and is not over a conference call. To listen, you will need to have headphones connected to your computer.

[UPDATE WITH CORRECT LINK]

REGISTER TODAY: https://admin.acrobat.com/_a791885149/octslsig/event/event_info.html

Goodbye Email - Week 2

Sep 22, 2008 Social Learning SIG

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Last week I was catching up from being gone for a week.  But still, I was doing more stratigic activities rather than tactical.  I thought I would have LESS emails sent out.  Nope.

Need… to… Focus…

On Friday I did a webinar for the eLearning Guild as part of their Online Forum conference.  Although it was also “Talk like a pirate day,” I refrained (but the urge was there!).  There is some polishing up I need to do on my webinar skills, but overall it went really well.  Great comments from the participants.  Thanks to everyone who chipped in - especially Bill and Karen who took care of the planning and administration.  They were great!

I spent a TON of time preparing for it.  Partly because I created it once, read Nancy Duarte’s slide:ology, and felt the need to redo it.  Even though it took a lot more time than I had anticipated, I am glad I did.  If you haven’t read the book - you must.  But because of that, I will break up the presentation and create a number of posts.

The 11 Verbs of Social Learning… coming soon.

Now that the webinar is done and my paper for school is done (was up at 2am this morning to finish it) I feel like a free man!  I can now focus on more fun stuff (you know, small things like being with my small family), and other things I have put off over the last few weeks.

If only I could wake up at 2am every day and still function!

Tags: International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Goodbye Email - Week 1

Sep 16, 2008 Email

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A little explanation: I ran a customer conference last week in Las Vegas.  That was it.  No regular work, no blogging, nothing.  Now that I am recovered (which is relative) I am back to real life.  Because of the conference I had an abnormally small number of emails.  (I have never texted so much in my life, though!)

I really can’t use last week as a real week, so I revert to my first week, the week before, and this week will be #2.

As you can tell, I really worked at it.  Still with only 4 working days during Week 1, I improved a huge amount.

It wasn’t easy, though!  Often I would start an email and then catch myself mid way through it.  Then the hampster in my head had to kick it up a notch: How do I communicate with this person if I can’t do it through email.  I found that I called more, used our internal system more and used Twitter more.  Sometimes I found that it was better if I didn’t contact them at all and just waited.

Oh, and what a difference it made on the # of emails I received!

Two other random thoughts:

1. Since buying my iPhone I find that I spend more time on that than I do on the computer at home.  So nice.
2. DO NOT EVER stay at the Flamingo.  I don’t care what you do!  Don’t give in.  Someone else at our company chose this.  I had never stayed there, nor did I really know anything about it (or I would have objected).  But after the mold, disgustingness, horrible service and ants in the bathroom I will never come close to that place again.  And it wasn’t just me - it was almost every single one of the conference attendees (pretty embarrassing to tell you the truth).  I thought about creating theflamingomustdie.com, but that is not how I want to be famous.  A small book could be created on our experiences - something akin to a bad nightmare.  By the way, Flamingo: Hot pink is out.

Tags: conference, Email, Las Vegas

Friday’s Thoughts

Sep 5, 2008 Social Learning SIG

End of another week - a short week. Got to love that.

EMAIL: I catch myself all the time!  I start an email and think: Doh!  And then I figure out another way - a better way overall - to do it.  More about that on Monday when I give a report of my progress to cut down on email.

TED: On the way home I ‘watched’ a couple TED videos this week.  Loved them both (as I usually do).  The first was Clay Shirky on Institutions vs. Collaboration.  Although I ‘watched’ it in the car, I highly suggest you wait until you are at your desk or in your living room.  Then, take a note pad and have the pause button ready.  Write down the thoughts that come to you.  Lots of great insights here.

The second was Kevin Kelly’s (which happens to be my and my wife’s names together) Predicting the next 5000 days of the web.  Take-away?  We take for granted what we already have.  “It is amazing!  And we’re not amazed!”  Great thoughts of where this might go.

BOOK: Beyond school books I received slide:ology last night.  I have to wait until Monday to start reading it, but I am excited to start.

SPEAKING: On September 19th I will be doing a webinar as part of the eLearning Guild’s Online Forum about social learning and would love to incorporate some of the things I learn from the book into that.

In November I am joining ELG’s DevLearn08 to present 15 objections to social learning and how to overcome them.  Also getting geared up for that.  I loved the Annual Gathering in April - best one I have been to so far and I can imagine that this is very similar.  I highly suggest that you get out to DevLearn.

NEXT WEEK: In Las Vegas for a company client conference I have put together.  LOTS of work leading up to it.  It will be great to actually do it.   I will be doing a lot of blogging, but specifically for the conference, and not so much here (as if I was prolific in the first place!)

UPDATE (One more thing…): A lot of people ask about tools.  Here is a great list of tools to use. I could add a few others.  Check out my (smaller) list at the Social Learning SIG site.

Eliminating Email? Not Quite, but I am Going to Try

Sep 2, 2008 Enterprise 2.0, Social Learning SIG, blogging

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Inspired by Luis Suarez and his “Giving up on email” quest, and the fact that I feel the need to more fully walk the talk, I am doing my part to eliminate the Outlook electrons.

Emails for this practise will only be counted from internal sources - I won’t be counting junk mail, vendor mail or outside non-work email that comes through my normal email (not that I would have any )  But if they come from another employee I will count them.  Those that I send will be counted as well.

Here is the break down (I always want to start beat boxing when I say “break down” for some reason).

I have never analyzed my emails before, but am happy to see that I receive less than I create.  You will notice that last week is not counted.  That is because I was experimenting to see if this would really work.  And I think it will!  Time will tell, but I am optimistic.

The first thing I did this morning was create a blog post and let everyone know what I am doing, and why.  One thing I have added in is that if someone want’s to get my attention with a particular discussion or wiki document, they should add my username to the tags.  My RSS feeds now pick up anything tagged with my username.

Below is a snippet of my post:

PROS:

• I don’t need to keep getting bombarded with emails every time someone replies. I can, if I want, see the culmination after a few people have chimed in. This cuts down on my viewing time and gives me back time I need.
• My days (and the tasks I do during the day) are not driven by my email. Rather, I spend longer times on one task and finish it, rather than being interrupted by many different tasks.
• I might be asking the wrong person a question and the right person (or someone who knows the answer) might see the information and give us the correct answer.
• I go to one place for all the information on the subject, not 10 different emails.
• Discussions / documents focus on one topic. Emails can branch out into other topics not related to the original. With all the emails, one can get lost and not quite find the information they are looking for later on.
• I can go back and actually find the conversation I had with someone else and remember why we decided what we did or the details of it rather than losing the email and guessing.
• If I ask a question, there is a good chance others have, or will have, the same question but now they will find the answer.
• If it is an announcement of some type, this elicits discussion - which is a big pro.
• Often what I do concerns projects. It is good to be able to go back and see what happened, when, what issues were worked through, what questions were asked, etc., for the next time.

CONS:

• I have never done this before. So it will be a change of how I do work. Assuming all goes well, this will turn into a pro.
• Those discussions will be out there. One may argue that it may ‘clog’ up GTSX (the name of our internal environment) with extra information that is not needed. But, again, if I have a question, someone, sometime will have the same question. So, again, it turns into a pro.

Now - why?  We can learn and share information more easily this way.  Natually, much of my offline communication has already gone this way.  In fact, I was commenting to my wife last night that I spend more time on my iPhone than I do our home computer.  A refreshing change!

Here is a SlideShare presentation on eliminating email.

Tags: Email, iPhone, Luis Suarez, Outlook, RSS, SlideShare