Ok, here we go, folks! Here comes 2012 and it looks like it’s going to be busier and more hectic than ever! Are you ready for it? We better be, because there is no way back! We are already fully immersed in it and it surely looks like it’s going to be another exciting, enlightening and rather interesting new year with lots of very inspiring and encouraging things worth while experiencing to the fullest! And today is no different! While I am still enjoying a few more days on holidays, before getting things rolling with another year at work, I thought I would drop by over here and kick-off the series of blog posts for 2012 with what promises to be *the* most Inspiring Video of the Year (Yes, I know! Already!!). One of those videos you must stop everything you are doing right now and watch it through! Specially, with lots of people around. Specially, with your kids or grand-kids. It’ll change completely the way you view things, and the way they, too, see them themselves. It’s the re-birth of the Circular Economy, as we know it. And about time, too!

I cannot believe that the video clip was put together, and shared across, in YouTube on November last year and that we all totally missed it, since it hardly has got more than 180 views so far. But, believe me, it will be worth while the 18 minutes of your life that it lasts. Every single second of it! It will change your life for good and plenty of your beliefs on what rules the world today and what should be eventually. Yes, indeed, it’s that good! It’s a rather short video interview that the one and only, Loren Feldman, put together for 1938 Creative in association with Important Media, to interview Ken Anderson, long-time naturalist, who word after word cannot but keep inspiring us all to help us understand how we need to redefine the way we live and the way we treasure, or not, certain things in today’s world.

Over at Ken Anderson: Perspectives From A Long-Time Naturalist Loren himself describes briefly in a short blog post what the interview will be all about, and in order not to spoil it, I will just briefly mentioned how, while going through the clip on its entirety I just couldn’t help thinking about two different blog entries that I put together last year and which would make up for some interesting reading along the lines of what Ken has got to tell us all on where we are heading. Remember “The Social Enterprise and The Circular Economy“? Or “Welcome to the Social Enterprise Awakening!“? In case you may not have, you would see how Ken demonstrates, time and time again, how it is possible to live, and embrace fully, a healthy, prosperous AND sustainable Circular Economy, as long as we shift focus from what drives our global economy nowadays (Not to worry, I’m not going to spoil it for you what Ken thinks are the main culprits of where we are today… Couldn’t have put it myself in better words either though!) and we start reverting things in the opposite direction of where we are heading.

Eventually, provoking what Ken calls out for as “The Awakening“, which, and I surely agree with him 100%, is very much needed at the moment. Now, I could go ahead and describe that awakening referencing back again that blog post whose link I shared above already, but, no, I am not going to do that. I’m actually going to point you instead to a superb piece of art that my very dear good friend Susan Scrupski put together a couple of days back and which describes, quite nicely and with quite powerful words, what our focus and purpose for 2012 (And beyond!) is going to be. At least, that one from yours truly. Have a look and check out “#OccupyEnterprise and Start your own Revolution” and be inspired by amazingly powerful statements as this one:

“The Council members are fighting for a new way of working where freedom of ideas will produce increased employee motivation and loyalty which in turn will spur innovation and problem-solving.  Yes, business objectives are driving this change, but the natural by-product is the humanization of the workforce.  Transparency will go a long way to revealing the unsavory underbelly of the corporate beast” [Emphasis mine]

And now, right after you have read Susan’s article, come back, hit the Play button of this embedded YouTube interview and be WOWed by Ken’s words of wisdom, knowledge, lifetime experiences, hope, optimism, outrageousness, deep caring, sharing, mother nature and our role in it, and, in short, ourselves, and our future in this world. Specially, for those who are coming after us and for whom we have got a lot to account for. Still.

Not sure what you would think, but after watching that video clip, there are two other things I’m going to be doing in 2012 plenty more: Wear Sunscreen and listen, and learn plenty more!, from our elders. They have always known, and experienced fully, a whole lot more than we do…

Recent Blog Posts

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The Future of Work by 2020 Wed, May 22nd 2013 6:06a Luis Suarez Fascinating topic, don’t you think? And here we are, still in 2013, and already thinking about what the workplace of the future would be like by 2020. Well, one thing for sure is that it won’t be anything like we have today or what we may have had over the course of the last 50 years. Even more, I am suspecting that over the course of time, if not happening already today, we are going to make a very healthy split between work and jobs. Because, you know, they are not the same, no mat [read] Keywords: enterprise integration linkedin mobile office twitter

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How Social Networking Can Improve Work Meetings Sat, May 18th 2013 2:07p Luis Suarez I am not too sure whether meetings lower our IQ or whether they make us all more stupid, as my good friend Stowe Boyd reflected on a recent blog post, but I can certainly confirm they do take a toll on your own productivity. Specially, when those meetings are not set up by you, but by everyone else, and therefore making you lose the control, once again, in terms of one of the most precious things all of us, knowledge workers, have that we don’t seem to treasure well enough: Time. Attentio [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm blogging email google linkedin networking office social software twitter

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Open Business – From Document-Centric to People-Centric Collaboration Mon, May 13th 2013 5:09p Luis Suarez Lately, I have been thinking quite a bit around the topic of Social / Open Business Transformation. Something completely different to what we may have experienced so far in the last three to four years on living social for the sake of social, which is perhaps what we pretty much keep seeing today all over the place. Instead, I keep pondering about how we can transform and redefine the way we do business through our day to day workflow(s) and if there is an idea that keeps coming back stronger b [read] Keywords: collaboration email google instant messaging mac networking social software twitter wiki

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Industrialisation of Social Networking for the Enterprise Sun, May 12th 2013 5:46p Luis Suarez Or, to put it in other words, automation of your social networking presence. That worrying topic has been in my mind for quite a while, and, lately, even more so, specially, seeing how plenty of people continue to automate, even further along, their online digital footprints with the argument, amongst several others, that they have got to do it, because they just can’t find the time anymore to make it happen in a natural, authentic, self-driven manner. Yes, it happens. Yes, it’s a to [read] Keywords: connections ibm blogging email enterprise exchange exchange google networking social software twitter

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Meet Your New CEO – Your Kid Thu, May 9th 2013 4:43p Luis Suarez Summer time is usually one of the busiest times of the year for me in terms of extra curricular work related activities. I know that this may sound a bit weird, but it’s actually rather accurate. While most folks keep enjoying their summer vacation, or a relatively quieter time anyway, my busyness increases a notch or two! And it’s actually quite fine. I have been enjoying it for a good few years already, more than anything else, because of a particular activity that helps me advan [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm email google networking twitter

119

Life Without eMail – 5th Year Progress Report – The Community, The Movement Mon, May 6th 2013 3:24p Luis Suarez There have been a lot of people who, over the course of the last few months, have been asking me whatever happened to that initiative I started a while ago around ditching corporate email (Under the moniker “A World Without eMail“), since things seem to have been a bit quiet over here in this blog for a little while on that very same subject. Did I give up on giving up on corporate email? Did I get tired of it and moved back to email? Was the experiment a total failure? Did I get tir [read] Keywords: calendaring connections ibm archive community email google leak networking twitter wiki

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Radical Transparency in the Era of Open Business Fri, May 3rd 2013 1:45p Luis Suarez In a work context, I have always been fascinated by transparency. And, lately, even more about radical transparency. I have always believed that if we would have been, all along, a whole lot more transparent in what we do in the corporate business world, the vast majority of the problems that we are currently suffering from, including what I still think is at the #1 spot, Employee Engagement, all of these troubles would be a thing of the past. Yet, they keep lingering around, because, after al [read] Keywords: collaboration community google network networking twitter

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One Month Anniversary on the New Job as Lead Social Business Enabler Thu, May 2nd 2013 6:05p Luis Suarez I cannot believe that, in just a few minutes from now, I will be celebrating the first month anniversary in my new job as the Lead Social Business Enabler at IBM and I hardly did notice how fast and furious it’s gone by. Goodness! One full month already?!? Where did April go? Even more important, what have I been up to during that time? Well, time for an update that I will try to summarise briefly with these few key words to then perhaps expand further along a single key point that has be [read] Keywords: collaboration connections ibm email linkedin network networking office twitter

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Social Business Adoption – The Laggards, The Critics and The Skeptics Tue, Apr 23rd 2013 4:49a Luis Suarez A couple of years back, Giovanni Rodriguez put together a guest blog post over a ReadWriteWeb on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: Does It Have To Be So Hard? and it’s rather interesting to see how almost three years later the challenge seems to be there still, alive and kicking: Social / Open Business Adoption is hard. Well, it should well be. If not, what is the point? What’s the challenge? Where is your vision? Where is the business value? What are your goals? Think of it, [read] Keywords: collaboration ibm enterprise twitter

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Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM’s w3 and www Connections – Job Role and Responsibilities Mon, Apr 22nd 2013 4:44a Luis Suarez Now that the word is out there, and since I have been in the new job for a couple of weeks already, I guess it’s a good time to reflect on what does the Lead Social Business Enabler for IBM’s w3 and www Connections do on a daily basis in terms of my job role and responsibilities. As a starting point, the novelty effect has been huge altogether, because in these first two weeks I have been in the IBM CIO Organisation there has been a growing trend that I am finding it quite fascinati [read] Keywords: collaboration connections ibm community email enterprise networking social software