(Note: You see? This is what happens when you go away on holidays and your team decides to have plenty of good fun without you hehe and they embark on launching our first external blog to talk plenty more about IBM’s internal and external Social Software Adoption Program: BlueIQ, which this year will be making our 5th anniversary… Here is a cross post of my introductory blog entry over there, so you can see what you can expect from it, should you decide to subscribe to it and keep the dialogue going… I will probably be writing one or two articles per week over there, along with the rest of my team, so let the fun begin! … And thanks for reading!)

One of the many things that you realise about, while you are on vacation, and something that over the course of the years you tend to come to terms with is the fact that, while you are away, life goes on, work goes on; with or without you. And that’s just fine! That’s how things go by and probably very little left for us to do on that matter anyway. So, as I am ramping up the last few hours of my holidays, yesterday afternoon I found out, through my colleagues, that, after a long while, our IBM Social Software Internal Adoption Program is now ready to transcend the firewall and go external. And, as such, a couple of days back we have now launched an external blog, called BlueIQ at IBM where, from now onwards, my team, along with myself, will be blogging every so often about IBM’s own adoption of social networking tools, as well as our full transformation, over the course of the years, on becoming a fully Integrated Social Enterprise. Yes!, folks, BlueIQ, finally, goes external!

And as you may have noticed already, a couple of my colleagues (Including our boss) have already been blogging away earlier on this week setting up the stage of the kind of articles you can expect to read, and engage with, hopefully, in our team blog. The vast majority of the topics that we will cover will describe how BlueIQ works, what we do to help accelerate IBM’s own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall, and at the same time you will also find interesting and relevant articles around topics like The Social Enterprise, Social Business, Social Networking, Adoption, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Communities and Community Building, etc. etc. Pretty much along the lines of the kinds of articles I have been sharing myself on my own personal Internet blog as well over the course of time.

The thing is that it’s not the first time that BlueIQ goes out there to the general public. In the past, there have been a good number of resources made available from our team on what we currently do at IBM, whether it’s our public wiki site available here, or the free whitepaper that both Jeanne Murray and Rawn Shah co-published a few months back and which covers our entire methodology on our social software adoption program (What’s worked, what hasn’t, lessons learned, program activities, metrics, etc. etc.), or the several presentations we have done at various conference events where we have been telling the BlueIQ Story.

However, this is the first time that we are working our way through our first public Internet team blog, where we are surely hoping to keep sharing further stories, experiences, know-how, lessons learned, hints and tips, and whatever other anecdotal evidence on what’s worked for us with our own social software adoption program and what’s happening in this very same space out there for other businesses. However, since this is also my first entry over here I thought I would point you folks to perhaps the most comprehensive BlueIQ Story we have got out there at the moment and which would certainly help serve as a good Introduction of who we are and what we are working on…

Yesterday, Rawn Shah, who, by the way, has now moved into another role within IBM as a Social Business Strategist, but you know how it goes, once a BlueIQer, always a BlueIQer tweeted about something that is pretty exciting for all of us at BlueIQ:

made Finalist for @profhamel ‘s Management Info Exchange “Beyond Bureaucracy challenge” @hackmanagement ow.ly/8rAYW

— Rawn Shah (@rawn) January 12, 2012

Indeed, over at “Cutting through BigBlue Tape: Using Collective Passion to Scissor Bureacuracy at IBM“, you will be able to see how our very own “BlueIQ at IBM” program is now one of the finalists on the “Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge” that Gary Hamel is sponsoring. And to say that we are incredibly eager and over-excited about the great news of even just being the final round would probably fall short pretty badly. We don’t know, obviously, who the winner will be, but to us all, on the BlueIQ team as well as our army of volunteers, the BlueIQ Ambassadors community of social software evangelists, it’s already a huge success and something to be very proud of.

But for you folks out there, you may be wondering what it is all about, right? Well, like I said, on that nomination paper that Rawn submitted, you would probably be able to find one of the most comprehensive and thorough descriptions of how, when, why, and for what purpose BlueIQ came into existence nearly 5 years ago to help fellow IBMers accelerate their own adoption of social technologies, both inside and outside of the firewall.

In a recent article I shared over on my Internet blog, I described a little bit IBM’s own journey to become a fully integrated socially enterprise, which would certainly be a rather nice complement to plenty of the historical and anecdotal evidence you would find also on Rawn’s piece of how IBM got started living social in the first place. However, what’s most interesting about that nomination piece is the various different sections that put together a rather nice picture of the kind of work we do and what triggered us to get started in the first place. So, to give you a taster of what you could find in it, allow me to include over here the headings of the various different sections, so you could have a look and read further on about them:

• Summary
• Moonshots
• Context
• Triggers
• Key Innovations & Timeline
• Challenges & Solutions (Which covers “Building an environment that fosters social collaboration”, “Enabling social collaboration skills by tailoring to specific needs”, “Gaining support from executives” and “Developing country-specific focus where needed”)
• Benefits & Metrics (With plenty of anecdotal evidence, and success stories from fellow IBMers who were facing real problems and found real solutions with social technologies)
• Lessons (Which covers “Keep the eye on the prize”, “Teach tasks, not tools, and help people learn socially”, “Engage your peers”, “Showcase executive participation”, “Use a deliberate approach”, “There is no “finish”")
• Credits
• Tags
• Helpful Materials”

Like I said, a rather extensive and pretty comprehensive resource, no doubt, that will surely give you all a pretty good base of what BlueIQ at IBM is and perhaps get also some other ideas you folks may want to give a try for your own internal or external adoption programs, and which we would all be more than happy to help out where we possibly can. Don’t forget to check out the extensive list of Helpful Materials as well, where you can find plenty more details about our overall program.

From here onwards, I would just personally want to thank Rawn very much for the wonderful piece of work done on that nomination piece and for making it into the finalists and I do wish him, and us, I suppose lots of good luck with it, knowing that we are already feeling winners just being on that final round, after checking out some of the amazing initiatives other people have been working on. Exciting times to be working on the Social Business space, for sure, and even more exciting when next week our entire team will be in Orlando, Florida, attending this year’s IBM Lotusphere 2012 event, where we hope to see all of you, face to face, to keep the conversations going about the Social Enterprise and its / our / your own adoption of social technologies.

Oh, and don’t forget we will be posting several articles per week in this blog with the whole purpose of keeping the dialogue going, before, during and after the event, because as Rawn mentioned, “there is no “finish”"

“Innovation never stops, and culture change takes time. Understand that victory is in the daily accumulation of social exchanges, content, and connections that lead to value. Understand that serendipity happens because the seeds of collaboration are sown throughout the organization. And understand that innovation never stops. You are not reaching an end line with social business adoption. Rather, you are creating patterns of behavior for collaborating and connecting that will transcend today’s innovations and position your business and your people for tomorrow.“

And if you would want to meet us up while at Lotusphere next week, to talk about adoption, enablement and share / exchange some further experiences around social technologies, here you have got some contact details from yours truly on where you can find me online, and, with me, the rest of the team as well …

Luis Suarez a.k.a. @elsua
Blog: http://elsua.net
Google Plus Profile

Welcome everyone to BlueIQ at IBM! Glad you could join us on this exciting journey!

Recent Blog Posts

37

The Social Revolution – Remember Us Thu, May 23rd 2013 5:25p Luis Suarez We live in rather interesting, intriguing, complex, uncertain and wonderful times. We surely do. We live in times of extreme negatives juxtaposing themselves with extreme positives. We live in times where the Social Web has become that amplifier of (global / local) events, of our passions, of our emotions, of an unnerving polarisation of opinions and beliefs, where tolerance, compassion, empathy and caring, some times, all shine for their absence. Just like in the real world. Where did we leave [read] Keywords: google

87

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

73

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

81

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

59

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

134

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

120

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

75

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

90

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

81

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