Status Reports via email?

Tomorrow I meet with my manager to review my IBM activities. I am excited about this meeting since she's in New York and I'm in Ohio and we do not interact on a daily basis. When I first started with her team I was sending excel status reports via email; now I use social media to document what's going on in my world.

I do not expect my manager to follow my every move, BUT she does have that ability with tools such as twitter. Some do not like their manager looking over their shoulder, but as I use twitter more anyone can find out what I am doing at any given moment. For example, she could find out via twitter that yesterday at 10:52AM I was "having my normal brunch of toast&peanut butter while I was reviewing IBM's business conduct guidelines."

Here are places she could track me down and understand better the value I am bringing to IBM...

Internal IBM Blog, External blog, twitter, cattail (like Google docs), Media Library (IBM internal), Dogear (like Del.icio.us), WikiCentral (IBM Internal)

Business Value of Twitter

I am envious of several of my IBM colleagues who are spending the next few days in Orlando, Florida. No, they are not hanging out with Mickey and Minnie. It's Lotusphere 2009! Even though I am not there in person I am able to get a very detailed report what's going on via twitter.

I'm a new adopter and the business value of twitter has slowly increased. Today that value culminated as I received live tweets on the iPhone via TwitterFon from Luis Suarez, Luis Benitez, and Chris Pepin while they attended Lotusphere. These individuals are leading the way in social software adoption internally within IBM and externally with our clients. I'm excited to attend Lotusphere via twitter the next few days.

Bad AT&T

I could not agree more with today's NY Times article, A Text Arrives. Oh, It's Just an Idol Ad.

I've been an AT&T customer for a week now and up until this point I have been happy with the service. While "the network" Verizon preaches may be better, I have seen no real network problems.

However, if they continue to send me more unsolicited text messages advertising shows such as American Idol. I may have to go back to Verizon. Hold on. No way...can't do it. I tested the Blackberry Storm yesterday and the iPhone is so far ahead of any Verizon device that I would put up with A LOT of unsolicited text messages before I switched.

iPhone Lesson #1 - Less Laptop Time

That's right...I am now enjoying less laptop time as I integrate the iPhone into my life. One task I have shifted to the iPhone is my gmail usage. While I still respond to some email via my IBM Thinkpad. I read 99% of my emails via the iPhone.

When I do respond to email via iPhone I make them brief and to the point. Shouldn't all our emails be like that already? Laptops give us so much space to write I guess we think we should fill it.

iPhone: Toy or Amazing Business Device?

I know all about toys. My children received many this year (mostly from grandparents).

Some have said that Angie's gift to me, an iPhone, is a toy. While it does have many apps that are fun (LightSaber) I must comment that it is an amazing business device that will enhance productivity and make life more enjoyable. Here's just a small snippet of my life this morning:

This morning:
8:00AM - On my way to work I checked my gmail and deleted unneeded messages. Thought about how to respond to other messages. (Angie..if you are reading this I promise to pay attention to the road and not rear end anyone else)

8:10AM - Listened to a my church lesson via the iPod

9:30AM - Showed my co-worker current pictures of the family (how often are you out somewhere and you only have outdated pictures of your family in your wallet?)

TeamIQ (Latest IBM project)

A few months ago I had an idea pop in my mind (can't remember if it was in the shower or not). You know, one of those ideas that you can't stop thinking about. An idea that you think will change the way your company works.

Since this idea was not part of my day job at IBM, I've spent any spare time explaining the concept to developers so they could help me make it happen.

The idea...drumroll please..TeamIQ, a new tool that aggregates the social tools of teams, is ready for prime time. We have tools inside the IBM firewall that are similar to those available to the public. The world has del.icio.us, IBM has dogear. The world has Google Docs, IBM has cattail. The world has facebook, IBM has beehive. The list goes on.

The new tool, TeamIQ, enables teams to input a list of their co-workers' email addresses and in response they receive a table that lists links to their coworkers' Beehive connections, Cattail files, etc. For example, if you are in a meeting you can paste in the Invitee list to find out what your co-workers are doing and who they are connected to.

I'm excited to evangelize and enhance this tool the next few months.