Lotusphere 2012:

Alone we are only popping champagne corks. Together we are dynamite!

NORWAY: – This is the second year in a row that I don’t participate at Lotusphere. Being a guy who breeds and bleeds yellow and have been working for Lotus for 15 years, I have to admit: It feels like being a small boy who has been left alone at home when the rest of the family goes on holiday. It feels lonely, it feels heartbreaking. But, someone has to stay at home and take care of the house, watering the flowers and feed the cat. And someone has to stay at home defending the fortress!

Lotusphere is a fantastic event. Thousands and thousands of people from all over the world gathers around one common interest; social collaboration. Not only are they interested in the technology – they are practically performing social collaboration live! They mingle, talk, laugh, change information, teach and learn, build new skills, meet new friends, meet old friends. People from all over the world, of all colors, all religions, all political standpoints, all cultures, all food preferences – they are all different, but they are all alike in some way – they are positive, peaceful, friendly and open! Lotusphere is a great place to be. Sometimes I think that the rest of the troubled world could learn something from the “Lotusphere Nation” – that collaborating socially makes the world a better place.

In january 2010 i participated at Lotusphere registered on IBM’s blogger quota. I blogged heavily during the Opening General Session, simultaneously. After three days I had posted nearly 50 articles from the event. Not only short news bits and comments, but interviews and full reports with pictures – like any web based news agency. That got me more than 7.000 readers – not bad when writing in Norwegian only with only 4,5 million Norwegians.

The year after I as not there, but blogged from my home office, following OGS especially and Lotusphere in general via the internet. I can assure you the result was not the same. The number of readers fell to 4.500 people. This tells me one thing, that I learned in my earlier days as a professional journalist – you have to stay close to the source!

Watching the streaming – often with technical problems and bad sound – will never be as good as being there. You never get the same feeling of togetherness as you do in that people packed conference hall. You never hear the summing, the comments, the intense nerve that is in the air. You never get the same inspiration via the internet. Being there is what rules.

Especially I will miss all the demo’s. Seeing is believing! I have more than a hunch on what will be announced, what the trend and the roadmap will be. If you are more than interested you will understand what has to come, without knowing all the facts in detail. You know that integration of social abilities and functions will be everywhere. You know that there will be more open technology. These are all technical stuff that many traditional Lotusphere-geeks are looking forward to. But for me, who is not a techie and has been working as a journalist and personal productivity adviser in my earlier career – the most interesting thing will be to see the new way of working!

You will see that the old way of working in silo’s will slowly disappear and transformed into a horizontal way of working. And the possibility to connect to other people will be integrated everywhere. We will see that everything is connected, people, documents, places – and there will be many ways to connect.

My thoughts goes back to that fantastic event when CNN’s founder, Ted Turner, set up a direct TV link between USA and USSR. He let ordinary americans talk to ordinary russians. For a young man like me at that time it became a learning for life. These people who has so very different lives and economic standards, suddenly understood that they all had the same worries and the same feelings about what life is all about. That TV show was imperative for my choose of a personal life agenda – and made me understand that social collaboration is what makes the world go forward.

Alone we are only popping champagne corks. Together we are dynamite!

Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen

arne@mynotesblog.com

@mynotesblog

http://www.mynotesblog.com

Recharging ones “batteries” before starting up work in january is very important. I am one of those lucky guys who have the worlds most effective chargers! The cat “Tiger Boy” and the dog “Charlie”!

Recharging batteries with Tiger Boy and Charlie.

Those two are my brothers in (my) arms and help me lower my heart rate, like you see in this picture! Just think about it – a cat and a dog that are the worlds best friends! They play together, sleep together, walk together and lick each others wounds when hurt. I wish the whole world was like these two guys!

And now they help me recharge my batteries and get new energy before the big travel month starts! First two days in Bergen, Norway for a Business Partner Training and a Customer Event. Then a hit and run in Copenhagen, Denmark to talk about “Social Business 2.0” at an IDC event. And then nearly two weeks in Orlando, Florida for Connect 2014 and an IBM internal education event. Back in normal pace again in february!

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 44,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2013, there were 178 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 2,013 posts. There were 95 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 31 MB. That’s about 2 pictures per week. The busiest day of the year was July 8th with 830 views. The most popular post that day was Where is the business case in changing email system?. The readers of The Nielsen Chronicle came from 135 countries during the passed year. Most of them came from USA, Norway and Germany. The most commented post was in 2013 was Danish company dropped Office 365 for IBM SmartCloud.

So, what will happen in 2014?

Well, that is partly for YOU to decide. I have written this blog for many, many years now – all since I ran it on my own server under my desk and used Lotus Quickr as the blog platform. Later I moved it to Blogspot and from there to where it is now, WordPress. What has kept me going all these years are YOU, my readers. Without readers blogging is just like a private diary – a personal and private therapist – which I don’t need. I have another application for that.

It is all about the dialogue with the readers. I learned that many years ago when I was a journalist in a local newspaper in the middle of Norway. – It’s all about the readers, my editor told me. – Make them glad, make them angry, but never, never bore them, he said. And since then I have tried to followed that rule through my career within in news media, weekly magazines and a chief editor and in the books I have written.

So, I hope I have not bored you, my dear blog readers, during these years. If I made you smile or cry out in anger, then I have succeeded. Then I have moved you. And moving people is what moves the world ahead.

Dear reader! Thank You for following my blog. Thank You for linking it, referring to it, copy from it, talking about it, forwarding it, tweeting about it – all this is what brings my blog forward. Please go on doing so in 2014. Ad do not forget to send me news tips, ideas on what you think I should write more about. Or what I should NOT write about. And do not hesitate to comment!

I wish you all a Happy New Year! May the force be with you!