sacha chua

Today, I want to talk about grassroots adoption, when you’re trying to influence people around you to try out something new–a new tool, a new idea, a new way of working–without dictating to people. I hope that I can help you get a better sense of where other people are, what might be stopping them from moving forward, where you are, and how you can get better at helping other people learn.

I’m interested in this because as a technology evangelist, I’ve talked to a lot of people about social tools like blogging and wikis. Over the next few blog entries, I want to share some of the objections that I’ve come across. I also want to share some of the methods I’ve tried and observed.

But first, let’s talk about what technology evangelism is. You might be wondering why I use the term “evangelism”, considering its religious roots and sometimes negative connotations.

For me, evangelism has that hint of being more than just a dry list of facts. You want to inspire people to action, and you want to do this in a way that sticks even when you’re not around.

The technology you want to promote is not going to be a perfect fit for everyone or every time. Technology evangelism is not about convincing people that your way is the right way. It’s about showing people what their options are, helping them find something that fits them, and helping them learn how to make it part of their work or their lives. (I forget this sometimes, too.)

So if a technology isn’t going to be a perfect fit for everyone immediately, how can you encourage grassroots adoption?

One way is to scatter the seeds as widely as possible. If you reach out, you might find a lot of people who can benefit from the technology you want to promote. Help them, and their success stories and influence will help you reach out to even more people.

You might not have that option. You might have been asked to help a team get up to speed on a tool. You might want to explore a collaborative tool, but before you can take advantage of that tool, you’ll need to get other people on board too. (After all, you can’t collaborate on your own.)

This is where it can get frustrating.

Next post on Monday (or earlier =) ): Sowing seeds: Five common objections

As promised, weekly report on Friday instead of Sunday! Let’s see how well that works.

This week:

• Drupal: Our CSS person started work. Hooray!
• Drupal: We switched over to the next phase of configuration management. Instead of dropping and recreating the database from scratch, we now have to work with a live database, making sure that we don’t lose the editorial changes that users have been making. It’s pretty straightforward with Drupal, actually. Database changes are added to module .install files as modulename_update_() functions. Edits and other system changes are handled in the .profile and through the Web interface. I should blog about this soon.
• Drupal: I handled lots of little defects and a few larger changes.
• Speaking: Prepared another presentation for the upcoming IBM Academy of Technology conference on collaboration. “Sowing Seeds: A Technology Evangelist’s Guide to Grassroots Adoption.” Uploaded it to internal file-sharing site.
• Speaking: Got the survey results back from the IBM Technical Leadership Exchange! Blog post about that later.
• New hires and networking: Had lunch and tea with some of the other new hires and older employees. =) Good stories. Also, started working on a guide for new hires.
• Work: I wrote two short Ruby scripts that analyzed internal blogging, bookmarking, and file-sharing activity for one of the communities I’m active in. Posted the results in internal blog posts.
• Work: I started putting together some resources for fellow IBM newbies. It’s in our internal version of Pass It Along.
• Fight/fitness: Not much this week. Just one class of yoga because the gym was closed on Tuesday and I was feeling tired last Thursday.

Next week:

• Drupal: Survive the demo. Plan tasks for the next phase and clarify my responsibilities.
• Speaking and presentations: Write blog posts / speaker notes / articles for my upcoming presentations. Make plans for conference travel.
• New hires and networking: Make a one-page list of tips about IBM and Web 2.0

It turned out that our newest team member, Tom Plaskon, is also a bookworm. Over lunch last Wednesday, we chatted about how we keep track of what we’re learning from books. My system hasn’t changed that much sinceI described it in February, but I thought I’d post an updated blog post about it, just in case writing about it prompts ideas.

How I get books:

I still read lots of books. I usually order books from the Toronto Public Library system or pull them off the library shelves when I go on a library run, but sometimes I’ll pick up books from the bookstore or order them online. I occasionally get book recommendations from other people, too.

I tend to read in sprints, focusing on a single subject. I’m currently revisiting personal finance, and I’ve read about comics and graphic novels, sketching, storytelling, writing, leadership, time management, Javascript, CSS, relationships, communication, management, consulting, entrepreneurship, photography, cooking, presentation skills, education, reading, economics, parenting (yes, I read my mom’s parenting books when she was raising me - made for an interesting childhood!), social networking, quarter-life crises, career planning, learning, creativity, self-defense, exercise, romances (particularly classic Regency ones) gardening, and other topics that slip my mind at the moment. Reading in sprints allows me to get through books quickly (few non-fiction books are packed with new ideas) and see the interconnections between ideas in books. Sometimes I’ll go for variety when I’m raiding the library shelves.

This is a pattern of reading that practically requires a well-stocked public library, as there’s no way I’m going to spend all that money doing a reading sprint by buying books from Chapters or Amazon. I’d be limited by my book budget and I’d end up with too many books full of too much filler. Using the public library allows me to get value from books I might not ordinarily buy and books that are mostly fluff except for one or two good insights. (Or books that have one good idea and just keep hammering it in.)

How I read books

While I’ll slow down and enjoy a dense, well-written book, most books are worth cursory scans. Sometimes I’ll look at the table of contents to get the lay of the land. Other times, I’ll just plunge right into it, skimming the book for good quotes, interesting insights, or good explanations.

I read books on the subway, over breakfast or dinner, while walking (except across intersections), on evenings and weekends, and whenever I can steal a moment. I try to always have a book or two in my bag.

How I take notes

The first step is to mark the passages I want to keep. I don’t like writing in books (and absolutely abhor the idea of writing in a library book!), so I have to keep track of the passages I want to put into my book notes system. I must confess that I’ve resorted to dogearing pages. Post-It flags feel wasteful and torn slips of paper are inconvenient. I’d be happy to switch to a better method for remembering pages if it was something I could do while walking around (rules out scanning text with a digitizing pen) and it allowed me to keep track of any number of pages (rules out bookmarks, unless I carry a whole stack of them).

After I’ve gone through a book once, it’s time to put the passages into my book notes system. If I have time, I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to dictate the book details, page numbers, and relevant passages to my computer. It’s fun, it reinforces my memory, and it helps me train the speech recognition engine. If I’m pressed for time, I scan the relevant pages, then and use Tesseract Optical Character Recognition to convert the scans into text.

I currently keep my book notes in a large text file with a little markup to make it easier for Emacs to display it as an outline. (Hooray org-mode!) Each book is an outline item, and each quotation starts with the page number. I also add my own notes.

How I review my books

The human brain is good at associative memory. When a conversation topic reminds me of something I’d read, I can usually come up with a few titles or keywords from the quotations. My book notes allow me to send not only the book details but also the relevant quote, which helps other non-bookwormish people zero in on the part they might want to check out. So far, my text file has been working well.

I occasionally review my book notes by flipping through my book notes on the computer or on my Nintendo DS, jumping to a random note, or searching for certain keywords. I also reread particularly good books to see if I’ll get even more insight this time around. This helps me keep the content fresh, and it also prompts me to think about who I know would benefit from the book I’m reviewing.

How I can make this system better

I think I’ll start using LibraryThing to keep track of the books I’ve read. This allows me to take advantage of social recommendations. I used to use Amazon for that, but it’s also nice to run into fellow bookworms with similar interests and to see what else they’re reading.

It might be good to capture diagrams neatly. I’ve got the scanner, so I just need to work out a good image storage thing.

I want to be able to link related quotations and books with each other. Blog posts would be a good way to do that. I just need to make sure I save my post locally, too.

I need to think about which new books are worth acquiring. =) There are a few presentation-related books I’m going to order (Back of the Napkin, Presentation Zen, Slideology).

Todas as faces da colaboração?

O poder do indivíduo já era. Experiências com colaboração e ferramentas sociais em grandes companhias, como a IBM, dão conta de mostrar o valor do trabalho desenvolvido em rede e global

Que tal conseguir o emprego dos sonhos compartilhando suas idéias em um blog? Foi assim que Sacha Chua, atual evangelizadora de Empresa 2.0 da IBM, conquistou o posto que ocupa hoje dentro da companhia, em Toronto, Canadá. Aos 23 anos, tão logo a jovem estudante passou a circular pela empresa por conta do projeto de conclusão de sua tese de mestrado em computacão social, em 2006, não hesitou em disparar posts sobre a própria pesquisa pela ferramenta interna de blogs que a IBM disponibilizava aos funcionários.

“Percebi que se não fizesse isso, no final de mestrado poucas pessoas leriam minha tese. Escrever sobre a pesquisa enquanto ela era feita permitiu que eu compartilhasse meu conhecimento com outras pessoas e aprendesse com as sugestôes e conselhos que me davam”, conta.

Foi como se a partir daquele momento tivesse calçado os sapatinhos de cristal de uma Cinderela moderna que ascendia para o universo corporativo. Do dia para a noite, o blog da então ilustre desconhecida caiu no gosto dos funcionários e se tournou o mais popular da empresa não só no Canadá–com média de 300 a 600 acessos diários–tudo sem sair da esfera interna da IBM. “Queria fazer mais do que escrever software, queria ajudar as pessoas a se conectarem por blogs, wikis e outras ferramentas web 2.0 e a IBM era a empresa perfeita para aplicar tudo que aprendi a respeito no mundo real. Quando chegou a hora de pedir o emprego, o processo foi fácil porque os futuros colegas de equipe já me conheciam e sabiam o suficiente para convencer a gerência a criar um cargo só para mim”, lembra.

A história de Sacha poderia ser uma exceção, mas não é. Essa é apenas uma das faces das oportunidades que as ferramentas sociais e de colaboração apresentam dentro de companhias. Por isso, a IBM vem apostando na criação de ambientes férteis para a inovação.

Except for my age, most of it’s right. Nifty! There’s more, but it would take me a while to type it all in from the scan. I wonder if I can get a copy of the magazine for my mom… =)

Pereira, Paula. June 2008. “Todas as faces da colaboração?”, B2B Magazine

After one of the new hires read my blog, she asked me, "How do you find the time to do what you do?" This was after I’d sent her a couple of useful links, so I didn’t think she meant it in the "You have too much time on your hands" kind of way. I said that I saved lots of time and and I use that time to get good enough at what I do so that people want me to do what I want to do. After reflecting on the question, though, I realized that my answer is at least half-wrong.

It’s not about time management or productivity.

I probably work less than most new hires do. I don’t work long hours because my evenings and weekends are full of wonderful things to do. (Okay, I do some work in the evenings and on the weekends, but that’s because it’s fun.) I’ve also kept a careful rein on the urge to immerse myself in work because I’ve heard that it can take over one’s life. This is not to say that people who live for work have made the wrong choice (we owe so much to people like them!), but I like the balance I have.

I don’t think I work significantly smarter than other people do. This is not about tips for handling e-mail faster or to make better use of your downtime. I’ve read a good number of productivity books and blogs, and I’ve incorporated many of their suggestions into my habits, but that’s really more to minimize frustration than to trim every last minute and streamline my daily routines. Besides, all these things are things other people can do. Whenever I come across something that saves me time, I try to teach it to other people–lifting as I climb. I’m not looking for a competitive advantage. I want to make the path even easier for other people than it was for me.

Besides, it’s difficult to compare productivity anyway. Let’s take my current project. I can read and figure out PHP code quickly, but it takes me forever to do cascading style sheet designs for websites. Am I faster or slower than my teammate? I don’t think it matters. My manager and my team members are happy with my work. I fulfill my end of the deal, and I help other people work more productively as well. I’m happy with my work and how I spend my time, and that’s probably the best result.

So if it’s not about longer hours or greater productivity, what’s the deal, then?

These three things are true about time: you will always have the same amount of time in one day as other people do, there will never be enough time to do everything, and there’s plenty of time to do the things that matter. The first point is the answer to "Where do you find the time to do this?" The second point is what stresses lots of people out. The third point is what makes all of that easier to deal with. It’s like the difference between a half-empty glass and a half-full glass. If you’re stressed out because you feel you don’t have enough time, you’ll feel even worse and you’ll use up more energy when you’re doing things. If you’re happy that you have the time to do a number of valuable things and maybe even a little more, you’ll feel better and you’ll bring that energy to your work and your life. So much of happiness is in how you see things.

What matters? For me, my formal responsibilities matter. My team relies on me to do certain kinds of work. I can see the value in what I’m doing, and I know that if I do a good job at what I do, I help other people create even more value doing the work they do. So yes, my work matters.

But my formal responsibilities aren’t everything. Even when it comes to work, I feel that i