An archive of my writings from 2007 till 2011. If you're interested in the recent stuff, visit my Tumblr at dvirreznik.com.
My BFF Ezra Butler videotaped this video, and it’s a good thing I’m leaving IBM, or I’ll have to answer to my bosses… 😉 Ezra came to IBM Israel for the Innovation Forum held last Thursday, and we managed to sqeeze this short interview before the event started.
TheMarker Com.Vention was an excellent event for business networking, and as a result I have some 20 new twitter followers, not to mention facebook and LinkedIn invitations.
TheMarker Com.Vention was held yesterday at Avenue, attracting more than 1,500 people, all of them part of the local hi-tech and internet community. Twitter was definitely the most mentioned word during the event, with a hashtag that appeared on themarker.com (#themarker09) and a dedicated panel: micro-blogging, substance or hype. My tweetdeck was filled with #themarker09, which got me thinking – why not set a group photo, of all twitterers attending the event? And so it was.. Below you can see the first group photo of some of the Israeli twitterers, along with Arjan Radder, who was a speaker at the event yesterday.
The original pictures are available at Niv’s album or his flickr.
From left to right (some people were not tagged, yet):
My good friend Arjan Radder is here, getting ready for his TheMarker Con.Vention appearance, meeting some customers and BPs as well. Since it’s Arjan’s first weekend in Israel, we’re going on a 1-day trip Saturday, up north, to the Galilee. Here’s what we’re gonna see (from Wikipedia).
Update – trip was excellent, most informative, great weather. We also visited Nazareth, site of Basilica of the Annunciation. Remember that Mount Tabor closes at 11:45 for noon prayers (opens again at 14:00), so you need to be there before that. Photos from the trip are available at the facebook album.
Mount Tabor – is located in Lower Galilee, at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, 17 kilometres (11 mi) west of the Sea of Galilee. It is believed by many to be the site of the Transfiguration of Christ and site for the battle between Barak and the army of Jabin, commanded by Sisera. It is also known as Har Tavor, Itabyrium, Jebel et-Tur, and the Mount of Transfiguration.
Walking on Water – one of the miracles that the Gospels attribute to Jesus. An account of the miracle appears in the Gospels of John (John 6:16-21), of Matthew[1] and of Mark [2]. According to the Biblical narrative, Jesus sent the disciples in a boat, ahead of him, to Bethsaida, but when they were half way across the lake, Jesus walked over the lake and met them.
Capernaum – The town is mentioned in the New Testament: in the Gospel of Luke it was reported to have been the home of the apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John, as well as the tax collector Matthew.
In Matthew 4:13 the town was reported to have been the home of Jesus himself. According to Luke 4:31-44, Jesus taught in the synagogue in Capernaum on the sabbath days.
Nazareth – According to Luke, Nazareth was the home of Joseph and Mary and the site of the Annunciation, when Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would have Jesus as her son. Nazareth is also where Jesus grew up from some point in his childhood.
As promised last week, you can read the full interview TheMarker held with my friend Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Mgr., IBM Europe. Interviewed by Or Herschauna.
Arjan will be speaking at TheMarker Com.Vention Conference coming Sunday, March 29.
——–
Facebook Is Not for Enterprises
Arjan Radder, Social Software Sales Manager in IBM Europe, believes that a Social enterprise networks can have a crucial role in enhancing organizational efficiency.
By Or Herschauna
The first time Arjan Radder, who is responsible for social software sales in IBM Europe, heard that many IBM Israel employees have a Facebook profile he was surprised. “It’s very different for us in
A quick check indicates he is right. There aren’t any Dutch IBM employees in Facebook or, at least, not any employees who mentioned the name of the company for which they work. Radder quickly regains his composure. “It’s actually logical,” he says, “Facebook is very popular in
Radder’s role at IBM involves in leveraging the advantages of social networks in the enterprises.
“When web sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook started to become popular we understand that we at the IBM, have actually been doing something similar for over a decade. For example, we have a network of employee profiles called Blue Pages, which is almost identical to LinkedIn. It is no simple matter to make communications in an organization of almost 500,000 employees efficient. We are spread out over the entire world and engage in fields with a large amount of knowledge. It was simply a matter of necessity for us,” he explains. “We also have 80,000 blogs at the company, ad 12,000 communities,” he adds.
As part of its use of the advantages of the open social networks IBM recently incorporated Lotus Connect and Beehive in its organizational social networks product. Beehive expands the standard user profile in IBM software and makes it similar to the Facebook profile. Beehive allows surfers to upload pictures and events to the profile, and to add comments to the profiles of other users. Radder finds it easy to explain the significance of social applications in an enterprise like IBM.
“Once, when I searched the Internet for something, I’d do it through the regular search engines and receive, at least, hundreds of results. Now I get two results – the first is the results from the general search engines, like Google, and the second is a result from the links that IBM employees uploaded to IBM’s shared tag web site, which is similar to the Delicious social tag site. In most cases the second result is more relevant to my purposes,” he explains.
Saving Search Time
Radder notes that in house research IBM carried out indicated an increase of 50% in employees satisfaction with the search results. “Moreover – not only do I only get relevant results I can also examine the ratings that the company employees gave to the link and, at the click of button, I can start a chat with someone who has already looked for the concept,” he continues. “Can you imagine how much search time is saved in an organization the size of IBM,” he asks.
Radder presents the advantages offered to the enterprises by social software. “Take, for example, the immediate message programs – this is one the easiest business examples. It is very easy to show the tremendous saving which organizations can obtain using such software, in terms of the cost of telephone calls and storage space for emails,” he explains. Nonetheless, he does not recommend the popular programs in this field, such as Microsoft’s Messenger or Yahoo, Skype or Google Talk. “There are regulatory requirements for information storage. For example, organizational solutions for social networks contain the users’ immediate messages for a period of around three years, as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the law which requires public companies traded in the
“Until a few years ago organizations that wished to use social tools contacted the accepted Internet portals, simply because of the lack of alternatives. These tools, however, are simply not suitable for organizational needs,” he explains. The first and foremost reason for the lack suitability, according to Radder, relates to the inability to perform user identity verification in an appropriate manner in the open social networks, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. “Moreover,” he explains, “there is, of course, a major problem of security and compatibility with the regulations.”
