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Rafael Nadal – The Legacy Begins

Published July 7, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Yesterday at 23:15 (Israel time) I jumped up from my sofa after seeing Federer’s ball hit the net. That shot was the end of a giant’s marathon, that ended up with 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7 and 9-7, after 4:48 minutes of actual playing time. WOW!

Yesterday’s Wimbledon Finals between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer was by far one of the best matches I have ever seen!! I came into the game in the 3rd set, when Nadal was already up 2 sets (6-4, 6-4), behind 3-4 in the 3rd. And then came the rain. And then everything’s changed.

I used the ‘mini-break’ to head home, and from the moment the match resumed, it was perfect tennis by two of the best players the world has ever seen. And I apologize in advance to Pistol Pete and Andre (Bjorn Borg was way before my time) – but the level Nadal–Federer played was above what we’re used to. Federer came back from 2 sets behind to win 7-6, 7-6 in the 3rd and 4th, before Nadal clinched the win in the 5th set, after breaking Federer’s serve and winning 9-7 on his own serves. They ‘encouraged’ each other to play better, had some incredible returns (Federer’s back court return in the 4th set tie breaker and Nadal’s, well, pretty much every return) and provided the 17,000 people at Center Court, thousand spectators outside and millions at home a chance to be a part of history.

Rafael Nadal is only the 2nd player (Bjorn Borg did it first) to win Rolland Garros and Wimbledon, back to back (in the same year), and obviously preventing Federer a 6th Wimbledon title in a row (2003-2007), passing Bjorn Borg, who won 5 consecutive titles between 1976-1980.

Head over to wimbledon.org and watch the action as it unfolded – AMAZING!

[picture of Rafael Nadal from wimbledon.org]

I freed myself from e-mails – Luis Suarez

Published June 30, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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My friend and colleagues Luis Suarez wrote an article for the NYTimes about his very public project: giving up on work emails. Luis is a social software evangelist and community builder with IBM Software Group, which basically means he explores new and innovative ways of collaboration. He’s also a great public speaker, if you need someone to talk about social media.
Not sure what triggered his experiment (now entering week 21), but the ripples are still visible.

The leading internet news site in Israel, ynet.co.il, also picked up the story, translated it, added some personal commentary and link to the original article of course. Reading the Hebrew article, I realized I wasn’t the only one struggling to come up with an Hebrew word for ‘Evangelist‘. The author simply wrote evangelist, only in Hebrew.. 🙂

Links:
I Freed Myself from E-mail’s Grip – NYTimes.com
Your inbox is a catalyst for productivity – Ed Brill


Blocking return receipts in Lotus Notes

Published June 30, 2008 Uncategorized 4 Comments
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Was working with a colleague the other day, both in our Inbox, when all of a sudden there’s that shout: ‘I hate return receipts!‘.

For those not in the Inbox-ing business, I’ll explain, briefly: say you just sent an email and want to make sure people actually see it and not delete it. There’s an option that allows you to track the email, and get an email response when the other side sees it – called ‘return receipt‘. The accepting side, if he know where to look (bottom status bar), sees a quick message saying ‘return receipt submitted’, and has little time of stopping that process in the outbox.

I was poking around the floor, getting the feel of IBMers to that ‘big-brother‘ option, when stumbling upon Alex Varshavsky, Rational Sales Mgr. at present, Lotus developer in the past. Alex told me he had already wrote a code that blocks it. Great!!

From developerWorks:

Return receipts can reassure people that you received their email message. But have you ever wanted to block a return receipt? If so, you’re in luck. You can have the option of blocking a return receipt before it is sent by doing the following:

  1. In Domino Designer, open the ($Inbox) folder of your mail database.
  2. Select the QueryOpenDocument event in the Objects window.
  3. Select Formula in the Programmer’s pane, and then copy and paste the following code into the pane: 
    @If(@IsAvailable(ReturnReceipt);
     @If(ReturnReceipt = "1";
         @If(@Prompt([YESNO];"Return Receipt";    
             "Delete Return Receipt?");        
             @SetField("ReturnReceipt";"0");
         "");
     "");
     "")

Here’s the full article, at developerWorks.

And yes, I know Outlook 2003 has it out of the box. Fine.
But I bet Alex feels super knowing he developed something helpful for the benefit of the community !!

Implementing E2.0 @ IBM – BNHP workshop

Published June 28, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at a management workshop of Bank Hapoalim about Enterprise 2.0 and IBM’s experience with implementing such tools and solutions.

I made some changes to my slides after the presentation, and posted at slideshare.net/dvirreznik.
Love to hear comments and feedback.

E2.0?! Can you start from Web 1.0 please?

Published June 24, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Today I had the privilege of speaking at a management workshop of one of the largest banks in Israel. The workshop was held at the bank’s education center, 30min outside of Tel Aviv, with a beautiful view of the ocean. This was one of the cases that I came to lecture through the community. The management workshop was given by an outside consulting company, that heard me speak at a recent conference. Another proof of the power of social media.

I was told to present ‘the IBM story’ of E2.0 adoption (Web 2.0 goes to work), meaning what we’re doing, internally, to foster knowledge sharing and participation. I took couple of my presentations, consolidated slides, made some adjustments, added the IBM angle, and I was ready to go.

The population was mixed in age, all in managerial positions at the bank, youngest one in the room was me 🙂 Only when I asked people if they knew what twitter is, I realized that most people had no idea what Web 2.0 is all about, not to mention E2.0. That’s when I decided to skip some slides and explain over a whiteboard what we’re talking about…

I won’t tell the entire 90min presentation here, only summize with this:
At the beginning of my presentation a lady asked me what’s the benefit in all that user generated content (blogs, comments, wikis, articles, etc) if most of them are garbage (or below average), and why should any organization consider adopting such tools. At the end of the presentation, she asked me what’s the top 7 blogs to follow. And she’s also the one responsible for the title of this post. Folks, change is possible! even in a ‘traditional’ business as a bank.

As for the slides: I had to make some ad-hoc changes during the workshop, so the slides will be posted later this week.

BTW – if you haven’t subscribed to Jeremiah Owyang by now, shame on you!
His posts are right on the mark, and his knowledge in social media is infinite!
Only today we were talking at the workshop about FSS examples for social media (ROI/VOI), and there’s a list availble. We also talked about Gen Y and why they care if a bank has IM or a facebook thing, and here’s another post.
Subscribe. Now.

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.