TurboTech: The Wisconsin Episode

Every once in a while, developerWorks’ Scott Laningham and I get together via Skype to catch up on the latest in technology.

This week, Scott’s on a remote, cheese-head “workation” somewhere in the middle of Wisconsin.

And despite being surrounded by trees and lakes, he found his way to an Interwebs connection, along with a gasoline generator, so we could do one of our “TurboTech” episodes.

I was afraid one of the rhinos that John Swanson thought he spotted in a separate “This Week on developerWorks” episodes recorded with Scott in the great outdoors might sneak up on Scott while we were mid-recording, but fortunately that didn’t happen.

In this episode, Scott and I opined on social media’s role at the London Olympic games, along with a deep space exploration of the latest Mars rover (“Curiosity”) landing on the Red Planet. We also mentioned several forthcoming IBM events stretching from Orlando to Vegas to Singapore.

Me, I’m just glad Scott’s generator didn’t run out of gas. That would have brought a whole new meaning to the phrase of having another episode “in the can!”

Impressions From SXSW Interactive 2012: Q&A With IBM Social Leaders George Faulkner & Susan Emerick

One of the best parts of attending SXSW Interactive 2012 these days is to meet other IBMers.

That wasn’t always the case — for many years, it was a lonely IBM vista in March at SXSW Interactive.

But this year, all that changed, and two of my good friends and colleagues in particular, George Faulkner and Susan Emerick, spent some time with Scott and I on the IBM “Future of Social” couch discussing how IBM approaches the social media.

George has been a stalwart in IBM social media — I worked with him way back in the Jurassic Age of the social Web, in 2006, on the IBM ShortCuts podcast series.

And Susan has been a digital leader in and of her own right, most recently helping IBMers who haven’t been as active in the social media to get up on their feet and establish their social media eminence.

This thought-provoking interview opens the kimono a bit on the challenges and opportunities a large organization like IBM faces in opening itself up to the social media, and explains how, in fact, IBM gets 400,000 IBMers on the same page so they can successfully change the corporate social media light bulb.

Impressions From SXSW Interactive 2012: Q&A With Newsjacker Dead Head David Meerman Scott

Scott’s interviewed David Meerman Scott several times for developerWorks, but never on camera.  That changed at SXSW Interactive 2012.

If you’re not familiar with Scott’s work, you’re missing out on one of the early voices analyzing and detailing the opportunity presented by social media.  From The New Rules of Marketing & PR  to his latest book, Newsjacking, David Meerman Scott has been a consistent and practical voice in helping organizations large and small, as well as individuals, navigate the contours of the new and social media.

He talks about all that, and the marketing lessons he learned from the Grateful Dead, in our extended interview below.

Impressions From SXSW Interactive 2012: Q&A With Don Tapscott On Our Digital Future, Privacy, & Milennials

I’ve been following Don Tapscott’s work since I first moved to New York in 1995, reading a number of his early books, including Growing Up Digital.  Without question, he’s been a consistent and articulate voice about how digital technology is changing our world, detailing for us mere mortals its impact on business, education, children, and beyond.

Scott and I had the real privilege of stealing a few minutes of Don Tapscott’s time yesterday here at SXSW Interactive 2012 to talk about some of those themes, and Tapscott’s suggestion that there’s some very real change in the air that’s being enabled by Internet Protocol-based technologies, including the smartphone.

Live @ Pulse 2012: IBM VP Bob Sutor On The Mobile Lifecycle

Earlier today at IBM Pulse 2012, Scott and I had a far-ranging interview on the mobile ecosystem with IBM Mobile Platform vice president, Bob Sutor.

Our discussion ranged from the mobile “lifecycle,” which Bob recently presented to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, to privacy and security in the mobile realm, to Android v. iOS v. some stalking horse mobile OS being written in some kid’s garage nobody yet knows about.

It was one of our favorites of the event, and we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed doing the interview. We could have spoken with Bob for another half hour and not covered everything we would have liked.

Check it out here.

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 2 Vodcast Summary — Getting Down To The Business Of Social Business

Another day, another vodcast.  Scott Laningham and I teamed up again late yesterday afternoon to try and effectively summarize some of what was spoken about here at Day 2 of Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012.

Chief among the topics was the business of getting down to the practicalities of social business — including a case study of IBM customer TD Bank, the 6th largest in the U.S. — as well as some insights on enterprise gamification and collective intelligence.  The later of which Scott and myself have certainly not cornered the market on.

I want to thank Scott in advance for including that particular frame of the video by which to start this vodcast (you know, the one where I’m squinting like Uncle Scrooge?) Nice editing, amigo.

That’s okay…I’ll get you back, just when you least expect it.

You’ve never had to contend with an exploding microphone on camera before, have you, Scott?  Kind of like those exploding golf balls my dad used to exchange on the tee?

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 1 Vodcast Recap

Scott Laningham is not here at Lotusphere 2012 this year…at least, not corporeally.  But he is here in spirit, and yesterday afternoon, I spoke with him live from Studio 8004 here at the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando and debriefed him on all things Lotusphere Day 1, the Turbo POV, for The developerWorks Podcast.

We discussed day 1 themes and talks, including that wonderful keynote from actor Michael J. Fox, as well as some of the key announcements and an overview of the IBM social business strategy.  Keep an eye out here on the Turbo blog and Twitter to be reminded of future Lotusphere podcasts…in the meantime, let Day 2 begin!

TurboTech: Technological Romance For Dummies

Scott Laningham and I, having entirely too much time to ourselves over the holidays to ponder all things technology, spent a good 26 minutes one late December day discussing likely future tech trends: Everything from the absurdity of code names for mobile operating systems to our having our own technology reality TV show someday — but one in which nobody could give Scott and I a rose.

That just simply wouldn’t be appropriate.

I also provide a shout out to the IBM Connections event, which starts a week from today in lovely Orlando, Florida.  It’s not too late to register for it, and for Lotusphere. Go here to learn more.

I’ll be arriving in Orlando early Sunday evening and plan on bringing all the blogging coverage my little Turbo hands can handle (And Scott assures me in the video below he’ll do some remote podcasting, since he won’t be there live and in person.  Make sure you provide some comments and try to hold him to it!)

TurboTech: A Humorous Look At 2011 Technology Trends In Review

It’s not many people who have the opportunity to be able to say that they’ve worked with a true broadcasting professional like Scott Laningham.

Blogger's Note: No dolphins were harmed during the making of this video. Green pigs who stole bird's eggs, well, that's a whole other story!

It’s even less people who would take the opportunity to actually come clean and admit to having done so, especially on more than one occasion.

Because I’m neither a true professional nor someone who likes to allow the skeletons in his closet to begin to accumulate, instead of facing as many of them as I can take head on like some egregious out-of-control episode of “Walking Dead,” or, worse, a full-on “Angry Birds” like assault come to life (but only if it’s the ad-supported version, as we’re too cheap to actually buy a copy), it is with great pleasure that I feature for you my readers the latest episode of “TurboTech,” another fine example supporting the postulation by Gartner and others that broadband video is here to stay…even if Scott and I are not destined to be ourselves.

The following is video documentary evidence of what happens when nature cannot simply abhor a vacuum, but instead must attempt to fill it with technology forecasting tripe at the end of another grand year of massive technological disruption.  In our case, the year 2011, which was filled with much technological wonder and wonderment, not the least of which included fabric-based computing.

It shall also not go unnoticed by somewhat regular (assuming there are any of you) viewers that Scott continues to look and sound much, much better than me in these episodes, indicating once again that Scott continues to have better technology than me.

This, too, must change.

New TurboTech Episode: Scott and Todd on IBMers Tweeting About Stuff IBMers Say…& The IBM 2011 Tech Trends Survey

So Scott Laningham and I haven’t seen one another lately, seeing as we saw so much of one another at Information on Demand 2011 in Vegas that, well, we probably just got plain sick of one another. Actually, that’s not true, but it makes for good drama as you try to figure out just why we hadn’t done a TurboTech episode lately.

There really was no good reason, except that we’ve just both been so busy with our “day” jobs that we hadn’t gotten in touch.  Well, that all changed yesterday, when one of our colleagues started a trending theme on Twitter called “StuffIBMerssay” that probably witnessed a $200 million productivity hit to the IBM company as hundreds of we IBMers, former and otherwise, stopped what we were doing and stared in fascination as the hilarious Tweets about being an IBMer scrolled by. I’m guilty as well, having provided several contributions.

Just use the hashtag #stuffibmerssay and I’m sure some doozies are still rolling by.

We also just haven’t had much to say, Scott and I, but with the recent launch of the 2011 IBM Tech Trends report, that all changed.  So, click on the play button below, and you, too, can lose 15 minutes of your day.

But you also might just learn something….that’s doubtful, of course, but there’s always the possibility.