I’m fortunate to be a part of Aaron’s social friday 2.0 club;  informal meet-ups among us Toronto 2.0 geeks – though he was absent at the last one given a business trip to NICE. (envy).   I hope to hear more about his move and sincerely hope he is still involved in emerging tech.

I like his exit post – he shows a deep respect for IBM as many of us did when choosing to leave the tech nest.  I concur with him – its a great company too easily attacked by old and dated brand images made popular by mac.

I suspect @aaronjuliuskim will have some major blog separation anxiety from leaving his internal blog at IBM as I did when I left IBM.

Funny – he chooses the same blog title I did in 2006 ‘leaving ibm‘ (okay – the title is pretty obvious and simple but do a google search and you will find hundreds of exit letters from IBMers).

Well – best of luck to Aaron.

@ldillonschalk

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About IBM. As of this past summer, a little less that 1% of IBMers were active bloggers. 3% had blogs (active and inactive). But in a company of 329, 000 – a 1% adoption creates the largest blogging environment in a private domain – that I know of. And quickly, those who were blogging got to see the light. The power of enterprise 2.0 and its promises towards collaboration, innovation and employee retention.. I say that last benefit cautiously because I did leave IBM. But the enterprise 2.0 did lift my belief in IBM. I love the company. I just can’t travel the way my job required of me. With more time, I could have found the right job in IBM. *sigh*.. I did get a few perfect job offers on my last day.

That said, I enjoy my new job immensely. The home building industry is rich for learning and I see where I can make strong contributions. I know I can help easily in the areas of branding, research and web strategy & development. What I deeply underestimated was the contribution that I could make in e-business in an industry still shackled in traditional processes.

I have this book called “how digital is your business”. Truthfully, I’ve never cracked its spine but its cover title serves to inspire me for this industry.

I was invited to present to the Northern European Marketing Board for IBM on my views on web2.0 marketing. Its a long story.. but I unleashed a presentation in IBM on web2.0 – its importance, why the conditions are right for this major internet revolution to stick and to my great surprise and flatterly, I contributed to a massive wave of web2.0 thinking inside of IBM. I got to meet the greats – a phd student, Pranam Kolari, who masters in blog spam (splog), another student, Sacha Chua, who researches corporate adoption of social networking tools and doubles as an incredible web2.o evangelist, yet another, Aaron who studies wikis and enterprise 2.0 pushing IBM’s innovationjam full of ideas (and who was my original inspiration for blogging), another ibmer Jen who doggedly pursues the creation of web 2.0 services,  another IBMblogger Luis,  who, as a knowledge management contributor, managed one of the most popular blogs inside and outside for IBM, and still another who has educated me on the future of second life.

I miss my blog. I feel separation anxiety for the posts that I no longer have. But happily, I learned that 31 people in IBM were reading my blog today. And I’ve been gone for two months.

Laurie.

Subject: Hello – could we connect on Linkedin? 

Dear Laurie,

I hope you will forgive me writing to you directly, but I’m afraid I was off sick while you were leaving IBM and missed the chance to write to you.

I greatly admired your work on web 2.0 and I raised it to very senior levels in Europe. We are now building some of it into our Barcelona Banking Centre as part of its refresh.

If it were possible to connect through Linkedin (..or similar), I’d be very keen as I’d like to stay in touch.

Best wishes, and I hope the new job is going well,

Alex

 ________________________

Solutions Specialist, European Center of Competence for Banking Front Office, Barcelona

Hello!,
I wanted to share my new job and contact details with you.
I’ve resigned from IBM and today is my last day.   I’ve loved IBM and my web consulting, and yet, I need to step out of the travel spotlight while my family is young and exciting.

So, I’m moving to local company with a positive reputation –  GGH, a homebuilder in the GTA.  I’ll be directing their corporate and low-rise/hi-rise brands.  Its a promising move in an interesting industry.   All of which puts me on the client side with little travel.   The office is at VP & F in an industrial park (oh god)  - but I think I’m getting an office & desk so things are looking up.  

I’m easy to find in www.linkedin.com or openbc.com.    My new contact information – xxx@rogers.com.  And I believe I will have xx.com as an address.   (bad website.. and there is my opportunity)

I’m always up for coffee – let me know when or if you are in the area.  

truly,
Laurie