As many of you know, I was recently off in Tokyo, then Singapore and Malaysia for business reasons. At some point, I'd like to post some broader observations. At this point, just a couple of things.

First and obviously foremost: A week after my departure, Japan was hit with the terrible combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe. Like many, I am challenged to understand the scale of the disaster, made especially poignant by my recent visit and my appreciation of the kindness and talents of my new friends in the Japan team. Please forgive my not making those reflections a further part of this post: the right words have not yet been found, not here and not by me. Fortunately, those friends old and new and their families and colleagues are all safe. Many, of course, continue to face challenging circumstances.

Second: while its of dramatically lessened import compared to the above, I wanted to reflect slightly further on the subject of my last post, about groups of individuals using "social business" to re-organize in a more open/democratic fashion, about essentially moving from using their org chart as their primary information processing tool to using more advanced techniques like filters, recommenders, activity streams and the like - approaches pioneered in the consumer realm by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. It was an open question whether this would be a useful message in cultures as different as Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia. The initial feedback I had was that at least among some in the audience, there was great openness to the approach. It will as ever be intriguing to see how culture and technology connect and evolve here. Lengthier thoughts coming soon.

Third: I had the privilege of trying out prezi as a keynoting tool, and of meeting the CEO and Founder, Peter Arvai. I'm certainly a rank amateur at the use of the approach, but the groups I worked with found it an enjoyable alternative, and Peter was patiently encouraging :). I'm looking forward to playing around more, and open of course to pointers to other such innovative re-thinks on how to engage an audience in what can so often seem like a rote pushing of information. For those interested in seeing what I presented, you'll find the presentations on Prezi at the following links: my Tokyo keynote, my Singapore keynote, and my Malaysia keynote (all pretty much the same), along with a more business audience spin that I gave to a CHRO (HR exec) audience in Singapore. Its a long way from clear that these presentations stand alone without my verbose explanations!!! Anyway, I enjoyed the chance to experiment with communicating in a new way, and I think you can actually grab them and copy/mod/play around yourself with the presentations using prezi. All part of the social business experiment!