Living without Email - One Man's Story. Are you Next?

One of my fondest memories of 2008 was meeting Luis Suarez from IBM. We both spoke at the Next08 conference together in Hamburg. (I will be returning to Germany in 2009 for the Next09 event.)

Luis' story is amazing. First, he lives in the Canary Islands and he's a social computing evangelist/knowledge management specialist for IBM. Until recently, he reported to managers in the Netherlands and the US. Now he is reporting locally to folks at IBM in Spain, but he still works at home.

What's notable here is that Luis during the year has been on a quest to eliminate all business email. According to his latest status report, he's down to about 20-40 a day. He wrote about his experience in the New York Times earlier this year. I also interviewed Luis on the subject last month via Skype as part of an Edelman Change event that we held for clients, which you can view below or here.

So how is Luis doing it? By pushing more of his communication into social networks and wikis - both internal and external and relying more on IM. Luis is an inspiration. So do you think this is part of a broader trend? Is your email down this year? I think mine is down slightly and I am wondering if we're all starting to live like Luis and what the broader ramifications might be for internal communications.