 |
|
Lotus Connections on VM
Many customers are always asking for support on VMware. Typically they like to use VM images for pilots and proof of concepts. Because of the demand for VM support, IBM software group products have not annouced restricted support on VM. For more information about Lotus Connections support for VM, check out this link.
Categories
: [ connections | vm ]
Aug 03 2008, 02:13:32 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
New Reviewer's Guide from one of my favorite authors
The Lotus Connections R2 reviewer's guide has now been published to developerWorks. Yours truly is one of the authors of the guide that provides an overview to the latest version of IBM's social software, Lotus Connections R2, and its five components: Profiles, Activities, Blogs, Dogear, and Communities. This guide also covers integration with other applications, such as Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft technologies.
Categories
: [ connections ]
Jul 19 2008, 04:47:55 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
Teams and Communities 101
Many people confuse teams and communities when it comes to software. I'd like to try and help people better clarify the difference. In the most simplest terms, take software out of the picture and think about teams and communities around your city. Here is the great city of Beverly (Bev town as us locals like to say), we have a multiple communities established around location, religion, and ethnicity. A couple of my good friends are members of the ICC (Italian Community Center). The purpose of this community is to socialize around topics that they have in common. Some of the members in the ICC enjoy fishing, darts, or just hanging around the ICC for dinner and drinks. Every member of this Community has opted-in and they can leave at any time.
Beverly also has teams. Growing up I played multiple sports (#2) and continue to play sports. Let's take the local men's lacrosse team for example. The goal of this team is to compete at a high level and to win the yearly intercity championship. This team was brought together where individuals were invited to participant based on their skill set to help the team accomplish their goal. Every year the team is restructured based on skills as they some times need to replace or add team members to achieve their goal.
Now if you think about team and communities in terms of software solutions, the same applies. For example, Lotus Quickr is the premier team software solution in the market places designed for team of people to come together using software tools to help them accomplish their jobs. Most often the team is controlled and the information the team shared for the team members only. Just like the lacrosse team doesn't share their playbook. Lotus Connections is premier community software service created in part to help people come together because they share a specific topic of interest. The information in the Community is mostly public for all community and non-community members to see. Just like the ICC has a monthly newsletter that anyone can subscribe to.
Remember, communities service a purpose and are often open while teams focus on a goal and are often private. In many cases, team and communities co-exist. Often you will find a subset of a Community make up a team. Just as the ICC in Beverly has a softball team, Lotus Connections Community may also have a Quickr team site.
Categories
: [ connections | quickr ]
Jul 15 2008, 03:29:10 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
Lotus Connections FP 1
IBM Lotus Connections Version 2.0.0.0 Fix Pack 1 for Windows, Linux, AIX 32/64-bit is now released on the Lotus Connections Fix Central. I would recommend anyone install this as it contains 20 High Impact/Medium Probability of occurrence issued resolved. I remember when we used to just post fix packs along with a list of bug fixes. I like the idea that we know publish the impact and calculate the probability of an issue occurring. And for those of you that may have experienced some issues with Firefox 3, a reliable resource told twitted today stating this was resolved.
Categories
: [ connections | fp1 | support ]
Jul 14 2008, 08:48:56 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
My first week on the job
My first week on the job as the Americas Sales Advocate for Lotus Connections and it was a busy one. I'm no stranger to long days from my previous positions, but it's always tough to come into a new role and try to hit the ground running. The good news is that I'm well versed with Lotus Connections. The bad news is that the sales cycle process is new to me. The easy part of my week was all the customer meetings around Lotus Connections and the business value of social software. The majority of these meeting I covered how Lotus Connections integrates Microsoft applications like Outlook, Office, Sharepoint, and Office Communications Server. I've always enjoyed customer meeting and our software stack makes the time go by quickly as the product is extremely easy to demo. Customers quickly see the feature capabilities of the product and engage in a dialogue. I much prefer to demo over slides.
The tough part of the week was getting through some of the initial tasks in joining the sales organization. There is a whole new set of weekly conference calls, events, meetings, and deliverables. I'm lucky that I have a great manager that is exposing me to the high priority items first instead of throwing everything at me. I'm also lucky that many of the people I work with on a day-to-day basis are people I used to work with sporadically. This is where social networking and social capital provides me the flexibility to easily adapt into this new role.
The weekend is here, weather looks good in Boston and the beach is calling my name. Have a good one 
Categories
: [ connections | job ]
Jul 11 2008, 06:21:34 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
Thoughts when picking a social software vendor
I've read many analyst reports around social software. Just like other collaboration technologies, most analyst advise customer to go with the well known and established vendors like IBM, Microsoft, BEA, Cisco, etc. I agree with that as these vendors are typically the companies that can survive the bumps and bruises the economy can put on technology companies. Especially with technology changing so much it adds to the risk of choosing a vendor that may not be around in 5, 10, 15 years.
I posted a blog entry almost a year ago when I was doing some competitive research around Lotus Connections. The same still holds true today. The top vendors in social software are still the well known and established vendors and IBM is still leading the pack. There has been much publicity lately as Lotus Connections went head-to-head at Enterprise 2.0 with the closest competitor Microsoft Sharepoint. We were the clear winner and still #1 with social software.
Read more about it here.
"IBM was the clear winner across the board."
Mike Gotta, E 2.0 Conference: Social Computing Platforms, June 19, 2008, Collaborative Thinking Blog
Categories
: [ connections ]
Jul 10 2008, 07:48:58 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
Turning the mic back on
For the past 14 months, I've had the pleasure of being the product manager for Lotus Connections. I had my hand in the strategic directions for the first two product launches. I had the opportunity to work with a great development team that was dedicated to making Lotus Connections successful from the start. I enjoy working with customers and partners helping them understand the value that web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wiki's, social bookmarks, widgets, etc can bring to an organization both inside and outside the firewall. Effective this month, I am moving into a new role at IBM as the Americas Sales Advocate for Lotus Connections. In this new role I will be closer to our customer community and being more vocal when it comes to Lotus software.
It's been a while since I've updated this blog, but I plan to make this a priority now. Bare with me though, I'm expecting my first child in a couple days so will be away from the computer soon
Categories
: [ connections | sales ]
Jul 09 2008, 02:32:07 PM EDT
Permalink
|
|
Lotus Connections going mobile with Blackberry
Last week at Lotusphere I was pleased to help announce that RIM will be providing a mobile solution for Lotus Connections. Lotus Connections helps you build out your social networking inside your company and now you can extend your capability to mobile devices. It has always made sense, and really only a matter of time before a mobile solution was available for Lotus Connections. With Lotus Connections profiling service, you can quickly and easily find experts and resources across your company. Viewing someone's profile allows you to find out more information about that person such as projects they are working on or have worked on. You can surf up, down, and across the reporting structure and find all the business relevant information to contact them. I can't tell you how many times I've been on my mobile device and wish I had profile access to my entire corporate directory. Well guess what, now I will with RIM's solutions as I can easily search by name, job, keywords to find the right people and start an email or phone call with them.
Dogear, our social bookmarking service can also be leveraged from Blackberry devices. I love to use Dogear as I can easily manage and find my bookmarks as well as others regardless of the machine or browser I use. Now I can use my Blackberry device to get access to my bookmarks when I'm on the go. I am extremely excited to be working with RIM on their solution.
For more info - read RIM's press coverage at http://www.rim.com/news/press/2008/pr-23_01_2008-01.shtml
Categories
: [ blackberry | connections | mobile | rim ]
Jan 28 2008, 04:24:13 PM EST
Permalink
|
|
Lotus making investiments in SMB
Today IBM announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Net Integration Technologies, Inc., a privately held provider of software server solutions based in Markham, Canada. Net Integration Technologies will become part of the Lotus business and extend our leadership in the SMB space. "Small businesses need superior collaboration technology as much as large companies do," said Michael D. Rhodin, general manager, IBM Lotus Software. "The difference is that it must be an affordable turnkey package that doesn't require a large investment in on-site IT expertise and resources. Net Integration Technologies meets that need for our SMB customers and represents a terrific business opportunity for IBM's business partners." Net Integration Technologies develops easy to deploy, essential solutions for small and medium businesses that help simplify file management, directory services, e-mail, backup and recovery, and other business tasks. The solutions are designed for small business customers with little or no in-house technical expertise.
You can read more about today's announcement in the press release on ibm.com.
Ted
Categories
: [ ibm | lotus | smb ]
Jan 18 2008, 09:19:22 AM EST
Permalink
|
|
*NEW* Social Software Space
For the last couple of months, IBM developerWorks has been launching group and expert spaces. Group spaces focus on a specific technical topic and may
be led by multiple administrators and editors. Visitors to a group
space can request membership to the space to stay informed with the
group. Expert spaces are owned by experts in the developer community and
include links to each expert's favorite resources, including blogs,
forums, podcasts, and more.
For those of you interested in social software, come view and join the social software group space.
Ted
Categories
: [ connections | social_software ]
Jan 14 2008, 08:07:46 AM EST
Permalink
|
|
Social Software sessions at Lotusphere
As expected, this year there will be some great product announcements and features related to Lotus Connections during Lotusphere. It's been about a year since we first announced Lotus Connections and about 7 months since we released the first version. With thousands of customers using or trying Lotus Connections, we have gotten great feedback and are building that into the next version of Connections. I don't want to spoil the fun down at Lotusphere so to get the latest information, you'll just have to wait a couple more days.
| Session Topic | Speakers |
JMP401 QuickStart: Warp 9 -- Getting Up to Speed on Social Software and IBM Lotus Connections
What is social networking, and why should you be paying attention?
You'll learn why businesses are embracing it to enable improved
innovation, connect far-flung corners of their organizations, and make
a new generation of professionals feel right at home. In this session,
you'll hear an overview of the difference between social and
collaborative tools, some general thinking in the field of social
networking and some of the opportunities (and pitfalls) that can arise
as social technologies proliferate. You'll also learn about the
capabilities of Lotus Connections, some of the technical best practices
for deploying Lotus Connections -- such as planning, architecture,
tuning, and maintenance. |
Ted Stanton
Gia Lyons |
INV105 IBM Lotus Connections Strategy and Roadmap
IBM was the first to introduce social software for business, Lotus
Connections, but we are continuing to set the strategy and direction
for this emerging market. This session will highlight our current
progress in the market as well as the details around our current
release. In addition, we'll provide you a glimpse of the new ideas and
directions we are taking Lotus Connections through 2008 -- and beyond.
|
Heidi Votaw
Ronnie Maffa |
AD101 Building Social Software Solutions for Your Applications
The IBM Lotus Connections REST-style API allows integration with
applications across your organization. Come to this session to learn
how you can use the API and to build customer applications and mash-ups
featuring the power of social software. We'll include a discussion and
demonstration of the Lotus Connections plug-in for IBM Lotus Notes as
one example of using the API. |
Miguel Estrada
Mike Roche |
AD102 Expand and Extend Your Investments with IBM Social Software and Web 2.0
Learn how to exploit the capabilities of IBM Lotus Connections to
improve and extend IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, IBM WebSphere
Portal, Microsoft Office and your existing applications. You'll
understand how mash-ups, REST, ATOM and widgets allow you to connect
people in new ways through a myriad of applications technologies. This
will include a discussion and demonstration of the APIs and
technologies used for Lotus Connections plug-in for Lotus Notes as an
example of how you can tap into personal interactions and information
in Lotus Connections from other applications. |
Ted Stanton
Joe Russo |
ID502 Lotus Connections - An in depth view of the next release
Last year, we announced Lotus Connections, social software that enables
customers to leverage the knowledge of many, share content and
expertise, and complete work faster using a set of interactive
services. In this session you will get a premiere look at the new
features being planned for the second release of Lotus Connections. See
how we've taken the Communities and Activities components to the next
level, how we've extended Lotus Connections to tap into your customer
networks, how we've increased your social productivity and
connectivity, enhanced user profiles, and unified your social
experience by providing services and features that span all of Lotus
Connections. Be the first to see these new features in action. |
Suzanne O. Minassian
Scott Prager |
ID506 Driving customer loyalty and revenue growth with IBM Lotus Connections
Come learn how you can leverage social software for B2C scenarios.
Transform your corporate web site and allow your customers to connect
with other customers of similar interest, build communities, and
provide innovation to help create new products and services. |
Christopher Lamb
Ajamu Wesley |
ID507 How Communities of Practice can get the most out of IBM Lotus Connections and social software
Within every organization there are a variety of practitioners who have
their own special responsibilities, techniques and concerns. Social
software can serve as the "glue" that brings the communities of
practice together. Learn how the information sharing and social
communication capabilities of Lotus Connections can enable employees to
leverage each other's tacit knowledge and past work products. |
Brendan Crotty
Ethan Perry |
ID508 IBM Lotus Connections Architecture and Deployment Best Practices
Lotus Connections has been deployed in organizations around the world
and in industries from automotive to telecommunications. In this
session you will learn the technical best practices for deploying Lotus
Connections from the people who ran these projects. Topics to be
covered include planning, architecture, tuning, maintenance and
integration with existing systems and much more. |
Jay Boyd
Morten Kristiansen |
ID509 Why "Activities" are Critical to Your Business
Business collaboration is purpose driven, yet technologies force us to
distribute and fracture our work among existing tools. The Activities
component in IBM Lotus Connections is the Lotus approach to
transforming collaboration to directly support agile, purpose-driven
work. With the Activities service, people, information, and tools are
organized around specific activities, where actions can be guided,
planned, or adapted to changing situations. Further, work can be
captured, and reused, amplifying the transfer of people's knowledge and
experience. In this session, we'll explain the research supporting
Activities and take you through business scenarios showing how
Activities can transform business work. We'll also show how Activities
integrates with your existing applications. |
Suzanne Minassian
Marty Moore |
HND303 Build IBM Lotus Connections Mashup applications
Lotus Connections services support the Atom Publishing Protocol as the
common public API. Lotus Connections Atom API enables developers and
technical end users to easily create mashups, plugins, and extensions
in a variety of clients. In this lab, you will be introduced to the
Lotus Connections Atom APIs and you will learn some of the many ways to
take advantage of the Lotus Connections services. You will build a
browser-based mashup aggregating several Lotus Connections services.
In this mashup, you will provide the ability to create and edit Lotus
Connections services data without having to leave the current web
applicationand assign a task in an Activity. |
David Brooks
Joe Russo |
BDD104 Connecting to Social Software -- Extend Your Business with IBM Lotus Connections
The social software market is exploding and IBM is in the lead. Attend
this session and see how you can catch this wave and attack this market
to dramatically increase revenue in 2008. You'll also see how existing
system integrators and software vendors are doing that today with Lotus
Connections. |
Brandon Smith
Curtis Ryan |
BP111 Tips, Tricks and Traps for Deploying IBM Lotus Connections – Best Practices in a Real World Implementation
It doesn't matter if you’re new to Lotus Connections or an old hand,
the world changes quickly and you need to keep up. Using experience
from many successful engagements, this presentation discusses the
lessons learned in each of the stages of gathering requirements,
designing and implementing Lotus Connections. With lots of take away
hints, tips and traps to avoid, we’ll share our deployment experience
with Lotus Connections services. We’ll also discuss case studies from
several groups that are using social software with portal today to
increase productivity and customer satisfaction. You'll get a checklist
of steps to take to ensure a successful deployment along with any
issues to watch out for based on early real world deployments. |
Abhijeet Nakhwa
Sunil Hiranniah |
Categories
: [ connections | lotupshere2008 | socialsoftware ]
Jan 10 2008, 07:51:58 AM EST
Permalink
|
|
|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S | | | | | | | 1 | 2 | | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | | 31 | | | | | | | | Today |
|
InsideLotus - Lotus, Portal and Social Collaborative Software
