Socialize Me

Lotusphere 2012: Thursday Recap

2012-01-26T13:11:00.000-04:00

And now we get to the last day of Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. Lotusphere 2012 was my 5th Lotusphere, but it was the first time that I actually stayed the full day on Thursday and left on Friday. Usually, I would head out to the airport Thursday at noon so I had never seen a Closing General Session or participated in a Blogger Open before. Like Sharon said, I'm surprised with the number of people who leave Wednesday night or super early on Thursday.

Thursday started like any other day with customer breakfast and then customer meetings. Then it was time for the Ask the Product Managers session. As usual, Mitch Cohen live blogged that session so you can see what happened there. It was an easy session for me since I only had to answer 1 question in the whole hour :) .

Leaving on Thursday also gave me a chance to connect with more people. At lunch I finally got to see Chris Whisonant if only for a few minutes and of course got my hands on the famous pretzel cookie.

After lunch, I took a very loooong walk encouraged by Alan Lepofsky. The last 7 days I had been trapped inside the Dolphin and/or Swan so it felt great to spend time outside and breathe some fresh air. I also had never been all around the property. Given the weather was so great, I had the opportunity to take some very cool pictures.

From there I headed to go see my first ever Closing General Session. The session was mainly hosted by Andrew Zimmern, who has his own TV show on the Travel Channel: Bizarre Foods.

Before the final session started, the big screen was showing tweets from earlier in the week. I managed to grab a couple of tweets but this is the best one that came out:

I think that tweet summarizes Lotusphere 2012 very well. Looking back on Lotusphere 2011, I think it was very focused still on the "Why Social Business", whereas this year with so many customers sharing their examples it was more about "How Social Business". And this was reflected as well on my 1:1 conversations with customers. They knew they had to become a social business and they were going to do it. They didn't need me to convince them of that. Rather, they wanted to talk adoption and roll-out strategies.

Finally, after the Closing General Session, we walked to the Blogger Open for some mini golf fun. It was awesome!!!! Our team didn't win anything (sorry guys!), but still had tons of fun.

I can't wait for Lotusphere 2013!!

Lotusphere 2012: Wednesday Recap

2012-01-25T12:17:00.000-04:00

Hopefully by now you've been able to read some of my previous posts on Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. I've already covered some of the media coverage, my recap from Monday, and my recap from Tuesday. So let's get on with Wednesday.

Just like Tuesday, I had to wake up very early to attend a Birds of Feather (BOF) session, this time hosted by IBM Champions: Sharon Bellamy, Stuart McIntyre, and Simon Vaughan. For some time now, Simon has been managing the IBM Connections Users community in Greenhouse. This community is a community run by IBM Connections customers for IBM Connections customers. A popular part of this community is the idea section where customers and partners are coming together to submit ideas for feature enhancements and vote on these ideas.

If you are not yet a member of this community and you use IBM Connections, I strongly recommend that you join the community. Simon has been doing a great job as the community manager and knows how to engage the right IBMers to participate in the conversation.

After the session completed, it was time for the third keynote titled The Future of Social Technologies with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web. This was an interesting day to have him on stage as this was the same day that there was a global protest against SOPA. Berners-Lee was very enthusiastic during his talk and I could tell that he's very excited about the Semantic Web and the mashup possibilities that are possible when you destroy silos and bring data together. At the keynote, we also got to hear from Manoj Saxeona, General Manager of the new Watson Solutions group at IBM.

Of course, if you missed the keynote, you can watch the replay here.

ibmsoftware on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

The rest of the day was filled with customer meetings and my second session at Lotusphere 2012. This time I presented on What's New in IBM Lotus Quickr for Domino, what's coming very soon and what's in the long term roadmap. One of the things that I was very happy about in 2011 was how good the product did and how much the ecosystem grew. Many partners keep building solutions on top of Quickr and the customer base keeps growing. I also shared the news around the releases that were done last year.

During the session, I got the feeling that people were very happy with the roadmap. I did announce that there's a new release coming out in Q1 of this year. I'll be sharing more details soon as to the specific release date so stay tuned. Here's the presentation for those of you who couldn't make it.

ID224 - What's Coming Quickr Domino Next and Beyond

View more presentations from Luis Benitez

Towards the latter part of the afternoon, I joined a BOF that was hosted in Spanish. I think that was a first for Lotusphere (a BOF hosted in a language other than English). In the BOF we talked about social business challenges in the Spanish-speaking market. I got to share my own personal story of how I was able to overcome some common fears which prevent adoption, such as "knowledge is power". I couldn't stay for the whole session as I had a meeting to go to prior to leaving to the Wednesday night party.

After the last meeting of the day, I headed out to Sea World where I got to see Shamu (not the show but the mascot) and ride Manta and Kraken! Those two roller coasters were so much fun! And because lines were moving fast, I was able to ride the coasters multiple times. Sweet! The weather was just beautiful. Here are a couple of pics I snapped.

Overall a great day at the conference!

Lotusphere 2012: Tuesday Recap

2012-01-24T11:17:00.000-04:00

Tuesday at Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 required getting up very early as Mac Guidera and I had a 7am Birds of Feather (BOF) session on IBM Connections Adoption and Governance.

The sun completely threw me off and I barely got out of bed in time. As I walked towards the Swan, the sun wasn't even out and I took and shared this picture on Instagram. I did make it on time, and was surprised that the room was completely full that early in the morning which led to a great discussion.

We talked about guidelines, gamification, integration, plugins, executive engagement, and other tactics to help the adoption of social business within an enterprise. To my surprise, Michael Sampson, author of the recently published book Collaboration Roadmap made it to the session! My favorite part was getting customers to talk to each other and share was has worked for them.

Day 2 keynote was right after our BOF so we headed back to the Dolphin. Mike Rhodin, Michael Chui from the McKinsey Global Institute and Wendy Arnott VP for Social Media from TD Bank were the keynote speakers. Wendy told various stories of how TD Bank has adopted IBM Connections and are becoming a social business. She also shared some tips on what has worked for them to drive adoption:

Get the executives involved from the beginning
Set up dedicated community managers
Get various business units involved: Marketing, HR, Communications, IT, etc
Don't overlook the minor details
Engage employees

And speaking of TD Bank (who uses Outlook for email), I was glad to see so many customers that use competing products such as Microsoft Outlook and/or SharePoint add IBM Connections to their stack. Other examples that came up at the conference were Electrolux, Bayer, and Continental AG.

Todd Watson has an amazing recap of this opening keynote. And, if you couldn't make it to the keynote on day 2, you can catch the replay right here:

After lunch, I headed down to the Social Café where it was my turn to take on my duties as a member of "Team Social". I had various persons come up to me telling me their company had deployed IBM Connections and just wanted help on the best ways to use it. I shared my experiences and got them to promise that first thing they would do once they got back was to start using IBM Connections more.

Another surprise of the day was when I learned that I had received an award: VideoFest 2012 Super Star. Sweet!! VideoFest is now a yearly tradition where members of the community submit videos that show tips on how to use the various products of the portfolio.

And thanks to Mitch Cohen for capturing this pic:

A great day overall!

Lotusphere 2012: Monday Recap

2012-01-23T09:26:00.001-04:00

Last Monday was the 2nd day of the Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 and was the day that the Opening General Session took place. I was part of the demo team so for me this was the day that Lotusphere actually started as up until then we were backstage getting ready for the big keynote.

As you probably know, the keynote was live streamed. The main speaker was Michael J. Fox and the opening band was Ok Go which made Lotusphere trend in Twitter. Michael J. Fox did a tremendous job on stage and was very funny. I'm sure that every time someone brings up a problem, I'm going to say: "Hey, a lady had a baby in a tree, what do you got?". If you don't get the reference, you'll have to watch the live stream replay here.

Or if you are short on time, here's the OGS in 60 seconds:

The feedback from the audience in Twitter was extremely positive. I loved every minute of the experience of getting the demo ready and getting to know what it takes to put together the best demo ever for Lotusphere. Hope that next year I get to participate in this as well. Here's a picture of the demo team taken by Alistair Rennie.

Immediately after the main keynote, customer and business partner meetings started. Throughout the conference, the attitude was extremely positive and everyone was very excited about what's coming in 2012.

At the same time, Guy Kawasaki took the stage for the Opening General Session at the IBM Connect conference. Guy had a great message around trust, where you have to trust others before they start trusting you. Guy also insisted that you have to accept others the way they are, and not to try to change them. Next, he emphasized the importance to always think how you can help the other person, and not how they can help you.

If you missed it, here's a quick chat recorded with Guy:

Watch live streaming video from ibmsoftware at livestream.com

or his actual keynote is here:

Watch live streaming video from ibmsoftware at livestream.com

Monday afternoon was also my first session of the conference where I co-presented with Mike Roche, Chief Architect for IBM Connections. Since our session wasn't on the Application Development track, we wanted to stay away from code and instead highlight the art of the possible and show how customers and business partners have extended the IBM Connections Platform. I often find that not everyone is aware of all the integration points that are available today so that's why we wanted to focus on that.

Here's the presentation that we used:

ID223 IBM Connections Platform Integration

View more presentations from Luis Benitez

Monday night, the OGS team headed out for dinner and it was great. I had such a good time. I think I hadn't laughed that hard before so it was a great way to end the day and hang out with colleagues who are often remote.

Lotusphere 2012: Media Coverage

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Just like last year, I am now back home and it's time to catch up with my feed reader and all the press coverage that was generated by #ls12 or Lotusphere 2012. Looking at the press generated this year and comparing to that of 2011, this year's coverage is **significantly** higher! To me, this has been my favorite Lotusphere and I'm extremely excited as to what the rest of 2012 will look like!

Newspapers and Magazines:
NY Times: IBM Makes Its Social Computing Strategy Smarter
The BrainYard: 10 Ways to Transform Into a Social Enterprise
TechNewWorld: IBM Hones Social Enterprise Tools (I'm featured here! :) )
IT World: TD Bank goes social 'inside the firewall'
eWeek: Electrolux Taps IBM for Social Software
V3: IBM takes on Google and Microsoft with cloud-hosted document editing tool
The BrainYard: IBM Aims To Be First With OpenSocial Embedded Apps
eWeek: IBM Bolsters Social Business Play with Analytics
(added on 24/Jan/2012) The BrainYard: TD Bank's Social Strategy: Start Small, Think Big
(added on 24/Jan/2012) ComputerWorld: TD Bank Gets Social for Better Business
eWeek: IBM: Defining a social business
eWeek: IBM Kicks Off Lotusphere with Focus on Social Business
eWeek: IBM Partners Prep for Social Business at Lotusphere 2012
CIO Insight: IBM Social Business Software is Bolstered with Analytics
CIO Today: IBM Launches Services To Help Businesses Go Social
SiliconANGLE: IBM Gears Up for Social Business: the New Enterprise
ZDNet: IBM rolls out new social analytics tools
CMSWire: IBM Connections: Analytics, Email, the Activity Stream, & More
ServicesANGLE: IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps
IT Jungle: IBM Gets Down to Social Business
No Jitter: Lotusphere: IBM Puts Meat on the Bones of its Social Strategy
UC Strategies: IBM Provides Analytics to Social Business
Technorati: IBM Adds to its Social Business Tools with New Analytics
MyCustomer.com: IBM continues social business expansion with new programs and partnerships
Channelnomics: IBM Eyes Partners to Expand Social Business
theflyonthewall.com: Electrolux enables a social, mobile workforce with IBM software
WebProNews: IBM Announces Social Analytics Services: IBM Connections and more, for the enterprise
IT World: IBM unveils next-gen Connections
CIO Insight: Social Business: If You Build It, Will They Come?
Information Management: The (IBM) Social Network
Destination CRM: IBM Brings Analytics to Social Business
TechZone360: IBM Connections Looking to Make the Enterprise More Social
Computerworld: Sharepoint is a 'document coffin', says IBM
V3: Lotusphere: IBM demos social lab projects including business ramification tool
eWeek: Lotusphere 2012: 10 Takeaways from the Show

Bloggers:

Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session
Alan Lepofsky: My POV on the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session
SmartPlanet: Is your company ready to be a social business?
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Monday Morning Press Q&A
Keith Brooks: Rachel Happe's Session at IBM Connect
Chris Pepin: Lotusphere 2012 kickoff
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session Tuesday
(added on 24/Jan/12)Todd Watson: Live @ Lotusphere 2012: IBM Customer TD Bank Makes Major Social Business Deposit
NTEK: IBM Takes The Power of Analytics to Social Businesses (Spanish)
@gawed: IBM Continues its Leadership in Social Media (Spanish)
Perficient: Lotusphere Session Highlights - IBM Connections Auditing and Compliance Infrastructure
Alan Hamilton: Lotusphere Business Development Day
Adam Brown: Why Gamification for IBM Connections
Perficient: Lotusphere Tuesday Keynote: Social Evolution with McKinsey, TD and FAST Company
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: Lotusphere 2012 Opening Session
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: Day 2 Kickoff Strikes Transformation Theme
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: 3M Unites Global Workforce with Technology
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: IBM as a Social Business
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Customer Conversation - Russell's Convenience
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session Wednesday
mwd advisors: A new, confident IBM at Lotusphere 2012
GigaOM: Notes from Lotusphere and thoughts on IBM

(added 25/Jan/2012) Social Media Today: Lotusphere 2012 Touts Social Business But What About Social Media?
(added 25/Jan/2012) Inspirian: Shiny Social Tools Meet Practicality at Lotusphere
added 25/Jan/2012) Per Henrik Lausten: Thoughts from Lotusphere 2012: IBM Connections Next

Social Business Trends on Twitter Thanks To Lotusphere 2012

2012-01-18T10:12:00.001-04:00

At this week's Lotusphere 2012, Social Business became a hot topic. In fact, in the United States 3 of the 9 trending topics at Twitter were a result of Lotusphere '12 #ls12.

First, the band Ok Go started trending as they took the stage sharp at 8am to get people psyched for what some are calling the best keynote and demos ever! As they rocked the stage, some of their YouTube videos played on the big screen.

Second, Michael J Fox started trending on Twitter as he was announced as the guest speaker at the Opening General Session. It was great to see him on stage. I remember always being jealous of him as he got to fly on the hover boards in the Back to the Future movies ;). My favorite quote: "a lady had a baby in a tree, what do you got?"

It's a good sign when 2 hours have gone by and I've barely noticed.This is one of the best Lotusphere keynotes ever. #LS12
— Alan Lepofsky (@alanlepo) January 16, 2012

And third, the hashtag for the conference, #ls12, started trending on Twitter as well.

Suzanne Livingston shared a tweet earlier with a screenshot of the trends ( see below ).

#ls12, Michael J Fox, and OKGO all hit Twitter's Trending Topics for the US at the #LotusphereOGS twitter.com/suzielivingsto…
— Suzanne Livingston (@suzielivingston) January 18, 2012

asd

How cool is that!!!??!! W00t!

If you missed, it, you can always check out the live stream.

Lotusphere 2012 Live Streaming #ls12

2012-01-16T08:30:00.000-04:00

Straight to the point… here's the live stream for Lotusphere 2012 !!! Watch carefully and you'll see me briefly during the Opening General Session on Monday January 16th @ 8am ET.

If you want to know what will be showing when, check out the Lotusphere 2012 Live Stream Schedule.

Enjoy!

How To Add Twitter Search Widget to IBM Connections Communities

2012-01-14T09:07:00.000-04:00

In my previous blog post, I shared how to add a 'Subscribe in iTunes' button to the Media Gallery in IBM Connections. In the video that I shared, you may have noticed a widget that I had added to my demo community in IBM Connections.

I've created a simple widget that exposes Twitter's Search widget inside of a community. You can configure this widget so that you can specify which hashtags to monitor. The widget updates in almost real-time every time someone uses the hashtag in Twitter. This is great if you want to have a community that supports a product launch, or a customer support community, or even a social media marketing community.

I'm working right now to get the widget posted in the Lotus App Catalog. Once the widget is there you'll be able to simply install it on your server. If you want to use it immediately, you can use the copy that's running on my publicly facing server by following these instructions:

Follow the steps here to check-out and modify widgets-config.xml

In the <definitions> section for community add the following 1 line of code

<widgetDef defId="TwitterSearch" url="http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/TwitterSearch/twitterSearchWidget.xml"

modes="view edit" primaryWidget="false"
iconUrl="http://www.twitter.com/favicon.ico" uniqueInstance="true"/>

That's it!! 1 line of code! Now, save and close the file and check it back in as documented in the instructions in step 1.

Once you restart IBM Connections, you'll be able to add the widget to any community and configure it for any hashtag. This simple widget took me about 10-15 minutes to code showing once again the extensibility and flexibility of IBM Connections. And because it was created by me, do note it's not officially supported by IBM and is provided as-is.

Here's a video that shows the widget in action.

Let me know what you think and if there are any simple changes you would recommend. I'll also be demoing this on my Monday session at Lotusphere '12 #ls12 so hope to see you there!

How To Subscribe To IBM Connections Media Gallery via iTunes

2012-01-13T14:07:00.000-04:00

One of the new features that was introduced in IBM Connections 3.0.1 is the Media Gallery which Suzanne demos here. Chris Crummey recently asked me how could he subscribe to the items in the Media Gallery via iTunes. That way, when he's traveling he can catch up with the videos that have been added to the Media Gallery.

As you probably know, IBM Connections provides a very easy way to subscribe to each page via feeds. iTunes also has a way for you to manually add a feed to subscribe to a podcast. Thus, you can manually copy/paste the URL provided by IBM Connections, add it to iTunes and voilá.

I wanted to take this to a new level. As I thought more about this, I realized this is a huge use case. Imagine using the Media Gallery as a way to store enablement sessions as part of a product launch. Now, imagine giving your sales force a 1-click ability to take the Media Gallery offline and get up to speed on new products on their own time, perhaps as they are traveling from one customer to another.

Having said that, I created a quick customization which enables this. If you want to enable this on your server, follow these steps:

If you haven't yet, copy footer.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/footer.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
Switch to the <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates directory
Open footer.jsp with your favorite text editor

Scroll to the very bottom of the file and add the following line of code

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://blog.lbenitez.com/iTunesConnections.js"></script>

That's it!! 1 line of code! Now, save and close the file. This will make all the files uploaded to the Media Gallery and tagged with 'podcast' available via iTunes.

Here's a video of how this works:

I'll be demoing this in my session on Monday at Lotusphere '12 #ls12 .

ISW Introduces Gamification for IBM Connections

2012-01-04T15:38:00.000-04:00

What a great way to start 2012. IBM Business Partner, ISW (the same business partner that created iWildfire for iPhone and iPad and Wildfire for Notes) announced that it's now providing gaming capabilities within IBM Connections.

I caught a demo of the add-on yesterday and it looks very good. Out of the box, it comes with a variety of badges that users earn based on various metrics and achievements within IBM Connections. When you go to a user's profile, you can see the various badges that they have earned and their progress towards other badges.

Administrators can define their own badges and metrics (the actions that users must take to obtain a badge). For example, you can configure that a badge is awarded when 30 files have been shared with more than 100 tags as shown here:

You can even tie with external systems. For example, you can create badges that are awarded to members of the sales team once they achieve their quarterly quota and show that within Connections.

Gamification is a way to drive adoption of a new platform. For companies that have rolled out IBM Connections, you may want to consider this add-on to drive adoption of the platform. In the words of ISW:

ISW has performed many implementations of IBM Connections and we have found that a significant factor in organisations driving real business value is ensuring strong user adoption. In addition, providing guidance to users to leverage all of the capabilities of Connections rather than just individual capabilities is a key success factor. The key is to help users understand "Why?" they should leverage social software to work better. An important strategy for encouraging user adoption is providing reward mechanism's, both tangible and intangible. Kudos Badges for IBM Connections provides this strategy in a very powerful and flexible way.

To learn more about Kudos for IBM Connections, go here.

Article originally published in Technorati: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/isw-introduces-gamification-for-ibm-connections/

IBM Connections Celebrates the Holidays

2012-01-03T10:53:00.000-04:00

Happy New Year to everyone! As I catch up with emails and get ready for Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 I saw an interesting "card" from a business partner in Spain.

They loaded profiles for Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men. The card is of course in Spanish, but you'll probably get a kick out of it as well.

May 2012 be an AWESOME year!

Enjoy!

My Lotusphere 2012 Schedule is Set!

2011-12-27T11:18:00.000-04:00

I've just finished setting up my page for Lotusphere 2012. Just like last year, you can use that to start planning your Lotusphere trip and figure out how to reach me / find me while at Lotusphere.

At the point of this writing, we are just 18 days away from Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. I'm actually going to get to Orlando on the 7th since I'll be taking the kids to their first trip to Disney. My oldest has a countdown going and is very excited about the trip (as well as with all the toys he just got for Xmas).

This year, I'll be a presenter in 2 sessions, a Birds-of-Feather (BOF) session and will participate again in the Ask the Product Managers session. Here's a quick recap of the sessions:

ID223 - IBM Connections Platform Integration
South Hemisphere I - Sunday 2:15PM - 3:15PM

BOF137 - Connections Adoption and Governance
Swan Toucan 2 - Tuesday 7:00AM - 8:00 AM

ID224 - What's Coming in Quickr Domino "Next"
North Hemisphere D - Wednesday 1:30PM - 2:30PM

ASK102 - Ask the Product Managers
Swan 5-10 - Thursday 11:15AM - 12:15PM

Getting up early on Tuesday is going to be tough but definitely worth it. The Connections adoption at #ls11 was awesome! So start planning your schedule and hope to see you in a couple of weeks!

AppFusions Integrates IBM Connections and Atlassian's JIRA

2011-12-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, AppFusions published a great video where they show integration of IBM Connections and Atlassian JIRA . If you are not familiar with JIRA, JIRA helps development teams connect, track bugs, defects, plan agile development and more. (I'm not sure if JIRA is an acronym or not, though)

Part of JIRA is an activity stream where you can see what's happening across the projects you belong to. As part of the integration, AppFusions has created a widget that can be deployed in the Connections home page.

Once the administrator deploys the widget and quickly configures it to connect to the JIRA backend, end-users will be able to see what's happening in JIRA directly from Connections. Actions that occur in JIRA are immediately reflected in Connections. Very cool.

Check out the quick 1 minute demo:

AppFusions will be an exhibitor at Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 so make sure you stop by their booth to learn more or check out the solution in the Lotus App Catalog.

Social Scheduling Now in IBM Connections

2011-12-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

IBM Business Partner Intravision has created a great integration point between OnTime Group Calendar and IBM Connections. If you haven't heard or used OnTime before I suggest you check them out. They provide an awesome add on with a powerful and very slick group calendar interface.

OnTime also allows you to work with group calendars even when you are on the go by providing mobile access from your favorite mobile device.

The new integration point brings the power of OnTime Group Scheduling into communities in IBM Connections. The following video shows a demo of the integration. It shows a community being created in IBM Connections for team collaboration. One of the challenges of building a team is finding the people with the right skills at the right time. IBM Connections already makes it super easy to find people based on skills. This integration point, allows you to see someone's availability right on their Profile page within IBM Connections.

Once you have everyone in the community, you can quickly see everyone's availability today by just hovering over the names of team members, or you can even see a nice graphical representation for everyone's availability any date/time.

Finally, the Social Scheduling widget allows you to find people from various departments that are available at any given time. Very cool!!! Check out the quick video below:

This is a great example of the extensibility of IBM Connections via widgets. If you are interested in learning more about this, go to http://ontimesuite.com/ . And congratulations to the team for being nominated for a Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 award in the "Enabling Business Innovation through Social Collaboration".

Yay, I'm going to SXSW 2012 !

2011-12-13T10:02:00.001-04:00

Earlier this year, I asked that you go out and vote for the various sessions we had submitted. Yesterday, more sessions were announced for SXSW 2012 and I was happy to see that the proposal Suzanne Livingston and I submitted was accepted.

Our session is titled Enterprise Social Media Trends: Are We There Yet? . Here's the abstract we submitted:

Social media has gone mainstream! But it's not everywhere yet. In this session, we'll explore case studies that showcase the trends and best practices of using social media today, the ROI, and the impact on your customers, employees, and entire supply chain. We'll dive into the core capabilities of a social business and review how organizations are leveraging new capabilities to deliver bottom-line results. This session will provide a look into how businesses are utilizing social technologies to respond faster to opportunities, generate new ideas, accelerate innovation, and beat their competitors. We'll look into the technologies that enable this growing form of enterprise collaboration that is built on the new generation of information sharing. We'll close this out with five top trends and thoughts about where this is heading.

So once Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 is done, I'll come back home for a few weeks and then off to Austin.

I've been to Austin a couple of times to visit customers and the IBM offices and it's a great city. However, I've never had the opportunity to go to SXSW. Based on what I've read and heard, it's an awesome conference and I feel lucky to have the opportunity to go there and not only present, but also go to sessions put together by leaders of the mobile & social media industry.

For example, in the newly accepted sessions, I see speakers from companies like Twitter, Foursquare, Paypal, Pageonce, Popular Mechanics, etc.

If you are going to SXSW 2012, I hope to see you there!

LotusLive Connections Upgraded This Weekend

2011-12-12T09:41:00.000-04:00

Over this past weekend, we finalized some upgrades to LotusLive Connections, our multi-tenant IBM Connections solution in the cloud. This update adds some great new capabilities to Communities, Files, Activities, and Profiles. Here's a couple of my new favorite features:

Community business owner can give ownership to another person
Community file folders for communities that you belong to are now shown under 'Folders shared with Me'
Easily link to Files from Activities
Parity with IBM Connections Files (which means, for example, new drag-n-drop capabilities!)
Instant messaging presence information in the business card
Limit scope of a community to an organization only
ProjExec has been integrated into LotusLive. ProjExec Live enables project managers to create, plan, execute and track projects using a professional Gantt editor that synchronizes with Microsoft Project. Invite other LotusLive users as project members and collaborate securely using a multi-project activity stream called the Project Wall. ProjExec Live is an intuitive, mobile-friendly solution to effectively manage and deliver projects of any size. More information is available in the wiki page for ProjExec. If you haven't seen ProjExec yet, here's a demo.

I'm so excited to have this release out. The team has worked tremendously to get this out, so congratulations to everyone!! For more information on What's New in this release, go here.

New IBM Champions Announced

2011-12-08T11:21:00.000-04:00

Joyce Davis has just posted an announcement in the Social Business Insights Blog. You will remember that earlier this year, IBM announced 50 new IBM Champions. Joyce provides a great summary of what we look for in IBM Champions:

These individuals spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources evangelizing for IBM, sharing their knowledge and helping grow the community of users and business leaders focused on our solutions. As champions, they will receive an IBM Champion merchandise package (apparel and some cool gadgets!), increased visibility on IBM sites, invitations and discounts to IBM events, recognition at select conferences, and access to key IBM business executives and technical leaders. Visit the IBM Champion site to read more about the program and get to know the current IBM Champions.

While at the Lotusphere #ls12 and Connect conferences in January, look for the IBM Champions by looking at the ribbons in their conference badges. And, as you can imagine, MANY of them will be speaking at sessions, facilitating Birds of a Feather sessions, conducting book signings, being interviewed on video, and a number of other exciting activities. You might even be lucky enough to witness a group of them sing karaoke ("We are the Champions!") in the evening if you head over to Kimono's. Check out the Lanyrd page for Lotusphere 2012 for more information.

Once again, congratulations to the newly minted IBM Champions!!! (and stay tuned because nominations will open again for the next round in August)

Christian Henseler
Eric Carter
Fabrizio Marchesano, Frame srl
Glenn Kline, Perficient
Howard Greenberg, The Learning Continuum Company
Masahiko Miyo ef Co, Ltd
Mike Ostrowski, Ascendant
Peter Presnell, yellowverse.com
Rob Shoenfelt
Salvador Gallardo, Innexware
Sean Cull, FoCul, Ltd
Tom Simmons, Alacrinet
Weerapong Panpai, Zenith Comp Co., Ltd

How To Add "Invite To Network" Button to an Email

2011-11-30T13:56:00.000-04:00

This is another posting from my colleague Romain Lienard. The first posting that I shared from him was a quick post that explained how to add a "Follow This Community" button to an email which helps accelerate adoption. In this post, Romain shares how to simply add a button to your email signature, for example, so that others can click it and invite you to be part of their network. This is another great example of using LotusScript with the IBM Connections API. And given I like to share a bunch of how-to's, I figured I would help spread the word on this one.

What follows is his entry:

This is the second part of my previous blog entry "Follow-this-community button"

In the same spirit, I wanted to do a button that let people invite me into their network in a simple click, because it can be a good way to drive adoption of Connections.

Here again, all you have to do is :

1 - create a button in your mail, via Create>Hotspot>Button.

2 - Specify a label for your button, select LotusScript instead of Formula

3 - Copy & paste this code, after changing the YOUR_EMAIL with your email :

Sub Click(Source As Button)
     Dim objHttp
     Set objHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
     url = |https://w3-connections.ibm.com/profiles/atom/connections.do?email=YOUR_EMAIL&connectionType=colleague|
     req = |<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<entry
  xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  xmlns:snx="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn">
   <category term="connection"
   scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/type" />
   <category term="colleague"
   scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/connection/type" />
   <category term="pending"
   scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/status" />
   <content type="html">
   Please accept this invitation to be in my network of Connections colleagues (sent from Lotus Notes).
   </content>
</entry>|
     objHttp.open "POST", url, False, "", ""
     objHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "text/xml"
     objHttp.send(req)
     Msgbox "Invitation has been sent !"
End Sub

Save your document, click on the button, and voila ! (note : you'll be prompted for your intranet password)

If you want to use this button every day, there is unfortunately no way to put it on the signature file BUT (thanks to Herbert Hilhorst for the tip) you can copy & paste your signature and the button you put on it from the current mail to the signature richtext editor (More...>Preferences>Signature). In this way, the button will be copied too. Don't forget to select Rich Text instead of HTML or file.

This button is now in my default signature :)

Very cool, huh? Here's the original link to his blog entry so you can say "thank you" :).

How To Add a "Follow Community" button in an Email

2011-11-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

I saw this posted internally and just felt compelled to share. My colleague, Romain Lienard, He developed a way to quickly add a button to an email so that recipients can quickly follow an IBM Connections Community with a single click. I can see this being very very handy, specially when combined with the community email newsletter generator. This is a great example of using LotusScript and the IBM Connections API.

What follows is a copy of Romain's blog entry:

The IBM Connections API can be used with Lotus Notes and its LotusScript programming language in order to facilitate some tasks for end users.

So with some Notes support from Herbert Hilhorst, I wrote a piece of LotusScript that automatically follows a community with a simple click. The authentication is done directly in the Notes client

All you have to do is :

1 - create a button in your mail, via Create>Hotspot>Button.

2 - Specify a label for your button, select LotusScript instead of Formula

3 - Copy & paste this code, after changing the CommunityUID (here it's 5bf86449-cd87-4e02-bef5-a24f24408723) according to your needs :

Sub Click(Source As Button)

     Dim objHttp

     Set objHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
     url = |https://w3-connections.ibm.com/communities/follow/atom/resources?source=communities|
     req = |<entry>
<id>urn:lsid:ibm.com:follow:resource-5bf86449-cd87-4e02-bef5-a24f24408723</id>
<category term="resource-follow" scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/type"></category>
<category term="communities" scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/source"></category>
<category term="community" scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/resource-type"></category>
<category term="5bf86449-cd87-4e02-bef5-a24f24408723" scheme="http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn/resource-id"></category>
</entry>|
     objHttp.open "POST", url, False, "", ""
     objHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "text/xml"
     objHttp.send(req)
     Msgbox "You're now following the TEC-F community. Thank you !"

End Sub

Save your document, click on the button, and voila ! Here's the original blog entry so you can give thanks to Romain :).

IBM Releases Glimpse into IT Future In The 2011 Tech Trends Report

2011-11-15T10:00:00.000-04:00

IBM has just released the results of its 2011 Tech Trends Report. The report provides insight into the most significant enterprise technology trends and is based on the input of more than 4,000 IT professionals and developers across 93 countries and 25 different industries. This report is unique as it surveys the development community, the people that are in the trenches everyday making IT work for countless businesses around the world.

Whether you are interested in social business, open source, cloud, mobile or analytics, there is something for everyone in this report. I personally have an inclination towards cloud, mobile, analytics and social business, so the report was a great read to say the least.

Here are some key findings from the report (in no particular order):

Mobile - Android leads the way with 70% of respondents saying they are looking to develop for that platform compared to 49% for iOS. Why are people choosing Android? The openness and ease of development make Android the platform of choice.
Cloud Computing - 40% of respondents indicated that their organization is not using any mobile technology, but 75% said that in 2 years their organizations will begin to leverage the cloud representing a tremendous opportunity for cloud vendors. The top motivators for adopting cloud technology? 58% say it's because of flexibility and scalability and 40% say it's to reduce capital costs.
Social Business - Organizations are looking to deploy internal social business platforms (43%) and are considering using external deployments (41%) and using mass market social networks (20%). The top challenge cited by organizations? 48% cited end user adoption of their social business platform, a topic I've talked a lot in the past.

In the following video, Sandy Carter, VP of IBM Social Business, talks about the results of the social business survey.

In this second video, my colleague Suzanne Livingston talks about the results found in the mobile area:

To view the report and learn more about the Tech Trends, check out: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport

Social Media Club Boston on The Evolution of Social Business

2011-11-14T16:34:00.000-04:00

Last week, the Social Media Club of Boston and IBM partnered up to talk about the Evolution of Social Business. While I couldn't assist in person for obvious reasons, I liked the ability to catch up via the uStream replay (below). The club celebrated its 5th anniversary and the outgoing president started the meeting with a re-cap of the club. This was very interesting to me in various levels. First, as you may know, I lead the Social Media Club of Puerto Rico so I like to learn about how other clubs structure their events. Second, the event was sponsored by my employer, and, third, my big boss was one of the panelists .

The following participated in the panel:

Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Social Business, IBM
Andrew Carusone, Director of Integrated Workforce Experience (IWE) and Community Governance, Lowe’s Home Improvement (you may remember Lowe's awesome story on how they use IBM Connections to increase sales by million$ )
Ric Fulop, Partner, North Bridge Venture Partners

Following the tweets generated by the event over at #SMCBoston, I knew I had to watch the replay. I specially liked these tweets:

"Awesome #SMCBoston event, "The Evolution of Social Business," last night at IBM Innovation Ctr. Learned a TON!" --Kirk Hazlett, Curry College Communication Professor; PRSA Fellow, and PRSA Director (2011-2012)

"This is not a tool discussion." @alistair_rennie at #smcboston --@jimstorer (principal at The Community Roundtable)

"Glad to see IBM support #smcboston & the local Boston community by having @alistair_rennie join us tonight #IBMsocialbiz" --Rachel Happe, former IDC analyst and principal at The Community Roundtable

"IBM has been great supporting #smcboston and other great Boston innovation communities like @MassInno Thx @#IBMSocialBiz" --Bob Collins, Partner at Human 1.0 / Digital Media & PR Strategist. Content Creator and Host of Boston's Social Media Breakfast

"Interesting demo of internal IBM employee search directory "Faces" @IBMWaltham. Very cool #SMCBoston pic.twitter.com/YOljxNeT" --Dave Cutler, Blogger, columnist and social media strategist.

The event was also highlighted by Bill Ives and in Mass High Tech.

Andrew from Lowe's did a fantastic job introducing how and why Lowe's embarked in the Social Business path. As part of his introduction Andrew told the amazing story of how they were able to increase sales at their retail stores by using social software behind the firewall (in their case IBM Connections). The specific example was about how an employee was having a challenge replenishing a specific type of pain tray. They had gone from selling 2 paint trays per week per store, to more than 15 trays per week per store. The employee didn't know how to get more trays in so they could sell more. As other employees saw the question, they wondered how this particular store was selling so many paint trays since the average was just 2 per week. The employee shared how they configured the display for the tray and all stores followed suit and they saw the same increase in sales, nationwide!

Ric is an entrepreneur and gets to read to hundred of business plans per year and has identified three trends: 1) consumerazation of the enterprise, 2) conversational web, and 3) next generation optimization. I don't want to spoil all the details so watch the recording.

Here's the video recording of the event (1 hour and 20 minutes):

asdf

How To Get Twitter Feed Added to IBM Connections Profile

2011-11-08T13:30:00.001-04:00

IBM Connections Profiles is all about aggregating user information from various sources into a single place.

Yesterday, I noticed that JustNudge, an IBM business partner (the ones who created the Profile Completion widget), had created another widget. This time, their new widget gets the user's Twitter feed and brings it in directly to their Profile as shown below.

Sharon Bellamy from Applicable also got this working on her own server and it looks great!

JustNudge is offering this widget for free for a limited time so go ahead and get it while it's hot. I installed it on my demo server following their instructions and it took me about 15 minutes to go through the process. Very easy!

To get the widget, go here.