Episode 44, recorded Monday 28th March 2011, discussing the Sam Palmisano article and IBM comments, tablet sales in 2011, the Social Business Summit, Domino as a RAD platform and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Sharon BellamySharon Bellamy (blog | twitter) is the Lead IBM Software Support Specialist at City University in London working on all things collaborative and IBM/Lotus software based.

Topics

CNN/Fortune profile of Sam Palmisano

Enterprises will buy 50 times as many tablets in 2011 as they did in 2010

  • the number of tablets sold to Enterprise last year though was still really tiny. No wonder that “times” sounds huge

Dachis Group Social Business Summit

  • Sharon and Stuart attended
  • What were main takeaways?
  • Technology agnostic – is that a positive or a negative?
  • Is Jazz music the greatest example of real-time collaboration?

(March Madness Domino Style has taken hold)

5 minute RAD – Is Domino Really SO RAD?

Darren wants IBM to reduce the TCO for Domino apps

  • Ed hinted in the comments IBM may well be working on it

Phil Salm wants Cisco to buy Lotus

  • His title made us look twice…

Carl Tyler wants IBM to drop the Notes client (kind of)

  • Ed hinted in the comments IBM may well be working on it
  • Is an XPages only server the next great thing?
  • Is it time for IBM to look at it’s competition?
    • Visual Studio
    • DropBox
    • Skype
    • Outlook

UKLUG

  • Abstracts due by the April 5th
DarrenTDI tip – of the AMC seems inaccessible (i.e, you don’t see any images) try running “TDI_install_dir/bin/amc/setAMCRoles.bat(sh) username
SharonUse an iPad / tablet for taking notes while you are out and about – I didn’t think I would ever use it for that .. and that is now my primary use.
StuartBuy new batteries for your MP3 recorder before attending an event!  Seriously, DB2 config for Connections 3.0.  Be afraid, very afraid! Resource requirements are significantly up on 2.5.

Episode 43, recorded Thursday 17th March 2011, discussing Business Intelligence and Collaboration integration, free LotusLive for Japan relief, Sametime for Android and iOS and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Andy Piper

Andy Piper (blog | twitter | company) is WebSphere Messaging Community Lead at IBM, and is also widely known online as a “social bridgebuilder”. He has been with IBM for 10 years, was working for an IBM customer for 4 years before that, and whilst he works within the WebSphere brand of Software Group, he is a “friend of Lotus”, being extremely active in internal and external social networks (one of IBM’s early internal blogging community, and a “BlueIQ Ambassador”). Andy is a regular speaker on both technical topics related to application integration as well as on bringing social dimensions to business. He is also a co-presenter of the weekly Dogear Nation podcast… which is about to hit its 200th episode…. he is also very good at teaching TWiL people about how to more effectively use Google Docs… 😛

Lars-Olof Allerhed

Lars-Olof Allerhed (blog | twitter | company) is Social Evangelist in the World Wide Tiger Team  for IBM Collaboration Solutions, He has worked for IBM for a bit over 10 years in various senior technical positions, was originally hired in to Lotus when it was a subsidiary of IBM and since 1st of January is back in “Lotus”again working for IBM Collaboration Solution (ICS) in IBM Software Group. Focus in my current role is to evangelise about how to use ICS products  an solutions especially focusing on emerging technologies and Mobile,  he has developed a  speciality skill in delivering First of a Kind projects (FOK) successfully and is frequently requested form different parts of IBM to lead FOK projects. Has been blogging externally since the early dot com days and was one of the first jump on Jaiku.

TIna Groves

Tina Groves (twitter | company) recently re-joined the Cognos product management team to lead the collaborative decision making area, leveraging her 25 years experience in analysis, event processing and information-driven applications. She is best known by Cognos customers for her popular conference sessions on report design and advanced charting.

Topics

Collaborative Business Intelligence with Cognos BI and Lotus Connections

  • What is BI?
    • Cognos Business Intelligence was started back in the mid-nineties with reporting and interactive analysis delivered by Impromptu and PowerPlay.  Over the past decade, Cognos products evolved to a suite of reporting and analytical capabilities to delivering a complete platform which included metrics and financial performance management to today where it’s a system of business analytics.
  • Why and who uses BI?
    • Organizations use Businesss Analytics in order gain insights into their business interactions, develop strategy and manage financial forecasts.  People use Business Analytics to answer questions like how are we doing, why and what should we be doing.
  • Why Collaboration and Business Intelligence? 
    • People today use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to connect with friends in their personal lives.  People are wanting to use these means to find people within their organization and find relevant information in their environment to assist their decision making.
  • What does a customer get when they buy Cognos 10? Are there any restrictions on how they use Connections? 
    • Cognos customers have full use of Connections with Cognos BI v10.  Users require enhanced consumer role or higher to have entitlement to the Collaboration capabilities from the Business Insight Workspace (yes, fully un-crippled!)
  • What happens if Connections takes off and they want to get more licenses? 
    • Then, a corporate-wide license can be purchased for the employees who do not have a Cognos license.  The Cognos 10 application can be configured to use the corporate-wide Connections application.
  • Examples and screen captures can be seen in Tina’s guest entry on synch.rono.us
  • What’s next for Cognos/Connections?    
    • More and more integration!  Cognos is also interested in expanding the BI value to other collaboration tools such as instant messaging and to further the integration on platforms such as mobile and cloud.  Stay tuned!
  • Inside Gatorade’s Social Media Command Center

IBM offers LotusLive free of charge to agencies in Japan

  • Salvation Army planning to use Lotus and LotusLive technology to manage their efforts
  • Not the first time this year IBM Lotus technologies have helped in a disaster, Mark Bennett (a TWIL devotee and all around good guy) of the New Zealand Salvation Army developed RAD Notes apps to assist in the NZ earth quake

Speaking of cloud, Microsoft to offer free BES Hosting with BPOS

  • Supported and hosted by RIM
  • Does this pressure IBM to do the same? I know we’ve heard $15/user/mo is the “market norm”, has that now changed?
  • Is LotusLive really aimed at the < 300 user markets (the minimum number of users required for LL BES)?

QuipIM –First Sametime Client for iPhone and Android released

  • Available for Android, coming soon for iOS.

Twitter tells developers not to build clients anymore – what happened?!

  • Twitter grew on its own multichannel, multipurpose nature – clampdown seems counterproductive?
  • Is it all about control and advertising? (chart)
  • third-party dev backlash
  • How does Twitter make money? It doesn’t. There is your reason why they are doing this

Tips

Darren

xDesk v1.1 from Chris Connor on OpenNTF. And fine example of an XPages helpdesk and issue tracking database….with mobile access for iShiny and other webkit browsers! So good I’m actually using it. This month it is also the featured OpenNTF Project of Month.

Andy

Lanyrd – can’t remember if this has been covered on TWiL already? I see no evidence of it on the blog and it’s very relevant to a collaboration / social audience. And I’ve blogged about it. It’s a social conferencing site which also has some extremely cool features for speakers, enables persistent aggregation of information around point-in-time events, uses Twitter, now has a browser plugin for enhancing Twitter profile pages, etc etc.

Lars

Collabracam – an iphone ipad application to shoot multi camera videos with up to 4 iphones (iTunes link)
Discussions in Google Docs

Tina

If you want to learn more about how Cognos and Connections deliver social business to organizations, join this webinar on Mar 23rd, with demonstrations on Collaborative BI, Social Analytics and Consumer and Corporate Sentiment.
Lotusphere Comes to You in Montreal on June 7th… yes, I’ll be speaking in person at that event! (I love Montreal! (being the only Canadian city I’ve visited, though) free poutine for all attendees? –andyp) 
The Future directions for Business Intelligence highlight the importance of mobile devices.
If you need a chuckle about Canadian facts, check this out

Stuart

Dragon Dictation for the iPad/iPhone – Free app, works great, not so good in noisy environments, but with headset it really rocks.  Helps iOS catch up with Android in some regards.

Episode 42, recorded Thursday 10th March 2011, discussing upcoming Lotus User Groups in Belgium and the UK, why the Lotus community should ‘put up or shut up’ in Australia, IBM’s stance on Nokia devices and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

 

Warren Elsmore

Warren Elsmore (blog | twitter | company) has worked in the Lotus arena for 15 years and is a Senior Architecture Consultant with the Bluewave Group.  Bluewave provide technical architecture consultancy and advice to a range of large and small customers across the globe. Warren has spoken at many Lotus events including Lotusphere, Collaboration University, the View Admin conference, ILUG and UKLUG. He also writes for Clippings and in any spare time he has left he runs the UK Lotus User Group!

Theo Hesslemans

Theo Heselmans (blog | twitter | company) has been doing Notes/domino development for almost 20 years. He became an independent consultant about 10 years ago and founded Xceed. He’s been to almost every Lotusphere, and got involved into the Lotus community when he started blogging about 4 years ago. He’s been running the BLUG now for 2.5 years.

Topics

User groups

  • What are Lotus User Groups?
  • Why did you chose to organise them?
  • What’s involved in organizing such an event: find Venue, Date, Speakers, Sponsors, Attendees, Staff, Merchandising
  • Who attends user groups?
  • What is the format of your events, days/numbers?
  • What are the benefits of attending?
    • to attendees?
    • to sponsors/exhibitors?
    • to speakers
  • Shouldn’t IBM be responsible for running these events?

BLUG

  • When is it? (March 31th – April 1st)
  • Where? (Crowne Plaza In Antwerp, we needed a bigger venue, as we grew: more than 200 people per day)
  • Why Antwerp this time? (Great city, we wanted to a change from Brussels)
  • Now a two-day event – why the change? (so many topics to cover, and we had to turn down too many excellent speakers last time)
  • Who is speaking? (70% international Lotusphere speakers)

UKLUG

  • When is it? (23rd-24th May)
  • Where? (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry)
  • What is planned? (2 days of conference sessions with a fantastic line-up of speakers)
  • What are you looking for in session abstracts?

The future of LUGs

  • Are more user groups required around the world?
  • If someone wants to organise a new one, where do they start?
  • How do you get the word out?
  • Does the move to Social Business change anything?

Other news:

Tips

Darren

1) Book your flights (if flying!!!) soon, fuel surcharges are being added to prices at an alarming rate.
2) IBM stop changing your technote URLs!!!

Warren

1) Register for UKLUG – as an attendee, speaker or sponsor (Abstracts and sponsors close 5th April Final session by the 18th April.
2) If you can’t make it to UKLUG, find your local LUG through LotusUserGroups.org
3) If you don’t have a local LUG – start one!

Theo

1) Register for BLUG: about 50 seats available
2) Go to UKLUG: you won’t regret it
3) Ytria updated their tools to version 10. Especially ScanEZ is a lifesaver. Bought it in 2004 and practically use it daily.

Stuart

1) Google Chrome 10 just released, features new preferences UI, and sync of apps/bookmarks/extensions/password/preferences/themes etc between machines, even between operating systems.  Faster than ever too.  IBM support still an issue, but otherwise, why aren’t you using it??!
2) Also, look out for TWiL goodies at UKLUG…

Episode 41, recorded Thursday 3rd March 2011, discussing the work of analysts, the state of the collaboration marketplace in 2011, IBM’s new Social Business campaign and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

James GovernorJames Governor (blog | twitter | company) is analyst and co-founder of RedMonk
Angela AshendenAngela Ashenden (blog | twitter | company) is Principal Analyst at UK-based research and advisory firm MWD Advisors, where she leads the Collaboration practice.

*** Please note: there is some ‘industrial language’ in this episode.  Please beware if easily offended, or if planning to listen in an open-plan office! ***

Topics

Analysts 

  • What the heck do you lot do?
  • How does one become an analyst?
  • What happens when you criticise companies?

Social/Collaboration in 2011 

  • Can we set the scene?  Who are the major players? Who’s up and coming, who’s fading away?
  • Cloud seems to be the big thing, at least according to Microsoft 😉
  • Isn’t everything cyclical?

Lotusphere 2011 / IBM Social Business 

  • What did you think of IBM’s Social Business rebranding effort at LS11?
  • James, you’ve been vocal about the importance of developers to the brand.  Can you explain why you think this?
  • The social collaboration and mobile market both are very consumer-driven at present – does IBM need to market to consumers?
  • How well does LotusLive now stand as a cloud-based alternative to the on-premise Lotus portfolio?
  • IBM seems to be deprecating the Lotus brand – is this a good move?

Tips

DarrenIf you get a new iShiny device, be sure to have your fingerprints surgically removed. And why should my iShiny make me enter a credit card to download free apps.
JamesFollow @monkchips !!! if you want to cut your coffee consumption treat it like cigarettes. don’t drink coffee in the office. i am down to 2 coffees a day.
AngelaWatch out for a free MWD online event launching 12 April – Email in the Cloud: hype, opportunity and your collaboration strategy
StuartSkype community chats for Connections, Quickr and LotusLive.  Contact me for more info.