53: Live from UKLUG

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:15 — 43.4MB)

Episode 53, recorded Monday 23rd May 2011, live in Manchester at UKLUG 2011…

Hosts

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

Guests

Mary Beth RavenMary Beth Raven (blog | twitter) is IBM Senior Technical Staff Member in the Lotus User Experience Design team
Mat NewmanMat Newman (blog | twitter | company) is the Director of Educaiton for ISW (an IBM Premier business partner in Australia, and this years winner of the IBM South-East Asis Business Partner of the Year award), Mat is a Lotusphere speaker of repute and renown and owner of the coolest yellow suit around!
Julian RobichauxJulian Robichaux (blog | twitter | company) is Programmer/developer at SNAPPS. iPhone, Java, IBM, Lotus Notes, etc. Accidentally funny at times.
Bill BuchanBill Buchan (blog | twitter | company) is a technology consultant, focused on enterprise collaborative applications. I’m based in North-east Scotland but work all over Europe, and sometimes I present at technology conferences using a mixture of deep-technology and humour to keep the audience awake.

Topics

We’re live at UKLUG 2011, how’s the conference
Talk about the keynote – get social, little notes and domino
A plug for Auslug
What will Lotus be called?
Should IBM give away solutions for free?
Are we in danger of becoming disliked as Microsoft is?
Is Microsoft still the most significant vendor for integration and competition?
Mobile first application development strategy?
Does data all have to held remotely with the cloud?
Does the need for partners go away with the cloud?

Tips

No tips this week, sorry!

52: Squishy Peas

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:17:43 — 71.3MB)

Episode 52, recorded Thursday 19th May 2011, discussing a year of this show, Sametime 8.5.2, UKLUG, the Exceptional Web Experience conference, new XPages Application Server license and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Lisa DukeLisa Duke (twitter | company) is Business Development Manager for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc. (also known as STS), an IBM Lotus business partner specializing in collaboration, mobility, and virtualization.  STS also resells IBM System X hardware and related storage.

Topics

This Week in Lotus is a year old:

  • Have we enjoyed it?
  • What have been the main topics:
    • May 2010: LUGs and the launch of the iPad
    • June: decline of RIM, Radicati – Notes/Domino to have 266m seats by 2015, Notes App Store
    • July: IBM Named Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Platforms Software, Lotus Protector, Project Northstar
    • August: Death of Google Wave, Directory Independence, Notes/Domino 8.5.2
    • September: Quickr 8.5, NLLUG, IBM Customer Experience Suite, a world without email, XPages Extension Library
    • October: ExtST, new LotusLive, Symphony 3, virtual conferences, Cognos integration
    • November: XPages source control, Connections 3, ILUG, BES Express, Transformer, XPages performance
    • December: Social (inside firewall and Twitter), leadup to Lotusphere, Higher Education
    • January: Live show, lots of Lotusphere! Sandy Carter
    • February: Lotus rebranding, Social Business, Mastering XPages, DDE on the Mac, Design process
    • March: Analysts and developers, User Groups (Australia), Business Inteligence and Social software, RAD
    • April: WCM renaming, RAD again, IBM Champions, Connections 3.0.1, iWildfire
    • May: ISVs, Management of Connections, LotusLive new release
  • Highlights of the year:
    • Episode 7 – Darren admits to enjoying being Rick Rolled (I think I said I liked Rick Astley)…..
    • Episode 6 – Michael Sampson & User Adoption – this is only going to be more important as social software comes into business – I would love to see IT take a lead in bringing in technology and be seen as thought leaders, not as “server janitors”
    • Live show at Lotusphere
  • Guest Stats
  • What did you learn from a year of doing the podcast?
    • Lisa – found out about Dogear Nation & have been keeping up on robot news
    • Stuart – how many great people there are in this community
    • Stuart – how tough it is to keep audio quality high
    • Stuart – how many IBMers are willing to reach out
  • What surprised you most?
    • Stuart & Darren still in shock they got the location of the Lotusphere Party
  • What were some of your favourite moments?
  • Running jokes/themes
    • Stuart asked Darren to be his co-host because he can pronounce Duke? Stuart getting all non-UK surnames wrong
    • Darren panicking about tips
    • RIM on the slide
  • What do you want to change/do differently in Year 2?
    • More people volunteering to be on
    • More customers, analysts and journalists
  • If you could ask listeners for one favour, what would it be?
    • More feedback!!
  • Plan for This Week in Lotus at UKLUGOther News:
  • Stuart & Lisa presenting end of day Monday at UKLUG on social business – if there are no chairs left in Mary Beth and Mat’s session come see us
  • Sametime 8.5.2 released, loses IBM moniker, solves NAT traversal issues
    • New Sametime Unified Telephony Lite
  • Exceptional Web Experience conference in Orlando
    • Shocked at how small compared to Lotusphere
    • No major announcements
    • Previews of Portal 8
  • Ed just announced new XPages Application Server license at DNUG, coming later in the year…

Tips

Lisa: If there are managers & line of business people in your office who don’t “get”social, let them know about the Get Social Do Business podcast I host – fairly non-technical discussion of how people are using social tools to transform business
Darren: Matrox M9120 Plus LP graphics card. You can never have enough monitors, this puppy drives 4!
Stuart: Audio Hijack Pro for the Mac $32, free trial available. ‘Record any audio – three simple words to explain Audio Hijack Pro. Record from applications like iTunes, Skype or DVD Player. Record from microphones, Radiosharks and other hardware. If you hear it, you can record it.’Used on This Week in Lotus!

51: You don’t go far in a one legged race

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:39 — 51.1MB)

Episode 51, recorded Thursday 12th May 2011, discussing the LotusLive Spring 2011 release, Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

David DurazzanoDavid Durazzano is IBM Senior Product Manager for LotusLive Services.  David joined Lotus in 1994 as a technical support analyst, he then went on to co-founded a Lotus Business Partner consulting company and later started an on-line software/services company.  David rejoined IBM in 1999 where he has held several technical leadership roles on the Lotus Notes/Domino, Workplace & Greenhouse teams before shifting his focus in 2007 to contribute to the IBM on-line collaborative SaaS business LotusLive.

Topics

New release of LotusLive 

  • What’s in the new release?
  • Seems that many of the features of IBM Connections are being brought into Engage – is the eventual goal to have full feature parity? Blogs/Wikis etc?
  • New levels of privacy give Extranet-type functionality
  • Which LotusLive features are affected?
    • Communities – now have sub communities, files and folders, add guest users to community, improved forums
    • Admin – announcements, hiding user profiles,
    • Files – folders
    • Meetings – now match standalone meeting experience
    • Sametime – up to 8.5
  • Has LL Connections been upgraded in the same way? Whats the difference between Engage and Connections?
  • LL Meetings?
  • When is LL Symphony Meetings going to be included?

Microsoft buys Skype 

  • $8.5bn – is this a fair price?
  • What’s the plan?
  • Is it a consumer or a corporate play?
  • How does the Skype acquisition fit in with Phone 7 and Nokia?
  • Is the merger of consumer and corporate IT inevitable?

Tips

DarrenCompletely off topic – In 17 days I’ve lost 10 lbs thanks to “The 17 Day Diet”. It works. No doubt it’ll be added on with all the fish ‘n chips at UKLUG
DaveRedLaser – iOS and Android app for scanning barcodes and comparing prices
StuartAbout.me – free site to create personal profiles, linking to other social sites.  E.g about.me/stuartmcintyre

50: Managing IBM collaboration tools. ‘Does that mean Microsoft has it right all along?’

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:20:33 — 73.9MB)

Episode 50, recorded Thursday 5th May 2011, discussing backup/recovery/management of IBM Collaboration Solutions technologies, why IBM Connections is possibly a ‘non-specific item restorable product’ and more…

(Stuart here, I think this is a fascinating discussion – one of the best we’ve had on This Week in Lotus.  If you know someone in the Lotus product teams at IBM that should hear the points made in this episode, please please pass them the details.  If you are a customer that wants issues such as these resolved, again please tell your IBM contacts.  Thank you!)

Hosts

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

Guests

Sean BurgessSean Burgess (blog | twitter | company) is a Senior Certified Advanced Lotus Notes Developer skilled in development of applications including project tracking, workflow, change management, and information publishing in Notes and to the Intranet/Internet via Domino. Experienced with large scale administration and deployment of Notes including initial server setup/installation and remote access. Interfaces professionally with all levels of the organization from management, for project/capabilities presentations, to staff, for training and project management, to end users, for understanding needs and gathering requirements.
Chris WhisonantChris Whisonant (blog | twitter | company) is a Lotus Consultant with GROUP Business Software (GBS). Chris supports the broad suite of Lotus Software running on virtually every supported operating system. Chris has spoken at the Lotusphere and COMMON conferences and is the lead administrator of the BleedYellow services.
Sharon BellamySharon Bellamy (blog | twitter | company) is Lead IBM solutions specialist at City University London.Sharon supports all of the IBM / Lotus / Tivoli stack at City and will soon be taking on the Domino implementation at the Cass Business School.
Dave HayDave Hay ( blog | twitter | company ) is an Infrastructure Architect, specializing in Portal and Collaboration solutions, in the IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL) team, working mainly in the UK and Ireland. Dave has recently been involved with the delivery of an enterprise-wide collaboration solution for a large UK customer, based upon IBM Connections 3 and WebSphere Portal 7.

Topics

Backup and Recovery / Management of Lotus technology: 

  • Sean raised issue with recovering Connections community after deletion, replicated issue that Sharon had at City. Prompted thoughts and discussions about best practice for management of both traditional Domino/Notes and Websphere-based infrastructure

So let’s kick off with Domino. All of us on the call have been working with Domino for years 

  • What have we learnt about backup/recovery – how is it done best?
  • Foundations did it best. Bit level backups of safe replicas of the databases. No downtime and easy recovery.
  • What tools have we used?
  • How do you handle recovery of individual mailboxes/blogs/teamrooms/apps?
  • How about document-level recovery?

Now, many Lotus products are now WebSphere based – Sametime8.5, QuickrJ, Connections, Portal etc 

  • How do we go about backing these up, given three layer model?
  • What about restores? (how do we handle mixture of DB and file store?)
  • How do we handle document-level restores?
  • Should we be looking to IBM/Tivoli to resolve this or third parties?
  • How about soft-delete? Is that the way forward?

Other topics:

  • New short URLs for Lotus sites
  • Office 2010 vs the world
    • Symphony finishes 3rd
  • Not WES (aka BlackBerry World aka BBW) this week
  • (From Chris: Here is a link to the GROUP Learn event I talked about that has slides showing one how to enable a scheduled backup for DB2 databases)

Tips

DarrenTalking of backups, to backup PC’s or laptops I use Acronis. Very impressive product.
SeanJQuery – use it!
ChrisHAProxy – very easy to configure load balancer! Can do http but also other ports – e.g. running one HAProxy server to balance QuickrD, Sametime Chat, LDAP, iNotes. Only limitation is no https. Have a brief story about trying to setup Websphere Edge Components vs. HAProxy.
SharonSkype chats – there are a number of them set up now – Connections (and some portal), Quickr and a sametime one – brilliant for asking questions, confirming your sanity and sharing your knowledge.
DaveThe HTTPS Everywhere plugin for Firefox, as mentioned on the Guardian TechWeekly podcast a few weeks back, helps secure connectivity to websites such Twitter, Facebook, Google etc. “forcing”HTTPS rather than HTTP.
StuartUse the forums – a great way to self-help and find answers to your issues, e.g. with backup.  Even better, replicate them in your Notes client.  Instructions here.  Use them or lose them!

49: It’s all about the stickiness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:44 — 73.1MB)

Episode 49, recorded Thursday 28th April 2011, discussing why ISVs enter the Lotus collaboration space, what IBM could do better to support ISVs, the App Store, robot lawnmowers and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Eileen FitzgeraldEileen Fitzgerald (blog | twitter | company) is  VP Customer Service and Product Management at GSX. GSX products assist you to monitor and manage the various tools in your collaboration Portfolio. Years in Collaboration Management administration and Management , Project Management and ITIL Certified. ILUG / UK Lug Organiser and tends to do a bit of hill walking in her spare time.
John de GiorgioJohn de Giorgio is CEO of Integra for Notes, solutions to assist transfer of Lotus Notes based data to Excel, Word and Symphony.  John has a 27 year background in the IT field and 14 years in the Lotus Notes field, which although a small part of the Shireburn Software business, is close to his heart.  John’s strength is assessing a business process and seeing where technology can be used to add value to the process.  His off-the-keyboard activities focus on sailing.

Topics

First up, to both guests:

  • What do each of your company’s solutions do?
  • What made you wish to develop a solution for the Lotus portfolio?
  • How big a part of your business is the Lotus-focused products?
  • Is this growing or shrinking?
  • Is there a profile for your ‘typical’customers?

State of the ISV market for IBM Collaboration and Social Business solutions

  • Does IBM’s move to Social Business make a significant difference to your businesses
  • Stuart’s blog post post-Lotusphere
  • Does IBM make it easy to partner and develop? How could they make it easier?
  • How does the Lotus re-brand affect things?
  • Would an ‘AppStore’or sophisticated provisioning catalog make a difference?

RIM buy Tungle.me

  • Joins Gist in the RIM stable
  • What are they planning?

General news:

Tips

Darrenpool.ntp.org is a free source for pooled NTP time servers worldwide
EileenWithings scale that integrates with iPhone and RunKeeper. (Amazon US | Amazon UK)
JohnHusqvarna Robot Lawnmower Controllable Via iPhone How cool is this!!!
StuartOrigami Workstation case for iPad/bluetooth keyboard – fantastic case for Apple bluetooth keyboard, that doubles as stand for iPad.  Going to start to travel with just iPad and keyboard now… $29.99.