57: Living the dream (IBM Champions)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:41 — 57.5MB)

Episode 57, recorded on Thursday 23rd June 2011, discussing the new IBM Collaboration Champions, the Enterprise 2.0 conference, IamLUG keynote speaker announcement and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Joyce DavisJoyce Davis (personal twitter | company twitter | company blog) leads the IBM Collaboration Solutions community. Her goal is to bring together experts and business leaders from inside and outside of IBM to share knowledge, build community, and improve the information that helps people use Lotus products.
Luis BenitezLuis Benitez (blog | twitter ) is one of the Social Software Product Managers at IBM.  He’s been with IBM for 9 years and loves to promote the concept of accelerating innovation in the workplace by socializing.

Topics

IBM Champions for IBM Collaboration Solutions 

  • What are IBM Champions? Where did the program come from? Why 50?
  • What was the nomination/judging process? Who was involved?
  • What was the judging criteria?
  • Announced at The View Admin 2011 / PacLug by Ed Brill
  • What are the benefits to IBM and the champions of the program? How will IBM be working with the Champions?
  • How long will the champion status last?
  • Great effort Joyce, we thank you!

PACLUG 

  • Demos were excellent. Well done Chris Crummey.  Replay is available.
  • A good example of a streaming keynote. Very well done
  • Lots of mobile goodness

Enterprise 2.0 Conference 

  • What were the highlights?
  • How were Mike Rhodin, Alistair Rennie and Sandy Carter’s sessions received?
  • Seems that ‘Social Business’is the accepted term, rather than Enterprise 2.0. Agree?
  • IDC say IBM is leading E2.0 vendor, also Connections 3.0.1 launched, and Actiance plugin

IAMLUG agenda announced 

  • August 1-2, 2011
  • Keynote by Brian Cheng

IBM Connections Files versus MS Sharepoint comparison 

RIM to kill BES Express for Domino?

Tips

Darren:
In iTunes you can highlight the songs/podcasts/etc and copy and paste into a spreadsheet (like Notes copy as table).Very handy when calculating stats for the podcast.
Joyce:
New IBM Champions Twitter List
Luis:
Evernote Peek ‘Evernote Peek is the first app designed for the iPad 2 Smart Cover! Studying with an iPad has never been more fun’
Stuart:
Notes 8.5.x now working again on Lion – small beta update yesterday
Social Connections – event taking place on 4th July. Excellent agenda and speakers (from IBM labs, Headshift, Cardiff University etc). Small number of places left, please register!

56: As easy as ABC

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:41 — 57.5MB)

Episode 56, recorded on Thursday 16th June 2011, discussing IBM’s 100 year anniversary, the Domino and Traveler betas, The Salvation Army’s application for the Christchurch earthquake and more…

(As easy as ABC… Anniversaries, Betas and Christchurch…)

Hosts

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

Guests

Mark BennettMark Bennett (blog | twitter | company) is IT Director at The Salvation Army in the New Zealand, Fiji, and Tonga territory.
Sam SawatzkySam Sawatzky  (twitter | company) is the Computer Services Manager & Part-time Domino Admin for Mennonite Central Committee Canada – an international NGO doing relief and development work.
Ben ChapmanBen Chapman (twitter | company) is a Technical Evangelist for Lotus(can we still say that? ;))/IBM Collaboration Solutions in the United States.

Topics

IBM hits 100 

  • 100 years since four companies merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation
  • In the the Fortune 500 first list (in the 60’s) only 70’something survived into the 90’s
  • What does IBM mean to you?
  • What will be the big moves of the next 100 years?
  • How Stuff Works podcast

Lotus Foundations 

  • Is it staging a comeback?
  • Parts reinstated into Passport Advantage
  • Have seen no announcements or feedback on why this might be – lack of communication when Foundations was withdrawn, again now it has been reinstated…

Is Domino part of the Social Business agenda?

Notes/Domino 8.5.3 coming soon, now free of NDA 

  • Lots of goodies…
  • Symbian^3 support and encryption
  • over 50% of the Traveler enhancements listed are Android specific (from Ed’s blog)
  • GA due in Q3

Traveler 8.5.2.3 released 

  • Partial wipe of iPhone – makes use of P.O.E. easier while abstracting corporately-liable info.
  • Previous was to make iBrick -> plug in to iTunes to restore all data except that configured by policy
  • Heard via another podcast there is a drive up market for iPhones, taxi drivers can get up to $100 per device IF they’re popped the battery … is this a losing battle?
  • Lotus Traveler Database De-fragmentation for Improved Performance
  • System performance impacted as db sizes grew.  Run 1x / month
  • How do you support Android devices? HTC sense UI is so different to MotoBlur, which is different to put Android (Nexus One)
  • Get agreement from executive about support boundaries BEFORE you turn it on
  • Sort out your policies BEFORE it is released

Apple event (WWDC) – Lion and iOS previewed 

  • Of course Stuart is running both 😉
  • iOS 5 rocks, very few apps don’t work (Gowalla being one). Traveler seems to work in most cases (calendar invite accepts being an exception!).  Loving the new Notifications system – a massive improvement!
  • Lion is sweet but still quite unstable, not sure about Launchpad, seems to be aimed at new switchers.  Do not upgrade if you want to run Notes 8.5.x!  Worked initially, now won’t start and won’t reinstall.
  • As iCloud comes on-stream a lot of the new features will make more sense.
  • iCloud and multiple Apple IDs

Social Connections 

  • Registration now open
  • Sponsors and Speakers invited

Tips

Darren:
SpiceWorks is free (not open source, just free) with help desk, network monitoring (although I still prefer Nagios and NagiosQL for that), PC Inventory (think Belarc) and IT reporting all in one. Pretty slick and I have a few customers using using it. We’re starting to use for PC, switch and server inventory too.
Mark:
Transform your Notes client into mission control with some sidebar widgets.  They transform the client for your users too. Snippets, File Explorer, WildFire, Quickr, Connections, ANY Google Gadget, create your own from your Lotus Apps.
Sam:
We’ve upgraded to Windows 7, and on most machines the Right-click -> Send to -> Mail recipient shell menu option has not worked. I found someone in the forums with the same problem, who opened a pmr. There is a file that is needed in the system folder for this to work with Lotus Notes. I deployed it to our workstations, and now everyone is very happy.
Ben:
iWildfire by ISW – surface Connections on your iShiny – built in configurations for DeveloperWorks, Greenhouse, can add other Connections deployments.  Ad driven, but pro version in the works
Stuart:
Don’t upgrade to OS X Lion beta just yet! Be social, use your LinkedIn recommendations… trying to write at least 2-3 a week…

55: You can’t say ‘people are going to shoplift anyway, let’s get rid of the tills’

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:45 — 56.6MB)

Episode 55, recorded on Thursday 9th June 2011, discussing the new IBM Sametime 8.5.2, Domino Express licensing, Quickr connectors and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Gab DavisGabriella Davis (blog | twitter | email | company) is Technical Director of The Turtle Partnership, an IBM Lotus Advanced Busines Partner. Originally a ccMail Administrator, Gabriella has been working with Lotus Collaboration software since 1993 and today works extensively with the WAS-based Lotus products including Connections. Sametime and Quickr. In addition, she and her company act as primary Domino Administrator for customers worldwide covering more than 400 servers, 30,000 users, and 60 domains.  When she can, she lives in London in a house stocked with 5000+ books, 14 ip addresses and 1 neglected television.
Adam BrownAdam Brown (blog | twitter | company ) is a Director at ISW, a focused IBM Premier Partner in Australia that operates across the full IBM Software Portfolio including Lotus, WebSphere, Rational, Tivoli, IM, and Business Analytics (Cognos). Adam is the Technical Director for the company and is responsible for helping our clients understand where IBM solutions can help them meet their business objectives. Specifically Adam is personally focused around Connections/Portal/Forms/Notes/Domino/TDI/TIM/TAM/Cognos.

Topics

Sametime 8.5.2

  • Shipped last week, a whole week early
  • What’s new?
    • Audio and video through the firewall
    • Audio and video in a browser too
    • Mute your mic in a meeting! (switches camera to the person speaking)
    • Control how much bandwidth is taken up by audio and video
  • How is the upgrade from 8.5.0 or 8.5.1?
    • Can upgrade from 8.5.1 but Gab’s advice would be to build a new environment
    • In 8.5.1 you needed a deployment manager for each server, now have just one for all servers.
  • What issues does it solve?
    • NAT traversal
    • Multiple deployment managers
  • What’s the experience been like so far?
    • Gab has done 4.5 upgrades so far, have worked really well
  • How many boxes are needed now?
    • Can get all servers on one 4way-4GB box now (for pilot purposes)
  • Has Sametime Advanced been updated?
    • Yes, same four features as previously
    • Can connect a Sametime persistant chatroom to a Connections community
    • Now runs on WAS 7
    • Expecting Advanced to be more popular now
  • How about Sametime Gateway?
    • Now runs on WAS 7 and connects to the System Console
    • Dropped the Lotus name, now IBM Sametime

The state of ‘Lotus’ in Australia

  • Some high profile customers migrating from IBM in Aus lately.  Is there still plenty of demand for Lotus development in the geography?

Ed says there’s been issues with the change to the Express licensing

  • Is the PVU/CAL model still relevant?
  • Is it fair that partners and customers try to ‘exploit’the licensing to minimise costs?
  • Could IBM make it easier to transition from one license model to another?

iWildfire has launched

Quickr Connectors for Windows x64 and Office 2010 support!

Announcing ‘Social Connections’

  • The first IBM Connections user group
  • Based in the UK initially, but would love to do events in Europe and even further afield, perhaps tacked on to national LUGs
  • Thanks to The Salvation Army for providing the location and to all those that have helped so far.

Tips

Darren:
Completely off topic (and non-controversial) an excellent non-technical book, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier by Edward L. Glaeser. Saw him interviewed on the Daily Show a while back. Has some interesting plays on why cities are “greener”
Adam:
Xmarks. If you work across multiple computers/devices/vm’s etc then Xmarks is awesome way of synching your browser bookmarks. Very neat.
Stuart:
Pixelmator – Photoshop lite for the Mac. Great app, layers work well, much more intuitive than PhotoShop, and much much cheaper! 17.99GBP in the App Store.

54: A face is the cheapest form of marketing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:18:38 — 72.1MB)

Episode 54, recorded on Friday 3rd June 2011, discussing UKLUG, the state of mobile technology, GSX 10, Sametime 8.5.2 and IBMers leaving for the competition..

Hosts

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

Guests

Paul MooneyPaul Mooney (blog | twitter | company) is Senior Technical Architect from Bluewave Technology with 15 years experience supporting Lotus messaging products.

Topics

UKLUG 2011 

  • UKLUG? How did it compare to previous UK/ILUGs?
  • How does it compare to other LUGs, e.g. in the US?
  • MOSI is an amazing place
  • Mobile

Paul had some rather interesting observations in in his Bluewave/Teamstudio session in NY 

  • I will do an overview of the day/workshop and point out the issues I found with device setup
  • First month with an Android
  • Windows Phone 7 demand?
  • Windows 8 demo released

GSX 10 update 

  • Paul has been looking at GSX 10.
  • Now in flex goodness. Yep – can go through what I saw
  • Does Quickr, Traveler and BES too

Sametime 8.5.2 released 

  • Will the real Sametime 8.5 stand up? This looks to be the one.
  • Gab’s write-up is excellent
  • Does web conferencing still live on-premise?

Are you a Domino hosting company? 

  • Add yourself to the wiki

Talking of wikis… Lotus Wiki feedback survey 

  • Launched by Mary Beth Raven, give your feedback on how the Wikis work and how they can be improved.

June is Learn XPages Month 

LSOnline is being retired, but content being moved to permanent location 

Darren J Adams has left IBM 

  • The most recent loss to Microsoft
  • Can one person make a difference?
  • Does Social Business mean these individuals are more important?

Tips

Darren:
Superb travel charger kit if you are in the US La Crosse Charge4All. I only need to travel with one device charger now. This one. Does iShiny, mUSB, miniUSB and others out of the box. With car and wall charger and can charge up to 4 devices at once.
Paul:
If you use Lotus Traveler, you may have a requirement to display names in lookup/typeahead mode.  By default that works after you type in 4 characters.  You can alter this though – Go to NTSCONFIG.xml.  There is a parameter called NAME_LOOKUP_MIN_LENGTH. You can alter the required number of characters.
Stuart:
Matt White’s user group template – will be on OpenNTF soon. Fabulous value, works so well, covers most elements of organising a LUG – info sharing, registration, abstract submission, sponsorship and more.  Written in XPages, so also a great way to learn XPages best practice from one of the gurus.  Using it to organise a Connections user group, to be announced very very soon.  Look out for details in the next couple of weeks.