62: Notes, Domino and Social Business

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:07:28 — 61.9MB)

Episode 62, discussing Notes/Domino 8.5.3, relevance of the products to the Social Business message, the effect of seniority on social engagement and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Ed BrillEd Brill (blog | twitter) is Director, Product Management, IBM Lotus software.  Ed’s focus is on growing and continuing IBM’s success in messaging and collaboration software, through working with customers, business partners, and IBM sales, marketing, and product development organizations.  Ed’s responsibilities in this role have included the market launches of Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 and 8.5.1, the introduction of Alloy, the release of Lotus Symphony 1.3, and plans/development for LotusLive Notes, an IBM cloud offering for messaging and collaboration. A frequent speaker at IBM and industry events worldwide, Ed is well known for direct contributions to the many Lotus software-focused social media and virtual communities.
Louis RichardsonLouis Richardson (blog | twitter) serves as a worldwide social business evangelist for IBM. As such, he gets to talk to executives and business managers around the world, about how they are using…or thinking of using social software in their organizations.

Topics

Notes/Domino 8.5.3

  • What are the major new features?
  • With the release of the XPages RDBMS extension library we’ve made a huge jump forward. Currently it is on 8.5.3 CD5 users which means Design Partners only
    • When is the public beta of 8.5.3 starting so non-DP’s can get their hands on this tasty goodness?
  • When is it coming?
  • When will it be available as LotusLive Notes?
  • Can you talk at all about Notes/Domino Next, timescales, aims etc?
  • Will this be a key deliverable in terms of the realisation of Project Vulcan?
  • When you’re talking to customers about SocBiz, how much does Notes/Domino come into the conversation?

Social Business

  • The campaign/brand
    • What has the response been from customers to the Social Business message?
    • How about ‘traditional’Notes/Domino customers?
    • We are used to Microsoft being the main competition in the Messaging/Collaboration space – is this still the case around Social Business?
    • Which products are involved?
  • What is the key element for a company to understand if they want to become a social business?
  • Is Blogging still relevant?

OpenNTF

  • Pleased with progress in the opensource support for these technologies?

IBM donates Lotus Symphony code to Apache

  • What does this mean for Symphony going forward?
  • Is Symphony still getting development effort from IBM?

Tips

Darren:
Milebug – THE best mileage tracker for the iPhone (and also Android and Nokia now). For $2.99 a real bargain. There is a lite version too (limits the number of trips you can store, but allows you to see if it fits your needs)
Ed:
Plantronics Savi Office –  I’ve switched over to this as my UC/UT environment in my home office and it’s just a dream along with Sametime 8.5.2
Louis:
When you’re considering how your company is going to implement and leverage social in your business, be sure to (1) keep the focus on the people and (2) make sure it integrates into your business. It’s not about making social your business..it’s about making your business social.
Stuart:
Customise your menus in Connections 3

61: Milwaukee, here we come!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:57 — 63.2MB)

Episode 61, recorded on Thursday 21st July 2011, discussing MWLUG, NotesF1 To Do, the Lotus business in New Zealand and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Richard MoyRichard Moy ( blog | twitter | company) has been working with Notes and Domino since Notes 3. Richard co-founded with Gregg Eldred the MWLUG conferences. He has started or co-founded three different companies after working as a consultant in a large firm including Taishan Works and ReCor. Richard promotes the use of Notes and Domino and other IBM Lotus products in small and medium businesses and calls himself unofficially the “Notes and Domino Evangelist for Small Businesses”. Richard focuses on working with organizations on defining their business needs and processes to deliver solutions that works within their business environment.
Bernie LeungBernie Leung ( blog | twitter | company) is a visionary and an advocate of social media and social collaboration. His company wrote its first social networking software – MyLifeCircle.com in 2003, about 6 months before Facebook got started. While we all know that Lotus is a great platform for intra-company communication, social collaboration has really expanded our need to go outside of our comfort zone. Our business users are demanding social collaboration and social marketing, can we keep up? Here comes LotusLive – a great platform to consider if you are looking at social collaboration beyond the corporate boundaries.  Bernie is also certified in Websphere eCommerce and in Tivoli Security. He was heavily involved with the Lotus Foundations platform as well.
Vaughan RivettVaughan Rivett (blog | twitter | IBM ) has been an active advocate of all things Lotus for about 15 years.  His work has seen him travel internationally to enable people to collaborate effectively.  The majority of his time has been spend running businesses where he has lead and inspired teams in collaboration enablement.  In recent times, he was the GM of Certus Solutions’Enterprise Collaboration Services division where he headed a team of experienced Lotus Domino/Notes developers.  Recently, joining IBM, Vaughan applies his passion and energy to a competitive market.
 Magnus TothMagnus Toth (company) Magnus started his career in 1995 in a Swedish IT consulting company where he worked as a Lotus Notes consultant. Over the years, he have had time for basically everything regarding Lotus Notes. Development, architecture, infrastructure and advanced system configurations have all been part of his daily work over the years.  In 2004 Magnus was one of the founders of the IT company Cikado. Cikado is a Swedish company which provides advanced consultant services and develops products for IBM/Lotus Notes and Domino. These days he mostly works as a project manager in large Notes / Domino installations and he is also Product Manager for Cikado’s app NotesF1 To Do which provides syncing capabilities of Notes To Do’s for iOS devices (an Android version is under development).

Topics

MWLUG: 

  • What is MWLUG, and how did it come about?
  • How much does it cost to attend?
  • Where? It moves around, right?
  • How do we register? What’s the website?
  • Who is delivering keynote? (It’s a secret!)
  • What is the focus of MWLUG? Which products?
  • What is the MWLUG Community Outreach Program?
  • Reminder deadline for MWLUG XPrize Design Competition – August 8th
  • When is it? 24-25 August, 2011
  • Why come to MWLUG?
  • What makes MWLUG conference different than other LUG conferences?
  • AUSLUG and IAMLug both coming soon too

NotesF1 To do: 

  • First app to sync To-dos with iOS
  • How much? $3 for full version for iPhone/iPod, $4 for iPad
  • How does it work?
  • Any plans for Journal/Notebook? – hint, I really, really want this DD 🙂
  • Any plans for Android version? Yep!
  • Available from Magnus’ site.
  • What other apps do Cikado have?
  • Will you be supporting iOS Enterprise licensing?
  • It will be easier to right a Journal as he will have a to do list

State of IBM market in New Zealand

  • How is it?
  • What is it like being at IBM after years at a partner?
  • What made you join up?
  • What are your goals for 2011?

Other News: 

Tips

Darren:
Marketing to geeks? Follow Toshiba’s lead and use very amusing Zombie “movielets”. As seen on US TV. It is a Youtube link.
Richard:
Whether you are using XPages or not, learn Dojo
Vaughan:
Looking to upgrade your email system, don’t!  Upgrade to Collaboration 2.0 instead.
Magnus:
Download the trial version of NotesF1 To Do
Bernie:      
You can invite external users to LotusLive community and activities for free. They don’t need a paid account to collaborate with you.
Stuart:
JotNotPro for iOS and for Android

60: Google Nonplussed?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:16 — 59.9MB)

Episode 60, recorded on Thursday 14th July 2011, discussing Social Business, the shift to the Cloud, Google Plus and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Alan LepofskyAlan Lepofsky (blog | twitter | company) is Director of Marketing at Socialtext, an awesome Silicon Valley startup in the collaboration and social networking software industry. He formerly worked at IBM where he focused on several aspects of Lotus Software, ranging from running customer councils and conferences, to product pricing and licensing, to working with business partners, and even on technical architecture.  Alan’s final position at IBM was working for the head of software strategy, helping think about the future directions that Lotus software could go in.
Carlos CasasCarlos Casas (pronounced CAH-SUS) (blog | twitter | company) is the CEO of RockTeam & Lotus Education Online (LEOnline.net), an award-winning IBM Training Center and Business Partner focused in IBM Collaboration Software and Social technologies.  LEO (IBM ECIS Award Winner)  is a division of RockTeam focused on Instructor-led Online Training for IBM Software as well as providing learning tools for IBM Software. LEO is a world-wide strategic partner for IBM Lotus Education. Personally have been working with IBM collaborative software for 14 years rooted in architecture and development.
Travis RetzlaffTravis Retzlaff (pronounced Retz-loff) (blog | twitter | company) is a Lead Delivery Consultant for Logicalis  – an international IT solutions and managed services provider. Personally have been using IBM collaborative software for over 11 years rooted in architecture and development for a host of products in Lotus and WebSphere brand software (some no longer with us). My day to day activities have me discussing business and technical problems and solutions with customers of all sizes and vertical markets, specifically around collaboration, messaging, and web infrastructure. I’ve been active in user groups for both Lotus and WebSphere software including being a repeat presenter and Group Leader.

Topics

Social Business/Social Collaboration/Enterprise 2.0, where are we at?

  • For those coming from an email/IM-centric collaboration background, Social Business may still be a new vision, not well understood, or even something that is against the culture of the organisation
  • How well are customers understanding Social Business principles?
  • What are the challenges to purchasing, implementation and deployment?

On-premise versus cloud/SaaS

  • We are seeing a focus on the cloud by most major vendors, whether full multi-tenant SaaS, private cloud, hosted appliance, PaaS or hybrid – lots of different business/technical models…
  • How do we see this panning out?  Is there still a place for on-premise(s) IT (particularly collaboration)?

Google +

Tips

Darren:
Daniel Nashed’s excellent Domino on Linux start up script. Make Domino on Linux start up like a “service”does on Window. Been using it for years, but did another Linux Domino job last week where we used this. Simply fill in the form and you’ll have the scripts emailed to you in minutes. Works for AIX servers too.
Alan:
Your opinion is just that…
Carlos:
2 tips: Check out grooveshark.com (free online music streaming that you can build customized playlists and about.me ←great online business card site
Travis:
Everyone is enamored with Google+ right now, don’t discount near future networks like Diaspora. In fact I encourage people to see what it may have to offer when available if for nothing else than to promote what promises to be more user friendly policies around ownership of content and interoperability with other third party networks. We shouldn’t all have to use the same interface/network to be able to socialize and collaborate with others. Imagine if you needed Outlook/Exchange to communicate with other entities using Outlook/Exchange, dreadful!
Stuart:
Google Maps now has traffic information for Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.  Either on the web or on mobile devices.

59: ‘Darren, I completely agree with you’

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:17 — 60.8MB)

Episode 59, recorded on Thursday 7th July 2011, discussing IBM Champions, searching Notes from Windows Search, Google+, Ed’s response to the re-branding brouhaha and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

John HeadJohn Head (blog | twitter | company) is Director of Enterprise Collaboration at PSC Group, LLC
Jonathan Griep (blog | twitter| company) is President of JPG Consulting, Inc.

Topics

IBM Champions

  • Will it change the way we interact with the community or IBM at all?

Notes Connectors

  • What are Notes Connectors?
  • EZ Notes Search
  • Add-in which leverages Windows Search
  • Works on Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) and Windows XP
  • Automatically discovers your mail and archives
  • Windows Search filters (to: from: subject:)
  • Who is buying them? Individuals or corporates?
  • Any plans for a Mac/Spotlight addin?

IBM loses Uni of Nebraska to Microsoft

  • John’s post
  • Nebraskan Symphony project and Lotusphere Idol
  • Seems that Unis are generally moving away from Notes&Domino for email?

The rebrand rumbles on…

  • Ed answers via a blog post – ‘Whatever we call it’.  Over 80 (mostly constructive) comments

Google Plus

Tips

Darren:
LUGs, LUGs and more LUGs. Birmingham, AL in July, Nashville, TN in August and Atlanta, GA in August. There’s one near you no matter where you are in the S.E USA, excepting FL, but that is really more like NYC anyway 😉 See the STS Events page for further details.
John:
Stardock Tiles – Windows Task Manager Extreme & AnyDVDHD and IamLUG & MWLUG
Jonathan:
EZ Notes Search 30 Day Free Trial
Stuart:
New LotusLive meetings app for iPad

58: Is that a personal size issue?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:17 — 53.5MB)

Episode 58, recorded on Thursday 30th June 2011, discussing the new release of Portlet Factory, MWLUG, the XPrize Design Contest and *that* community call.

Hosts

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

Guests

Mike McGarelMike McGarel (blog | twitter | company) is a Collaboration Solutions Developer for Czarnowski, a North American exhibit services company. He is responsible on both intranet and extranet applications. Mike is the developer for the Blogger Open and SkiLUG sites. He is Vice President of GRANITE, the Chicago-based Lotus user group.

Topics

Websphere Portlet Factory re-branded as Web Experience Factory

MWLUG (Midwest Lotus User Group Conference)

  • Dates: August 24-26, 2011
  • Place: Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield Hotel, Brookfield, Wisconsin (near Milwaukee)
  • Plan to have an XPages track like there was last year

XPrize Design Competition

  • Contestants build an XPages application based on one of the old Nifty Fifty templates from the R3/R4 days
  • Contest is Richard Moy’s idea — I added the templates idea
  • Limited to subset of nine templates to make the judges job easier
  • We have six judges total, from both inside and outside the Lotus community
  • We encourage particpants to submit their entry to OpenNTF.org when the contest is over
  • You can use custom controls from this XPrize contest for the current OpenNTF contest

The community call

  • How did the call meet the expectations of the attendees?
  • Changes in title of the webcast, was this wise? Created expectations that wouldn’t be met?
  • How do we take this new Social Business message to customers and executives in a way that makes sense of the Notes/Domino/Lotus heritage?


Tips:
Darren:
GPS Location by Acceleroto for the iPhone. This thing is scarily accurate.
Mike:
Android phone app called Juice Defender which saves battery life. There are free and pay versions. I’m using the free version and it seems to be helping.
Stuart:
Alfred – great replacement for Quicksilver as task launcher on Mac. Free on Mac App Store, Lion ready.  Also, get free retakes on IBM certification exams