67: Snags, beer and topless karaoke – AusLUG comes to town!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:25 — 40.8MB)

Episode 67, recorded live from Sydney, Australia and over Skype from the UK and Atlanta, Georgia. We discuss AusLUG, recent IBM announcements and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

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!
Mikkel HeisterbergMikkel Heisterberg (blog | twitter | company) Been working with Notes/Domino, Sametime and Java for the last 17 years and have a strong foundation in the Lotus portfolio. I have written five articles for THE VIEW, spoken at several conferences (Lotusphere, ILUG, DNUG) and I’m a Design Partner for Domino NEXT and Lotus Connections. I am a frequent blogger (http://lekkimworld.com) and I am the author of the open source documentation framework LotusScript.doc and the TwitNotes sidebar plugin for Notes 8.x. I am a partner at IntraVision, a Premier IBM Business Partner from Denmark. IntraVision is the creator of the OnTime suite of products (http://www.ontimesuite.com).
Karen HooperKaren Hooper (company | twitter | linkedin) is an Advanced IBM Certified Instructor in both System Administration and Development. Karen and her husband Steve own and manage Dr Notes Solutions, a Premier IBM Business Partner in Australia. Karen is the author of the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide (available on Amazon). Her passion is to empower people so that they increase their productivity and use the tools available to them.
Craig DaviesCraig Davies (twitter) is an Administrator and Developer of Notes since V4, and now a proud member of the AUSLug organising committee.  Works in IT Management for a global organisation.
Paul CalhounPaul Calhoun (twitter) is Director of Enablement at GBS

Topics

A more informal chat than usual, recorded with a live audience… We cover AusLUG highlights, announcements made in the keynote, ‘social’ activities and much more.  Darren and Stuart then continue the discussion, covering MWLUG highlights and how Notes/Domino news seems to be ramping up toward Lotusphere.

Tips

No tips this week, sorry!

66: Live from MWLUG 2011 (aka if someone were to play you in a movie who would it be?)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:16 — 28.8MB)

Episode 66, recorded live from MWLUG 25th August 2011, with Gregg Eldred, Ray Bilyk, Mike McGarel, Lisa Duke, Darren Duke and the MWLUG lunch audience.

Hosts

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

Guests

Lisa DukeLisa Duke (twitter | company | podcast) 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.
 Gregg EldredGregg Eldred (blog | twitter) Messaging Administrator that dabbles in application development. Enjoys reading and reviewing books
Ray BilykRay Bilyk (blog | twitter) IBM Lotus Notes/Domino Administrator (and closet Developer) from the Detroit, MI area Hakuna Matata! No worries… Just relax and have a homebrew… Cheers!
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

This is a live podcast so the topics started with MWLUG and headed off from there!

65: Quality, Security and Openness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:26:38 — 79.4MB)

Episode 65, recorded on 18th August 2011, discussing quality at IBM, Lotus Protector 2.8, OpenNTF, IBM’s support for older releases and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Flemming ChristiensenFlemming Christensen (blog | twitter | company | linkedin) is the chief quality architect for IBM Collaboration Solutions responsible for the process by which new releases commit to quality improvements and measure attainment.
Bruce ElgortBruce Elgort (blog | twitter | company ) is the Chairman of OpenNTF, Inc., an IBM Champion and also Adviser at Elguji Software, LLC.
Niklas HeidloffNiklas Heidloff (blog | twitter | OpenNTF blog) is is an architect in the IBM Lotus Domino development team and leads IBM’s engagement in OpenNTF including XPages.info.
Sean BrownSean Brown  (blog | twitter | company | linkedin) is the Product Manager for IBM Lotus Protector, and responsible for all collaboration security solutions including Lotus Protector for Mail Security and Mail Encryption

Topics

Quality at IBM 

  • What is quality?
  • How do you manage that (i.e. quality as just discussed)?
  • How do IBM avoid regression bugs, particularly in very large mature products?
  • How do you measure for LotusLive? Is that any different than what you do for on-premises software?
  • How do you strike the balance between quality and timeliness?
  • IBM releases to OpenNTF – mobile toolkit, extension library etc. Are they under same Quality controls?
  • How do you measure whether you’re getting better?

New release of Lotus Protector 

  • What is Lotus Protector and what does Collaboration Security mean?
  • Lotus Protector for Mail Security 2.8
    • Protecting your organization with new Data Loss Prevention for files and emails
    • Support for IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr (for Websphere Portal)
    • New licensing models to better match to customer needs
    • What to expect next
    • When will we get “sidecar”for Domino and QuickrD?
  • Branding still Lotus?

OpenNTF.org 

  • Now a Not for Profit organisation
    • What’s the rationale?
    • What will it mean?
    • Why should organisationss become OpenNTF members?
  • Can we hear about some highlights from past few months of contributions?
    • Contest
      • http://contest.openntf.org and http://xpages.info/contest
      • 46 submissions with >50 controls (one more day to submit)
      • 13 first time contributors
      • Some contest controls (not prioritized): JavaCharts, View Picklist, Involve, Multi Database Search, Recaptcha, ZK Spreadsheet, Calendar plan, Asynch Files Upload, Select Database, Poll, Search and TagCloud, MySQL
      • Next week judging, shortly after this announcement of winners
      • Next: import in Designer, out of the box controls
    • Statistics
      • 17k downloads last month (compared to ~8k when IBM got engaged end of 2008)
      • 300k page visits per month
      • 50 new releases (41 non IBM, 9 IBM) in June
      • > 100 approved OpenNTF contributors plus CCLAs from IBM and Group
    • IBM contributions
      • Latest: REST APIs, JDBC, servlet sample
      • Soon: Mobile, social, surprise
      • New model/taking back code in product
    • XPages.info

IBM Policy of Supporting N-2 

  • Why the change?
  • What does it mean for customers?
  • Won’t this hinder motivation to upgrade?
  • What will the cost be to maintain these additional versions?

Domino Danderers Dander for Dosh 2011

  • Eileen & Steve walking 26 miles for Dadaab refugee camp. Please donate!

Tips

Darren:
CDBurnerXP –  use it to burn ISOs and files to CD, DVD, BRD and HD-DVD(!). Also works on x64 Win7 and 2008. Oh, and completely free and completely free of adware and other nasties.
Flemming:
IBM Electronic Support has its own Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/IBMElectronicSupport and Lotus Support has a new Facebook page: ‘Like’us at http://www.facebook.com/#!/IBMLotusSupport and follow us on Twitter with ID @Lotus_Support 🙂
Bruce: – XPages101 – XPages Video series with over 50+ video tutorials
Niklas:
XPages.info/contest to see descriptions, screenshots and videos of all controls of the contest.
Sean:
Drag/Drop emails to your desktop with Notes.  If you need to send an email in it’s original format (non-forwarded) you can drag the message right from your Notes inbox to your desktop and then attach it to a new email.
Stuart:
Lotusphere 2011 videos posted to YouTube

Thanks for listening!  Buy a Sonos – This Week in Lotus will sound even better!!!

64: The tyranny of distance (AUSLUG & the future of Notes/Domino)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:26:38 — 79.4MB)

Episode 64, recorded on 11th August 2011, discussing AusLUG, the future of Notes & Domino, the new Connections native apps and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Mat NewmanMat Newman (blog | twitter | company) is the Director of Education for ISW (an IBM Premier business partner in Australia, and this years winner of the IBM South-East Asia Business Partner of the Year award), Mat is an IBM Champion for Collaboration Solutions, owner of the coolest yellow suit around and friends with Lisa Duke and Sharon Bellamy!
Karen HooperKaren Hooper (company | twitter | linkedin) is an Advanced IBM Certified Instructor in both System Administration and Development. Karen and her husband Steve own and manage Dr Notes Solutions, a Premier IBM Business Partner in Australia. Karen is the author of the IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide (available on Amazon). Her passion is to empower people so that they increase their productivity and use the tools available to them.
Richard SmithRichard Smith (company | linkedin | twitter) is a skilled and passionate IT professional, able to communicate both at technical and business levels.His awareness of business systems, processes and workflows orginated from a business background, before making the jump to more technical systems development roles on IBM’s Lotus Notes and Domino platform. His grounding allowed him to quickly apply Notes and Domino technology to real business problems. He’s been architecting systems for this platform since 1996 (version 3). Richard’s overriding aim for the solutions he has architected, is to provide a defined return on investment and demonstrable wins for users of his systems.Richard is a PCLP Administrator and is the Technical Director and Owner of Basic Business Systems Ltd a IBM Lotus Business Partner in the UK..

Topics

Auslug

  • Why:
    • Why did you feel AusLug was needed?
  • The process:
    • Is it immense amounts of work?
    • How are you coordinating activities?
  • The details:
    • When? Sydney
    • Where? 29/30th August
    • Are there any other events taking place that week? TackOn by Chris Miller on Sametime on Wednesday, The View Bootcamp Weds-Fri.
    • Who’s speaking? 5 IBM Champions. Paul Calhoun, Chris Miller, Mikkel Heisterberg, Mat Newman, Adam Brown, Ed Brill presenting the keynote.
    • How is attendance looking?
  • How will it compare to other LUGs?
  • The social stuff:
    • What extra-curricular activities will be taking place?
    • Will the yellow suit make another outing?
    • How can people that can’t attend in person take part?
  • What’s your one wish for Auslug?

The future of Notes/Domino 

IBM Connections apps for Android, Blackberry and iOS 

  • All three apps now available on the App Stores
  • Is there still a place for iWildfire?
  • Mat runs down the differences between the IBM versions and iWildFire

Tips

Darren:
Free antivirus from Microsoft…..yes! Microsoft. And it’s pretty good. Good for home PCs and personal laptops. See the Microsoft Security Essentials site for more details.
Mat:
Web 1.0 was I’ll publish something, so you can you consume it, Web 2.0 is “let’s interact with one another”. I know a product that’s over 21 years old which does BOTH!  If your Admin hasn’t given you “social”apps in your Notes/Domino environment, things like Forums, Wikis, Blogs and SameTime you should be demanding them to improve your productivity and interaction with others – they are, after all – FREE!
Karen:
Attend the biggest IBM/Lotus conference in Australasia – AusLUG!  And buy my book – <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849680205/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=twilotus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1849680205″>IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 User Guide</a>!
Richard:
Xpages and modern web interfaces mean that you need to know CSS, as well as everything else! A good CSS editor will help. Getting into this means understanding how pages will look in a different way. I user TopStyle but there are other tools. The trick is to lay out your CSS in a good way, so your processing order is correct as much as possible as styles are applied in order as they are read by the browser as they go through the sheet. The first style is applied and then the second and so on. That means  if a style appears at the top of a style sheet and then is changed lower down in the document, the second item of that style will be the one applied, not the first one. So what you might think should be black could be Red, as its defined again later in your sheet. !Important helps overide this, but its better to structure your CSS sheets in a logical way up front, using a defined structure. So, your most underlying elements, like pages, navigation, content containers and global styles such as default fonts, define at the top of your CSS sheet in clearly labelled areas. More granular stuff, define later in the sheet, but labelled according to the job the code is going to do, eg article styles,  call to action buttons, quote boxes or page specific items.
Stuart:
My word, these tips are getting tough!  Handbrake DVD ripping made easy. Awesome app, started on Mac, now on Windows & Linux too.  Oh, and Plex for viewing said rips, including new Plex iOS app.

63: Avoiding finagling but causing a kerfuffle

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:07 — 62.5MB)

Episode 63, discussing Domino on IBM i, new Notes connectors for Mac, native Connections apps for mobile devices, IBM Connections winning at Bayer and numerous Lotus User Groups…

Hosts

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

Guests

Steve PitcherSteve Pitcher (blog | twitter) is Enterprise Systems Manager for Scotsburn Dairy Group, a 200-user SMB in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Steve has been a Domino admin/developer since 2003 and a journalist for MC Press Online since 2009. Scotsburn went from ISP hosted email with no collaboration software to internally hosted Lotus Domino based mail, custom applications, Quickr and Sametime in the last year…all on one IBM i partition.
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.  IBM Champion and friend of Mat Newman.
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. IBM Champion and friend of Mat Newman.

Topics

Advocating Domino products on IBM i 

  • What Lotus products run on that platform?
  • What are the advantages/disadvantages?
  • Is iSeries still an expensive platform to run?
  • Are the skills out there to manage/host/upgrade?
  • Most Sametime components run natively, some (Media Manager, etc.) do not
  • No native Connections support
  • Plugin support

Notes connectors for Mac 

Mobile Clients for Connections released to app stores 

  • Release for Android
  • iOS and RIM coming soon
  • Posts posted then withdrawn, waiting for PR
  • Anyone tried them?
  • Feel bad for iWildfire and mLinked

IBM Connections wins at Bayer

IAMLUG 

  • How was the LUG as a whole?
  • What was the attendance like?
  • Keynote by Brian
  • What did you think?
  • What else?
  • How did tack it on work?

MWLUG’s social track & Lisa’s panel discussion

Tips

Darren:
The Paladin Tools PT-540 Powerplay Multi-tool For Electrical and Networking – a geeks Leatherman tool. This thing is great! It even has a 110 punch-down tool. How fricken cool is that?
Steve:  
When thinking about deploying Lotus software, have a hard look at IBM i on Power Systems considering the stability, security and throughput capabilities of the platform.
Lisa:
Louis Richardson’s new social videos:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6toR7am7OAE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y0xNv8JXFg
Sharon:
Deliver It – post your RSS feeds to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter automatically! http://dlvr.it/
Stuart:
Downcast – on the fly podcast download and management on iOS devices. No need to sync your device to get the latest This Week in Lotus!

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