Episode 89 recorded on Thursday 16th February 2012.    We meet with Dave Durazzano of IBM and Elaine Murray from Applicable to discuss the planned rename of Lotuslive, announcements from Lotusphere 2012 and plans for new bundles to clear up a few confusing names…

[Full title: Lotuslive becomes SmartCloud for Social Business. Longer name but less confusion?]

Hosts

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

Guests

dave durrazano

Dave Durazzano (twitter) is Program Director for IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.  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 a cloud computing 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 previously called LotusLive.<br>

Elaine Murray

Elaine Murray (twitter) is IBM/Microsoft Messaging & Social Collaboration enthusiast at Applicable. A Marketing Manager with a passion to promote powerful collaboration.

Topics

SmartCloud for Social Business

  • For those new to the community, what is Smart Cloud for Social Business?
  • IBM SmartCloud portfolio
  • Formerly LotusLive
    • New brands to be established in Q1 (next few weeks)
    • SmartCloud Engage to be key brand, various levels within that
    • What happens to customers that have LotusLive contracts?
  • New URL in Q2 – http://ibmcloud.com/social
    • What is the proposition that SCSB represents?
  • Many would see Office 365 and Google Apps as the main competitors
    • What are IBM’s advantages?
  • Will the iNotes and Connections brand confusion be cleared up?
    • Yes!
  • Whats coming in 2012?
    • Will the newly named IBM Docs be part of SmartCloud too?
      • Yes, 2H12

Applicable

  • What does winning the Lotus Award mean for your business?

Tips

Darren:

Dave: 

  • Start a 60 day trial of IBM SmartCloud for Social Business – See first hand how your business (any size) can leverage the cloud to collaborate with customers, partners, vendors today.   IBM SmartCloud for Social Business Toolkit – Found in IBM DeveloperWorks.  Access the IBM SmartCloud APIs for integration development!

Elaine: 

  • Knowledge is Power.. Keep up to date with the customers who visit your web pages and learn more about them and their areas of interest: http://www.trovus.co.uk/

Stuart: 

  • TweetBot v2.0 – fab new Twitter client for iPhone and iPad. Granular notification settings, no nasty panels, customisable buttons. It rocks.
  • UC Expo – effectively the biggest Social Business trade show in the UK – 6/7th March at Olympia.

Episode 88 recorded on Thursday 9th February 2012. Jason Dumont joins Darren and Stuart to discuss the roadmap for the Lotus clients – Notes, iNotes and Connections Mail – through 2012 including the exciting Social Edition release. He also fills us in on the details around ‘that plugin’ – the ability to render Notes applications in a browser as if in your Notes client.  

Hosts

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

Guests

Jason Dumont

Jason Dumont (twitter | linkedin) is currently the Program Director for Messaging & Collaboration Client Strategy at IBM. His responsibilities include strategy development and product planning for all of IBM’s messaging and collaboration clients within the Lotus brand, including our on premise and cloud based delivery options. He also leads a new strategic effort focused on the delivery of a more social messaging experience, which will first be represented as IBM Connections Mail. His team is located in the United States with an extended team around the globe.

Topics

Lotusphere announcements

  • Lotus Notes and Domino Social Edition
    • What is Notes/Domino Social Edition?
    • Is this the ‘Notes Foo’that has been discussed over the last year?
    • Why ‘Social Edition’?
    • When will it ship?
    • Is this the equivalent of Notes Next?
    • Lets break it down:
      • What will Domino Social Edition offer in terms of iNotes functionality?
      • How about Notes Social Edition?
  • What Social features will be available in the new release?
  • IBM Connections Mail (aka social mail)
    • This has been explained as ‘triage mail and calendar’, can you explain the use case?
      • ‘Picture in picture ’analogy
    • When will it be delivered? Need Connections Next and Domino 8.5.3+ or Exchange 2007 & 2010
    • Works with Domino and Exchange mail? 
    • Will it support cloud-based mail?
  • The Plug-in
    • What does it do?
    • What are the use cases you foresee?
    • What are the requirements? Which browsers (IE, FF both on Windows), which Domino release?
    • How big is the plugin?  Will it get cached?

‘State of the Union’

  • Are you excited about 2012?

Tips

Darren:

  • Workflow for XPages : OpenNTF project released by Phillipe Riand, Qian Liang and Niklas Heidloff. Fills a missing gap that has always existed in Domino.
  • Also in an XPages vein, the 3rd and latest XPages Development Contest is open. More prizes this time, again from the kind folks at We4IT!

Jason:

Stuart:

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!

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!!!

Episode 28, recorded Friday 26th November 2010, discussing reasons to be thankful, Connections 3.0 GA, Transformer demo, ‘classic’ applications, XPages performance in the Notes client, the new XPages URL Shortner and more…

Please note: we have started to put times in the show notes for when we start to discuss each topic, in order to make it easier to fast-forward through the show to the topics that are of particular interest.  If you would like us to produce an enhanced podcast (AAC format) version of the show with multiple chapters to cover the individual chapters, please do let us know.

Also, we have made the decision to move to recording this show on Thursdays from this point forward, in order to allow additional time to get the podcast produced and still release on a Friday in time for the commute home (in Europe and America at least). Hope this meets with your approval!

Hosts

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

Guests

Tony McPhail (twitter) is IT Technical Manager with The Salvation Army, Southern Territory, responsible for Enterprise application and infrastructure, including CItrix, VMware and Lotus Domino portfolio. Domino, Notes and iNotes clients, sametime, quirck and connections.

Pim van Wetten (blog | twitter | lotuslive) has worked with Lotus related software for over 11 years. After finishing his studies in Management and Information Sciences in 1999, Pim van Wetten (1974) started working at e-office. e-office is a Dutch IBM Business Partner that consults organizations about the way they can use technologies to collaborate more efficiently independent of place or time. During the first six years of his career Pim has taken a deep dive in technology by programming in Lotus Notes, WebSphere and WebSphere Portal. Then, he broadened his activities with project management and consultancy. The last three years he specialized in enterprise social media consulting. Pim is a regular speaker on this topic and has hosted several Lotus Connections sessions at the Dutch Notes User Group (NLLUG).

Tim Clark (blog | twitter | lotuslive) is an IT Specialist working in IBM Lotus Technical Sales in the UK and Ireland. Tim has been working for Lotus since 1994 and still loves it. The last few years have seen Tim focus on XPages, but now that focus is shifting to help customers understand how they can improve their collaboration using Lotus Software products. Tim is also a founding member of the XCast, an XPages podcast, which will be re-launching for Lotusphere 2011 with new hosts.

Topics

Thanksgiving week – what is your ‘reason to be thankful’? (04:52)

Lotus Connections 3.0 GA (07:43) 

  • First available to customers, then partners – what were they thinking? 😉
  • Lots of useful resources, not least a checklist for the upgrade
  • Demo video
  • Several HowTo video’s
  • Installation worksheet (would this be appreciated for other Lotus products? Would it scare people off?)
  • Side-by-side upgrade – makes you realise how good Domino upgrades are
  • Wiki-based documentation – how do we feel about this? Should there still be a straightforward Infocenter?
  • CMIS demo of Luiz Benitez showing integration with Lotus Connections
  • Is there a pilot version of Lotus Connections 3.0?

Transformer demo on LotusUserGroup.org (28:41) 

  • What do we think?
  • Is automated process the way ahead?

“Classic”- phrase du jour (37:52) 

  • Developers are affecting the messaging side with this jihad to create a nomenclature to separate out XPages
  • Mail is still a Notes app (composite and all, people think it is just LS and forms)
  • Would you invest in a messaging platform dubbed as “classic”or “legacy” by the very people who’d sell it to you?

On a related note Jake Howlett’s “Are You A Domino Developer?”survey (41:06) 

XPages in the Notes Client Speed – Sean Cull (43:25) 

  • aka XPiNC
  • A 80 fold increase in data transmitted to the client over a regular Lotus Notes app

XPages URL Shortner (48:12) 

What happened to the XCast? (50:01)

Lotusphere 2011 only 65 days away (51:59) 

  • No sign of session confirmations yet
  • Who’s attending? Submitted abstracts?
  • What is the Lotusphere Solutions Developer Lab?

Traveler for Android out by the Holidays (58:01) 

Tips

(1:02:18)

TimKeep an eye out for the new book “Mastering XPages Development”(Amazon UK US) due out in time for Lotusphere 2011 and should be on the bookstall. Written by Martin Donnelly, Mark Wallace and Tony McGuckin with technical review by Maureen Leland and John Mackey.
PimMy tip is about social software. Focus on collaboration, on improving your daily activities. It’s about business value, not a social cool tool.
TonyUse Lotus Sametime.. awareness to see if people are available, send message to see if they can accept your interruption.
DarrenThis has been said before in TWiL, but Evernote is amazing. I’m using it to sync “notes”between several Windows laptops, my Galaxy S Android phone, my BlackBerry Tour and my Galaxy Tab Android Tablet. I store things like wifi passwords, etc and have them accessible no matter the device I’m one.
Stuarta) Need to know more about Social Collaboration (and specifically Lotus Connections)? Join the Collaboration Matters/Applicable webinar series, starting on December 6th.
b) SSDs rock.  Expensive but worth every penny/cent/dime etc

Episode 26, recorded Friday 12th November 2010, discussing the new Lotus Connections 3.0 release, notesiscool.com, IBM’s new Social Everywhere campaign, the Foundation appliance end-of-life and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

Suzanne Livingston (Connections team blog | personal blog | twitter) has, over the past 10 years, held a variety of roles within software development, including development, design, user research, and now product management. She is currently senior product manager for IBM Lotus Connections, a social software suite for businesses and organizations. In this role, Suzanne works to define the overall social software strategy, develop and drive product requirements with engineering and design, work with customers and partners to shape the product, and publicize the product through demonstrations and presentations at numerous industry events.

Mac Guidera (blog | twitter) is a Social Software product Manager at IBM. He joined IBM Software Services for Lotus 5 years ago after working as a business partner for many years. Focused on Lotus Domino web development, Mac helped his customers using cutting edge solutions around Java, DXL and Ajax technologies. After working in Services, he went on to become the Technical Team Lead on the Lotus Greenhouse team. The Lotus Greenhouse allows IBM customers and partners to try out the latest form Lotus in a single unifies environment. After working with that team, Mac joined the Lotus Connections team as a Product Manager and is currently working to drive IBM Social Software portfolio.

Darren Adams (blog | twitter | notesiscool) has been with the Lotus brand for 19 years, starting in Customer Support and moving to Sales as a Systems Engineer in 1994. More recently he has held the role of Lotus.Technical Sales Manager for the old North Region and then UKISA, and then headed up the Competitive SWAT team. After spending three years as the Messaging & Collaboration Business Unit Leader for UK & Ireland Darren moved on to be Business Unit Executive for Messaging & Collaboration in North East Europe, holding that role for a year before returning to a re-vamped version of his previous role in UKI.

Mark Dixon (blog | blogtwitter | twitter | company) is Business and Technology Consultant at Applicable, and has 20 years of experience in Information Technology Management including 10 in Unified Collaboration and Communication consultancy. MBA specialising in Technology management.  Mark is currently leading the hosted Connections offering delivery at Applicable.

Topics

Connections 3.0 announced at Enterprise 2.0 

  • What was announced? When will it be available?
  • So what’s new?
  • Social Analytics, Mobile, Community, Forums
  • Overall UX enhancements, Compliance, Extensions
  • The new UI moves away from the OneUI we’re used to – will the other products move in this direction too?
  • How does this release set compare to the opposition?
  • Some new case studies (CEMEX, Bayer etc) announced. What benefits are they getting from Connections?
  • What are Applicable planning for Connections 3.0?

NotesIsCool.com

  • Where did idea come from?
  • Why are we seeing Notes ‘fan sites’springing up?
  • Whats the feedback been like, and what did IBM think of it?
  • How’s the site built? Why not Domino?

Lotusphere Social Aggregator now online 

  • OGS and other sessions to be streamed live for the first time
  • #ls11 is the hashtag to use

Social Everywhere 

  • New campaign from IBM
  • Seeing roots in Cognos, Rational etc.
  • New IBM product page at http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/socialcollaboration/
  • Interesting to see the term ‘social collaboration’being used – Collaboration Matters has been using it since 2008 😉
  • With Project Vulcan in the future, is social collaboration where its at? Will the other products in the Lotus portfolio head towards this product segment?

Lotus Foundations withdrawn 

  • Discussed this last week, Ed Brill has now entered the conversation
  • Does it make the situation any more obvious?
  • Are there lessons to be learnt from Nitix experience generally, and this situation specifically?

Luis Suarez – Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist of the year. Congratulations!!!

Tips

DarrenD    THE Ed Brill will be presenting in Atlanta at ATLUG on Friday 19th, Nov, a change of day! Details on the blog. Also been doing traffic analysis on Domino servers, switches and routers and I am using MRTG aka Multi Router Traffic Grapher
SuzanneCheck out the new social everywhere series on Synch.rono.us
MacAs with anything.When using Social software, you don’t have to do it all at once…start small and eventually it will become part of your everyday.
DarrenAFeel free to e-mail me with content suggestions for notesiscool.com
MarkAnyone BUT IT should drive social computing initiatives
StuartSpeck case for Macbook Pros – transparent plastic clip on cases for MBP – beautiful and provide great protection. (Amazon US | Amazon UK)

Episode 22, recorded Friday 15th October 2010, discussing the forthcoming Lotus Symphony 3 release, David Leedy’s Notesin9 screencast, Lotusphere 2011 abstracts and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

David Pearson (twitter | email) is a senior architect in the IBM Software Services for Lotus Centre of Excellence, and is also IBM’s worldwide services leader for Symphony. He has been at Lotus / IBM for 14 years.

Eric Otchet (email) is currently the Product Manager for Lotus Symphony.  He has been with IBM for over 22 years and has held both technical and sales positions during that time.

Corey Davis (twitter | company) is the owner of Conxsys, author of two IBM Redbooks, and is on the OpenNTF steering committee.

David Leedy (screencast) is a corporate Notes developer and producer of the NotesIn9 ScreenCast.

Topics

Symphony 3 launch

  • What is IBM Lotus Symphony ?
  • How did Symphony come about?
  • What is IBM’s strategy ?
  • Can you describe the Symphony roadmap ?
  • What is the relationship with the OpenOffice community ? What does IBM do with OpenOffice Code ?
  • Will split in OO movement help or hinder (LibreOffice)? Does IBM feed back into OO code?
  • What are the key differences between OpenOffice and Symphony ? Is there round-trip compatibility?
  • How Does Symphony link into the rest of the Lotus portfolio ?
  • When will Symphony v3 be available ?
  • What are the key new things in Symphony v3 to get excited about ?
  • Once Symphony 3 ships, can we integrate it into (and over) the current Lotus Notes Symphony install?
  • What is Project Concord and how does that integrate with Symphony ?
  • Any plans to extend Symphony to include Draw and give us a real Visio replacement?  Or a database?
  • When will be able to save as docx, xlsx and pptx?
  • Quickr connectors? Coming? Dates?
  • Get more information from symphony.lotus.com

Notes In 9Extended Edition 

  • Where did the idea for this come from for the extended format?
  • What exactly will a “classic”Notes developer learn?
  • What’s next for Ni9?
  • Announcing new Website

Lotusphere 2011 

  • Abstracts due in last Friday!
  • Daily OGS Monday-Wednesday
  • New tracks:
    • NEW! Track Four: Business Solutions
    • NEW! Track Five: Customer Case Studies

LotusphereBlog rides again! 

LTAP 2010 

  • The conference will take place October 27th and 28th.  There will be an opening session followed by breakout sessions organized by track–Developer, Administrator, and Management.   Each presentation will last approximately 30 minutes followed by up to 15 minutes of Q&A.  Sessions will start at the top of each hour, 10 AM, 11 AM, 1 PM, etc.
  • Free registration
  • Virtual format
  • What do we think of the idea? Something that could take on?

Windows Phone 7 launch 

  • Seems to be being marketed as the phone that lets you get on with your life – get in, get out, get on… Is this a cohesive idea for a smartphone? Do we spend too much time on our BBs, iPhones, Androids?
  • Is it too late for M$ to recover their mobile market share?

Tips

Darren:Give Symphony 3 a try. I use it as my primary office suite on my new Lenovo T510 running Windows 7. Stay away from Symphony 1 though. Remember if you are a current Lotus Notes support licensee you have full support too. Do you have that with MS Office? And it is FREE, FREE, FREE
Eric:Make sure to check out Lotus Symphony Website late next week for some important news
Corey:Domino Designer 8.5.1 Crash Course for Admins
DavidP:Take a look at the content we have in the Symphony wiki – and also try out the mobile interface. If anyone requires help to evaluate or deploy Symphony see IP.com.
DavidL:If you want to start learning XPages, there’s one site that you need to know about – XPagesWiki.com
Stuart:Don’t be frightened of partitioned servers – in fact use them liberally (assuming your licence supports them).  Simply install multiple partitions on install, use as many of them as you need. Add IP aliases to your network cards, and then configure IP address per partition in notes.ini.  Oh and never use hostname = service name!