Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
What makes a network social? I suppose the first part is people, the second is interaction and third is collaboration. If I take a look at my various networks all are social in some shape or form, so doesn’t that mean all people networks are social. Point open for discussion no doubt and I think I wanted to puts some comments down on some of my experiences over the years with my various networks.
If I look today I have a number of electronic tools that help me connect to my networks, theses include internal works only sites and external public sites. So what do I use, lets take a look:
Work Intranet – We have components of the intranet that have now been productised (is there such a word) into Lotus Connections and with more to come as the product evolves. Basically I have a number of different sites within IBM that allow me to build networks and connections between colleagues regardless of where they are. Today I can use Lotus Connections, Bluepages+1 and Project Beehive (Internal Project not to be confused with Oracle Beehive).
Another tool is Lotus Connections.
What these two tool allow me to do is build my internal networks, neither is externalised so only IBMers in these networks, which works well in a lot of circumstances, but in the real world I need that mix of both internal and external, which I can get via the Lotus Greenhouse project (greenhouse.lotus.com), but this means having my details populated in another place, so that would be 4 in total with Beehive, Connections, Fringe and Greenhouse. This is just pushing the boundary to far in terms of maintenance. Basically with any social networking tool the ability to use and maintain is key so having multiple tools we need to have update once write multiple times.
Thats internal covered what about external, well to be honest I have three tools that I use regularly. They are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. All of these have the notion of networks and the ability to be friends with people. With the concept of Twitter we have a different spin to that of Facebook and Linked as I can easily follow someone without the person necessarily knowing me. What this does mean is I can get information from maybe influential or for interest perspective. With the other two sites it is a notion of a friend on Facebook or colleague on LinkedIn. There is the need for someone to accept your friendship unlike twitter which you would need to block people to stop unwanted people following you.
So what do I use these sites for? Facebook is a way to interact with both friends and colleagues but more on a social level rather than professional level and I have friend and family as well as colleagues on the site from all walks of life and age ranges.
With LinkedIn I only use this for professional contacts with fewer updates. I have used on a number of occasions recently when ensuring I have links to some of my colleagues in the US who may be moving on. I will write more on my experiences of LinkedIn in the next week or two.
So I have babbled on for a while about networking and have decided that all of these tools are social in some shape or form and that each has its uses. The one thing I love and also hate is the fact I link my twitter updates (tweets) to Facebook , but sometime the tweets are lost on a lot of my facebook friends, really need a method to tell twitter not to always update facebook.
Well I will write more on this subject as time passes..
Cool Keynote session on social networking with HSBCs Ian Haynes on stage talking about how they use connections. There was PLI and SuccessFactory on stage talkling about there experiences with Connections
Mac to the Future session
Overview of what Lotus is doing in this space..
Lotus Notes 8.5
- Feedreader, Sametime, Widgets, CAE
- Spotlight support for searching
- Unicode
- Cross-platform support migrate Window to Mac
- Multi-user support, run from any user account
- MAC keystrokes supported in RTE
- Mighty Mouse support
- Java agent support
- PErformance
- Applescript
- NSD crash protection
Lotus Notes 8.5.1
- Symphony support directly in client and support for activities plugin
- Improvements UI in conjunction in Apple UI team
- Use iWork bundles seamlessly as attachments (Round trip, fidelity)
- FTI for attachements
- Quality improvements
Dragging objects such as graphic in safari into an email demoed, drag contacts from ST embedded to email to, cc, bcc, body fields, neat features. Support for bundles is cool, support for spotlight looking good.
Symphony on MAC
Sametime Meetings on MACs cool and about time… Adding livescreen share from 1 mac to any other platform. Lotus Connections Firelox support 2 on Tiger and Leopard, Investigating support for FF3 and Safari 3.1 for 2.5 of connections.
iNotes back instead of DWA fully supports safari on the MAC working with Apple and of course ultralite support for iPhone.
In symphony, can do Open send to mail….auto attaches the presentaion/doc or spreadsheet, Offline activities will work and all looking cool. Nice support for ST Unyte.
iPhone Applications support coming soon
- Connections Application on iPhone
- Sametime support on iPhone
More to come in 2009
Today up at 6ish dressed and email checked off to get breakie meeting up with Karen and Rob. I bumped into Brian Campbell and Dan Kikuchi and chatted about our time working on the Portal 6.0 beta programmes and how the economy is in both the US and UK.
After breakfast off to INV105 Glimpsing the Future: Report from IBM Research & The Center for Social Software with Brendan Buckingham. Irene Greif and team went through the what research are doing in the Social Software space. This session was an excellent insight into some of the project on going within IBM especially the Social Accessibility tools demo’d by the team from Tokyo Labs. The tool was an excellent example of social networking and the crowdsourcing of getting content accessible.
The other neat research project explained was related to travel and this was entitled Sojourn/ Voyager The tool will basically allows you to interact with fellow travelers and start to manage trips, with co-workers to allow you to benefit from sharing cars/taxi and meeting for dinner etc. The tool will also allow you to to see recommendations on things like hotels and airlines similar to content that is available in tripadvisor.
Coffee with Brendan Tutt checked in at home and then went to AD401 IBM Lotus Connections Customizations with Karl Brooks and Mike Roach. The session looked at CSS customisations, header and footers and finally widgets.
INV101R From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration, Productivity, and Adoption in the Enterprise. Reckling and Kogan providing more information on Web 2.0 to E2.0. Lots of references to books on mass collaboration including Clay Shirky Here comes everybody. Walked through three scenarios on using E2.0 in business.
AD405 Are you REALLY taking advantage of an integrated Lotus Collaboration experience – Thomas Schaeck and Derek Carr gave an informative overview of the services available to consume and produce with REST APIs within the Lotus product suite including demos of Quickr, Connections integration with Portal with improvements coming with an iWidget for Quickr libraries
Caught up with Jon and had a look around the showcase, store and bookshop. Spoke with MainSoft team on MOSS and WSS integration with Lotus products.
ID217 IBM Lotus iNotes for the Apple iPhone and iPod with Will Williams and Eric Portner with some really good demo on a simulator for the iPhone. I have used the Lotus Greenhouse Ultralite mode in iNotes (see greenhouse.lotus.com to get access to the service). It is really good and we are waiting for access to the internal pilot for this service at IBM.
Day started with Breakfast at the hotel after a short bus ride with a bunch of the team including Rob T, Karen B and Dougie.
OGS started with the Blue Man Group and it started with the same routine that I had seen on Space Pirates (UK Children’s TV show). Then it was over to Bob P to start proceedings followed by special guest speaker Dan Aykroyd which was entertaining. Then on to the details including three customers, Coke Cola, NetJets and HSBC. Surprising thing was the man Ian Haynes from HSBC was the only one not wearing a tie, good job.
So on to some more details including Project Atlantic now named Alloy and due Q1, Bluehouse now Lotus Live www.lotuslive.com this really makes an interesting prop for our customers with the ability to have a mechanism to integrate this service with the traditional collaboration environment. So we have LotusLive Engage is the Bluehouse offering but also LotusLive Connections, LotusLive Events, LotusLive Meetings, LotusLive Notes and LotusLive iNotes.
Bruce Morse on stage, dressed very Steve Jobs, is he the new Steve Jobs but from IBM. From here we had Sametime Unified Telephony and Sametime 8.5 which are looking good and start to bridge some of the gaps between traditional collab and telephony. ST 8.5 now being talked about including using on iphone also we have the web 2.0 client on the way with zero footprint.
On to Social Software so updates to Lotus Connections with 2.5 and loads of details in Luis Blog here http://www.lbenitez.com/2009/01/what-new-in-lotus-connections-v25.html
Basic highlights are looking good with browser version like ultra lite inotes for connections, Linkedin intergation with connections and new wiki for both connections and quickr.
New Portal Logo in use now yellow instead of purple 
sorry websphere. Nice integrations shown in demo, updated ui for portlets. Mashup and mobile accelerators announced and content accelerator update to include Ephox Editlive added to WCM. Web analytics from three partners will allow customers to understand what is happening on their portal.
Went to loads of sessions today and kept seeing the MS Director of Sharepoint in the Connections session so I sure we will see stuff arriving in Sharepoint 2009 potentially based on some of the social software capabilities. Finished the day with BOF for Connections and it was good to finally meet in person the two Luis’ and Stuart M.
NV103 Bringing the Best Together morphed into Web 2.0 deep dive for social software with Chris Lamb and Peter Van de Graaf. Good covering on the connections side and different business aspects of social software.
ID503 Innovation with Integration: IBM’s “Next Generation” Intranet Portal. Brian did a great job of showing the IBM Intranet (On Demand Workspace) especially how testing of new portlets and themes and content can be achieved without impacting BAU on the intranet. Interesting skeleton portlet has been created to allow users to easily create new portlets, this is aimed at end users.
ID304 What’s Next with IBM Lotus Connections: Great session by Suzanne Minassian and Scott Prager. Great session highlighting the new stuff in Connections 2.5 especially in File sharing, Wiki etc.
INV107 The Future of Enterprise Collaboration – Guy Creese was a general session covering collaboration in the enterprise that covered some of the ground from many other presentations in the past.
Dinner with Rob, Karen and Stu tonight in the hotel and then finished for the day..
Clock is ticking to LS09 and I have started to form my agenda items for the weeks proceeding and only a few clashes. If it follows previous trips to Orlando my planned scheduled will go out of the window as I change my mind once I revisit the descriptions etc of the sessions, plus sometimes I just lose the will to walk back to the other hotel.
So some topics I will be looking into will be Portal, Connections and general collaboration updates announced. Must do’s are visiting all my remote colleagues and friends from the development, technical and services teams that will be in Orlando including visiting booths/Peds for ID/Redbooks, ISSL and Products, plus all of our BPs.
I will most definitely be visiting the Labs to see what going on and what research etc are up to in the coming months. Hopefully I will get the chance to get some decent info for my customers and of course myself.
In addition to the fun and games of Lotusphere there will be the compulsory shopping during the week, it just a pity the exchange rate is so poor at the moment. I will be going to the apple store at some point as it is compulsory to double check to see if there is anything worth buying. Sorry I should rephrase that to see what I can justify buying, maybe one day the IBM powers will furnish me with a MacBook for work so I can get rid of the stinkpads. Or they should just give me some money and I will buy my own 
well more about Lotusphere over the coming week and whilst I am there I will blog about it when I can
