Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
Headed into TVP Oracle site in Reading this morning to meet up with my new team for Beehive. Started with breakfast, followed by a general discussion with Dickie on Beehive and activities in the first weeks. The office is nice and am hot desking which is very familiar scenario after all my time at IBM.
Spent the morning looking at information and documentation on Beehive and now waiting for the Lenovo to deliver my new laptop which is due on Friday.
In the afternoon looked at some more background information and some presales materials. This was followed by meeting one of the account team to discuss the On Demand option for a customer followed by a whiteboarding session to help create a session abstract for OpenWorld for the development team.
Looking forward to the coming days and hopefully being completely online.
OK after nearly twelve years at IBM I am moving on to a role at as part of the Oracle Global Sales Unit for Beehive. Obviously this was a difficult decision for me to make after such a long time with IBM within the Lotus Brand. Currently the product set that Lotus has in the market is excellent and covers many aspects of Portal and Collaboration. Although the products are good it was time for a new challenge and one that would allow me to stretch myself and to be part of something that is new and exciting especially with Oracle.
Beehive is the new offering for Collaboration that will replace Oracle Collaboration Suite which frankly had a bad press. I will be a Principal Sales Consultant working in the EMEA region with the Sales teams and the customers. This will start with me being part of a very small team worldwide to grow the business and who know what will happen next.
The most interesting aspect of this new role so far is the recruiting process that I have been through that was a very different experience from my previous job moves. I first became aware of Oracle’s product Beehive and the requirement to recruit a new team came in the form of an email via my LinkedIn profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/scoot
The email was at first ignored and then after a week or so I thought why not ask for some more information on this one this was back in the first week or so of December 2008. I dropped the Oracle HR person an email to ask for more information that was promptly responded to within less than a day. The response gave me some brief details plus a job description but that was about it. At this point I would like to highlight that Social Networking has proven that electronic interaction does work.
I read the short job description plus the background detail on the product Beehive and thought actually there is something in this, but I cannot put my finger on it at this stage. So upon the request of the HR contact I sent through a CV that I had been working on updating with my Technical Sales role activities for 2008. A day later I was contact be another HR consultant at Oracle that was interested in having a brief chat to discuss the role and my skills and experience. This was duly arrange and a call took about 90 minutes on a dark December Friday afternoon. On completion of the call the consultant Brigitte asked me if I was willing to have a phone interview with one of the VPs in the US who were involved in the hiring. The answer was yes and I thought long and hard about what it could mean going forward and what did I have to lose by having further discussions.
Then followed a period of time in which I had regular contact with the HR consultant on how things were being progressed and apologies for the delay in arranging the follow-on meeting. Finally post Christmas and New Year I had a call with the VP to understand if both parties were on the same page and that I had the sort of skills and personality for the role. As it turned out there were actually two different roles one with a pre-sales and the other post-sales focus. After the discussion it was clear that I had the skills for both roles with my background in Technical Sales, Services, Early Programme Management and internal Systems.
The next step was to have two further telephone interviews with someone from the development team and someone for the consultants group. These were arranged very quickly and both went well and answered a lot of questions that I had and also Oracle need to know. The next stage was to have a further interview with the head of the team. This was arranged for a Friday evening and the discussion went very well especially since I had met the person when they were in fact employed by IBM Lotus in Europe. This was bizarre to be interviewed by someone that I had met about 9 years previous when I provided support to our eastern european offices. Again this went well and I was informed that I would have a technical interview in the next week or so. At this stage I was packing for my trip to Lotusphere and wondered whether this was going to happen. I had also managed to find out from the VP that Oracle had an Architect (ex-Lotus) attending Lotusphere so were given her details to arrange a catch-up to really understand what working for Oracle is like.
So off I went to Orlando to see what we intended to do over the coming year in the products from Lotus and hopefully meet up for a drink and a chat with the Oracle Architect. On the Tuesday evening I met the Architect Barb and had a really good chat about Lotus and Oracle and how it was a fab place to work. I was now thinking hey this is sounding better all the time. It definitely wasn’t a walk in the park, but had a real set of challenges for me to tackle. Later in the week I was contacted by the hiring manager and discussed my skills and experience and filled in the blanks about the technical aspects. After this call which was the sixth call and didn’t include the quick beer at Lotusphere I was told that they would be making their decision in the next 5-7days.
A week after returning from Lotusphere I was called and verbally offered a position at Oracle subject to their standard vetting process and management approval. At this point it was decision time or would be in a couple weeks as the process to vet and approve takes about two weeks. I completed a vetting questionnaire and passed to the vetting agency to process and report back to Oracle.
After about three or so weeks the process was finally completed with the management team approving the hire, apparently part of the process given the investment being made in the current economic times.
So this was now crunch time with regards to taking the plunge. I had received the paperwork over the weekend of the 7th March and ironically in the same post was a letter from the Software Group VP at IBM congratulating me on my successful 2008. So as I had the Monday off and was out at the Science Museum with the family for CJs birthday had to text my manager and try and get a meeting arranged. Managed to arrange time for a quick chat on the Tuesday lunchtime to discuss my position. The chat went OK and my manager had thought something was on the cards. We agreed to touch base on Friday at the pre arranged face to face in London, where things could be finalised.
The following day I was called by my manager confirming what IBM could do to try and tempt me to remain in my current role. In reality this was limited by a set of processes and very much based on guesswork as nothing could actually be confirmed at this time. With this update I decided that it would be best for my career development, a fresh challenge and improvements in my package that to get the formal resignation to my manager. We arrange to meet on Thursday lunchtime to compete the process which included handing back all of my IBM property 
So after spending Wednesday at UC09 at Olympia talking all things Sametime I sorted out my kit bag of IT, Comms and gadgets and packed it up ready to take into South Bank for my lunchtime appointment. It was very weird on Thursday driving into the office ready to hand over my stuff and complete my resignation. It was good to meet up with Spradders and Malcolm and grab some lunch before finally leaving an IBM building for the last time as an employee. The upside to this process is the fact that I have been put on a months gardening leave so now have the task of sorting out how best to use my time.
Social Networking Presentation I gave yesterday can be viewed here
Social Networking
Presentation went well and the general discussions around SN and some of the public site was good. Challenging questions on driving value to customers as nothing out of the box per se as there is a reliance on the end user adding content, but once growth happens then things really start to take off.
Will work out where to post the presentation outside of IBM so that others can see some of the information.
One thing that was different today was the fact I used my MacBook and Keynote for my presentation. Really like th ease of use of both the app and the hardware so will use more in the future. Just need IBM or someone to buy me a MacBook Pro for work rather than using my personal machines.
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..
Today I had some conference calls to sort out after last nights party at Universal, the first one at 8.30am so had to miss the first session. The call was finished in about 20mins so I was able to jump on a bus to catch the next session after some coffee.
I went to the xPages Theme session which had some neat stuff and it also gave me a chance to catch-up with Richard M as he was in the same session. Once the session finished met David P in the corridor as he was preparing with Leah to do his presentation on Symphony. I had a second concall to attend and then it was lunch. I had lunch with a group of the UK Tech Sales folks before we headed into the Closing General Session.
At the CGS there was a very quick recap of the week including a number of photos plus a new video which included custom snippets.
The final guest of the week was Benjamin Zander http://www.benjaminzander.com/ who the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and author of “The Art of Possibilities”. The session was excellent if a little strange, from being taught how to sing happy birthday correctly to some very interesting stories.
Once this was all completed it was time to work out what to do this evening, as ever Lewis had a plan so we all met in the Port Orleans bar at 7.30pm and then headed to House of Blues in Downtown Disney for dinner.
Finally retired ar about 11pm after a post dinner beer.
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 
