IdoNotes (and sleep)

You can register to attend virtually for the Cross Canada Collaboration User Group event. You can attend in person or virtually for this day of 8 sessions.

Sessions will cover Watson, Alexa, Domino applications, case studies, the IBM Connect Hackathon and more.

Register for the Cross Canada Collaboration User Group event right here

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On Monday, April 24th, 2017   by Chris Miller        

At IBM Connect 2017 I presented the above session of Deploying IBM Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a Customer. I was happy to see so many interested in this topic.  I also have a video that was complied walking through the steps coming.

Deploying Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a customer
Explore the benefits of IBM Blockchain for decentralized and trusted controls. Decentralized and trusted processing of real-time transactions can speed up your business processes! Learn how to deploy both test and production Blockchain environments on IBM Bluemix. Walk through the business needs for the evolving Blockchain technology from the customer perspective. View validations in progress and the health of your peers in the chaincode

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On Wednesday, March 1st, 2017   by Chris Miller        

I had the pleasure of participating again in Gurupalooza at IBM Connect 2017 . I managed to capture the entire thing on Facebook Live. Here is the replay.  You will find tons of Connect 2017 content on the IdoNotes Network page on Facebook.

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On Monday, February 27th, 2017   by Chris Miller        

IBM Connect 2017 is a week away and while Business Partner Day is not there anymore, there is an agenda for IBM Business Partners still.

• The general session for partners is Tuesday. Look for strategy and 2017 plans here
• IBM Tools and Incentives - on Wednesday you can find out where to look and what incentives are new
• Plan your 2017 strategy with IBM is also on Wednesday
• Taking on Microsoft Office 365 with IBM solutions is tapped for Wednesday (against my session I see)
• Making money in the Cloud is also Wednesday.
• Enhanced Partnerworld is also on Wednesday

So if you want a non tech track and a lot of BP content then Wednesday is the day.  The IBM Event app has it all and I will have a video coming on that shortly

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On Wednesday, February 15th, 2017   by Chris Miller        

So many of us are used to heading to Orlando, FL for Lotusphere aka IBM Connect. As that has moved months and cities, here are years of pictures to look back on

• Lotusphere 2005 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2006 (my pics)
• Lotusphere 2007 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2007 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2008 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2008 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2009 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2009 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2010 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2010 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2011 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2011 (group pool)
• Lotusphere 2012 (my pics) and Lotusphere 2012 (group pool)
• Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 (my pics) and IBM Connect & Lotusphere 2013 (group pool) with an amazing 973 photos
• Lotusphere/ IBM Connect  2014 (my pics) and IBM Connect 2014 (group pool) with an amazing 873 photos
• Lotusphere / IBM ConnectEd 2015 (my pics) and IBM ConnectEd 2015 (group pool)
• Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2016 (me pics which I just realized I never ever uploaded yet due to changing phones)

Yes there will be the normal new group for 2017 for everyone to join and share photos.

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On Thursday, January 19th, 2017   by Chris Miller        

I was excited to see I am speaking at IBM Connect 2017 in San Francisco.  Catch me on Feb 22 at 10am PST on the second floor of Moscone West, room 2020 (this may change as we get closer).

This content overall will be a new and positive change for the IBM Connect event. Look for a track on your standard ICS technologies, with the added bonus of learning new skills and seeing new ideas to spark some interest in your future plans with IBM.

Deploying Blockchain on IBM Bluemix as a customer
Explore the benefits of IBM Blockchain for decentralized and trusted controls. Decentralized and trusted processing of real-time transactions can speed up your business processes! Learn how to deploy both test and production Blockchain environments on IBM Bluemix. Walk through the business needs for the evolving Blockchain technology from the customer perspective. View validations in progress and the health of your peers in the chaincode

This is totally out of the normal sphere of content but shows how far and fast we adopt and implement new technologies. I will not look too deep into how Bluemix provisions, but more on Blockchain technology deployment  and where it can take us in the future.

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On Tuesday, January 10th, 2017   by Chris Miller        

IBM Connect 2017 registration has been opened up and this proves to be a whole new conference. The conference also moved to San Francisco and to the end of February (instead of late January).

Pricing has a slew of rates and levels which adds to the confusion of when and what you should register for.  I say this because I see they are trying to draw some people in for partial time and the EXPO without them having to buy a full conference pass.  There is also a middle level that tosses in the keynotes, Lightning Talks (on the EXPO floor I bet) and more. Then the full badge has pricing set with early bird and one day full passes.  Whew!

Discover Connect is the cheapest at $89, with Experience Connect at $995, One Day passes at $895 and full badges starting at $1695 without alumni discounts.

See the IBM Connect 2017 registration page for more details on packages and to get registered.

A special thing to note is that you must have an IBM Id to even register for the conference.

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On Monday, December 5th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Luis Guirigay of IBM to presented IBM Project Hawthorn: Today, Tomorrow, On Prem and Cloud at ICON US 2016. He covered the following in his ICON US 2016 session:

Since IBM introduced “Project Hawthorn” (aka IBM mail support for MS Outlook) many customers have been taking advantage of this new deployment option to provide Mail to users using their client of preference. Project Hawthorn provides the unique capability of “Bring Your Own Client (BYOC)” by allowing them to use MS Outlook without having to replace the IBM Domino platform. Use this in conjunction with the Notes Browser Plugin and XPages and provide a unique experience. Come to this session and walk away with a clear understanding of IBM’s strategy, Best Practices and tons of tips from the field.

This session was sponsored by Teamcentric Technologies

See all of the IdoNotes articles on IBM Project Hawthown and watch the replay above.

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On Tuesday, May 17th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

ICON US 2016 completed last week and the keynote was from Rob Koplowitz of IBM. The replay is online and he did a fantastic job conveying:

..a vision for unleashing cognitive capabilities and advanced analytics to create a more intelligent collaboration environment that assists employees and proactively surfaces experts and insights. See IBM's vision on the role of AI based Personal Assistants and cognitive Expert sources that will drive breakthrough results and move your organization and those you serve into the Cognitive Era.

Look for replays and online recording of the sessions from all of the speakers shortly.

ICON US wants to thank Teamstudio as the Premier sponsor for this keynote session.

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On Monday, May 16th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

ICON US 2016 went live at 8am CST this morning with Rob Koplowitz of IBM presenting on cognitive. Why not see the full agenda and still register and join in?
The keynote is covering:

The pace of work is accelerating and the volume of information is overwhelming. Join Rob Koplowitz as he conveys a vision for unleashing cognitive capabilities and advanced analytics to create a more intelligent collaboration environment that assists employees and proactively surfaces experts and insights. See IBM's vision on the role of AI based Personal Assistants and cognitive Expert sources that will drive breakthrough results and move your organization and those you serve into the Cognitive Era.

Seats are still open in registration for ICON US !!! Hurry though before it fills and closes

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On Monday, May 9th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM has noted that during ICON US 2016 online next week on May 9-10 they have slotted a special announcement for a contest open to the public.  This special announcement is sponsored by Panagenda (no affiliation to the contest)

We cannot give too much more away in advance, but you will have to attend ICON US 2016 online next week by registering below.


Seats are still open in registration for ICON US on May 9-10th 2016 online!!! Hurry though before it closes.

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On Thursday, May 5th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Want to know about Integrate Bluemix with Your XPages Applications for a World of Possibilities? Then register for ICON US 2016 virtual event taking place May 9-10th 2016 and see John Jardin of Ukuvuma present this awesome session.

In this session John will take you through a gripping LIVE demonstration where he pieces together an "Integrated Circuit of Services", binding an on-premise XPages application with the IBM Bluemix cloud. Learn how to implement Web Sockets for real-time communication; use Watson services to improve user experience, and more.

Join this session and discover how your applications can easily leverage services on the Bluemix cloud to expand on what’s currently possible in XPages.

Seats are still open in registration for ICON US on May 9-10th 2016 online!!!

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On Thursday, May 5th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Want to know what Normalizing xPages Web Development is? Then register for ICON US 2016 virtual event taking place May 9-10th 2016 and see Shean McManus of PSC Group and Eric McCormick present this awesome session.

The XPages runtime is versatile and extends beyond just the components that come out of the box. While the core XPages/Domino platform has not changed materially since it’s initial release, the way this platform is being used certainly is evolving rapidly. Learn the best ways to optimize your application development by leveraging the latest and greatest frameworks, libraries, and tools that the web has to offer. Many modern tools can plug into your Domino and XPages applications in a consistent fashion with industry web development practices. Join us for some challenges to our preconceptions, options and alternatives, and a couple of fancy demos.

Seats are still open in registration for ICON US on May 9-10th 2016 online!!!

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On Wednesday, May 4th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

At ICON US 2016 online in just a week you can catch Virtual, Faster, Better! - How to virtualize the Rich client and Browser Plugin by Daniel Reimann. But only if you register for ICON US 2016 while seats remain

Virtualizing the IBM Notes client or the IBM Client Application Access (formerly known as IBM Notes Browser Plug-in) is an effective way to standardize your client infrastructure, to reduce costs for workstation hardware and to give your users a consistent experience. Learn how to implement, configure and tune Notes on platforms like Citrix or Terminal Server and get the most out of it by dramatically reducing start-up times and more. Beside a live demo you'll also get some worst practices stories as Daniel Reimann shares his experiences from real-World client virtualization projects.

Seats are still open in registration for ICON US on May 9-10th online!!!

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On Monday, May 2nd, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Register today for one of the virtual seats at ICON US to see Luis Guirigay of IBM present IBM Project “Hawthorn" - Today. Tomorrow. OnPrem. Cloud. This session will cover:

Since IBM introduced “Project Hawthorn” (aka IBM mail support for MS Outlook) many customers have been taking advantage of this new deployment option to provide Mail to users using their client of preference. Project Hawthorn provides the unique capability of “Bring Your Own Client (BYOC)” by allowing them to use MS Outlook without having to replace the IBM Domino platform. Use this in conjunction with the Notes Browser Plugin and XPages and provide a unique experience. Come to this session and walk away with a clear understanding of IBM’s strategy, Best Practices and tons of tips from the field.

Seats are still open in registration for ICON US on May 9-10th online!!!

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On Wednesday, April 20th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

ICON US 2016 announced that Rob Koplowitz of IBM will be the keynote speaker. Session announcements will start coming tomorrow. Registration for ICON US 2016 still has some space for this virtual event. They keynote will cover the following abstract:

The pace of work is accelerating and the volume of information is overwhelming. Join Rob Koplowitz as he conveys a vision for unleashing cognitive capabilities and advanced analytics to create a more intelligent collaboration environment that assists employees and proactively surfaces experts and insights. See IBM's vision on the role of AI based Personal Assistants and cognitive Expert sources that will drive breakthrough results and move your organization and those you serve into the Cognitive Era.

ICON US wants to thank Teamstudio as the Premier sponsor for this keynote session.

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On Wednesday, April 6th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

I am happy to finally announce ICON US 2016 is officially launched with a twist.  This will be a one time virtual event on May 9-10, 2016. Registration is already open as well as call for abstracts and sponsor opportunities.

More information will be coming on the website, but space is still limited.  Even with a virtual event.  Head over to http://IamICONUS.org and get registered before it fills.

Also make sure to submit abstracts and get in touch to sponsor either here or via the site.

P.S. Had you been signed up on the IdoNotes newsletter you would have got early notice :-)

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On Tuesday, March 8th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

I had the pleasure of presenting Logging Wars: A Cross Product Tech Clash Between Experts with Ben Menesi, of Ytria, at IBM Connect 2016.  He did an amazing job making slides for us from all our conversations. Thanks to every that attended or has reached out looking for the slides.

Do not forget that all the slides are in the  IBM Connect sessions database  with over 200 since 2013 publicly available for your review and searching.

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On Thursday, February 11th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Above is the content for my 60+ in 60 - Admin Tips Power Hour session from IBM Connect 2016.

With a guaranteed minimum of 60 administration tips in 60 minutes you will walk out with a list of items to immediately help you tune your collaboration environment. Covering IBM Domino, Sametime, Connections, Traveler and more will have you eager to get back and implement some of the ideas. We will take best practices from the my SocialBizUg Admin Tips newsletter, customer case stories and other best practices. Have no fear, we will move faster that you can write so everything will be available for you to download. This is an ode to the hundreds of tips brought to you by the letters M and G (Mooney and Gab) over the years.

Make sure you visit the IBM Connect sessions database  for content going back to 2013. Now about 200 entries large.

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On Wednesday, February 10th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

We have begun adding sessions and content to the annual IBM Connect sessions database here at IdoNotes.  With content going back to 2013 there is almost 200 total sessions, slides, demos and videos.

There is a tag cloud for easy sorting and on the right a breakdown by track for more sorting options. Full text searches are also available for digging into specific abstract content. So head over to the IBM Connect sessions database  to find the slides you were missing or want to see and thank the authors!

All content is owned by the authors and is only embedded and not served directly from IdoNotes.  It is only a portal to find the publicly shared content.

For sponsors, if you wish to advertise in the database please get in touch as it will get considerable traffic as new content is added.

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On Tuesday, February 9th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

Session slides from IBM Connect 2016 are beginning to appear in the IBM Event Connect site and on public blogs / SlideShare.

Each year I bring all of the publicly shared slides that can be embedded or linked into the IBM Connect Sessions Database. They are sorted by track/topic and it is full texted indexed for quick searching to find just what you need.

As you can see this is what the uploads look like in the IBM Event Connect portal for IBM Connect 2016.  

Note that they use the hidden session ID that no one really shared this year. Previously we would use BP101 (for example) and it showed the track.  Now they are a giant glob of numbers that presenters didn't really tag their content with on titles or online. So once these are made available fully for download we will have to find a way to match and sort them

There is plenty more information to come on IBM Connect 2016. Make sure you subscribe to the blog, the newsletter (see the sidebar), iTunes and the YouTube channel to keep up. Heck even Twitter, the Facebook network and Instagram.

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On Thursday, February 4th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM kicked off IBM Connect 2016 in Orlando, FL. I summarize the Opening General Session and more for you.

The IBM Connect 2016 episode covers the following:  Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2016 OGS and day 1 review - IdoNotes Episode 145" »

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On Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM GO, the digital conference extension, now has IBM Connect 2016 listed. I like to think I had something to do with that from my IBM Connect 2016 preview post and video.

Sign up is free to access whatever content they will stream and allow you to replay. You will have to fill out a sign up form which then sends a verification email message.  Hilariously the welcome message has links to upcoming content...  from October 2015.  Sigh...
Continue Reading here" IBM Go now has IBM Connect 2016 available" »

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On Friday, January 22nd, 2016   by Chris Miller        

At CES 2016 this week we got a closer look at Keezel, which is your own portable VPN network connection device. You connect everything to Keezel and let it connect to public (or any) network to protect your data.

Keezel has reached agreements with numerous global VPN providers to allow this device to work pretty much anywhere you can get online. Setup was amazingly simple. Turn on the Keezel, connect all your devices to it and then have Keezel log into whatever wireless network you desire.  Be it at the coffee shop, airport, friend's house or even your own home.

The idea of Keezel is to use VPN to protect your data.  While you sit in the coffee shop, you really do expose a lot of data. (Read a great recent article right here on how easy it is). So with the Keezel, you are not only protecting where you surf , but also your private data like account numbers, login names, and yes even passwords.

Bonus number one is that Keezel will allow you to switch which country you appear from (switch location). This opens up the ability to watch or stream shows and visit sites that are normally restricted unless you are in that country.  Think Netflix and iTunes as examples.

Bonus number two is that Keezel has a large enough battery inside that you can also charge your phone. This reduces the time the Keezel can run, but it already has a long battery life according to their statements at CES (we hope to really test it shortly).

Keezel also has big plans to allow you to hook two of them together to allow access to your files at home. Basically the two devices would tunnel a private connection for you just like you were on your own network.

I should have my hands on a device soon after CES for testing and a full video review. They have a ton of packages for annual and even lifetime subscriptions.  There is even a limited bandwwidth free version.  Keezel is still on Indiegogo but their website is live as well.

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On Thursday, January 7th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

For those headed to IBM Connect 2016 prepare yourself for the Opening General Session that shows up as 2 1/2 hours long with a 45 minute break in the middle.

The normal time runs much like the first session listed above at an hour and half.  But this extra hour with no sessions and a break seems rather confusing. I am guessing we all leave the main conference hall for 45 minutes and then file back in for another large session.  Here is what is supposed to be included in each session slot.   Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2016 OGS is 2 1/2 hours long" »

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On Wednesday, January 6th, 2016   by Chris Miller        

IBM has provided some information on the IBM Connect 2016 Technical Labs. These labs have varied over the years and there is three this year.

You can view the full details right here at the conference site but here is a summary of each:
Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2016 Technical Labs" »

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On Monday, November 30th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM has tons of scattered information on IBM Connect 2016 in Orlando, FL. I try and summarize a lot of it in one place for you.

Here is a rundown of the show notes

• First of all we have a new location for IBM Connect 2016 at the Hilton Orlando.  We are no longer at the Dolphin & Swan area (video link)
• Things to do and eat around the new conference center location    (video link)
  Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2016 preview video - Lotusphere Podcasts" »
  
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  On Thursday, November 12th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM has launched IBMGO as a central source for all things around their global conferences.

The new social hub and free interactive digital experience for all IBM Global Conferences, available at any time, anywhere. Live and on-demand broadcasts of general sessions, keynotes and interviews as well as CrowdChats and exclusive access to Social VIPs.

The sad news is that IBM Connect, their global conference for IBM Collaboration Solutions, doesn't really seem to be listed or considered a global event on this new initiative.  IBM Insight, IBM InterConnect and IBM Vision are the only ones listed.

Sign up for the IBM GO site was simple and a confirmation email was to be sent (still waiting).
Update: I received an email about two hours later saying to reset my password.  Strangely I thought I was registering but I went ahead with the reset. I then got an immediate email with a reset password link.

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On Monday, October 26th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

I missed the live TED@IBM event through streaming (totally missed it in person) and am happy that the replays are online with free registration.

Make sure you sign up now or if you have already and have the password then go replay TED@IBM now.

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On Monday, October 19th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

For those not going to TED@IBM in San Francisco, CA on Oct 15, 2015 they have made it possible to register and stream the event.
While the cost to attend live is up to $10k (they report) it is only a half day event with two sessions covering 16 speakers, a lunch and a cocktail reception.  I really thought it was more intense than that so I am glad they are offering this free live streaming!
You can register for the live streaming right here.

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On Monday, October 12th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference has had a history of being located in Las Vegas. For Feb 15-18, 2016 it will move to Orlando, FL and be held at the Hilton Bonnet Creek.

Join us and learn how to grow and transform your business in today's highest value opportunity areas – Cloud, Big Data and Analytics, Commerce, Security, Watson, the Internet of Things and more. Explore new ways to work and new ways to succeed.

You can get more information and wait for registration to open in October right here

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On Monday, September 28th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

I had the opportunity to attend and present at Engage 2015 (formerly BLUG) in Ghent, Belgium. I wanted to provide a quick summary of the event in my monthly articles on SocialBizUG

Engage 2015 had an excellent keynote (that was recorded and will be available soon) with Kramer Reeves and other IBM speakers.  They really did not cover much new outside of some more new on IBM Verse as it prepared to become generally available right when the conference was going on. He shared much of the IBM vision and strategy and even a timeline on the future of the Lotus Notes client and server.  Everyone will be happy to know there is a definite timeline for the next eight years at least for what we know as IBM Lotus Notes.

Read my entire story over on SocialBizUG and subscribe to the monthly Sys Admin Tips.

Also make sure to watch the replay of the Engage 2015 keynote and my Flickr pics.

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On Wednesday, April 15th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

If you missed the Engage 2015 keynote address in Ghent, Belgium then you will be happy to know the replay is online and available for streaming.

Do not forget to catch up on my Flickr photo album from Engage 2015 also.  Please subscribe to all the IdoNotes videos on YouTube to keep up with things like the conference keynote playlist

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On Wednesday, April 8th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Engage (BLUG) 2015 photoset

I was happy to attend and present at Engage 2015 for my third or fourth formerly BLUG event. This year Theo took us to Ghent, Belgium to an amazing venue and city.  Here are my travel photos.

You can read more about my Engage 2015 experience in my Sys Admin tips newletter on SocialBizUG shortly (I will link it here later)

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On Friday, April 3rd, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM has released audio and presentation files from Business Partner day at IBM ConnectED 2015. They are available via PartnerWorld with login only.

This year at IBM ConnectED 2015, we hosted a track of sessions exclusively for our IBM Business Partners. We shared the vision and strategy for 2015. This track included a special Business Partner kickoff featuring Channelcorp’s Bruce Stuart as the keynote speaker. Bruce provided executive education on how Business Partners can successfully transition their businesses to a recurring revenue model in the cloud.

In addition to the kickoff session, we hosted five additional sessions covering everything from how to make money selling cloud, marketing best practices, incentives and lead passing, as well as two standing room only sessions: BP105: Successfully Selling Against the Competition and BP106: IBM Verse Business Partner Enablement.

You can log in with your IBM PartnerWorld credentials to get the content right here

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On Monday, February 23rd, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM has made the IBM ConnectED 2015 slides available to the public via SocialBIzUG (free registration required). These are the slides found from the IBM ConnectED site. You can still see all the speaker shared ones in the IBM Connect/Lotusphere/IBM ConnectED database.

We’re happy to announce that SocialBizUG.org members can now download presentations from ConnectED 2015! Visit our ConnectED 2015 community and click the Download presentations link next to the track names to start downloading your session files today.

Make sure you thank all the awesome speakers for their hard work.

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On Friday, February 13th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

I am happy to announce for IBM ConnectED 2015 (aka Lotusphere) the sessions database now has over 30 slidesets from presenters for 2015.  All are sorted by time and/or track. Searching is also available on the upper right.
Continue Reading here" IBM ConnectED and Lotusphere slides database updated for 2015" »

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On Wednesday, February 11th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

IBM has not communicated well that IBM ConnectED 2015 overall conference evaluation and individual session evaluation forms are online to be filled out.

The homepage of IBM ConnectED 2015 now has a link on the right (note the arrows) to take the overall conference survey. You will need to have an IBM Event Connect account for IBM ConnectED to submit the survey.  There are numerous sliders, questions and freeform text boxes looking for your input. PLease go and fill that out.  there is no free t-shirt or other giveaway as in past years, but they want to hear your thoughts.

Next up is the individual session surveys and these mean a lot to the presenters. Continue Reading here" IBM ConnectED 2015 overall conference and session evaluation forms online" »

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On Monday, February 9th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

Competing with http://t.co/5k9kfw4WDS and dropbox through new Connections file share features? Let's go @jeffschick #want #ibmconnected

— Ed Brill (@edbrill) January 26, 2015

IBM, via Jeff Schick, announced at IBM ConnectED 2015, a cloud file sharing service to compete with services like Dropbox, Box and Copy. While exact dates were not offered this is an interesting market for IBM to enter now.

This cloud based file sharing will be based on IBM Cloud Connections and is likely an entry point into upselling users on a full IBM Connections deployment. While an exact date for this offering was not made, the infrastructure beginnings are already in place.

What I found interesting was the late arrival of this offering when many organizations a deeply entrenched with services like Dropbox already. Most everyone you share with personally even asks what your Dropbox email address is. It seems certain services have become ubiquitous with the term file sharing and starting up usage on another service just for that offering would not be a draw.
Continue Reading here" IBM announced a cloud file sharing service at IBM ConnectED 2015" »

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On Monday, February 9th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

A whirlwind IBM ConnectED 2015 tour in under ten minutes. From the Opening General Session and onward. More of a peek instead of a full summary that needs to be written.

• IBM Verse was everywhere
• IBM Verse has a freemium model
• Digital Experience is a new way to work if you know what it is
• IBM Lotus Domino barely made a dent of a mention in the OGS
• The OGS went by quick
• Non-IBM speakers are delivering some high quality sessions (I have only seen two IBM sessions)
• The welcome party was not as it was
• The vendor floor was not as it was
• IBM Verse was everywhere again

See the video for more. Also catch up on the live blogging replay of the OGS on LotusphereLive from Carl and myself.

As for the week itself..
- a look at the annual backpack
- the Lotusphere cookie and #pretzelcookiegate
- IBM Verse again
- IBM Connections 5 sneak peek
- the vendor floor changes
- and tons more

The IBM Connect / Lotusphere sessions database is already filling with content. Make sure you visit that regularly as content gets added


See the video for the whole story and make sure you subscribe to the IdoNotes podcasts and Spiked Studio channels on YouTube

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On Monday, February 2nd, 2015   by Chris Miller        

I am happy to be back presenting at Lotusphere aka IBM Connect aka IBM ConnecED 2015, This time I am honored to partner with Wes Morgan for Sametime Deployment Do's & Don'ts and my own Considerations for the Cloud..
In each of these sessions I hope to bring you a unique perspective on decisions you will make while deploying your solutions and how to avoid the common mistakes.  Also we look at mistakes that come to haunt you after you have begun roll-outs. I sit in a unique position at Connectria in seeing so many varied deployments both in the cloud and on your own site.

Take a look at the agenda via the Session Preview Tool to get one of the remaining seats for IBM ConnecED 2015. You can get the current pricing at the registration page.

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On Tuesday, December 16th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

The Accell UltraAV 4x2 HDMI Matrix and Distribution Amplifier is now part of home media setup. With 4 HDMI inputs that can be split into 2 outputs across monitors or even multiple inputs on the same device.


The UltraAV 4x2 HDMI Matrix and Distribution Amplifier accepts signals from up to 4 HDMI enabled audio/video sources and distributes the signals to up to 2 HDMI enabled displays. The matrix can be configured to send any input to any utput,supporting all HDMI displays, monitors, projectors and TV's. Control the UltraAV Matrix using the included remote control or with the manual push-buttons.
Continue Reading here" Accell UltraAV 4x2 HDMI Matrix review - CES 2014" »

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On Tuesday, April 1st, 2014   by Chris Miller        

The Lync Conference 2014 was held in February 2014 and they had some case studies on stage. Tampa General Hospital sounds like they had bad admins

The second Lync deployment story session I attended was delivered by representatives of Tampa General Hospital. They opened by saying as recently as three years ago, the hospital was in the "IT Stone Age." This was defined as being dependent on a mainframe and using Lotus Notes, Sametime, WebEx and BlackBerrys. Three years ago, the hospital replaced Sametime with Microsoft OCS for IM and presence and moved to iPhones and iPads. Two years ago, they moved to Lync for not just IM and presence, but audio and video conferencing as well, decommissioning WebEx.

I mean they did have 3000 pagers still in use. I am not sure what Notes, Sametime and BlackBerry had to do with that Stone Age portion of their infrastructure.

Read more on the story here

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On Monday, March 17th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

With IBM Connect 2014 slides not posted on the official sites yet we are ahead of the curve offering over 55 slidedecks and videos embedded for your viewing in the slides database. Search, explore by track or browse by tag.



Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2014 slides and videos database now over 60 sessions inside" »

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On Wednesday, February 12th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Once again IBM chose AllianceTech for the evaluation system of IBM Connect 2014. They have been using AllianceTech for years for all the collection of attendee evaluations and RFID data.



As my post earlier alluded to, I have been having issues again. So today an email came reminding me to fill out evaluations. I saw they included an email address connectsupport@alliancetech.com which I proceeded to email with all my information. Here it went wrong again  Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2014 and AllianceTech for evaluations" »

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On Wednesday, February 5th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

Once again the annual IBM Connect evaluation (and speaker reports) is broken. For IBM Connect 2014 it seems you cannot add sessions it didn't see you enter nor see reports as co-speakers.



I won't go into previous year issues, but this year once again used RFID. Unfortunately it does not always catch you entering a room. So how do I add sessions? Not even my own are showing as me entering. No link exists to look up sessions and add evals.

Another problem I really have here..  Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2014 I just want to give feedback and you won't let me" »

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On Wednesday, February 5th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

I had the pleasure of presenting at IBM Connect 2014 with Celia Hamilton (SocialBizUG), Mike Smith (Turtle Partnership), and Mark Myers (LDC) on Empowering ICS Communities for SocialBizUG with IBM Connections. session BP303
Continue Reading here" IBM Connect 2014 slides for BP303 Empowering ICS Communities for SocialBizUG with IBM Connections" »

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On Tuesday, February 4th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

I recap IBM Connect 2014 day one activities and the Opening General Session (OGS) in this Lotusphere Podcast video. We dig into the backpack, the badge attendees wear and how the opening party went. From there it is all about the OGS:

• IBM Mail
• Sametime getting renamed
• lack of demos
• tons of customer stories with no demos
• Snuch in announcements
• Alcatraz the product

You can also catch the replay of our OGS commentary on LotusphereLive, just select 2014 from the archives.

See the video for the whole story and make sure you subscribe to the IdoNotes podcasts and Spiked Studio channels on YouTube,

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On Monday, January 27th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

CES 2014 allowed my to test the Geonaute 360 Camera and talk to product manager, Justin Schneller. We talk about the Geonaute 360 capabilities including the three 8 megapixel cameras, their custom software and how they fit mounts from GoPro cameras.

The Geonaute 360 Camera compact design has a micro-Sd card slot, video resolution 2048x1024 at 25 fps. The camera can do 360 degree shots in video, photo, burst and timelapse, helmet mounts, tripod mounts and more are available. The entire size is 1.65" by 2.83" and is light enough for even helmet mounts.

The GEONAUTE is designed to be subjected to extreme conditions. It is robust and IPX7 rated, can be submerged in 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. Dongle included you can use the device, even in the most extreme conditions

Continue Reading here" CES 2014 - Interview with Geonaute 360 Degree Camera" »

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On Thursday, January 16th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

While at CES 2014 I had the chance to interview Simon Tian, the CEO of Neptune Computers, and get hands-on time with the Neptune Pine Smartwatch. I have previously written about this and did a technical interview with their CTO. Above is the video interview from CES 2014.


You can read more on Spiked Studio.  Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel or playlist as tons of video are coming out the next couple weeks. Subscribe, subscribe is all I can say to keep up.

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On Tuesday, January 14th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

I will be live from CES 2014 this afternoon with the TechPodcastsNetwrk on TPN.tv from 1-3pm PST. But you can watch the live stream, interviews and more all day.

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On Tuesday, January 7th, 2014   by Chris Miller        

CES 2014 is days away and I will be part of two teams live (TPN and aNewDomain) broadcasting as well as doing my own reviews for Spiked Studio. Here is where to find me:

• TPN..tv for TechPodcasts live

 They have a great presence at CES including a booth where live interviews are done in 10 minute rotations. Then in the evenings there is uploaded floor reviews and replays.  We will be on Livestream.com and embedded everywhere plus a live blog, including my IdoNotes live page.

I will be on Tuesday afternoon from 1-3pm PST live and again Wednedday morning from 9-12pm PST

• aNewDomain will have a giant team there this year.  Look for us to broadcast live and cover ShowStoppers on Tuesday night with about 15 people.
  
  I will update the schedule shortly for the live broadcasts

The hashtag #CESlive will be in use by both the TPN team and GeekBeat (Cali Lewis and crew) so look for that across networks too.

If there is anything you want covered (think category and not an individual item) leave it in the comments below and I will see who is covering it

• Reviews already posted:
  Neptune Pine Smartwatch technical review - CES 2014
• Audio Technica Sonic Fuel ATH CKX7iS review - CES 2014

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On Thursday, January 2nd, 2014   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' UKLUG 2013 photoset

ICON UK 2013 (formerly ULKLUG) photos from IdoNotes are up.  As usual I try and upload my photos to Flickr where I sort by conference and location.  Here is most of the pictures.  I think I have a few strays yet to upload.

Make sure to check out all the IdoNotes sets and collections.

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On Thursday, October 10th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

I have submitted my Social Identity – Public, Personal and Private for a session at SxSW 2014. Of course I need your votes to make this happen!!


Here is the excerpt on the session:

As you use more social networking sites, your social identity becomes a blend of publicly shared and personal information.
Based on the upcoming book, see firsthand how innocuous things you share can be used to gain access to your private data and learn tricks to block those attempts.
We will explore the different levels of information and how to segregate the data. Learn techniques to isolate your private banking, credit card and health information, while still feeling comfortable sharing on public and personal sites.
By splitting how you participate in the online world of social networks, communities and even online finance you build a virtual wall.
We will also discuss the creation of a private and also a fake persona to help strengthen the barrier of your private identity and prevent identity theft.

I just presented a version of this last week at MWLUG and a smaller version in Australia.  The book is coming along nicely to coincide with the session and is on track to be ready by year end.

 What I ask of you is to go vote at SxSW (registration required to stop the spammers) and share this to your followers if you think it would be of interest to them too.

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On Monday, August 26th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

In just one week MWLUG 2013 will take place in Indianapolis. If you missed out on other events this year, this will be your last chance in North America to catch a user group event this size for 2013.

MWLUG 2013 provides you as an IBM professional many benefits including:

• Over 40 technical sessions and workshops
• Breakfast and lunch for two days
• Networking with other Midwest IBM Professionals
• Wednesday evening reception
• Thursday networking and fun event
• Access to experts of IBM solutions
• Free workshops

The agenda is available and I am happy to share I will present two sessions at MWLUG this year.

Social Identity - Public, Personal and Private on Thursday morning.  This session is new and hits on something that will likely scare quite a few of you as the test run did in AusLUG for a handful of people.  Just ask Paul Calhoun.

Connections Mail - As Simple as Rubik's Cube on Friday morning.  This session walks through the complexity, twists and proper turns to get IBM Connections mail running.

There is tons of beer, tours, IBM Champions and just plain old networking with others that do what you do.  So grab one of the last remaining seats!

Register here for MWLUG 2013

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On Thursday, August 15th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

I landed on Monday afternoon into Boston for ViewAdmin 2013 in a very rushed, fast and hard landing on American Airlines. We all looked expectantly at each other in my row asking the WTF question.  That was soon answered as we sat on the taxi way and everyone, I do mean almost everyone's, cellphones began ringing, vibrating and receiving text messages.  You know the rest of this part of the story.

With magic, WIS pulled off the ViewAdmin2013 conference with jumpstarts and three days of session including Friday while we were in total lockdown.  Do I think they could have pulled the plug at any point and people would have understood? Yes. Did we stop? No. It felt better to keep going, ignore the news since everyone was safe and there was nothing we could do at that moment and spend time making a new bunch of friends.  Inside of that group thrown together is people I call family. Not just other speakers but attendees that I have seen for many years at numerous events.

Susan and Andy already blogged some good summaries of their own and we all have the same general feeling.  Celia, Susie and the WIS team held it all together, the presenters gave it everything they had (even with one of us being sick one night) and put on a heck of a good content driven show.

Everyone made it to their next destinations without any incident that would even matter after the week. I grabbed some pics while there to show the isolation and emergency alerts (find me on Instagram) that Susan already tracked down. I even included a big ass chair pic that became our work area most of the day when we weren't presenting.

Let me also thank the Hotel Marlowe for added security, finding anything you may possibly want and even going extra steps with small things like late checkouts for anyone and finding food when deliveries could not be made at the end of the week due to the lockdowns

Strangely I landed so late even the airport was a zombie city which just carried the feeling all the way home

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On Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Join Scott Souder and Louis Richardson of IBM as they keynote BLUG (Benelux Lotus User Group) 2013 in Leuven, Belgium.

Scott Souder covers IBM Notes and Domino Social Edition, Lotus Traveler and more.
Louis Richardson discusses creativity crisis

This is an outstanding keynote worth paying close attention to all the details

************
View the list of all the IamLUG 2013 sessions and then make sure you register now while there are still seats. You can also register for this TackItOn session from the IamLUG website
**************

note: sorry for the angle as the full  tripod did not make it in time.

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On Friday, March 29th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

At BLUG 2013 I was asked to moderate the To email or not to email with panelists Stuart McIntyre, Luis Suarez and Louis Richardson. As we negotiated using collaboration platforms, streams and sharing over email there was terrific conversations from all three (and they stuck to their 1 minute per answer time limit).  The audience was engaged and asked great questions and provided some excellent feedback.

I had printed quite a few infographics for reference points just in case we needed starting points. However, I hardly had time to reference them during the session we had so much to cover.  Here are the links for some of the infographics I was referencing.

• Is Email Dead
• The Future of Email
• The Reign of Email
• Email Accounts - What They Say About You

A Google search will give you plenty more images and information to participate in the conversation.  Look for the hastag #lawwe to following conversations.

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On Friday, March 22nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' AUSLUG 2013 photoset

Outside of presenting sessions and the security TackOn with Paul Mooney at AusLug 2013 I did find some time to take a few pictures.  Here is the AusLUG 2013 set.

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On Tuesday, March 19th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

AusLUG 2013 is completed and Chris Crummey of IBM provided the keynote address.  Spiked Studio was asked to record it for everyone to see the kickoff of IBM Notes and Domino 9 gold code.

Make sure you subscribe to the entire keynote playlist as we record BLUG 2013 this week.

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On Monday, March 18th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

I am trying to fill out evaluations at IBM Connect and Lotusphere 2013 and I am having these issues with the system that runs it. Early warning and I hope they issue a fix quick.

P.S. my session numbers if they fix this is BP102 or 1050 for the four digit code.

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On Thursday, January 31st, 2013   by Chris Miller        

This is a packed 5 minute overview of the IBM Connect 2013 Opening General Session highlights including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, HitRecord, ForeSee, Kenexa, and analytics. I also need to get an interview at this Greenwell company too.

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On Wednesday, January 30th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Welcome to the BP102 presentation material for Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando, FL.  This is the complete list (and always changing) of the tools presented.  Come back to visit often as I plan on updating it as we go along.
Continue Reading here" Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 - BP102 Build Your Free Admin Toolkit" »

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On Monday, January 28th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Each year we add more video content from Lotusphere and IBM Connect and this year is no different.  We are stepping it up once again as Spiked Studio / IdoNotes will be doing short live broadcasts including the OGS with Carl Tyler on IBM Connect Live for Monday morning.

Using a combination of Google Hangouts the goal is to have some scheduled and some impromptu streams coming to you daily. Here is how you keep up. But I would subscribe on YouTube for sure.

• IdoNotes Live has been around since 2008 at http://www.IdoNotes.com/live   From there we broadcast and replay many videos that were recorded before and will have the Google Hangout available live.
• Circle me on Google Plus to know when we are going live and join in with questions!.
•  I will schedule some of the hangouts and then it will stream live on the IdoNotes YouTube channel. So you definitely need to subscribe there as well.  Other times we may just go live at a moments notice.

There you have it.  Live broadcasting on the channel from just about anywhere we desire.


P.S. do not forget about the new Notes client widget I made for the Lotusphere Podcasts!!

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On Thursday, January 24th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IBM has announced the majority of the IBM Collaboration Solutions Awards for 2013 advance of IBM Connect. Here is a list of the winners announced.  More will be presented live at IBM Connect 2013.

Social Business Solutions in the Cloud

• Intelecom UK ltd - winner
• ASI Informatique
• SBS Seidor

Create a Smarter Workforce

• Gemini Systems - winner
• Base22
• Social Smart Software

Create and Exceptional Customer Experience

• TECLA.IT - winner
• Prolifics
• Ascendant Technology

Innovation in Social Business Application Development

• ISW Development Pty Ltd - winner
• INTRANET Software & COnsulting GmbH
• GEDYS IntraWare GmbH

Extending Social Collaboration to Mobile Devices

• Teamstudio - winner
• e-Jan Networkjs
• iEnterprises

They also announced the finalists for the geographic awards.  Look for this list and winners at IBM Connect 2013 Business Partner Development Day.

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On Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Last year we witnessed and recorded an awesome tip on better using the iPad while at Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013. It was worth sharing the video again.

I am not yet sure where the pdf files will sit for you to access as they have not sent the annual online system email to give access. But once they do this saved me so much effort last year. I could then save the marked up PDF and send them to dropbox.

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On Friday, January 18th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

In previous Lotusphere years we had the unofficial Lotusphere database from Ben of Genii Software and this year for IBM Connect 2013 and Lotusphere a new version from Mat Newman of ISW launches.  What makes this database different than the Session Preview Tool from IBM we looked at last week? Watch the video above to find out.

Right before this published Mat also announced a mobile version!!

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On Tuesday, January 15th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

IdoCheckin is back for the fifth year at Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2013 due to your continued requests over the years. It really helps simplify finding people ad seeing where crowds might be.

The growth in 2012 was heavily attributed to Ben Langhingrich and his amazing FREE Lotusphere sessions database he spent countless hours developing. It was then hosted by  The Turtle Partnership who brought the application to mobile devices.

IBM talks constantly about location and mobile, so why not continue to showcase and grow it during Lotusphere 2013 and IBM Connect 2013 in two weeks?  Here is a refresher for you.

New locations?

Every meeting room, public congregating area and more at Lotusphere has already been mapped.  You will be able to check in everywhere you go!  There is a main check in for Lotusphere 2013 and also for IBM Connect 2013 to let us know you arrive on site.  From there, pick anyplace and share.

Is there prizes again this year?

Mayors at the end of the week for some randomly selected locations will have Bags 'O Schwag shipped to them (courtesy of Consultant In Your Pocket and Spiked Studio Productions).

How many locations will there really be and what about duplicates?

Have no fear.  Duplicates will be merged together daily.  The goal is to have pretty much each room and main area (like the Dolphin Fountain) available.  Being able to find friends and make swarms is the goal here.  I would love to see everyone get a larger super duper or epic swarm badge.  If you do not find a site, create it yourself or let us know and I will make sure it gets created shortly.

Ok, so I am in and want to participate. Where do I get the client, find friends and get started?

This is the easy part.  You can get a client for most types of phones, and even use the web interface.  iPhone/iPad/iPod, Android, Blackberry (Appworld link), Ovi and even more on the Foursquare site.

You can make sure to add myself and the Lotusphere relay account.  From there make sure you let it search against your Twitter, Facebook or other friends to get started.  On site just find people checking into places like you and add them in!

Look for more news coming shortly.  I created additional pages last year to show links and iwdgets for more of the locations to keep you up to date.

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On Monday, January 14th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

With the name changes at Lotusphere blending into IBM Connect, I decided to move Lotusphere Podcasts into IdoNotes podcasts and to launch an IBM Notes client widget.  The website/iTunes and RSS will redirect by this weekend.

Lotusphere Podcasts launched in 2008 and was built to:

Lotusphere Podcasts has brought interviews with the exhibitors, speakers, attendees and more from Lotusphere. We will also have times we are live!

The focus is to bring more video content from Lotsphere to your desk. Not everyone can make the journey to Lotusphere. So we now bring as much as we can to you

You can now find Lotusphere Podcasts as a playlist on YouTube and you can subscribe to that right here.

I also built a widget for your Lotus Notes client (as shown in the image above) that allows you to keep up right in your Notes client!  You can download the widget or drag it right into your Lotus Notes client widget area below.

Pay attention to the Arrows on each side and thumbnails on the bottom that allows you to navigate through the videos.  This will update on the fly as we add them down at Lotusphere/IBM Connect.

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On Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Time is almost up.  You have till Dec 31st to vote for your preferred Lotusphere / IBM Connect 2013 sessions and Birds of a Feather.

Why is this important? It helps them gear up the room sizes and planning on repeats. Head http://www.sponline.info  (don't ask me why that URL)

I forgot, yes mine is out there. But pick what you want to see is the most important thing.

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On Friday, December 28th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

On the monthly community call the 2013 selections for IBM Champion for Collaboration Solutions was announced.  Congrats to all the winners for 2013.

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On Tuesday, December 11th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

In what has become an annual announcement of discounted exams while at Lotusphere, the Collaborate for Success blog announces free and discounted exams again for IBM Connect 2013.

One of the biggest draws at this event has always been the certification testing and prep labs, and IBM Collaboration Solutions is pleased to announce that COMPLIMENTARY EXAMS ARE BACK FOR IBM Connect 2013. For the first time in years, we have approval to offer a spectacular pricing structure to both IBM Business Partners and our IBM clients and prospect, but conference attendees will have to act fast to ensure they receive their complimentary test(s). Here is how it works: 
 

• The first 500 IBM Business Partners who test at conference are eligible for two complimentary exams.
• The first 500 clients* who test at conference are eligible for one complimentary exam.
• Subsequent exams will be available for $75 each, a significant discount off the developed market price of $200 US (or equivalent).

So if you have been debating taking an updated or new exam, Lotusphere is always the best time to get the free or discounted pricing.

Read more on the original Collaborate for Success blog posting.

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On Monday, December 10th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At UKLUG 2012 in Cardiff, Wales another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.  Last up was the always hilarious Bill Buchan.  He discusses his dive into weight loss.

NOTE: I was told of an audio loss after about 7:30 and I am looking into it.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube or subscribe to keep up.

Related Posts:
Spark Ideas brings you Tony Holder at AusLUG 2012
Spark Ideas brings you Gabriella Davis at AusLUSG 2012
Lotus conference keynotes

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On Thursday, September 20th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At UKLUG 2012 in Cardiff, Wales another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.  Second up was Steve McDonagh.  Many of you know him from his presentation at the ILUG event.  Now see his personal story of sharing time.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube or subscribe to keep up.

Related Posts:
Spark Ideas brings you Tony Holder at AusLUG 2012
Spark Ideas brings you Gabriella Davis at AusLUSG 2012

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On Wednesday, September 19th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At UKLUG 2012 in Cardiff, Wales another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.  First up was Theo Heselmans.  Many of you know him as the coordinator of the BLUG event.  Now see some of his personal stories.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube or subscribe to keep up.

Related Posts:
Spark Ideas brings you Tony Holder at AusLUG 2012
Spark Ideas brings you Gabriella Davis at AusLUSG 2012

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On Tuesday, September 18th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

The UKLUG 2012 keynote address took place September 3, 2012 in Cardiff Wales.  Warren Elsmore opens the event with Uffe Sorensen providing the history of Lotus Notes and Domino.

Catch more information about UKLUG 2012 on the website.

You can also watch the Spark Ideas by the Nerd Girls recorded at UKLUG and all the events on the Spiked Studio YouTube channel and the Spark Ideas playlist

Related Posts:
AusLUG 2012 Keynote with Ed Brill
BLUG 2012 Keynote with Chris Crummey
IamLUG 2011 Keynote with Brian Cheng
Collaboration University 2010 keynote

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On Monday, September 17th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Live video for mobile from Ustream
I am broadcasting live for the UKLUG keynote at http://ustream.com/channels/iamlug come and check it out!

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On Monday, September 3rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

In pouring over the site updates for IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere) there was a small section on abstracts this year:

Mark your calendars! This year's Call for Abstracts will come earlier than ever. Put on your thinking caps, sharpen your pencils -- and check back shortly. As you know, sometimes the best seat in the house is the seat ON STAGE!

Prepare those social abstracts on how to help IBM maintain the leadership in the social business arena.

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On Tuesday, August 28th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I once again have the opportunity to present at SxSW for 2013 and need my readers help in giving it a thumbs up vote.  I love this event and I am building this session around a lot of the content in my new book in progress that I haven't blogged yet.

Creepification: Identity Management Is Not A Game

Online identity should be split into three well defined areas of public, personal and private. This session will provide the reasoning, tools, tips and best practices in creating virtual levels to your online identity. Intermingling the public and personal levels of identity is possible without sacrificing security. Isolating the private level through logins, restricted email accounts and passwords helps protect your social identity from creepfication. By splitting how you participate in the online world of social networks, communities and even online finance you build a virtual wall. We will also discuss the creation of a private persona to help strengthen the barrier of your private identity and prevent creepification.

The process is competitive, so every vote helps.  http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/5292

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On Tuesday, August 14th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Spark Ideas launched at AusLUG 2012 from the Nerd Girls.  One of the speakers was Declan Lynch explaining his adult fascination with all things Disney.

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At AusLUG 2012 in Melbourne, Australia another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Tuesday, April 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Spark Ideas launched at AusLUG 2012 from the Nerd Girls.  One of the speakers was Tony Holder explaining how running has changed the person he is today.

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At AusLUG 2012 in Melbourne, Australia another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Tuesday, April 17th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Spark Ideas launched at AusLUG 2012 from the Nerd Girls.  Leading the charge was Gabriella Davis with her excellent talk on being a world traveler and an introvert at the same time.

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At AusLUG 2012 in Melbourne, Australia another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Monday, April 16th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Finally up for Spark Ideas at BLUG 2012 was Eileen Fitzgerald with How Hiking Changed Her Life.  With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Thursday, April 12th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Third up for Spark Ideas at BLUG 2012 was Steve McDonagh with Art: Re-Discover Your Inner DiVinci.  With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Wednesday, April 11th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

 Second up for Spark Ideas at BLUG 2012 was Jess Stratton with No More Excuses.  With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Tuesday, April 10th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

With the huge success of Spark Ideas from Lotusphere, the Nerd Girls have continued on at the various user group events.  At BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium another round was done and Spiked Studio captured them all.  First up was Kathy Brown with How a New House Made Me a New Woman.

You can watch the entire Spark Ideas playlist on YouTube.

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On Monday, April 9th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' AUSLUG 2012 photoset

I took a few more photos than usual and this is mainly due to the excellent time I had in Melbourne and at AusLUG 2012.  The weekend after gave me some sightseeing and relaxation time with friends as well.

I will post my thoughts later.  Do not forget to watch the keynote from Ed Brill at AusLUG 2012.  The Spark Ideas are coming online as well and I will post them individually.

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On Friday, April 6th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I had the pleasure to present Domino Admin to Websphere Admin at AUSLUG 2012 in Melbourne, Australia. You can also expand these into full screen and vote on individual slides.

Feel free to browse all my presentations

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On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

AusLUG 2012 kicked off in Melbourne, Australia with Mat Newman introducing Ed Brill as the keynote speaker in this video replay.  Ed covered strategy and futures before handing it over to Stuart for live demos and Ted Stanton with more insight.  This keynote runs just at an hour and thirty minutes.

Visit AusLUG to get more information on sessions and register for their Lotus Connections community.

Also make sure to watch the keynote from Chris Crummey at BLUG 2012 in Antwerp, Belgium from the week before,  Spiked Studio is happy to have produced both videos for replay.  Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel to stay up to date on all the videos as they get released.

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On Wednesday, April 4th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' BLUG 2012 photoset

I was happy to once again get accepted to speak at the well run event BLUG in Antwerp, Belgium.  Theo does excellent organization work for attendees, presenters and sponsors.  As you can see from the pictures above, it was an exciting two days.  I was able to record and publish the keynote from Chris Crummey of IBM.  He did a great job showing how he uses tools in his job each day.

Theo then invited me to moderate a social panel with Luis Suarez, Paul Mooney and Femke Goedhart.  I was able to record and publish this panel as well. This turned into interesting conversation between the panelists and even audience engagement.  The topics were varied and none of them had any idea of the questions I had prepared in advance.  A fast moving hour that begged many to want more time.  I heard one attendee said they could have sat in that session throughout the day!

Speed sponsoring was hosted by Paul Mooney as he shortened the time as the rounds went on.  The sponsors had good feedback on the interaction with attendees and format.

The hotel did have it's wifi problems as expected, but nothing that was not easily worked around or dealt with.  Congrats to Theo and his entire team (special thanks to Sesil who suffered through being my room monitor).  You will find my slides for the session at the link on the right.

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On Monday, April 2nd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

An incredible social panel at the Belux Lotus User Group for the second year of BLUG 2012.  I moderate an excellent conversation with Luis Suarez, Paul Mooney and Femke Goedhart around such questions as the first item checked daily, is email social, is there social sharing bullying, social acronyms in business environments and plenty direct from the audience.

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On Tuesday, March 27th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Watch Chris Crummey of IBM at the Belux Lotus User Group (BLUG 2012) in Antwerpen as he covers the strategy, futures and enhancements to the IBM Lotus suite of software. He walks us through live demonstrations of his daily life using the technology and case studies on other businesses embracing the new IBM direction.

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On Saturday, March 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Yes, you are really witnessing three geeks in the pool during the BLUG 2012 welcome reception performing a synchronized swimming routine.

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On Friday, March 23rd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

See new post for the recorded playback of the BLUG 2012 keynote

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On Thursday, March 22nd, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I gathered the crew at SxSW 2012 for a live video taping of TheSocialGeeks.  We had quite a few laughs and also some serious discussions around privacy, the new ambient and passive location based apps that launched, like Ban.jo and Highlight and talked top news from SxSW 2012.

We also vote on the hottest app from SxSW, the launch of GoKit.me and the sale of Yobongo in just one year.

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On Monday, March 19th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

From February 27-Mar 1 2012 the IBM Partnerworld Leadership Conference will be taking place in New Orleans, LA.  IBM has decided to stream a select few sessions via the above channel.

If you are a partner you may find some value.  If you are a customer you can see some senior IBM people talking to attendees.  This includes Ginny Rometti, President and CEO of IBM.

I did hear the words "net net" used three times already.

Related Posts:

• IBM is on Twitter forty billion times, who do I follow?
• IBM Pulse 2012 - set to stream keynotes for first time
• Lotusphere 2012 sessions on YouTube
• User Blast BP102 from Mat Newman for Lotusphere 2012
• XPages Jumpstart JMP 101 from Mat Newman for Lotusphere 2012

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On Wednesday, February 29th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

The IBM Pulse conference has been around a while and it seems IBM Collaboration Services (ICS) will be there in a large amount this year talking mobility.  To aid in getting information out to the masses, and after they saw how Lotusphere works apparently, IBM Pulse 2012 will stream the keynote from Kevin Cavanaugh.
Continue Reading here" IBM Pulse 2012 - set to stream keynotes for first time" »

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On Tuesday, February 7th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I have now had the question "What was IBM Connect?" asked of me four times this week.  Each time I give the same answer and then thought, I really don't know what went on behind those closed doors.  I went online to hunt down some answers outside of IBM sites.  Unfortunately if you search for "IBM Connect" you are left with few choices to glean any real information.

Network World had a quick two page article:

Alongside Lotusphere, IBM launched its Connect conference this year to instill a line-of-business voice into the traditionally IT-focused Lotusphere conference, specifically with the aim of pushing its next-generation social business products and services.

The article states this is the inaugural year for the event.  I am unsure of the actual attendance since it was blended in and registration for just the Connect conference was held in a different location that registration for Lotusphere (even though Lotusphere attendees could go to Connect).

IBM Connect 2012 was aimed at the business executive with a bunch of case studies, hoping the C-level would bring along IT for Lotusphere and vice versa.  This would give IBM both sides of the puzzle in pushing the social business theme to both at once.  Previous IBM employee and now research analyst Alan Lepofsky was quoted giving a good summary:

"IBM Connect is going to be more about higher-level - more managers or CXO-level people who are learning about why they should be doing this...I think Connections is what they're doing a lot more work on now. I don't think you're going to see a huge increase in adoption of Lotus Notes. I think people are moving towards more agile, web-based, lighter-weight collaboration tools"

IBM (formerly Lotus) Connections was launched in 2007 and is about to hit version 4 as shown at Lotusphere.  It has been a fast growing software for IBM and they will be driving this home for years to come as it evolves into sentiment and analytics.

I would look for the dual conference approach to be back for 2013 with more growth for Connect.

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On Friday, January 27th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

Back at NLLUG 2010 I had the pleasure of presenting to the large group about the idea and planning stages moving to Sametime 8.5.x.  I went ahead and edited the video and got it online for everyone to see.

You may also watch the video in HD on YouTube.

Brought to you by Connectria, you leader in IBM software and hardware hosting.

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On Tuesday, December 13th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I had the pleasure of providing the technical assistance to make this happen.  The NerdGirls held another session at AusLUG 2011 by including a local panel of 4 people, then video conferencing in Mary Beth Raven, Kathy Brown and Susan Bulloch (her voice but as shown in the videos as Spankford Blogmonkey).

So headed over to Spiked Studio to see the session and check out all the other shows that are available to subscribe or stream including:

• IdoNotes
• NotesIn9 by David Leedy
• TheSocialNetworker
• BlackBerry Today
• TheSocialGeeks
• ConsultantInYourPocket

While you are there go ahead and click the magic Facebook Like button too :-)

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On Wednesday, September 7th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Spiked Studio Productions was happy to be able to provide some technical help while in Sydney at the kick-off year for AusLUG 2011.  Not only was the keynote address with Ed Brill recorded and streamable in HD, the NerdGirl panel will be online shortly as well.

So headed over to Spiked Studio to see the keynote address from Ed Brill and check out all the other shows that are available to subscribe or stream including:

• IdoNotes
• NotesIn9 by David Leedy
• TheSocialNetworker
• BlackBerry Today
• TheSocialGeeks
• ConsultantInYourPocket

While you are there go ahead and click the magic Facebook Like button too :-)

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On Tuesday, September 6th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I am happy to be back on the panel picker again this year for SXSW.  This time it is for a session titled Micro-communities: Consume Better Content Faster,    I first wrote about this back in late 2008 and have expanded more over the years, and maybe I was ahead of the curve saying this would be the way to consume information.  Here is the abstract: for SXSW 2012 that I need your vote on:

Content is being created at incredible rates across multiple networks. You have the drive and need to be part of all of them, but it begins to erode your productivity. How do you filter the content down into consumable pieces? Micro-communities! We are constantly adding new RSS feeds, streams and sources for our own consumption. Soon we file virtual bankruptcy and start over, leaving behind the sources we trusted. What we do not learn is the value that drew those sources to us in the first place. Learn how to use smarter filtering, tools and resources to streamline, remove duplication and find the most important information across the networks. Understand how to begin the process of building your own micro-communities through minimal steps. We will look at various social networks, like Google Plus, Twitter, advanced RSS readers and where to start in curating groups, lists, etc. "Mark all as read" is not a successful filter, micro-communities solve this.

SXSW also requires you make a list and answer some specific questions.  I thought hard to make the five general enough to encompass the whole idea and planning, but just direct enough to give you the tips you need:

1.        What is a micro-community?
2.        Can I build one in any social network?
3.        How much content can I consume when using micro-communities?
4.        Is a group or list the same as a micro-community?
5.        How can I build my micro-communities to avoid overlap?

So what I need from you is a vote to help get this one considered.  You can vote on the Panel Picker site.  Even if you are not going, I will be making this available so please add a vote!

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On Thursday, August 18th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

When I went to pull up the call information on the monthly Lotus community call for IBM Collaboration Solutions (formerly the Lotus technical and Education calls) there was a change to the process.  It went from totally anonymous to registered only.  Did this have anything to do with the results from last month?

I blogged "How Lotus fits into the IBM social strategy - finally explained" back on June 28th.

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On Tuesday, July 19th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

The View once again live streamed the keynote address that contained Kevin Cavanaugh, Ed Brill and Chris Crummey for Las Vegas, NV.

After years of it being said that attendees wanted the printed material, WIS announced it went green and would not print materials.

Debbie Lynd announced the Three Musketeers to the stage, Ed and Chris are up first.

Ed started covering:

• all the product releases, versions and some features
• three updates to LotusLive since Lotusphere
• Lotus Protector 2.8 about to ship (or is it IBM Protector now?)
• Traveler companion for iOS now caches the password
• Ed wants to talk about XPages Application Server licensing model

Chris Crummey stepped in for live demos:

• a Notes demo and social demo were on tap
• Live text was a huge showing of the initial part of the demo

From here I got lost in the flow and point of the demo.  He stated he wanted to do a demo where social and Notes were so blurred that you didn't know which was being covered.  But, then he switched over to the Connections experience which showed the defining line.  Social integration and analytics.

Ed stepped back in and highlighted LotusLive Notes.  They are using an optional FTP approach to send data into the staging servers.  I am still unsure what happened to good old replication that we here at Connectria provide.

"Social Mail" is their idea of next generation messaging.  Back to Chris for the demo.

Chris brings up iNotes as the demo client with Sametime, calendar and the OneUI look and feel.  Makes me think "Social Mail" will head towards my posting of Saying Goodbye to the Notes Client I did back around the #ibmexperience announcements.

Kevin Cavanaugh takes the stage and talkes of Sametime 8.5.2 launch in May.  You can watch a great webcast on "What's New in Sametime 8.5.2"

Chris launched a demo of the new web based IBM Connections client from the Mobile betas.  He shows the IdeaJam Ideation blog from the mobile device as well to vote on topics.  

Funny I would think working with files would be more important immediately than working with uploading photos.  I can see some companies wanting to do this, but more work with files would be higher on my personal listing.

He then went into the native Sametime client on the iPhone, including groups.

Kevin went back into more Sametime 8.5.2 tools like NAT and Bandwidth Manager.  (See above webcast for more info on those.)  Presence and IM on the Android devices including a SUT Dialer for calls and preferred numbers. As well as Sametime Meeting clients for BlackBerry.

Kevin announces that the Connections mobile client is awesome and ahead of schedule. It will be in all the major app stores.  I have heard rumblings from iWildfire not knowing about this coming.

From Kevin:

"Activity Stream services for IBM Connections 4 will also have an installable app to take things offline as well as pivot on those activities and launch into a full embedded experience using the Open Social 2 standard to launch actions from your mobile device."

With Open Social they can make items in the stream actionable.  Meaning click to do something.

After a brief Symphony demo showing off color coded web editing for Lotus Symphony by Chris, we moved to his iPad.  He mentioned iWildfire which I wonder how this fits with the new Connections mobile client.

He then shows the new dashboard, Morning Report, to show everything for the day on his iPad.  It sees the messages, calendar, tasks and more.  Basically back to the old dashboard of the Notes client. You can adjust some settings around showing unread and others. He uses the word analytics and the social business toolkit.  I think widgets.

Kevin talks about the openness being brought into the product line with Open Social standards and 2.0.  The work being shown was being run on an Open Social public sandbox site. We went to some demos of the work IBM has done and Kevin wants Open Social widgets to be brought to the next Lotusphere SocialSphere.

An interface was shown in a browser on the iPad, including file preview from the stream. Basically widgets hooking together social sites.

Ed then announced the IBM Champions, congrats to all the winners!

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On Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I got wind that IamLUG published their 2011 agenda this morning and what a line up it has.  Plus a few surprises.  I would suggest registering for IamLUG if you have not.

The speaker list is amazing and the sessions they are providing even more so at IamLUG.

Plus the TackItOn day is back by demand with full day (small fee) seminars on XPages for beginners, XPages 201 for advanced and Lotus Traveler implementaiton.  That is 3 days of content.

Oh and look for a few more surprises I overheard.

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On Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

During the keynote today from Ted Stanton (his bio from UKLUG):

Ted Stanton is a World Wide Executive Consultant for IBM's Software Solutions Group. Ted is committed to maintaining high customer satisfaction while helping customers align software solutions with their strategic business goals. Ted’s strong technical background includes over twenty IBM product certifications allowing him to proactively work across technical teams and line of business to build solutions and articulate the business value, ROI, and transformation required for success

He confirmed that over the next two years that IBM will be retiring many of it's brand names by the end of 2012.  Products (think Sametime, Connections and more) will not be going away at all. Brands like Lotus, Websphere, Tivoli and DB2 will be folded in.

We have already seen this with IBM Connections and now IBM Sametime just last week.  Many were questioning and looking for a statement from IBM.  I think we have some answers they were looking for.  This is an overhaul of direction and branding to make IBM seen more as a single package, instead of multiple requirements.  For example installing Lotus Sametime was including Websphere Application Server, DB2 Enterprise and possible Tivoli Directory Integrator.  With the change you will install IBM Sametime that includes an IBM Application Server, IBM Data Enterprise server and IBM Directory Integrator.

Earlier this year I wrote and article for another online publication which I will post in later today in a follow up article.

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On Monday, May 23rd, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Get ready to talk with a panel of experts including business partners and IBM as we talk about "What's New in Sametime 8.5.2" tomorrow at 10am CST.  You can still register to learn all about the new items, enhancements and fixes.

You can register for the May 18th 2011 at 10am CST webcast right here.  If you want early notice make sure you subscribe to the Consultant In Your Pocket portion of the newsletter in the upper right of the blog.

Also visit our sponsor for the event, GSX for the best in Sametime monitoring tools.

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On Tuesday, May 17th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Just a reminder that the Consultant In Your Pocket webcast series is in full swing with DDM & DCT: What a Team! tomorrow at 10am CST.

Have you fully dipped into Domino Domain Monitoring with modular documents, collection hierarchies, event workflow and reducing the noise through filtering?  Have you completed a run of the Domino Configuration Tuner ?  Explore all the DDM options, choices and variables to get the most out of your Domino environment.  Use DCT to find out what areas to improve and what to monitor closely with DDM.  Use some of the new automation in DDM to correct problems before you even know they existed.

Join this FREE webcast to learn all about these underutilized features that come free with Lotus Domino.

Then on May 18th come and learn all about What's New in Sametime 8.5.2 with a panel of experts.

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On Tuesday, May 10th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Social Business and the Online UX Lab

Join Velda Bartek and Mary Beth Raven, senior members of the Lotus User Experience team, in a conversation on doing business by getting social in the new Online UX Lab. They will share with you how you can take part in this new approach to discussing your ideas and thoughts on the Lotus portfolio.

You can register for this Consultant In Your Pocket event  right now!!

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On Monday, April 25th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

IamLUG 2011 opened registration and already has a slew of people registering.  I would suggest if you want to attend the third year of the North American Lotus User Group gathering, register soon for the vent taking place August 1-2, 2011.  Then stay for the bonus day.

The team there has put on an awesome event each year, always seeming to add surprises and new features.  I am told there is some new things again this year.

TackItOn is also back after huge success last year.  On August 3rd, the day after, you can attend a full day training event for only $495,  With some more coming, this year you can attend:

• XPages Jumpstart - by TLCC
• XPages 201 - by Matt White
• Lotus Traveler installation and administration - by Paul Mooney and Teamstudio

Imagine two days of FREE sessions, networking and learning.  Then followed by a technical training day on some of the newest technology by the best in those areas for only $495.

Head over to IamLUG and get registered for 2011.  The team there can't wait to see you come for the first time or be a repeat attendee!

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On Monday, April 25th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

In this April 2011 edition I talk about Exceptional Web Experience and the following:

*From the Editor: Chris' 0.50000 XWE
*From the IdoNotes Mailbox : Is Macintosh Taking Over the Conference Speakers
*Renames and Domino
* Quick Tip: Enabling Network Compression and Encryption on Servers
*From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Port Compression and Encryption

Make sure you also:

* Register for IamLUG 2011!  The doors are open for attendees, speakers and sponsors.  The event will be FREE for all attendees and is being help Aug 1-2, 2011.

* Register for TackItOn again right after IamLUG.  This full day (paid) event brings Matt White for XPages 201 and Paul Mooney for Lotus Traveler

* Sign up for both the Consultant In Your Pocket and IdoNotes newsletters in the upper right corner of the blog.  Get early notices before the public, webcast information and commentary not found on the blog.  Did I mention the two free whitepapers on DCC and Search in Lotus Notes just for signing up?

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On Thursday, April 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Paul Mooney takes time out of his schedule to talk about:

• Lotus Traveler seminar he is presenting at cities globally with Teamstudio
• UKLUG
• IamLUG
• Notes Net closing
• Symantec Vision
• AUSLUG
• PlanetLotus oddities

You can also watch this video in HD on the IdoNotes YouTube and keep up with all of the Spiked Studio shows.

Catch the newly launched BlackBerry Today!

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On Thursday, April 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

IBM is holding the Exceptional Web Experience Conference in just under a month.  This was formerly known as the Portal Excellence Conference in past years.  It will be May 16-19 back in Florida to be exact.

The event sounds great so far, but I went in and saw the public agendas as they were being updated.  Strangely there are sessions being decided before the speakers were even selected for the event.  I know organizers like to see certain topical areas covered, but making a whole abstract and not having the skilled person on tap to produce it is very strange.  See the example here:



So how does one gauge whether or not to attend if you do not know the content will be presented in a relevant format?  The above image was a sample from multiple pages.  I asked this question long before I knew if I was speaking or not at the event.

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On Wednesday, April 20th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I just noticed the blog post from IamLUG.  Seems the North American Lotus User Group is back for year #3 and you might want to get in and register early this year.


Related:
IdoNotes Episode 107 - Lotus Connections 3.0.1

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On Monday, April 11th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' BLUG 2011 photoset

I had the pleasure of presenting at BLUG in Antwerp, Belgium last week run by Theo Heselmans.  I wanted to give my impressions, takeaways and photos from the event.

• I arrived just in time for the keynote session.  I was impressed with the immediate sense of organization I felt
• The keynote was a bit dry for some reason and Kevin had some slides with very tiny font.  You can read the entire live blogging of the keynote from myself and others right here.
• The session varied in length from 45 minutes to two hours.  A pleasant surprise
• The abundance of sponsored drinks was awesome
• Lunch was very European as expected
• The variance of sessions was nicely selected across the tracks
• The way speakers and sponsors were treated was amazing and greatly appreciated
• Sponsors once again learned it is hard to do Speed anything
• The organized night out with a tour guide was great and gave a quick overview of the city history.  Followed by a great cozy dinner (if you call all of us laughing loudly in a cellar cozy)
• The bags were cool, similar to the ones at NLLUG last year
• The wifi seemed to work 99% of the time all around the hotel
• I wish some of the lighting over the screens was not there as it made it hard to read from the room (I found out seeing other presentations)
• It is always great to see people from other events and to hang out with friends you only see a few times a year in person
• The giveaways at the end were very impressive and giving from the sponsors

I know I missed a bunch of things I will add in later.

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On Tuesday, April 5th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Scroll below for my comments as well

I was not shocked nor is it April Fools. See the entire BLUG set (so far) right here on Flickr.

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On Friday, April 1st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I am happy to share my slides from BLUG 2011 titled Seeing Shapes in the Clouds. This session walks through numerous architecture designs for moving to the cloud and questions to ask your cloud provider.

Do not forget to watch the numerous replays from the conference on YouTube

Browse all of my shared presentations

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On Thursday, March 31st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Scroll below for my comments as well



BLUG kicked off with a keynote from Kevin Cavanaugh. Keep up with my comments and the CoveritLive event.

• I found it interesting how they segmented parts of the symposium at Lotusphere around social business.  While each area does (definitely) have different needs, it seems many businesses are missing from the core focus. I know the larger monetary content is in those categories they covered.
• Kevin had a slide showing mainframe era days, into departmental the introduction of the PC, Internet based and now social.  Interestingly, it isn't the introduction of social now.  It is learning how to better share, digest and filter the data.
• Kevin still faces companies not wanting to talk about social business.  Is it the package that IBM is selling in general or the idea of social business is what came to my mind first.
• Kevin brought up the point that making social business an IT project is destined to fail.  He makes a good statement since the back end architecture has nothing to do with getting buy in and participation from everyone in the company.  Without that, the data is never shared, organized and promoted.
• Kevin then launched into a very tiny slide on the IBM Social Business Framework
• Social connectors tie together social services and analytics.  Layers of software to bring social networks together to give a better rounded view of social data.
• The Social Business Tolkit is an interesting piece with gadgets, iWidgets, open AJAX ad iCal for example.  I hope these are to bring more corporate data to the social front and not just always pull external data in for consumption.
• Kevin moved into a live demo of Project Vulcan.  I might be off here (verifying) but he specifically said they went to a browser approach to move away from the heavy client
• Interesting as Kevin flips between Vulcan, LotusLive and then the rich notes client with integration via Plugins to LotusLive and cloud type architectures.  Which is the right path?

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On Thursday, March 31st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

I am headed back to SXSW Interactive for the next four days to be part of one of the largest social media events that takes place.  This is where some top sessions on being social are presented and new products are launched to change the immediate social landscape again.

The entire TheSocialGeeks podcast team (ok minus JeffIsAGeek) will be there in full force.  If you are trying to be social and do business, you should be listening to that podcast already.  If not , subscribe on iTunes.

I will be posting tons of video, audio and comentary over at TheSocialNetworker blog and podcast on iTunes.  This will be quiet for the most part until mid next week.

I will be on Twitter and checking in via a myriad of location services (Foursquare, Gowalla, Tri-out, Whrrl, Latitude) during the week.  Remember, IdoNotes on everything.

I am already knee deep in new products (Yobongo, HeyTell, Beluga and some launching there shhhh).  Plus a bunch of other requests that you will see as shows or podcasts.

So Get Social and plan on Doing Business.

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On Thursday, March 10th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

If you missed out on IdoSphere two weeks ago, you should be happy to know that over 17 hours of replays are now online. Some of the best speakers gave new presentations with some updates of others sprinkled in. Topics included Domino Security, XPages, VMWare, Users and certifiers, Sametime 8.5.1 and more. Here is a quick sample video:



You can register for replays with either Paypal or Google Checkout and access is granted within ~24 hours. Did I mention all 17 hours are only $45 USD?

Some of the speakers included:

• Carl Tyler
• Kathy Brown
• John Head
• William Malchisky Jr
• Luis Guirigay
• Bob Balaban
• see the site for all of the speakers...

Fair warning, as more content is added the pricing will go up. So getting in now guarantees future access to all content, as much as you want to replay, at no additional cost.

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On Monday, February 28th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Thanks to everyone that either spoke, attended or just signed up to get recording access.  I am happy to say that the new IdoSphere site launched with more enhancements:

• Over 17 hours of videos are now online
• The main site was redone using the user group template format
• The recordings are secured for members
• The recordings are formatted additionally and available with mobile devices (if you can log into the site with the mobile device)
• Slides are being attached to session entries as they are sent in
• Speaker profiles are built with contact information
• Videos speakers sent were slipped right into the recordings, no need to additionally launch or watch.  Editing took care of it

If you missed out on the chance to register or attend, I would still sign up now before new content is added and pricing increases.  It is currently only $45 USD for unlimited access.  Above is a sample of what you missed

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On Monday, February 21st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

You can also watch this video in HD on YouTube

IdoSphere is just days away and the agenda is up with a minor time slot change.  The speaker bios are in place and each track will have nine sessions over the two days.  Did I mention it is only $35 for nine technical sessions, live speaker Q&A and then unlimited access to the recordings!
Genii Software has published an amazing sessions database as shown in the video above.  You can see not just the normal info, but tweet the session, find books on the topic, webcasts and tons more.  This is the start of something big for all events!  watch the video to see how to get connected live! Or download it from the links on Ben's blog.

Here is Version 2 of the IdoSphere agenda

Rumor has it that certain speakers have even blogged links to a discounted registration.  Shhhh.

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On Friday, February 11th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

What an amazing line up of speakers and topics for IdoSphere.  All presented live to the comfort of your desk or home office.  The online event takes place February 15-16 2011 and is all live!  Most of these sessions have never been seen at any other event.

Your registration of $35 gets you full access to all sessions, live Q&A with the presenters and access to all of the recordings of the event.  Head over to take a look at the agenda for the event and get registered.

Rumor has it that certain speakers have even blogged links to a discounted registration.  Shhhh.

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On Wednesday, February 9th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Foodspotting is a social network combining finding the best food dishes with Foursquare check-ins, Facebook Places and Twitter.  I had the pleasure of talking to their community manager and thought bringing this tool to Lotusphere made perfect sense.

The idea is not rating of restaurants, but you showing off your favorite foods you find with a picture and a Foursquare checkin.  The application then shows the best dishes to be found around you.  There are plenty of times people are looking for good food around Lotusphere.  This shows it off, let's you become an expert in food categories and share the location.

As a foodseeker, you can…

    * Explore your city or neighborhood to see the nearest, latest and best foods around you.
    * Look up a restaurant and see what’s good there.
    * Find a particular dish that you’re craving.
    * Bookmark foods you want to try by clicking (“Want it!”)
    * Vote up foods you’ve tried and loved (“Nom it!”).
    * Access guides from experts like the Travel Channel to see the nearest recommendations to you.
    * Follow people and guides that you trust, and places and foods that you love.

As a foodspotter, you can...

    * Share where to find a food you love by uploading a photo (“spotting it”), emailing it to food@foodspotting.com (you’ll need to add details from the website), or adding it to a guide.
    * Complete guides, scavenger hunts and challenges to earn badges and recognition.
    * Become a dish expert by spotting five or more foods of the same type.
    * Earn virtual tips for making quality contributions to the Foodspotting community.

Make friends with Lotusphere and myself on Foodspotting to get started!

Foodspotting integrates heavily with Foursquare, Facebook Places and Twitter (sorry Gowalla users for now).  It is available in the App Store for iPhone/iPod Touch and if you track me down I know about the Android beta and where to go.

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On Thursday, January 27th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

It has been a few weeks and everyone needed an update on the location services for year three of IdoCheckin.  Foursquare is in full swing with pretty much every venue created and ready to go.  From presentation rooms, to labs and more.  It is there.  Let everyone know where you are while at Lotusphere.  Prizes are being shipped down as well.

I have personally added Foodspotting to my arsenal to check in and say where the great food dishes are.

I am hoping we can get at least 500 people to check into the OGS room to get the Super Swarm badge.

• Genii Software (Ben) has embedded the check in ability into the Lotusphere sessions database for each room.
• Turtle Partnership (Gab & Tim) are finishing touches on embedding it into the Blackberry and iPhone and iPad apps as well
• All of the Boardwalk restaurants are on Foursquare

Everyone needs to remember:

• there are prizes!!
• it is voluntary
• Fun
• Include pictures
• Find friends easily
• See swarms of people

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On Thursday, January 20th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Day #5. A daily posting for a work week of the best and worst of 2010 in the Lotus world from my eyes.

Best - Growth of large scale LUG's
There was an amazing insurgence of country wide Lotus User Groups globally.  It is amazing to see really.  From 80-300 people gathering for 1-3 day events all over the world.  Incredible highly technical sessions, all given for free.  Speakers paying their own ways to share information.  Sponsors understanding the value of reaching those you do not find at other venues.  Then include the time the organizers put into making it happen (I speak from experience).  I am scared to list any of the growing groups because I know I will miss some there is so many.

The downfall is the drive for people to get to paid events.  Why pay for a two day event when I can get much of the same content free.  Lotusphere Comes to You seems to be more marketing, while the LUG events seems to be technical.  Webcasts (yes that is my link) are growing incredibly fast, giving everyone a chance to get involved and learn.  Without leaving their desk.

I hope this trend continues.  Many of the user group leaders work together.  Many use the same template developed by Matt White.  We share ideas, trends and stories.  We share pains, concerns and the very drive to bring it back each and every time.  All we ask for is you to come each time.


Worst  -  Little spats across the Lotus universe
They popped up like teenage acne. Little disagreements here and there.  It seems they come in waves with Lotusphere being a downtime each year.  Our world of Lotus software is quite small to begin with.  We have a limited number of bloggers and evangelists in the grand scheme of the number of users globally.  

Humorously, I wrote on this very same topic back in July 2009 when I said we all need to migrate to the Mauveverse.

Fighting between what constitutes industry leaders is something I have not encountered in other areas we deal.  Normally it is a strong stance and wall of support for everything that goes on.  Sure, they may work together to complain against the software or hardware producer for features or functions, but they stand together.  Maybe I am just being naive, even after sixteen years and running one of the longest Notes related blogs, completing 8 years in a few weeks.

I am not sure where to take this one.  Does anyone know?


********Related Posts*******
See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #5 of 5
See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #4 of 5
See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #3 of 5
See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #2 of 5
See the best & worst from Lotus 2010 day #1 of 5

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On Friday, January 7th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

The NerdGirls band together to talk about Lotusphere 2011, community growth, hashtags, buttons, online communities, community feedback, having daughters get involved and more.

If you want to track them down while at Lotusphere, their Twitter id's are below, you can also follow the LS11 speaker list or use IdoCheckin - location services for Lotusphere!

• Mary Beth Raven and LotusDesign
• Susan Bulloch
• Kathy Brown
• Francie Tanner and Panagenda
• Eileen Fitzgerald and GSX

For those interested in participating more in their communities:

• Zazzle for t-shirts
• LinkedIn group
• Skype chat (contact one of the above)
• NerdgirlsRule on Twitter

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On Thursday, January 6th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

IdoSphere is growing fast and the agenda is being finalized to be published.  I wanted to give you a sneak peek at the amazing list of speakers and topics coming.  There are more in the next days to be added to cap off the full event. Most importantly I did not want you to miss out on the discount pricing by registering by December 25th 2010.  For only $25 USD you get live access to all of the presentations, including live Q&A with the presenters .  This price comes with full access to all of the recordings after the event concludes. The full abstract of each session will be posted on the main IdoSphere site shortly.  The titles lone speak volumes!

Speaker	Session
Bob Balaban (Looseleaf Sofware)	Debugging Notes Java Agents with Eclipse
Carl Tyler (Epilio)	VMware 201 - Getting Past 1st Base
Jess Stratton (Solace Consulting)	Painlessly Moving Users to a New Certifier
Joe Litton (w\ Bill Malchisky)	Linux Desktop: From OS Install through Running the Applications
John James	Securing Lotus Domino for the Web
Dennis Heinle	Android 101: Introduction to Android in the Enterprise
William Malchisky Jr (Effective Software Solutions)	Lotus on Linux Report - Technical Edition
Mitch Cohen	Controlling Your Population - Going Beyond The Wizards
John Head	The Notes/Domino Application Development Competitive Advantage
Luis Guirigay	Got Problems? Let's Do a Health Check
Alex Kassabov (w/John Head)	Super Feats of Integration:  XPages w/Symphony, Sharepoint & Office
Jonathan Distad (Perficient)	Sametime 8.5.1 - Do's Don'ts and Other Considerations
Lance Spellman (Workflow Studios)	(TBA)
Kathy Brown	(TBA)
Sean Burgess	(TBA)
John Head	(TBA)
Those SNAPPS guys	(TBA x2)

If you have any questions, please send us a note found at the contact pages on Consultant In Your Pocket.  If there are firewall, network or other concerns please send them along.

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On Monday, December 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Each year we attempt to pull together as many of the publicly posted sessions as possible.  I know most like people to come to their blogs, and there is nothing wrong with that.  But hopefully we can get the content posted, tagged and still linked back to postings and additional files on the blogs as needed.

Remember, you can post to the event or tag your presentations properly.  It was chosen #ls11 as the proper tag, but beware there are other images and postings out ont he web already using that tag as well.

Either way, join in the the Lotusphere 2011 event on Slideshare.

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On Thursday, December 9th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

With the massive amounts events going on and content being produced, not everyone can be everywhere all the time.  Spiked Studio Productions, through Consultant In Your Pocket, decided to bring the events to you. The list of speakers already confirmed is amazing and all the presentations will be live for questions & answers.  Recordings will be made available soon after in case you miss a single session.  Here is a brief list of confirmed speakers: Bob Balaban (Looseleaf Sofware) Carl Tyler of (Epilio) Jess Stratton (Solace Consulting) Lance Spellman (Workflow Studios) William Malchisky Jr (Effective Software Solutions) Joe Litton Some of the SNAPPS crew

Can’t make it to the big Lotus conferences?  Want to see great sessions, but can’t get the boss to send you to Orlando?  Going to the big conference, but want to see some different sessions not found there?   Join us February 15-16, 2011 for IdoSphere.  Two days of sessions, all from the comfort of your chair via live webcasting!

Ever go to a conference and miss good sessions because two or more were happening at once?  Each session at IdoSphere will be recorded, so you can catch all the sessions you missed, for no extra charge.

These are sessions that are NOT being presented at upcoming conferences.

There is an amazing cast assembled with more to come and all that is needed is you.

For full information on the event and to register, head over to the Consultant In Your Pocket page for IdoSphere.

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On Wednesday, December 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Radicati Group had a webinar this morning on Instant Messaging Market: An Evolving Landscape that piqued my interest.   The panel that was put together included:

• Jan-Joost (JJ) Rueb - CEO of eBuddy, an awesome aggregator of IM services
• Eric Young - Sr Director of Field Services at Facetime
• Dave Kong - Product Manger at Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Sara showed the numerous reports they just released on eDiscovery, email platform for service providers, this one and wireless email market.  She then entered the panel discussion before open Q&A.  Her question in italics and my summary following.

Why is IM still a competitive market?  Microsoft gave the best answer saying IM is part of the broader solution and framework.  Clearly it has value that communication may start with IM and escalate or be solved with the capabilities such as web conferencing.

With more and more solutions forming federation agreements, how is this changing the IM landscape and what you all are doing?  All aggregate or federate a connection in some form,  Outside of Facetime that provides a service around the evolution and merging of enterprise and public networks.  Security is something you want multiple layers.  Some is built into the platforms, the rest is needed to be applied.

Security continues to be a concern for business and consumer users.  How well do you think the current IM security technology is keeping up with IM threats?  People are not advertising the fact they are being hit by malware over IM channels.  Some enterprises cannot tell if it came from the web, IM or even brought in from home technology devices.  In general IM has had more security with things such as presence control.

All speakers agreed secure authentication procedures should be used.  From encrypted wifi networks to SSL.

Will IM move to a bit more mobile technology? It is a personal way of communication so it makes sense to use your phone.  But the need for advanced capabilities, it is a messaging system and some features will need a computer.

Will IM move to be a simple feature of social networking? Speakers had some opinions and didn't commit either way.  Each is a unique piece of a social network, so needing a social network to just have IM and presence will not make sense.

Does eBuddy connect with or work with SMS networks? He can see it happening, but not short term.

Is Microsoft planning support for iOS and Android for Instant Messaging? Microsoft is looking into different devices right now, but no timeframe .
************************************************************************

My summary
She really didn't dig into anything hard or not presented in their slides.  Quite disappointing with the group she brought together.  I hoped for more content and deeper questions about market and movement.  I wish Lotus Sametime had been part of this as well as it fit right into the conversation numerous times.  I left slightly empty.

***********************************************************************
Sara Radicati did the brief introduction at the very beginning and let each vendor take about five minutes to talk about their product.  Read on that summary below
Continue Reading here" Live blogging: Instant Messaging Market from Radicati" »

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On Thursday, December 2nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' ILUG 2010 photoset

I wanted to log my own thoughts if not for myself, but everyone to read about ILUG 2010.  This not being my first time at ILUG, I have pre conceived notions of what to expect and I am never disappointed by the program that Paul, Eileen, Warren, Kitty, Matt, Coatise, Kerr, Julian, Mike, Steve (and more names I know I am missing), put on each time.

The organization of the event rivals none (ok maybe IamLUG but I am very partial to that one for my own selfish reasons,LOL.  That is a joke people).  The session layout, sponsor room and layout and wide array of content is incredible.  The relaxed atmosphere makes everyone want to connect.  This is not a suit and tie function.  it is the ability to be comfortable and get deeply technical or have fun while learning.

I sat through sessions on User Experience design and tools (listen to me interview Mary Beth Raven on IdoNotes Episode 85) and then went to an amazing session on LEGO from Warren. It gave technical insight as well as showed a personal touch.  Not like we didn't know Warren loved LEGO.

Then you get to the social aspect.  Yes there is long night of dinners and then at the hotel bar.  But, that is where the social communication takes place.  I made more business connectivity in those scenarios than sitting in a session.  I presented my topic on DDM and DCT and welcomed anyone that came up to ask questions or just say hi.  Every speaker, sponsor and attendee made themselves available and hopefully appeared open to any conversation.  There is always the bubble effect where many of us crowd together that only get to see each other in person a few times a year.

I did notice something new.  People tended to walk off and just join into other groups or individual conversations on a constant basis.  There was no giant magnet or static place someone stayed.  Sit here, eat, move to table.  Sit here, drink, move to other person/group.  It was a social moving circle and meeting new faces at the same time.  I had a few attendees come over together in sets of two or three to make the approach easier and have an anchor of familiarity when they wanted to talk.  This works very well and is something that should be noted and taken forward for other events.

I could go on about each session I attended, but many are showing online from the speakers.  You can scroll through and judge for yourself how much hard work and effort goes into an event where speakers do this for the community.  Sure you can gain a few Twitter followers, or Facebook network connections, news sharing from RSS, or location friends.  But that is the goal.  Share, connect.  Wait, that was my speedgeeking session too.  Filter, Share, Connect.

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On Monday, November 15th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Last week I had a snip of his talk, now we have the entire talk up to the snippet I posted.  Both available for your streaming pleasure on YouTube.  Much thanks to Jennifer Stevenson of RIM (her Twitter and blog accounts) for capturing this much and getting me the files as she left ILUG.

Enjoy this amazing presentation by Steve.

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On Monday, November 15th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

We had the incredible pleasure to have Steve McDonagh throw together a hilarious session on the history of Ireland.  While some was not safe for work, this clip is.  The whole session went on to end with a standing ovation that was so well deserved.  People were crying in laughter at many points.  Cheers to Steve for putting this together.

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On Friday, November 12th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

NOTE: Due to the high number of geeks, the bandwidth went dry like a midwestern summer drought.  We recorded locally to be edited and uploaded for replay instead.

Live from Belfast, we will stream (and record) the keynote of ILUG 2010 with Kevin Cavanaugh at 9am GMT (4am EST in the USA) using uStream.

You can watch now or see the recording posted later.

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On Wednesday, November 10th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Tri-State LUG kicked off in NYC with over 100 attendees from all over the tri state area and a few stragglers, like myself.  Mitch Cohen did a fine job opening the event with excellent organization compatriot Kathleen McGivney.

Alistair took the stage to cover the following:

• Canadian Thanksgiving and Columbus Day (yes he started there)
• Major shifts in collaboration

Alistair took the approach of where collaboration is headed.  Lotus began with Smarter Planet in 2008 with the theme of making people smarter to be a Smarter Planet. IBM Software has divisions to offer a portfolio aligned to meet any customer need.

Social is a fundamental process optimization opportunity.  Business went from mainframe --> departmental --> PC --> Internet --> Social.

Reinventing Relationships, what we saw here with Project Vulcan and here, is the key message he is pushing through now about integration to create an Exceptional Customer Experience (Northstar).  He then lead into the recent customer announcemnts and case studies based on these.

Mobile had a slide all of it's own with the lead as Traveler as the fastest growing deployed solution.  Mobile is becoming the primary access point for collaborative solutions.

Editor: I have mentioned this before that any new product always has huge growth after launch with a starting point of zero.  I would love to see market penetration numbers of overall deployed as a solution as a selling point, coupled with the dynamic growth.

Cloud deployments became the next slide focus highlighting cost, flexibility, extranet collaboration and ending in hybrid. Alistair highlighted the multi-tenant capability of LotusLive Notes (see my editor secion below)

Editor: I think Lotus realizes that not every application can move to the cloud for some time to come and started promoting the hybrid model.  I do not recall seeing it in the very early launch stages.  The pish was a total cloud solution.

Alistair mentioned the multi-tenant capability, but no one outside of Lotus is able to access this code, even though it is based on the 8.5.2 codestream.

A great quote was captured by Victor Toal that Alistair made about Lotus now running services on Domino:

#tristatelug IbM having to drink their own coolaid (Lotus Live) makes them take customer requirements more serious and implement them

LotusKnows and market presence was a push by Lotus to answer the request from the dedicated userbase to have more promotion of the platform.

He then opened the floor to any questions which is a great user group move to keep it informal.

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On Monday, October 11th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Collaboration University 2010 photoset

We closed out another year for Collaboration University, this time in reverse with Chicago being the last city.  With year number five under our belts, it moved along smooth and it is great to see students attend for all five years!  As you can see in the limited pictures I have posted, there was so much going on we forgot to take tons of them during the events as we have in past years (2009, 2008, 2007, 2006).

This was a big year of learning for attendees as both Quickr and Sametime received major updates since last years graduation.  While you should have been there in person we at least recorded the opening sessions for you.  You can replay all the opening sessions right here on the Collaboration University channel on uStream.

I had the pleasure of presenting the "glue" sessions this year.  LDAP, LTPA and plugin deployment were the starting set.  However, what session drew the attention of myself and attendees was governance, security and ui considerations for social media.  Some attendees have taken to the idea and even blogged about the governance already.

While we can't post all of the content here from the sessions, look for more on the governance on TheSocialNetworker blog.

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On Friday, October 1st, 2010   by Chris Miller        

For your viewing pleasure we present the replay above of the Collaboration University 2010 keynote address.  It starts with Gabriella Davis of Turtle Partnership covering Sametime 8.5.1.  Next is Troy Reimer of SNAPPS providing Quickr 8.5 and then then a great thinking keynote from Louis Richardson, WW Sales Executive of Lotus Software.

For those that must see Rob Novak provide the brief intro you can see that video here from the Collaboration University 2010 uStream channel.

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On Tuesday, September 28th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

If you missed the announcement last night, we will be streaming the next three hours.  View it all in the posting right here!

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On Monday, September 27th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Collaboration University returns for it's fifth year with the best technical training for Sametime, Quickr and Lotus Connections in one event.  Join us in the live stream as we deliver to you the following sessions all in Central Standard Time (-6:00):

• 09:00-9:15              Introduction and Welcome
• 09:15-10:15            What's New in Sametime 8.5.1 with Gabriella Davis (Turtle Partnership)
• 10:15-11:15            What's New in Quickr 8.5 with Troy Reimer (SNAPPS)
• 11:15-12:15            Keynote Address with Louis Richardson, WW Sales Executive for Lotus Social Software

Feel free to share this across your blogs and social networks using the hastag #collabu.  You can watch the stream embedded in this posting or click here to watch the stream live native on uStream.

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On Sunday, September 26th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

IamLUG is happy to have Ed Brill presenting his strategy update session with a touch of Project Vulcan thrown in (according to the keynote from Doug Cox yesterday.  Watch the full IamLUG 2010 keynote replay here.  We apologize early for the first few minutes of missing audio.

The presentation will be 11:15am CST / 17:15 UTC.  You can watch on the IamLUG channel or here.  You have choices to view.

• Live from this blog posting.  There is time to RSVP to watch the event.
• From the IamLUG uStream Channel
• on your iPhone via the uStream mobile player

Nathan Freeman and Tim Tripcony will also be streaming The XPages Revolution: Scalabilite, Maintainabilite, Usabilite at 9:45am CST on the same channel.  You can RSVP to watch as well right here at 9:45am CST / 15:45 UTC

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On Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Live TV : Ustream

Please join IamLUG attendees in watching Doug Cox, Vice President of Development and Support, as he brings you the keynote address from IamLUG.  You will be able to watch it in the following ways:

• Live from this blog posting.  There is time to RSVP to watch the event.
• From the IamLUG uStream Channel
• on your iPhone via the uStream mobile player

Please be sure to spread the news to tune in for the keynote and other session streamed through the event.  You can also interact during the streams though Twitter and built in chat.  Please send a note in email or the chat if you find audio problems or other parts with the stream.

The 2009 IamLUG keynote from Keving Cavanaugh is online for replay on uStream as well.

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On Monday, August 2nd, 2010   by Chris Miller        

What the heck does it take to fill the very last slots at IamLUG after a couple recent cancellations?  How about free stuff from the awesome sponsors this year?

What you see in the title is correct.  giveaways are building daily and these are the recent announcements:

• Crossware - iPad

• Panagenda - free Android phone
• Sherpa - Amazon Kindle
• Plantronics - free VOIP headsets
• PSC - AMEX gift card
• some other surprises along the way we are saving up...

So there is one heck of a list already folks.  Last slots, then waitlisting.  You must be present to win.  You must have registered.  You must not work for the sponsor.  We are debating if working for IamLUG counts or not, these are looking too sweet.

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On Wednesday, July 28th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Looking at the IamLUG 2010 agenda, I just came to realize there is an entire free day of XPages training.  A bootcamp, of sorts, to jumpstart your coding goodness.  Have you seen the list and finally convinced yourself to register for the last seats?

• Ten XPages Design Patterns - Matt White
• XPages Beyond the Introduction - David Leedy
• The XPages Revolution - Nathan Freeman and Tim Tripcony
• Using XML and RDBMS Data Sources in XPages  - Paul Calhoun

Sean Burgess throws in some jquery for UI enhancements, Developer Tips for Every Developer, TDI, location services and mobilizing applications round out the development track across two days.

IamLUG is happy to have IBM as the Platinum sponsor for 2010 and offer these XPages training classes for free.

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On Monday, July 26th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Great news for all third party plug-in developers for Lotus Notes an Sametime as the keynote kicked off with demos of Gist, Tungle, TripIt and more.

For help in learning how to deploy these plug-ins I would catch the Consultant In Your Pocket webcast on Jun 2 right here.

LotusLive is a key push with the ability for any enterprise to get involved in the beta early on.

We all know that Sametime 8.5 is picking up steam and they want companies to start looking at migrating and upgrading to the new features. If you are entering new into Sametime, it is an easy move and you never know the difference.  If you are migrating up, you can stay with what you have now and run Sametime 8.5 without all the new bells and whistles.  But for the full experience, you need to plan your Websphere deployment parts.

Let's not forget all the UC2 stuff and Sametime Unified Telephony.  VOIP is a big topic all over and the recent Skype integration into LotusLive adds to that argument.

They mentioned social analytics in Lotus Connections version 3.  This is something that was more of an asset in previous versions, I wonder if they are adding some of Atlas for free into version 3.  That would be incredibly helpful.

It will be interesting with the last part of open Q&A, not the normal for a keynote but a great idea!  I wonder if people will step up and ask what they want to know.

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On Wednesday, May 12th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

If your company was unable to send you to Admin2010 or Developer 2010 in Boston this week, do not fear.  Consultant In Your Pocket has a slew of webcasts coming starting May 19th through June bringing content right to your desktop.

• May 19 - Tivoli Directory Integrator (TDI) for Administrators with Tom Duff and Marie Scott
• May 26 - eDiscovery In Your Enterprise (title might change) with Bill Malchisky
• Jun 2 - Deploying Plug-ins for Lotus Notes and Sametime with myself

There are one or two more that are joining the schedule the next couple days.  I suggest you get on the mailing list for Consultant In Your Pocket or follow the RSS feed at least to keep up.  Remember, the above webcasts are totally free.

While you are at it, why haven't you signed up for IamLUG in 2010 and the TackItOn event immediately following.  All taking place in St Louis Aug 2-4 2010.

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On Wednesday, May 12th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

If you are unable to attend Admin2010, I will be performing all of the above, live from Admin2010 on Wednesday.  You can catch the stream at
http://www.IdoNotes.com/live

The blog will also update all day.  Some podcasts will be recorded, but I hope to get a bunch live.  I opened the stream to pretty much unlimited attendees at once.  If we are not live, you will see some other videos playing as holders.  I will try and tweet when we go live throughout the day, as well, for quick notice.

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On Tuesday, May 11th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

When I put out the blog posting for TriStateLUG a few of you listened and brought along a Poken of your own to share contact data faster, easier and updateable.  To further prove my point I brought along a few Poken giveaways for those that did not have one.  As I use it more and more, here is what I learned:

• Those that gave me a "high four" (term for sharing info across devices) I am instantly connected to, no business cards laying around
• I was able to tag you with the conference and any other pertinent information
• I am able to see your network updates as they happen now
• I can download your vcard and place it into systems like Gist for full management and interaction (I hope they integrate something like this later)
• I get your picture along with your card, strengthening my recognition of you again later
• No more freakin paper business cards laying around in stacks with no good way to quickly input

After using the device (and E via web at another) I am finding that I am happier and making more meaningful connections since I get all of your social context.  Most people carry a business card for where they work, not a personal card showing their blog and other information that I can better associate with.  For example Jim, who I had known by name and some of previous work,  shared his info and now I see his Twitter stream, LinkedIn, mobile #, location, tags, instant messaging accounts and more.  I was not connected to him before and got this instantly instead of poking around the social networks.

This is the type of connectivity we need for Lotusphere and more to better connect.  So since we can guess Lotus is not tossing one of these in every bag (let me know if they want to and I know the right people), I am giving you a discount code and link to get your hands on one or many.  Imagine handing some of these out pre-populated with your company information?  Yeah, catch up, that is what I did to those at TriState LUG

You can visit the whole "Zoo" right here.  There is also the possibility to brand and find more customized ones I found out.  Jim brought along a USB one that was sleek and had a simple logo.

So use the coupon code for another 10% off right here  -------> PWUODPALWTJCMTCPOO4O

 

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On Wednesday, November 11th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

The Tri-State LUG (the third state in the Tri always eludes me) will be happening on Monday Nov 9 2009 in New York at the IBM Building, of course.  I know big shots like Mooney, Balaban and Novak will be there.  I am sneaking in a session modified from Colalboration University on all the acronyms and making them work together.

What I want you to bring is, of course,  tons of questions.  But more importantly I want to start sharing and collecting social contact data with everyone. An impromptu discussion on being socially connected is welcomed and then the ability to actually connect is better.

 You have time to do this, so grab a Poken and stop using all these dang business cards that stack up and are hard to find.  Let us connect and then tag, sort and find you faster.  Between my Poken and Gist while at BlogWorldExpo and the Social Media Business Summit the past few weeks I managed to collect a good hundred viable connections and their information.  I gave you the banner above, so grab one.  I might even bring a couple extras for those that did't read this.

There might even be a couple other announcements made there.

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On Thursday, October 29th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

In light of a few other events coming up, like UKLUG, the teams in Canada decided to bring together the larger cities for a half day event this Thursday

The Cross Country Lotus User Group is an organization consisting of Lotus customers across Canada.  The objective is to provide a place where Lotus professionals can meet to:

-share their experiences
-learn new information
-improve technical skills
-take part in the Lotus Collaboration Community

The cities participating are Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Markham.  The agenda is a mix of some tech and some vendor topics :

What's New in Notes 8.5.1
Overview of Ytria's scanEZ solution
Domino Designer and XPages Overview
Overview of Customer Expressions's i-Sight solution
Sears Canada's Perspecitive on the Domino/Notes Upgrade Project
Kyros Systems: ADapting Domino Applicaitons onto the Blackberry
Life of the Notes ID

Look for some blog postings and other news around this one I am sure.

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On Monday, September 28th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Join us at 9:30 GMT this morning for the keynote address at yesterday's posting!

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On Monday, September 21st, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Collaboration University

Due to requests, we are once again streaming the keynote for the next stop of Collaboration University.  We thank all of you that watched the keynote for the Chicago session last week (which you can still replay at any time).  This time we have Darren Adams of IBM providing his own insight.

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On Sunday, September 20th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

All of the IdoNotes shows

Please watch and send your Twitter questions in to @CollabU during the event!

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On Monday, September 14th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Once again Collaboration University will be in Chicago and London in September.  Where else will you see:

• Lotus Connections 2.5
• Sametime 8.5
• Quickr 8.2

All in one place with the top partners that implement, customize and manage these environments.  Attendees get huge benefits including:

• First hand experience with Quickr 8.2, Connections 2.5, and Sametime 8.5, plus valuable tips on prior versions, upgrades and coexistence
• Access to three additional webinars over the next year to keep current
• One-on-one time with the gurus - solve your problems in minutes, not months
• Best practices in development and administration, including brand new methods for working with the APIs and admin consoles
• EXCLUSIVE early looks at R&D in mobile platforms (including some very exciting news), API development and Lotus software futures

To keep up to date on news about Collab Univ follow the stream on Twitter, or any of the speakers!

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On Tuesday, August 25th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

It is great to work with the team over yonder yet again!!  This year I tossed something new into the mix to have some fun and stretch our imagination.  Here is my abstract which I will be presenting at UKLUG in October"

Getting benefit out of your social connections
Getting a grasp on all of the social technologies and how to use them with your everyday Lotus work style is a struggle. Sit with Chris, and wish you had longer, as he runs through how to use tools outside of the Lotus world to not only be more productive, but find answers and knowledge holders. Chris will take you on a journey through his social workflow and show you what has worked and hasn't while maximizing value of everyone in the room around you.

The idea is to gain control of the information around you, maximize your invested time and present you with new places and ways to expand your knowledge.  Sure there will be some Domino ways in here, but plan on a majority of tools, tips, ideas and planning to be shown.

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On Wednesday, August 12th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

As you can see from above, I am pulling in the stream from the entire event with any picture that was tagged with IamLUG.  There is also a group on Flickr you can participate in and share!

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On Wednesday, August 5th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

So you want to keep up with the #IamlUG hastag traffic on Twitter and Flickr?  Well the above embedded wall (which can go fullscreen for you, is ready to go!  You can participate 3 ways:

• send any tweet with #IamLUG inside it
• tag any photo on Flickr with IamLUG
• send a SMS message to the number 87884 and say "@loca9128 "

Not only will we see it, but it will be shown for everyone.  Oh and so no one gets silly we can remove and moderate your posts :-)

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On Monday, August 3rd, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Welcome to year #4 for Collaboration University.  We have many returning for their senior year as well as new freshman entering the program.  For those of you returning, you get a special alumni discount for each year you have attended.  Then we have an early bird discount to entice some of you even more.

Visit Chicago from September 14-16
Visit London form September 21-23

But for today only, add all of the above discounts together and then toss on yet another $100 USD off the total registration for an amazing one day offer.  We will be covering Quickr 8.2, Sametime 8+ and Lotus Connections 2.5 with your normal professors and some new special guests.

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On Tuesday, May 12th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Look for postings, pictures on Flickr and even some live streaming (of what will be allowed) this week.  Best to do one of two things.  Follow me on Twitter, or watch for the #Admin2009 hashtag on Twitter for all related postings.  Paul Mooney will be doing some Cover-it-Live stuff I heard, even after flying through Cairo, Auckland and Tulsa to get here.

Otherwise the entire presenting crew has arrived safely and is accounted for.  Most of them either seen, sent tweets or talked to someone.

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On Wednesday, April 15th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Admin2008 Europe photoset

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On Wednesday, November 26th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

With the largest attendance in 3 years, we kicked off right on time this morning.  There are over 1 million Sametime users represented and over 14 countries between attendees here and London.  Amazing.  So what I have presented so far...

Sametime Advanced Install - wake up call for the resources to some, but everyone had great questions and comments.  Hopefully everyone got enough in the hour to install it via applianceware or as a whole when they get home.  The prerequisite installer really helps demo systems.

Lotus Connections Install with Mitch Cohen driving the train.  Many of the people in the full room had not really seen Lotus Connections and really needed a crash course.  While we did a demo session earlier, many were at other sessions.

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On Monday, September 8th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Hi Chris
I just wanted to show you that at least we learnt something in all the view's   ;-)

This "chris'ed" mailtemplate of my collegue





Best Regards
Marco

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On Monday, July 14th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

After completing yet another city for the ND8 Upgrade Seminar, I am always surprised by the upgrade plans of the crowd and where they sit today.  This was no different.

• Everyone was at least in the 6.x realm for current versions.
• A small percentage (like 10) had installed the Notes 8 client on their desktops
• Most did not have enough memory on all machines so they will roll out as the basic version
• Server upgrade plans varied from a few weeks to sometime next year, yes as in 2009
• Sametime at one company was discouraged as a nuisance of sorts and was not allowed
• Everyone was happy to see the gutter return to the inbox in 8.5
• Platforms are always a discussion for the server
• A couple sites had no firm date for the upgrades at all
• No one had logged into im.bleedyellow.com
• Everyone liked the free tools we give away

I could go on, but with all the excitement in the core Lotus blog community, we lose focus often.  We play with the latest and greatest while many larger shops are stuck with whatever gets decided by management.  We should sit back and realize there are over 100 million users, most of whom never even go to PlanetLotus.org to get the latest and greatest.

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On Monday, June 23rd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

First things first, here are the pictures:

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' ILUG2008 photoset

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On Friday, June 6th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Besides Paul Mooney doing the outstanding comedic warmup, Nick Shellness took over as the first keynote speaker.  As a former CEO at Lotus, he pulled out old slides to show how presentations he did projecting the future turned out.  He was not too far off in some areas surprisingly.

• Memory - try running Notes today on a few MB
• Disk capacity - picture 20MB then 200MB by 1988 as disk storage
• Screen size for attention - from 13" screens to multi flat panels now, it is all attention focus
• user interface -
• Knowledge management - organizing 80 GB of data, do things like taxonomy, auto profiling and intelligent search do this for the individual?  No since none has come truly to pass.  Social computing

Alan Lepofsky was next up... he stripped down to a "Luck of the Irish" t-shirt and took off.  His job is a Lotus Evangelist to say what they should be doing, instead of wondering how budgets work.  More moving research products to production instead. He came with prototypes and live/screen captures

• Twitter was the first topic for 2 minutes.  Alan is an attention seeking ***** he says
• http://Geekandpoke.typepad.com
• Due to time he skips the marketing preamble
• Collaboration went from document centric to people centric to community centric
• The inbox is now even hard to find info, so what tools do you use?
• How does Lotus help all of these areas after you find the tools you need (he demo'd my LifeStream map)
• Lotus is working on surfacing not only the information, but through seamless tools that fit various roles
• Next topic is social content - create, storage and share
• He went to some live demos of items that are in research
• Social bookmarking showing of Dogear inside Lotus Connections
• Now we head into attention management - importance (important to work on but due when?), urgency (to whom?) and interest.  Is there an interface that exists?

Some key area

• Collaboration in context is a future with the surfacing Lotus tools to do the work seamlessly
• Evolution of the creation of content
• Discovery versus search
• Attention management, bringing chaos together in buckets of management

Finally questions...

• Nick S. asks the first question about how the tools being developed previously were only 70-80% successful.  How does that translate in technology to ensure success rate gets increased.  Alan responds that new ways or working are being requested before Lotus is delivering them at this time.  Adoption rate is opposite, tools are coming slower than demand which grows adoption rate as fast as delivery
• Steve McDonagh asks about mining for information in searches across 26 languages using tags to return results in any language.  How do you generate the meta information to make this work?  he demod Dogear again to show tag growth
• Henri from BinaryTree brings up social networking and an example from MySpace or SecondLife, this is a huge risk that most don't seem to target.  Alan covers how bringing Connections into the corporate firewall to secure and share the data

Then we close up and head to lunch so they can prep the room for sessions..

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On Wednesday, June 4th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

If you cannot figure out where to go for technical information and some excellent training between June and September, then you have been sleeping.  Let's look at what is coming:

ILUG2008 - a free gathering of top presenters, business partners and Loti all in one place for a few days of organized chaos.  Not your standard conference in any fashion, with edgier sessions that can only happen with tons of drinking parties at night.  You have one week to get there.  June 4th-6th 2008.

Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar - Andy Pedisich, Rob Axelrod and myself have already done 6 cities to a string of top ratings on showing you not only what is new in 8, but how to get there in the best structured fashion.  Tons of take home tools and just conversation around the numerous upgrades we have done over the versions.  There are two cities in June.  San Francisco June 16th-18th and then again in Toronto July 16th-18th.  Get all the facts you need to make the right decisions every step of your upgrade planning, deployment and implementation.

Collaboration University - I have happy to be one of the founding partners to bring you the premier conference on Sametime and Quickr.  From basics to super advanced in both administration and development for these products, we hit it.  This year the US city moves to Chicago and then again in London.  Join Rob Novak, Carl Tyler, Gabriella Davis and myself yet once again.  For those coming for a third year, we welcome our "Juniors" and our new incoming "Freshmen".

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On Thursday, May 29th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

One more city down for the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, with 2 North American cities left to go (San Francisco and Toronto).  Once again I was not disappointed in what the attendees had to say and provide for feedback.

• 100% were on 6.5.x and higher (ok outside of one desolate R5 server)
• 85% used Sametime already and really needed to understand what the new integration offered.  They liked it but had rightful concerns over missing functionality and the locking of the chat as Notes did other things
• The limited number of users you can get on Citrix with the Standard client sucks and they let me know
• Widgets need tons of business value demos to sell them to the executives
• Productivity Tools were the doorstop of the sessions with people stepping right on by
• Lotus Connections made no sense to 90% of them at first.  Later, about 50% I think really got it (while they all then understood it).  But managing all that additional hardware was brought up
• Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
• Integration of Sametime is awesome if it was available while doing something else in Notes 8.  Otherwise they want the standalone version (mentioned again)
• Integration of Activities is confusing to many as to why choose that or Quickr or why at all.  This got answered
• The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them but MS connectivity is still a demand in Europe
• Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
• Attendees love free tools that we give away
• Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
• People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning,   Oh yeah, and provisioning that actually works, which is broke right now
• I know the list went on by I will update after I sleep and fly....

I broke their hearts when I taught all about site updates to only let them down with it isn't working.  On the good side, I think many are excited about the upgrade.  I was surprised at the length of time a lot will be taking to get upgraded in full.  We are talking well into next year.

Food this week was excellent, and I caught the play Billy Elliot (review here).  Dinner the first night was Kare Kare, an excellent Indian place.  Next up was a chain before the play for speed reasons and finally Amaya.  Outside of that it was all conference food for me :-)

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On Thursday, May 15th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Hi, I sent this posting over via email so it cold be pasted in.  I went to the Lotusphere Comes to You in St Louis last week for my first time.  I knew it was only a day review of what was explained to me a week long event.  I knew it would be consolidated.  I was not ready, however, for the way it was presented.  The speakers showed a lot of videos and hardly anything live.  One person actually showed his inbox, but everyone else had these pre-planned videos and stuff.  It turned out to be like a sales meeting in a way, where they talk about the products but only show slides.  I thought half of this was shipping? Could they not show it?  Are the demos too hard?  How can I make this work for my users then?

Also some of the speakers didn't seem to know fully the material or topic they presented.  Questions went unanswered.  That was a bit disconcerting for those that couldn't got to Lotusphere and needed more information.  I didn't plan on speeding a day there to get more questions that I came in with (meaning others asked some good ones too).  I know we only had a day to get this completed, but it seemed a bunch of product announcements from Lotusphere didn't even make it into the program in any way.  I know I stepped out once for a phone call, but in 20 minutes they could not have done them all as the session I stepped out from was still going strong when I reentered.

So my last thought was the actual other attendees.  From talking to people, there was like 3-4 times as many people last year.  With about 20-25 there this year, what happened?  I am sure it was not the change in venue as I got the email weeks before.  Where the heck was everyone?

IdoNotes note: I found the same thing from LCTY in Minneapolis per this blog posting.  I couldn't comment on that blog posting as it required a Wordpress account.  I suspect we are seeing this at cities that partners do not do a majority or any of the presentations?

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On Monday, May 12th, 2008   by Wanted to be Anonymous        

Since everyone gets this one, you missed my rant about ATT and their sucky free wireless mesh they put here in St Louis.

You also missed my recap of Admin2008 plus pictures.

Lastly, the blog server is now 8.0.1 and my logging of RSS feeds finally hit peak level across my blogs and took HTTP down.  All is well once again, thanks to Steve C himself.

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On Wednesday, May 7th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

First things first, here are the pictures:

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Admin2008 photoset

So recapping the last two days that were totally a blur. Pushes to Domino 8 are incredibly strong with a large focus on people that stuck in any session that did with upgrading. The mix of clients/servers was 6.5.x all the way to current. But the overwhelming feeling from all of them was they will make due with getting the necessary resources and get that awesome Notes 8 Standard client to the users. The talks of waiting for 8.0.2 went away when we showed them the security controls and features. Rob, Andy Pedisich, and I are on the orad again in 2 weeks to keep the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar going. Join us in London and San Francisco if you missed the show here.

Sametime sessions, including the jumpstart were popular. Once a grasp of how the Sametime client integrates and what features are missing was covered, I did a session on Sametime Advanced. Of those that came, two had a strong need for persistent chat. Others wanted to see what all the hype and difference was about. But everyone agreed that Sametime 8 was the place to be. I was happy to see so many people that had picked up my book on the Sametime Gateway and how it saved much time and energy. Yet the room had a ton of poeple that wanted to get it installed. The need to remove the public chat clients and make some instant messaging policies is getting stronger.

Disaster recovery was packed. I think many came in looking for the silver bullet of what should be done to get DR alive and functioning. What they walked away with was a plan, steps and decision points on how to build the proper topology with all the diagrams to get started. It was sad to talk to those that lost not just data during 9-11, and how they coped. It was an eye opener for me as well. I hope I helped, but Domino makes DR easy.

After a great dinner with Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Susan Bulloch, and John Head, day 3 was beckoning.

The vendor floor was busy since the crowd here was larger once again than years past. As the questions get harder each year, the skillset of the administrators and developers that attend get better. Which makes us work harder to put on a better show. Hope everyone enjoyed, I need a nap.

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On Friday, May 2nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

There are enough opening session remarks already blogged.  But here is what I gathered from talking to attendees all week.  Even though we are entering Domino 8.0.1, most have not made the full move to Domino 8 and are here to learn even more about it.  Even with all the press and online info, they still want to see live demonstrations on everything you can think of.

As usual I am not disappointed with the variance of types of issues they face on a daily basis.  From unique requirements to unique issues, they bring it all to the table.  There are happily not many at all they run R5, most are stuck in the 6.5.x and 7.0.x realm.  So the move to 8 is an important step that they are undertaking and by us including the entire Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar (still some cities left to attend) into Admin2008, they more than get their money worth.

The troubleshooting SMTP session I had first was a nice group that needed to understand the finer points of debugging and where to even begin.  After a quick Internet access issue, we were up and moving.  Then the real fun started as the Sametime plug-in and Administration session was up next.  A room full of Sametime 3.1 to 8.0 users and servers.  We dug deep in some areas while giving a glazing on others that I cover in sessions later this week to show them how it all fits together.

Right after a quick lunch I had a packed room for Leveraging the Messaging Enhancements in Domino 8.  The room was rowdy, fun and had great questions about the new features and implementation.  From message recall (booooo) to the new OOO as a service, they got it all.

Lastly was Sametime Gateway, one of my personal favorites as you know.  Smaller group that was already filled to the brim with knowledge, but they all wanted to get it working.  So we went hard through the configuration.  One person stated later that they broke so many rules I was teaching they are startling over.

To finish it was 'beat the geeks' then a sponsor party.  Nothing finer than a hundred geeks crammed into a room late in the evening.

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On Wednesday, April 30th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Surprise, disappointment, amazement, laughter.  We got every reaction possible.  Andy and myself fended off countless questions from a fully packed house.  The extra seats we planned open were taken by some last minute drop-ins that registered.  So what did we learn this city?

• 95% of the attendees use Sametime
• 100% were at 6.5.x or higher and wanting to go to Domino 8.0.1
• Not having Citrix support already for the Standard client made more than one of them very disappointed
• Widget policies were a selling point
• Lotus Connections, Lotus Protector and mainly Productivity Tools were not anything they cared about.  Did I mention Productivity Tools?
• Companies in size from 250 users to 40,000 all really use Domino
• Some admins are lucky when they get to go to Brazil for 9 days to install one Domino server
• Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
• Integration of Sametime is awesome
• Integration of Activities is confusing
• The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them
• Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
• Attendees love free tools that we give away
• Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
• People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning

I am sure there is a few other I will add in.  To summarize, the love Domino 8 and wish there was few more things that had made it into the product at the same time.  Social networking over here is not popular, while internal chat is.   They always have very specific and unique questions that we love getting answers to for them.  So excuse me while I collapse, eat a final dinner here and then head home tomorrow .  Check my "Where am I headed" tab to see the cities I have booked up.

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On Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Talking to Sean today, we found that hotel rates are always silly, mainly if a bunch of people are going.  So drop us a comment here or email if you are interested  in ganging up on a hotel for a better group block rate

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On Tuesday, March 4th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

So as people are slowly learning, Lotusphere on Twitter is out there and could be huge if we get a strong push from everyone. Yancy already has it feeding the main feed page for PlanetLotus and then pulls all Tweets to another page. Let us know your thoughts on how you want to best utilize Twitter down there? Open season tweets everywhere or following a main Lotusphere tweet? Or a mixture. Let us know. We also talked about grabbing the RSS feed from the Lotusphere pictures so we need to set a tagging standard.

Also, the normal string of IdoNotes podcasts will be running but the added benefit of IdoNotes.TV will be present. You will be able to reach it at any time at
http://www.IdoNotes.com/live
or you can find it on the PlanetLotus page. I will be grabbing any and all video I can from Lotusphere into a long loop plus live broadcasts from down there. Anyone that wants to assist in the live ones let me know. I see us being able to reach a large audience of people not there to give them the feel of what is going on. Even broadcasting JamFest or the scene of Speedgeeking could be cool.

Give me some thoughts here people and pass this posting out so we can get all the ideas finalized

go to the IdoNotes TV page to watch it now!

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On Wednesday, January 9th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Messaging and Collaboration Webconference
December 13th, 2007
9:30 to 10:30a.m. US Pacific Time
Moderator: Sara Radicati

So the moderator is basically showing off their new paper coming out about this very market.

This webconference looks at the market for enterprise Messaging and Collaboration. Messaging and Collaboration platforms are designed to be deployed on-premises by organizations and provide a broad range of functionality which includes email, groupware, calendar/scheduling, security, wireless email, and more.

Guest speakers are Microsoft, Microsoft, Novell and Georgia State University.  Hmm, I wonder who sponsored this one?

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On Tuesday, December 11th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Sun January 20, 2008	9:00-10:45am EST	Y&B Grand Harbor Salon IV	HND302: IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway - Setup and Administration
Tues January 22, 2008	4:15-5:15pm EST	Dolphin S Hemisphere IV-V	BP105: Installing and Administrating the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway
Wed January 23 2008	12:30-2:15pm EST	Y&B Grand Harbor Salon IV	HND302: IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway - Setup and Administration

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On Monday, December 10th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

You can find them all right here , some of them aren't bad

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On Monday, December 3rd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Emergence of a Digital Collaboration Infrastructure -

• One generation thinks of collaboration in the workplace used to be something around documents (ie: emails, presentations).
• The next generation thinks of SMS, instant messaging as the paradigm for collaboration
• The new generation come with MySpace, Facebook and the equivalents.

Product design going forward for Lotus has to take the collaborative energies and bring them together into the workforce.  All the data information, expertise and skills have to be shown in context.  The platform has to be open and enabled for you to plug in innovative infrastructure.  The Lotus infrastructure must be complete and open at the same time to support growth.

Digital Collaboration Infrastructure

• Collaboration Foundation
• Web 2.0
• Beyond Office

Work is now performed not around the technologies, but the activities they are currently involved in.  Software then assist in getting the work completed in context.  Notes 8, Quickr and Sametime enable that to happen.

Domino and Notes 8.0.1 will be released around Lotusphere in January 2008.

• New DWA client
• Lotus Quickr integration into side shelf in Standard client
• Storage reduction through increased compression - up to 35%
• Native 64-bit support
• IBM Lotus Notes Traveler for Windows Mobile support
• Support for Mac in beta

Domino 8.5 will ship towards the end of 2008

• Simplify the Notes Identity management and authentication
• Reduce storage costs
• Improve Quality of Service
• QuickTune
• Modernize Domino application development.  Tools, infrastructures and technique will take advantage of the frameworks developed in 8 and deliver it in 8.5 (hear that Nathan, just passing info, I have no clue about the dev side.  He said he didn't post on the blogs due to the announcements at Lotusphere coming)

Sametime 8 (we know hits the streets and I post plenty on it).  He did mention Entry that comes in the Domino server for free, then why sell it.  Easy..  those that choose 'other' messaging/email solutions, can still choose Sametime.  Sametime Advanced comes in Q1 of 2008.  It is Sametime for communities, adding social software ideas into the Sametime family.  Persistent chats (seen LotusphereLive done in 2007 without Advanced?) and polling.  Unified Telephony is next up for more aggregated presence, call management and softphones.  Lastly was the acquisition of Sametime Unyte for hosted conferencing services.

Quickr comes in Q1 with integration further into Notes and now the Quick Content Integrator.  This allows you to import information from Sharepoint and shared public folders in Exchange.  You can also synchronize and coexist between them.

Lotus Connections 2.0 will get more enhancements around a 'portal' type page allowing you to being in all your social contacts into a single interface and also better integration into the Notes client

This was a great, smooth and simple presentation showing the direction of Lotus and how things are coming together in context of letting the user work first with the technology in the background,.  Instead of learning new ways due to changes in technology.

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On Monday, December 3rd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

So all 3 days are completed here in Vegas.  We have already done Philly and Chicago is only 2 weeks out.  I missed almost all of day 1 flying in, but I was here for days 2 and 3 to talk to attendees around presenting.  I gleaned the following facts:

• About 95% of the attendees did not want to have a session on the Productivity Tools.  Many said 10 slides glazing over the topic would be enough as they are so entrenched in MS licensing there was not a recent chance.  plus, they were not the ones that would even make that decision
• About 85% of the attendees here already had Sametime running and were eager to see more info on what was coming in integration and implementation
• About 20% had any interest in Lotus Connections.  70% had no clue what it really did and the remaining knew already they did not want it.
• About 15% of the attendees here had over 20k users installed.  Many with large DWA implementations in place
• About 80% really wanted to get more info on Quickr
• About 95% loved all the ways that the products were starting to integrate tighter.  For example, all the hooks with Lotus Connections and Quickr into Notes 8 and Sametime and Sametime into Notes 8.  It is all making a cohesive direction from Lotus

One last stat came to mind:

• About 99% of the people in Las Vegas will wear absolutely anything on Halloween to win $1500 at the Voodoo club contest.  Even 50 stories above the strip, most clothing is optional.

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On Thursday, November 1st, 2007   by Chris Miller        

This event was well run and on-time the entire day so far.  An interesting group after lunch that did on the spot comedy routines.  But as for content, it is what was expected.  Over 100 registered to attend, I would say around 80 arrived. Many were IBM employees however, here to learn more.  The sessions covered all the important parts of Lotus Connections, Notes and Domino 8, Quickr and Sametime.  A surprise session (since the agenda website always said TBD up to yesterday) was Antony providing a competitive landscape session.

Was there things missed?  In my opinion, a few here and there.  Not enough demos and too many slides for the technical session on Lotus Notes/Domino 8 deployment.  Otherwise, well balanced for 45 minute slots with two rooms running at once.

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On Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Here is the link to the catalog I promised.  If you scroll down on the right to the 'Popular" section you will see the Lotus and Sametime plug-ins for Connections.  Have at it!  From there is you need help in adding the plug-in, you can find the online info center right here.

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On Saturday, October 13th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

While we were here at the Notes and Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, I needed a place to send the users to get as much information on deploying composite applications (aka shelf-apps, plugins, whatever) into the Notes 8 client.  Well low and behold a decent one existed..

Here is the page...

This web log is a joint effort by the key technical architects and user experience professionals to open a direct line of communication with developers about the capabilities of user facing composite applications.

I also had the link up on how to move a Sametime plug-in to Notes 8 client.  Here was that link.

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On Friday, October 12th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

The guest speakers didn't make much sense at all to me for Social Software for the enterprise outside of 1

• Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response
• John Landau, CEO of Customer Experience at Huddle.net (UK company)
• Mike Walsh, CEO of Leverage Software

Matt Anderson of Radicati was the speaker.  After 5 slides it went to Q&A with the panelists.

• Vendors that they listed included Lotus and a slew of others I did not know offered such solutions.
• The suites are what Lotus Connections offers with some added parts like Business Intelligence
• They then have specialists that work on each part of the software itself
• The market drivers were just what you know now.  Make some teams and share some info then find people around them
• The market barriers are what you expect but easily overcome.  Compliance (US issues), deploying new technologies

Q&A section

1. What does your offering provide to set it apart from other offerings

John Landau - Current enterprise software is inside the firewall focused and Huddle is trying to get externally focused as well.  Pushing for the MySpace generation and use of social networking is growing and businesses are banning such site access to MySpace.  The Huddle tools are aimed at business users.  The low cost of Huddle was their other point of their offering
Mike Walsh - They are trying to making it easier for the business person to make and find relationships.  Taking some of the Web 2.0 items , with security and making it easier for the business worker to share information in a collaborative environment within and outside the company.

2.   What was the initial pain point that caused them to look for a social networking solution for their enterprise?
Janine Popick - They have 30K small business customers with only a small number (50) of employees.  So they are the customer experience side.  They let the customer

3. How has business social software changed how employees share information between themselves and with customers?
Janine Popick - They have an award winning blog.  Employees post more content to give them exposure.  They use Leverage as their social software choice it was said.  They also started a Facebook group with about 200 members giving product feedback.  There is a wiki in place to post documents and share information.

4.  What are some of the key factors when vendors go up against Microsoft Sharepoint in this space?
Mike Walsh - Everything is based on the needs of the users.  It varies across prospects.  He said Sharepoint, which is a great product, and Lotus Connections, which he was not familiar with, helps them find the right people for a specific person to assist with a project or prospect.  he said Sharepoint seems to be for internal collaboration behind the firewall.  he does not look as them as a competitor, but as augmentation.
Jon Landau - They are often compared to Sharepoint.  The perception he finds is that is a free tool but the TCO is incredibly high for a business.  It does well for internal collaboration.  But the idea is to bring external clients together with the inside groups and becomes costly with Sharepoint.  Kingfield is a customer of theirs, and they were looking at Sharepoint until he brought Huddle to them.

5.  What were some of the critical features that your business looked for in a social software package?
Janine Popick - They found that their customers that used their service needed different feedback.  So small groups of customer types are forming.  They are also able to push focused product release information.  Finding users "like me" on a people map and then reaching out is helping the company since they already compile a large amount of data from each customer.  Live chats are helping get feedback on what features of their product are most important.

Questions from the audience....
1.  What are the real benefits, like ROI.  These seem like a solution looking for a problem.
Janine Popick - One of the things they did when deploying was hire someone to manage the deployment.  Without someone to drive and manage this can fail.  This person also participates in the social network by watching and even generating conversations.  On a hard ROI front they know they are saving time on email and feedback processing.  Vocal people in the communities help promote what is needed without them sending out constant user surveys.
John Landau - Huddle offers the ability to share documents and work together internally and with external partners gives a tangible ROI.  If that was done by email instead, You end with multiple people looking at different versions and chasing information.  Huddle has the centralized upload, sharing and work area to set approvals and tasks, etc.
Mike Walsh - They were out as a social network platform before Facebook caught on and now everyone is clamoring for this type of application.  They work with 300 companies with different goals and needs.  ROI might be decreasing support, increasing upsell, increasing customer loyalty, getting products to market faster by getting feedback.  Microsoft, HP, Oracle, Salesforce, Time Warner, NY Times are all sample customers.  Some need projects done faster and others are using it to find hidden talent in the company.

2. Were are a small software startup with 400 partners/resellers, can you describe the benefits of utilizing the software?
Mike Walsh - They do work with smaller companies to share best practices.  Relationship building through the social network is a huge benefit.
John Landau - You are able to bring all these partners and resellers into one social network so you can all chat, talk working group and share information with branding and customization.

3. How does voice and real-time collaboration overlap with services such as the social networking vendors?  Will you follow?
John Landau - Huddle is in a position in the next few weeks to offer integrate single sign-on ability.  Web conferencing tools are also being built into the product offering.
Mike Walsh - Open architecture through widgets allows you to add features and functions even without their help.  They are partnering with companies like Webex and SalesForce, or even pulling in a Skype or Webex widget.  Also a GoToMeeting widget as they used in this conference.

4. Is there a listing comparing what these vendors offer in their social network offerings? (my question)
They will have a listing in the Radicati report

5. How do you deal with issues around compliance. (yada yada yada) ?
Janine Popick - She does have compliance issue it seems.  They use a wiki for a lot of collaboration but will be tightening up how the information is controlled.
John Walsh - needed the question repeated.  The data can be exported so it depends on the requirements of the organization.  One feature they do not have is document check-in and checkout.  Their solution has revisioning and tagging.  How it is completed and found is up to the client, such as Wells Fargo.
John Landau - The document management system saves every version of the document as it is worked on.  Their solution is geared towards compliance.  You can see date and time stamps for all edits, updates, changes and new items.

6. What is the cost for trials of these softwares?
They will send that out later or go to the websites and get some free trials.  Huddle and Leverage offer free trials.

Sara Radicati wrapped it up with not much fanfare but look for their report, of course

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On Thursday, September 27th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

The final set is right here on Flickr

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On Saturday, July 21st, 2007   by Chris Miller        

I see I have been a giant slacker as I wake up this bight and sunny Saturday morning.  .  Everyone has started to recap the events but me.  Rob Novak, Carl Tyler, Mike Smith over at Turtle Partnership blog, and even Paul Mooney and Warren and Kitty Elsmore live blogged some of it!  I am sure there is others I missed reading yet in the blogsphere.

Let us go back a couple weeks to the beginning (cue dream sequence music)

Kansas City was a blur with the speakers getting together on Sunday morning to work all day.  We forced ourselves to finish the cd's and any editing.  It was a long day of anticipation of the second year.  We knew the alumni returning were looking for fresh and new material.

The first day went semi-smooth as our live video feed made it through Mike Rhodin fine and maxed out when Satwik went on for Quickr.  A good trial experience.  I will talk about the technology used in that later on.  We appreciate Mike for coming to the event.  The attendees gave good marks on his presentation where he personally did live demos.  From there on we raced through a long day of sessions to have the first cocktail reception.  The location this year was excellent and our same jazz musician returned from last year to play during the reception.  I even bought a cd from him...

Day was the longest day.  Due to comments from last year, we went from 3 tracks at a time to 2. This gave you a chance to see every Sametime or every Quickr session.  It also made day 2 go from 8:00am to 6:45pm.  Whew!  They were glazed and hurting by the end of that day.  I personally have both LDAP and Firewall/network sessions to give that day so I did my best to fill everyone's heads.

Day 3 only came after staying up all night to make sure the workshops were configured correctly.  read on....
Continue Reading here" Collaboration University recap - KC and London (and links)" »

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On Saturday, July 21st, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Here is the preconfigured Particls package people are asking for that was built at Collaboration University.

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On Friday, July 20th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

You can find the link right here for Flickr

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On Wednesday, July 18th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

While that is extremely early for most of you in the US, why not stay up another 6 hours (from CST) and watch?

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On Tuesday, July 17th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

I will embed the viewer again here and Rob will have it on the Collaboration University 2007 page.  You can also go right to the channel:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/collaboration-university

So do not miss out on seeing Ken and Satwik in the opening session

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On Monday, July 16th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Here is the preconfigured Particls package people are asking for that was built at Collaboration University.

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On Wednesday, July 11th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

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On Tuesday, July 10th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Carl is busy encoding the copy we will hopefully merge with the slides, but the raw broadcast I will link in a bit.  We might sneak in one more session live, like the Top 10 or the overview session from Collaboration University

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On Monday, July 9th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

We are all set up to go live in the morning for Mike's keynote of Collaboration University.  Listen in and watch live.

http://live.collaborationuniversity.com

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On Monday, July 9th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

This call was an open format for Q&A which was a nice change.  (I lost some text in live saving somehow, will try and recover it)

Rod Smith, VP of Emerging Technology in IBM started the discussion on where IBM will be headed in Web 2.0 in the Enterprise.

Carol Jones, fellow of IBM, was the other panel member.. she is always excellent in her answers

• Lotus will rely on input from the consumer (ie employees) to help drive feature requests of such products like Lotus Connections
• Nathan Freeman asked a question looking for early adopter stories and successes
• Chris Byrne asked about having a personal network, like LinkedIn, without adding everyone from a tag or group.  Carol said they have a lot of work going on in that area that wasn't in the product yet.
• Dana G asks about how IBM is already using open source and where 2.0 intersects with tools and functionality, applications, widgets and whether IBM will bring all this open source and Web 2.0 future.  Rod talks to the IBM participation into AJAX, Dojo and Eclipse.
• Neil Ward-Dutton asked a beyond the technology question on how IBM is looking beyond software and into consulting in how to leverage the new technology innovations.  I say they sell Lotus Connections.  Rod said that business strategy becomes a component of engagements continually.
• Chris Byrne asked about any response to the Microsoft plug-in announcement for Sharepoint
• Nathan asked about the implementation of the new products and how to simplify them..  Carol said Lotus Connections was a simple install.  Nathan took objection to that and I tend to agree.  While the blog portion is based on Roller, the entire Lotus Connections package requires quite a bit of installation and configuration.  Rod agreed that the cost would be large for smaller companies to launch a full Lotus Connections implementation, so hosting and other offerings becomes important.  Chris Byrne chimed in about the complex architecture.  Rod said they see other programming models in the future might need inclusion for simplification or changes.
• I asked about the ever changing the architecture in the future based on Web 2.0 growth and enhancements and the scare of rip-and-replace challenge and adding new features/options from the public Web 2.0 world.  Carol took on that challenge.
• A quick roll-call to see if Volker was on the call, yes he was
• A asked about better integration and future integration into Notes 8, like multiple plug-ins for Activities in the same client.  Carol took the initial tackle and then I tuned i and we took it offline for later
• Rod took last questions to head off to a mash-up
• Chris Byrne looked for online demos and was pointed to YouTube
• Stuart McIntyre jumped in and asked about Info 2.0.  Rod stated it was a suite to take information from multiple places (DB2, syndication) and then a tool to help merge and filter feeds.  Then catalog them with tagging and mash them up.  All of this in a Web 2.0 package.  They are looking towards the end of summer for some type of beta and then GA end of year of later.  A news feed server was also mentioned

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On Wednesday, June 20th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

What a collection of speakers that received high marks everywhere.  It was good to see everyone, attendees and speakers included.  Paul Mooney has some pictures up on his blog already, I know Susan Bulloch and Kathleen McGivney will have some blog comments.  We can always count on Wild Bill to take a stab after much late night and speaking recovery.  Francie Whitlock, Warren Elsmore and a few others joined as new admin speakers this year.  Mary Beth Raven walked everyone through the end of what will soon be a major step in the Lotus Notes direction with version 8.  Julian R, of the famed Taking Notes Podcast was presenting in full developer style.  Bruce, of course, was tethered by telephone and IM all week. I know I forgot some, I am brain dead however this early after the week is now done.

Andy and Rob of Technotics did a bang up job as always.  All three of us joined together to do a BOF on Notes and Domino 8 upgrading.  I went ahead and recorded it for a podcast that will be edited and online shortly

It was even rumored that Ed Brill himself stopped through for some socializing.  Someone said Alan Lepofsky was coming for dinner the last night but I left early and you will notice it was after Ed left, hmmmm.  A couple surprise appearances for some drinks and dinner from Carl Tyler and Rob McDonagh.

There was a comedy night sponsored by Blackberry on Tuesday which was a refreshing change and a break of all the information being shoved into the heads of attendees.  You can see some pictures I have up showing that event.

Now as for attendees, one of the best overall positive responses I have gotten from all of them.  There is always a minor thing here and there, but everyone went away happy.  I took them from the first session of building a disaster recovery solution for their entire Lotus portfolio all the way through S/MIME, LDAP infrastructure and all sorts of Sametime aspects.  Ten sessions later I walked out hoping I shoved enough into their brains to make their time worthwhile.  The event was a strong showing of the commitment to Domino by IBM and the user community.  Displays of current features of ND8, Quickr and Lotus Connections left more than a few re-energized in what exciting new paths they are about to take.

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On Thursday, June 7th, 2007   by Chris Miller        

Sorry for the delay, I was traveling out of the country right after Admin2007

Warning: I would zoom in many times.  The image is large in width and height to see all the font and information clearly.

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On Wednesday, June 6th, 2007   by Chris Miller