IdoNotes (and sleep)

IBM sent an email to business partners with the IBM Roadmap for Messaging and Social Platform. I was hoping  to summarize it for you and give a link but I was hit with this:

When you click "I agree" you agree that this information

• will not be disclosed to anyone inside your company without a demonstrated business need to know as they market or support IBM products.
• will not be disclosed to any party outside your company without express permission from IBM

This information is intended for IBM Business Partner information and is not to be shared with customers or prospects unless approved by IBM. Contact your local IBM representative if seeking approval to share with others outside of your organization

So all I can do is give you the link and if you are a business partner then you will be able to see it. Or track down your IBM rep to help out?

UPDATE: After reading this I think there are enough public presentations from user groups and other events to piece it together.  Some can be found in the IBM Connect sessions database  I aggregate each year.   The above video from MWLUG 2015 by Kramer Reeves may happen to contain a lot of the same information

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On Tuesday, September 8th, 2015   by Chris Miller        

I saw a link for an IBM Social Business ad that is also found on YouTube. It raised some interesting thoughts and questions about how no exact software, service or platform was ever specified, just come visit the site to let us help you. The site itself then has trials, demos and solutions included with some benefits of being more social.

I did appreciate one comment at 37 seconds into the one minute ad:

By 2014 nearly four out of five businesses plan to invest in social technology

Doesn't almost 4 out of five really mean 3 out of 5? can we not say 3 out of 5?  Also, hasn't everyone already invested.  I cannot think of a business that does not have email.  No matter what is said, email is still social as it meets the very basic criteria of social business. It shares information.

Do not forget to visit the #ibmsocbiz aggregator site to keep up with all the IBM news.

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On Friday, May 24th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

While building the IBM Connect and Lotusphere 2013 slides database I ran across this great report. It uses a social analytics platform from NextPrinciples.  As non-IBM bloggers we managed to write over 300 blog posts and 23,000 tweets.

What I am personally proud of is slide 7 that covers YouTube interaction.  IdoNotes and Spiked Studio were the primary forces in video creation and consumption. We worked hard at getting timely and decent content out to all of you to make you feel part of IBM Connect.

See the report for more info on hashtags, tweets, Facebook and tons of stuff they pulled.

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On Friday, February 8th, 2013   by Chris Miller        

Just launched is IBMSocBiz.com as a free resource to keep up on tweets, articles, videos and even photos around IBM Social Business.

IBM Social Business (or ibmsocbiz as we see it in hashtags) is generating a lot of interest. Unfortunately there was not a single place for me to capture it all so I built one for personal use. Then I decided it should be for everyone and set up the aggregation.

You are able to increase/decrease the font, change the background to white or black depending on your preference and please share away with anyone you think may be interested across you business networks.

IBMSocialBiz is brought to you by Spiked Studio.

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On Tuesday, November 27th, 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        

An IDC report came out in February 2012 stating how the future of email is social.  I was interested to see that IBM was the sponsor of the paper.

This IDC white paper takes a look at the current state of enterprise email and the perceived and real problems that surround its use.  The paper discusses the changing nature of collaboration and work fueled by the social web by examining current email trends and the emergence of new social collaboration tools.  Rather than envision "a world without email," it revels a future where email converges with social tools...

The paper begins with a situation overview and a team that needs to work on a project before jumping to a section on the history of email and a statistic that email will reach 2.4 billion users by the year 2014.

The paper covers the standard challenges about the number of emails, mobile access and blurring personal and business use of devices and email. Filtering is given a section on pages 4-5 which I feel is the basis for most of the overload.
Continue Reading here" IDC reports the future of email is social - sponsored by IBM" »

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On Thursday, May 24th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I watched and somewhat participated in a conversation about enterprise gamification addressing the negative side to employees as well as the rewards. Alan Lepofsky kicked the conversation off with the following tweet Talk about #gamification always focuses on rewarding positive actions. Do you think negative behavior should also be surfaced? #socbiz

You can read the threads from there.  I wanted to bring out a quick theory I developed.

With the current enterprise gamification engines a employee is rewarded with badges or other tidbits for completing specific tasks and activities inside some piece of software.  Examples for gamification engines for IBM Connections are Bunchball and Kudos.  Both include rewards andbadges for filling in your profile, uploading and sharing files, joining communities and making comments on others.

Now my theory is that this can be used against the employee as any other productivity benchmark can.  Your manager, HR department or supervisor can quickly pull up your profile on the enterprise collaboration software and see you have not earned any badges or marks from the enterprise gamification engine. Will this now be used against you as not being a team player and working with others?

What about simple productivity? Can they say due to your lack of file sharing you are not producing content valuable to the enterprise?  I personally do not know of any company that states that the enterprise gamification system will not be used against you. Many do not even say how it benefits you in any way.

This has nothing to do with the gamification engines at this time, as they are not offering markers or badges that are negative, it is just a view into how interpretation may be done at some companies.

Make sure you go watch my interview of Bunchball founder Rajat Paharia in IdoNotes Episode 123 on YouTube.

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On Monday, April 30th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I had the chance to meet the CEO and pretty much most of the team at SxSW 2012 down in Austin.  Paul Steel and myself then loaded up their application and did a review.  I like the way it automates many tasks, like emailing who you met and where to give them your info as well.

Take a look and load up the free app.

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On Thursday, April 19th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

I have been using the service Foodspotting for some time now.  It is an app that runs on all the mobile devices.  Instead of finding the best place to eat, it looks for and helps you share the best dishes to eat.  What you get is a catalog of great foods that you can look for in an area, browse and share.

I use it extensively on the road looking for well rated dishes at restaurants within walking distance of where I am at that moment.

So keep up with me on Foodspotting and start sharing with me too.  You can run it solo, connect it to Twitter, Facebook and other networks and even find people rated as experts in types of dishes.

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On Thursday, March 29th, 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        

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        

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines launched a program called Meet & Seat to passengers on select flights that allows you as the passenger to hook your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to your itinerary.  The linking allows you to browse other passengers to change your seat to sit near others with similar interests or business opportunity.

The question of privacy should immediately come to mind and how they use this shared data. I dig into that and my theory of some futures they could offer. This first quote from their main initiative page gives the basic privacy understanding:

Continue Reading here" KLM Royal Dutch Airlines uses passengers to be a social business with Meet & Seat" »

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On Monday, February 27th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

If you do not follow along all the shows in the Spiked Studio portfolio, now is the time get involved.  This week had three shows hit the intertubes for streaming and downloading.

• BlackBerry Today Episode 14 - The Express Version
• TheSocialGeeks Episode 44 - Pimpin Pinner
• NotesIn9 - episodes  41 and 42 and they announced over 100,000 videos served

You can find the videos on the SpikedStudio YouTube Channel and in iTunes for each show.

The content is amazing and the shows growing fast.  Look for some more places to watch and interact with us shortly!

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On Thursday, February 9th, 2012   by Chris Miller        

The Great Mind Challenge has been running for years, but has stayed overseas in India since 2004.  This year it came back to the United States to work with a bunch of higher education schools to dig into the IBM plan and new moniker of "Get Social, Do Business" for the 2012 competition.

One of the sponsors of the event is Group Business Solutions (GBS) who had the student projects look at their company. This article from the Spartan Daily (San Jose State University) has some good insight:

According to Daryl Pereira, social media manager at IBM, who has been an integral part in the creation of The Great Mind Challenge in the U.S., the challenge requires students interested in social business to form teams and solve real-world problems for the chance to win prizes and internships.

Gee said there were five winners who got a chance to move on to the next phase of the competition, inching closer to appearing in The Great Mind Challenge 2012.

“The five winners delivered a GBS (Group Business Software) Social Business environment audit study,” Gee said. “The audit provided further insight into GBS environment and ideas how to implement current/new social business techniques.”

So what does all of this mean? The students had to learn about social networking and analytics and bridging business and academics to solve business problems.   We won't see the results for the current program for a while, but the 2011 winners were announced.

Apparently Lotusphere 2012 will have a session on this in the Sponsor Track under SPN208.

Listen to the NerdGirls talk all about what they have going on at Lotusphere 2012 in this podcast

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On Monday, December 19th, 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        

I ran across this IBM whitepaper last week from IBM on Becoming a Social Business.  I took the time download and run through the seven pages of summary they bring together. The first thing I noticed is they actually define a social business:

What is a “Social Business”?
“Organizations that apply emerging technologies like Web 2.0 accompanied by organizational, cultural, and process changes to improve business performance in an increasingly connected global economic environment.”

The main point given in the rest was that IBM develops leading software to transform the way businesses work. It did seem the same text was reworded over and over in each paragraph the first few pages. There was no real meat to the sections. Social analytics was listed and I felt should have been a major part to help sell the idea of social business.

I did like the brief section on the document-centric disorganization that many enterprises face. Silos of information are growing at enormous rates, even IBM falls into this same dilemma. I have said this for two years now. I would have liked to see a few more examples of how IBM solves this with the software that the IDC claims as the leader. But, as a high level whitepaper for CEO levels entering social business, it aims for the mark.

Update: You can now watch the entire webcast from IBM on replay

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On Sunday, March 6th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

With another push of IBM into Social Business I decided I should build a list of Twitter accounts that were important. I immediately hit a stumbling block.  We have groups, departments, brands, divisions, people as groups, people, software, events and more.   Plus a list of people that are responsible for social media in the descriptions of some.

Some of the accounts and services are very duplicated.  There are multiple people that seem to be in charge of the areas and it was difficult to even start to build this listing.

***** The good news *****
I made a list of all of these you can simply follow instead of worrying about each account.  You can follow the list here, under IdoNotes lists
************************

• IBM - WTF? Locked private account, no tweets. Nothing here.
• DeveloperWorks - IBM premier Twitter account for everything (34934 followers)
• IBM News Releases - straight from IBM Communications (10086 followers)
• IBM Social BizAgenda - officially managed by Alok Chander (social media lead for software group of IBM)  (351 followers)
• IBM Social Business (IBM SocialBiz) - official IBM social software and collaboration services. Actually points to the next one strangely (1137 followers)
• IBM Social Business (IBMSocBiz) - another same name account, different id managed by four IBMers (203 followers)
• IBM Social Research (IBMtweets)- a social computing research project for IBMers and IBM Twitter accounts (2568 followers) but strangely with all these accounts only following 49 accounts
• IBM Blogger Central - never tweeted, doesn't follow anyone (5302 followers)
• IBM Business Analytics - run by IBMers (jack Mason, Reilly Starr of IBM Strategic Communications and Christine Kinser) talking about analytics
• IBM Design - News and updates about design at IBM. from Director of IBM User Experience Design, Karel Vrendenburg (15293 followers)
• IBM Software -  IBM software team managed by Tiffany Winman, IBM Social Media Strategist (2851 followers)
• IBM Software Newsletter - links to things (4077 followers)
• IBM Software Americas - IBM software news across the Americas (564 followers)
• IBM SWG SA Channel - no info (103 followers)
• IBM Northstar - tweets about Project Northstar
• IBM Research - official id for IBM Research Division. Cotweeted from 8 IBM labs (11557 followers)
• IBM Accessibility - news about accessibility from IBM.  Managed by Holly Nielsen, Web Outreach Program Manager. (2013 followers)
• ctr4socialsoft - this is the IBM Center for Social Software
• Smarter Planet - just that.  Managed by Kevin Winterfield, a social business expert
• IBM_Events - different account than below (5859 followers)
• IBMEvents - info on when and where. Run by Karl Roche of IBM Communications, and Rebecca Reyes
• IBM Dynamic Infrastructure - news on dynamic infrastructure from IBM (988 followers)
• IBM Interactive - tweets from the Digital Interactive Agency (1216 followers)
• IBM Extreme Blue - IBM's premier internship program for students pursuing MBA and software dev (673 followers)
• IBM SmarterComputing - info on smarter computing?
• IBMCafe - coffee and IBM (124 followers)
• IBMstg - marketing for IBM demand products by Mary Hall
• IBM BP Team - UK and Ireland BP news and events
• IBM US Jobs - tweets about jobs at IBM in the US (1029 followers)
• IBM Optim - Mostly San Jose and Princeton area by Kathy Zeidenstein (295 followers)
• IBMPartnerMktg - by Jacqi Levy who is a social media strategist, IBM channel marketer
• IBM Promotions - IBM discounts, special offers (872 followers)
• IBM Redbooks - notices when Redbooks come out (2905 followers)
• IBM SOA Bus partners - the business partner community for IBM SOA (1381 followers)
• IBM Engines - I have no idea but it published case studies?
• IBM Communications Server - enterprise networking solutions (164 followers)
• Citizen IBM - IBM's corporate citizen organization (419 followers)
• IBM Partners - updates from midmarket and IBM software business partner teams (867 followers)
• IBM Next Generation Network (NGN) - Updates around NGN and Smarter Planet (2832 followers)
• IBM_DataPower - DataPower Experts, IBM SOA architecture and Websphere professionals (4150 followers)
• IBM Cloud - Everything IBM and cloud related. Managed by Jeremy Hodge, Social Business Manager (1022 followers)
• IBMVLP - Virtual Loaner Program, no charge remote cloud access (616 followers)
• IBMSubCap - flexible licensing for middleware in virtual environments (90 followers)
• OpenIBM - Open source news at IBM. Says tweets are their won and not IBM, but no name (2168 followers and follow no one)
• IBM Government - Smarter public services (540 followers)
• IBM Retail - Smarter Planet solutions for retail operations (2146 followers)
• IBM Compilers - C, C++, COLBOL and Fortran compilers (61 followers)
• IBM Security - talks about solutions from IBM around security
• IBM Storage - news about IBM Storage solutions (4486 followers)
• IBM Innovate - the Innovate Rational conference account (3040 followers)
• ISICC - IBM SAP International Competence Center (632 followers)
• IBM DB2 - maybe an official DB2 account (1946 followers)
• IBMSLST - IBM Systems Labs Services and System Training (289 followers)
• IBM Blue Blog - a German blog of IBM (1674 followers)
• IBM Information Management Support - the support news and updates on Information Management (272 followers)
• IBM Cognos - info on Cognos Software from IBM.  Run by Delaney Turner in Canada (7022 followers)
• IBM Service Management - news around IBM Service Management solutions
• IBM Noticias - IBM notices and press (292 followers)
• IBM eSupport - the official support account for IBM eSupport
• IBM System Z - all about IBM System Z (1501 followers)
• IBMsysxblade - tweets about System X and BladeCenter servers (2809 followers)
• IBM Pulse - the official IBM Pulse conference account run again by Tiffany Winman, IBM Social Media Strategist (like above IBM Software)
• IBM Pulse Madrid (pulsecty) - IBM Forum in Madrid from 2010 (531 followers)
• IBM Smart Camp - global program to bring together people around Smarter Planet
• IBM HealthAU - tweets around providing services to Australia/New Zealand healthcare (174 followers)
• IBMUKcareers - not sure, get a job with IBM UK? (2831 followers)
• IBM Forum Warwick -IBM Forum Center (51 followers)
• IBM Forum London  - another IBM forum center (57 followers)
• IBM IIC Chicago - Innovation Center in Chicago (126 followers)
• IBM Switzerland - tweets from Switzerland's social media office (613 followers)
• IBM Mittelstand - IBM on Tour in Germany (2060 followers)
• IBM Mexico - tweets from their location (1667 followers)
• IBM in Ireland - tweets from the Ireland team (1482 followers)
• SmarterCities Mexico - not sure (623 followers)
• IBM UK News - news about IBM in the UK (1784 followers)
• IBM Communications Germany - another Germany account (570 followers)
• IBM Software India - Ranjini Rao runs this account
• IBM India University Relations - University Relations programs in India (464 followers)
• IBM Brazil - yes IBM in Brazil (11578 followers)
• IBM Singapore - Singapore, no tweets, no following (78 followers)
• IBM Argentina - tweets from the team there (1752 followers)
• Developerworks Japan - the version in Japan (1319 followers)
• IBM Chile - tweets from that team (384 followers)
• IBM Software Turkey - from Turkey (95 followers)
• IBM Scotland Events - IBM Scotland news and events (920 followers)
• IBM DE Careers - tweets from the career group in Germany (1017 followers)
• IBM Canada Recruiters - Campus recruitment for students in Canada (1132 follwers)
• IBM Poland - official IBM Poland feed (107 followers)
• IBM NZ - tweets from New Zealand (84 followers)
• IBM Suomi - tweets from Helsinki (203 followers)
• IBM Russia - tweets from that team (540 followers)
• IBM Recruiting Belgium - announcements on Belgium IBM jobs (794 followers)
• IBM Software Sverige - newer account (80 followers)
• IBM SW Alps - news from Switzerland and Austria by Taru Koch (327 followers)
• ISV news from IBM - ISV news and resources from Partnerworld
• IBM System Z - info on the System Z
• IBM CICS Support - news and updates about CICS (891 followers)
• Linux at IBM - tweets about Linux and IBM? (2599 followers)
• IBM Watson  - the official tweets behind the machine (6853 followers)
• IBM at GSMA MWC 2011 - tweets from a conference
• Greater IBM - the network for retired IBM and current employees (3113 followers)

Lotus directly related

• Lotus Education - easy enough.  Info on Lotus software education (1487 followers)
• IBM Lotus Tech Info - from Joyce Davis. Tweets around technical content found online (4014 followers)
• Lotus Knows - managed by Bilal Jaffery. General Lotus news (3626 followers)
• Lotus Live - the official(?) feed for Lotus Live services (1046 followers)
• Lotus Germany - their own feed (2046 followers)
• Sametime - the official Sametime information (1547 followers)
• Lotus Tech Support (Lotus_Support) - posts info on Lotus products support (896 followers)
• Lotus Tech Docs - a Twitter feed with all technotes, whitepapers, redbooks and more in realtime
• Lotus Support (LotusSupport) - LotusLive support (45 followers)
• Lotus Design - the Lotus UX and UI design team (607 followers)
• Lotus Social SW Info - information and education for Connections, Quickr and LotusLive Engage (151 followers)
• Lotus Collab SW Info - information and education for Domino, Designer, Symphony and more (104 followers)
• IBM Lotus SW CEE - Marketing and Sales for Central and Eastern Europe (294 followers)
• Lotus Business Partner - managed by Deb Cole for information on Lotus BP program (525 following)
• Lotus Connect - official Twitter for all news and opinions of Southeast Asia region (538 followers)
• Lotus Symphony - two tweets, all in 2009 (313 followers)
• AusLUG - Australian Lotus User Group (66 followers)
• IamLUG - North American Lotus User Group (210 followers)

Tivoli

• IBM Tivoli - tweets from the Tivoli team, mainly by Tiffany Winman, IBM Social Media Strategist
• Tivoli Business Partners - a community account for Tivoli business partners (555 followers)
• Tivoli Japan - their own feed (277 followers)
• Tivoli Germany - their own feed (247 followers)
• Tivoli Australia - their own feed (126 followers)
• Tivoli Netcool - never a single tweet (170 followers)
• Tivoli OMNIbus - never a tweet (139 followers)

Websphere

• IBM Websphere Commerce - news and updates on this product (1552 followers)
• IBMAdapters - IBM Websphere Adapters support feed  (295 followers)
• WebsphereCommer - might be a long forgotten account or fake. 1 tweet in 2009 (123 followers)
• IBM Websphere MQ Support - just what it says (1002 followers)
• IBM AppServer - IBM Websphere Application Server news, updates and more (1804 followers)
• IBM_ProcessServ - IBM Websphere Process Server support and updates (904 followers)
• Websphere Buzz News - news around Websphere in general (644 followers)
• IBM Websphere BPs - what Websphere Business Partner Marketing is up to (587 followers)
• IBM Websphere Brazil - info from Brazil team (544 followers)
• Websphere Japan - yes the team in Japan (797 followers)
• Atlanta Websphere - Websphere User Group in Atlanta (77 followers)
• Websphere User Group Argentina - the groups own account
• Websphere eXtreme Scale (ElasticCaching) - from Research Triangle Park
• Websphere eHelp - updates around the eHelp program (507 followers)
• Websphere Portal - links around Portal.  An amazing 7 tweets (573 followers)
• Websphere - not owned by IBM.  Former Web Ring

Rational

• IBM Rational - information about IBM Rational software (4034 followers)
• Rational Support - tweets from the support team for Rational
• IBM Japan Rational - the group in Japan (732 followers)

People with IBM in name that relate to the tech (not added to list)

• IBMiCIO - oops not an IBM account.  Run by an iSeries evangelist
• IBM Cliff - an IBM employee
• I really quit there was so many out there....

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On Tuesday, March 1st, 2011   by Chris Miller        

IBM has a nice sign-up page where you can get your hands on the ~60 page book titled "Collaboration for Dummies" published by Wiley Publications.  I will have my review up shortly, but I imagine you may want your own copies.
.


I  wanted to give you the direct pdf link to save you the effort in tomorrows newsletter.  You can sign up for the newsletter in the upper right corner of my blogs OR just watch my Twitter stream for the link to tomorrows edition of the newsletter that will have it.

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On Monday, February 28th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

You can also watch this video in HD on the IdoNotes YouTube Channel.

IBM launched the Social Business Jam today, in an attempt to get businesses and social media experts to participate for 72 hours in sharing ideas and brainstorming.  I did a screencast of my thoughts as I entered the jam.  I was hoping it was populated with some starters in advance.  But I found it to be quite empty and I was not sure what to do.

While a Help section was there, and I noted it, a splash with simple steps would have made more sense.

You have about 70 hours left to get involved at the IBM Social Business Jam

UPDATE: The Jam I was thinking of at the end of the video was the Innovation Jam in 2006 via their Collaboration Jams

During IBM's 2006 Innovation Jam^TM - the largest IBM online brainstorming session ever held - IBM brought together more than 150,000 people from 104 countries and 67 companies. As a result, 10 new IBM businesses were launched with seed investment totaling $100 million.

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On Tuesday, February 8th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Lotus has a huge drive, you will read an see, on being a Social Business.  Brice and Chris took this to heart with JMP206 - How I went beyond the Hype, Narcissism and Trendiness to Become a Social Software Superhero.  With included videos from IBM, bloggers and others they dove into changing the enterprise outlook on what social media means to individuals and business.

"The Internet never forgets, it is like trying to remove pee from the pool" from Bruce Elgort

A section of the presentation covered the enterprise and SocialSphere Interactions.  Working with internal and external social interaction.  Where to focus and being your process of becoming a social business.

Sharing + Social Awareness = Increased Trust

Chris Martin tells us he and Bruce "met online and have been sharing since".  There is no guidebook how to communicate, meet, interact.  It is about listening, sharing and communicating.

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On Sunday, January 30th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

Day #4. A daily posting for a work week of the best and worst of 2010 in the Lotus world from my eyes.

Best - Lotus Connections 3.0
As the reported leader in the enterprise space for a social networking software platform, Lotus Connections saw version 3 roll out the doors a short time ago.  Added features like forums, recommendations, better community management and notifications as some examples.
Via Radicati of all places:

The release of Lotus Connections 3.0 symbolizes IBM’s commitment to two things: making the social network viable for enterprises as an on-premise and hosted solution, and using analytics to further streamline business processes and tools.

While businesses that have not deployed or taken the investment have a hard time validating due to ROI theories, the ones that took the step and chance see the return as employees find valuable information faster and share more intellectual capital easier in a controlled environment.

Lotus cannot sit back now as companies see the success and begin to build their own solutions.  Lotus/IBM will need to evolve the product further adding even more advanced analytics, functions and integration into public networks.

Worst  - IBM social silo's
I have blogged about this before in two ways.  
1.        How IBM has built numerous silo's of social interaction, causing everyone to have multiple profiles and no seamless linking of information in the article Here comes another silo, "My Developerworks".
2.        How the Lotusphere social site is built each year, content never brought along and then destroyed just a month after the event closes in the article Shouldn't Lotusphere be a growing and nurtured community? Not reborn every 12 months?.

I long for the day where I can bring together all of my content needed on IBM as well as share information across forums, Greenhouse, Developerworks, wiki's, Sametime communities and more.  Then hooking into public social networks with ease to share to larger groups.  Not everyone spends their time searching only on IBM.  That is why the custom blogger search engine has been used heavily, for example, through the web and the awesome Lotus Notes widget. (also on Greenhouse if you prefer to get it from that catalog).

I have seen postings on LinkedIn groups about a possible long term site being established and managed for Lotusphere. I can only wish it does not rely on yet another name/profile/login to integrate.  I hope they dig deep into existing systems and begin to fold them together.

IBM stands proud as a leader in the social software space for enterprises, but that does not mean fire up a new environment for every project, section or purpose.

********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 Thursday, January 6th, 2011   by Chris Miller        

As the blogs light up with a LotusKnows blogging initiative, I wanted to remind you of the resources available for keeping up with the news.

• If you do not use RSS feedreaders, I created a simple LotusKnows landing page for you in a year ago for LotusKnows and Lotusphere.  The data is being pulled from numerous searches brought together in widgets on the page.
• If you prefer a newspaper format, the LotusKnows newspaper edition exists as well.  Twitter, blogs, feeds and more.  Did I mention there was a XPages newspaper as well already made?
• I updated the full OPML file of Lotus blogs to include LotusKnows blog in the listing.  You import this directly into your feed reader of choice.  Hopefully that is Google Reader (my choice with the Feedly overlay) so you can easily share what great news you find.
• Finding the information you want was never easier with the Google Search for bloggers, Lotus technical information and more.  I shared the Lotus Notes client widget yesterday ort you can always use the search box in the corner of my blog.

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On Thursday, June 10th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

No need for long blog posting introduction.  If you are slightly interested in social media and social networking then you should already be listening to TheSocialGeeks podcast.

However, Episode 25 has Alan jump in with some great feedback and insight into the following:

Google tests a new Google Voice desktop app
Location awareness and Foursquare cheaters
Daniel Brusilovsky steps down from Teens In Tech
LooptPulse for Blackberry
Farmville causes real debt
Parents rights over their kid's Facebook account

Call us and leave voicemails to be played at 3-2345-GEEKS (via Google Voice)

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On Thursday, April 8th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

Most BOF sessions do not have slides.  I merely made these are reference handouts for the attendees for BOF507 - Utilizing Social Tools to Consume Lotus Information

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On Wednesday, January 20th, 2010   by Chris Miller        

We (read this is Viktor, Novak and more) are finding this easier to keep up with each other and quickly view locations of friends while out and about in London instead of tweets or figuring it out ourselves which isn't always accurate.  As always you can also find me on Birghtkite.

You have to specifically enable/disable this badge off of the Google Latitude page. You have choices to show the roads, terrain, satellite and hybrid modes.  Of course, height and width can be adjusted at will.  So this is what the badge looks like at the detail level.

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On Sunday, September 20th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

We were having an issue with certain BlackBerry devices not being able to turn on integration features on the updated Facebook application.  In short, the new Facebook app should allow you to integrate messaging, calendar synchronization and contact matching.  However the calendar and messaging option was grayed out on our BES devices, but enabled for those not BES server connected.  So off we went to the BES server policies.  A sample of what we saw on the devices is below.



What we discovered after reading a ton was there was no policy that controlled the options,  only for a BES 4.x server.  There is a new policy in BES 5 that let's the administrator control how Social Applications interact with devices that have applied policies from BES servers.  It not only controls Facebook, but has very special settings for Lotus Connections individually.  It definitely shows how Lotus and RIM are working together.

So what did we do for the BES 4.x server??  BlackBerry just released a downloadable policy update for BES 4 servers.  You import the policy update, make the necessary changes, apply the updated policy to the users and they are almost instantly able to work with the new features.

The new policy area allows the BES administrator and to control data access on the device for social networking applications.  You can read about the policy update from this technote . It will also point you to a secondary one where you should download the additional policy.

What we did notice missing was the same integration for Lotus Connections.  It would be nice to have profile information, including pictures, pulled in to match my address book like the Facebook application.  Also, the ability to bring Activities into the calendar would be of huge benefit.  Moving into Bookmarks (Dogears) and having those sync to the Blackberry would make Connections a seamless integration point as well.

I'm just saying.

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On Friday, August 7th, 2009   by Chris Miller        

Exactly what one would expect, a quick article showing how the adoption rate of the actual employees in organizations is slow on the corporate social network software side.  While companies are pushing technologies like Lotus Connections, getting the employees into them is a much tougher task.

But recent research and interviews with analysts suggest that the adoption of these tools has been slow due to a lack of engagement by users and the stiff competition for their time posed by sites such as Facebook

Does your company feel they have to shut off all external social network access just to force users into your own?  Or is there not enough cool features and need to use your own internal ones?  Keep in mind that sites that have high activity like IBM's own internal networks have been in the making for years.  Read that, years.  Not just since last year when Lotus Connections came rolling out the door.  It was taken from the building of what seemed to work in a company with around 300k employees with a need and demand to find someone that knew what they wanted.

So how are you promoting it in your organization?

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On Friday, May 23rd, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Bruce made a posting on this and I had a commented that I hesitated making a full blog posting until the site grew in usage some.  But today I received another email from IBM that they were shutting down the site today and to hurry over.  Well I hurried over, to see only 44 postings total in the site.

So I jumped back a page to get the push of what the site was supposed to do.  Ahh, create topics for work between IBM and the Business Partners.  There was an interesting amount of topics around IBM and green initiatives in there.  The rest were scattered.  So my thought it that IBM had this set for a fixed time to build up some quick ideas and then work on those.  Only 7 of the ideas had a catalyst take them on as a project.  Here, this screenshot describes it better.


So I say the idea to have the idea exchange was valiant, but not enough people knew of it or took part to make any difference.  Forcing it out of existence this quick also stops ideas from growing.  This was not a brainstorm site, a discussion board can't live one week like that unless everyone is spending each day in there.  If you have an IBM partner id then go take a look.

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On Friday, February 15th, 2008   by Chris Miller        

Without us even talking this weekend, Carl beat me to the posting in how he is handling Facebook activity. I think some of our too reasons are different, but the end result is the same.

With all the different place to update, it could be time consuming.  Many of you that are listed as friends on Facebook notice I have moved to having other feeds update Facebook.  I do get on and still accept friends when requested, but past that there is no value that exists there that I haven't already built on other networks.  The idea of Facebook moves along of developers making applications to keep you in there more without providing business benefit.  Sure, sure, find business contacts and create some groups.  I will make you a list of sites doing it.  Discover old classmates.  Have you been to your high school reunion?  Right.

So please feel free to keep adding me as a friend on there, I will gladly accept.  Many of you find that is the place you want to get all your updates.  I accept that and feed right into it from many sites as you can see.


Then all of the status updates are fed from multiple sources so I can post once , feed all.  Feedburner handles a mega feed from Jaiku that has most all my feeds wrapped into one.  Data ownership plays a huge roll in this and there is some good news coming from that shortly.

Thoughts from anyone?  I am not exiting Facebook, just providing alternate ways that it gets updated.

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On Monday, February 11th, 2008   by Chris Miller