Posts Tagged 'ibm israel'

Diving into Secondlife and ‘The Forbidden City’

Published November 23, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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The Israel Internet Association is holding its November meetup today at IBM HQ, with an interesting session about virtual worlds – diving into Secondlife and a guided virtual tour of The Forbidden City, IBM and China’s Palace Museum 3-year long project. The meeting will start at 17:00, networking at 16:30. Feel free to RSVP at facebook event page.

About The Forbidden City:

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a partnership between IBM and the Palace Museum in Beijing, China. For more than five hundred years, the Ming and Qing emperors ruled China from the palaces of the Forbidden City. The art and architectural treasures from this period are the cultural heart of modern China.

The principal goal of the project is to provide the means for a worldwide audience to celebrate and explore Chinese culture and history. As an IBM Corporate Citizenship project, the project marries world-class subject matter with world-class technology innovation. It is a premiere showcase of IBM’s leadership in virtual worlds and cultural preservation.

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is the world’s first online virtual world dedicated to a country’s cultural heritage. This is presented as a three-dimensional replica of the square-kilometer palace grounds called The Virtual Forbidden City.

IBM Israel receives PM Award

Published November 18, 2008 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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During his last visit to Israel, Andy Monshaw had an unexpected obligation – to join Meir Nissensohn, IBM Israel GM, to an official ceremony where IBM Israel was honored with the Prime Minister‘s Award for Economic Contribution.

IBM made three purchases in Israel this year, starting off with XIV in January ($350m), FilesX early April ($70m) and Diligent mid-April ($200m). IBM has been the first global corporations to open local offices in Israel, back in 1949. In 1972 Haifa Research Labs were opened, and grew to be the largest research facility of IBM outside the US – with over 1,000 researchers, working at three development labs (Storage, Software and Development).

Link:
Prime Minister awards IBM for its contribution to the Israeli economy (Hebrew)
IBM History

IBM’s ‘Facebook’

Published August 13, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
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Enterprise social software is gaining momentum in Israel towards the end of 2008, a trend that I believe will become stronger in 1H 2009. In a great timing, just before our KM and Collaboration User Forum, where we’ll demo IBM’s social software solution, TheMarker IT published a great article discussing enterprise 2.0 examples, from Deloitte, IBM and Best Buy.

The implementations vary from one company to the next, but the goals are similar: higher employee retention, knowledge sharing, win young talent, support global operations, shorten development cycles and others.

IBM’s Beehive, is a natural evolution of the company world renowned BluePages solution (employee directory), an inhirint part of IBM Intranet (w3):

“Very early on, we recognized the importance of connecting people within IBM and moving beyond a static view of the individual,” says Jeff Schick, vice president of social software. The heavily used directory includes 450,000 employees and gets 6 million lookups per day.

Although Beehive is still experimental, there are already some 38,000 employees (in just 9 months!) actively using Beehive, with actual benefits:

For Michael Ackerbauer, a manager in the CIO’s office at IBM, the results are already in. He learned about Beehive a year ago, and “I quickly got hooked,” he says, especially since he manages a team of developers who work remotely. “It’s valuable for the team to get to know me on a personal level, and I like to get to know them.”

Jeff Schick, VP, Social Software, IBM SWG, provides an advice for companies looking at social software solutions:

“Knowledge workers today have no time to add new activities to their day; they’re looking for how to work smarter,” Schick says. “Poor user adoption is rarely because users didn’t know how but rather didn’t see why.”

If you RSVPed to our user forum event Sep. 8, you’ll have the opportunity to epxerience Beehive first hand, along with Lotus Connections – IBM’s social software for the enterprise solution, which is based on our internal experience. Seating is limited, so RSVP now.

Update:
TheMarker IT artilce is a translated (with permission of course) version from The Industry Standard, ‘Social Networking Behind the Firewall‘.

Links:
TheMarker IT: IBM’s ‘Facebook’ (Hebrew)
Event: KM and Collaboration User Forum, Sep 8th, IBM Israel
The Industry Standard: Social Networking Behind the Firewall
IBM: Web 2.0 Goes to Work for Business
IntranetBlog: http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2008/7/7/3781562.html
IntranetBlog: Beehive builds buzz at IBM

KM and Collaboration User Forum – Sep 8

Published August 6, 2008 Uncategorized 6 Comments
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When you start getting questions from colleagues and customers about a user forum that we publicized using facebook alone, you begin to understand the power of this new media. In our FB event page there are 61 confirmed participants and additional 40 in maybe attending status – and there’s still a month to go. Here are the official details on our KM and Collaboration User Forum – Customer Talk, set for Monday, Sep. 8th, at IBM Israel.

Intro:
Many organizations are looking for easy solutions to manage (and deploy) knowledge management and sharing technologies, which also leverage existing infrastructure investments. Success stories and best practices are always needed, and our WebSphere Portal solution has some 6,000 customers worldwide. In this upcoming user forum I will speak very little. The portion I do speak will be to narrate the demo we have planned at the last slot. We are leaving the stage to our customers, that include leading local and international companies such as Bank Hapoalim, TEVA, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foriegh Affairs, Minsitry of Transportation, Amidar Housing, Standards Institutue of Israel, TARO, Meuhedet Health Company, RAD, Bank Leumi, Discount Bank, NESHER Cement, Nirlat, OPAL Future Technologies, Pelephone Communications, Israel Securities Authority and others.

Target Audience:
Social managers, knowledge management specialists, marcom, team leaders, HR people, IT staff, consultants and analysts, procurement – basically anyone who wants to share knowledge internally or externally and looking for a solution.

Agenda:
15:30 – Networking and (light) food
16:00 – Welcome – Dvir Reznik and Alex Balk, SWG, IBM
16:15 – Customer talk: Unified Messaging Platform for a Paperless Office – Sharon Ben Haim, CIO, Ministry of Finance
16:45 – Customer talk: The Portal as a Workspace – Gabi Shoval, CIO, Menora Insurance
17:15 – Customer talk: TBD
17:45 – Leveraging Web 2.0 solutions for sharing knowledge, the IBM Story – Dvir Reznik
18:30 – Panel and Q&A with speakers – Sharon Ben Haim, Gabi Shoval, Dvir Reznik, Alex Balk

Registration:
There are several ways to register, you can choose one or many:

Happy Pesach !

Published April 17, 2008 Uncategorized 6 Comments
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Spent the entire week in Madrid for a Lotus workshop for IBM South-West Europe – understanding how IBM Israel came to be at South-West Europe is a whole new discussion, that I won’t start here.

Since Pesach is upon us (Saturday), I decided to send a greeting to colleagues in Israel, wishing Happy Holidays. But, we do live in a UGC world, so why not record a Happy Holiday greeting?
Sitting at the hotel lobby, spending time until our flight back to Tel Aviv, I took the initiative.
Alex didn’t share my enthusiasm, but this is not in a democracy. After we took the video using my Nokia N95, we found that it’s in MP4 format, and needed to be converted…. 🙁 So, Alex opened a connection to his home PC, running Linux, converted the file and uploaded. Thanks Alex !

So, straight from Madrid, Spain – Chag Sameach and Happy Holidays!

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.