As you know already, Lotusphere 2009 is already underway, scheduled for January 18-22, 2009. My colleague Mac Guidera is the manager of the Best Practices track, and is taking a very social approach towards gathering ideas. Basically, the Best Practices track has grown over the years to become one of the most popular at Lotusphere because it cover topics and has content that is relevant to you.
If you’re a customer or a BP interested in presenting at LS09, Mac has the full 411 on how to accomplish that.
You asked for it, and it’s (finally) here: Lotus Notes support for the iPhone. And it’s not just us (aka IBM) saying so, Apple are also in the picture. Update: Got some responses from readers over the weekend, so, just to clarify: I’m not talking about full Lotus Notes client on your iPhone (like a pre-installed software), but rather a web access (through a browser) to your inbox/calendar/contacts (Domino Web Access, version 8.0.2).
Before heading out to army reserve I wanted to post a quick wrap-up of yesterday’s IBM/Lotus User Forum. We had some 45 participants, customers and consultants, who came to hear two customer stories (which included live demo) and a live demo of IBM’s enterprise social software solution, Lotus Connections. Furthermore, it was great meeting, in person, some of my twitter and facebook friends – with all that social, it’s important to keep a personal touch, and actually, well, touching people and shaking hands.
Publicizing the event using social media only, we didn’t know what to expect in terms of attendance, but we were surprised by the number of people arrived, some registered at the day of the event! I’ll post a separate entry about lessons learned at a later date.
Been getting a lot of feedback from customers and colleagues about the importance of this user forum, and we definitely plan to host more like it, with 2-3 customersuccessstories and an IBM demo. The event page at ibm.com/il is also live (4 days), where we’ll upload the slides and some pics from the event. The expected attendance is surprising, with some 110 people (!): over 70 RSVPed at FB, others commented at TheMarker Cafe (here, here and here), dozens have either email/text me, and some registered at friendfeed. Amazing!
This is actually the first event at IBM Israel (that I’m aware of at least) that was advertised using social media only, without the traditional DM (direct marketing) tactics – email, distribution lists, advertising, articles, interactive, phone calls, etc. Sometime next week, after we’ll have time to study and evaluate the outcome, I’ll post my impressions (and lessons learnt) of organizing an event using social media only.
There’s more to Web 2.0 than RSS, blogs and the 1,150,000,000 people connected to the internet. Web 2.0 is allowing us to bridge the gap between innovative (and social) technologies and business needs, in a simple (and code-less) way. I can take a map from Google, picture from flickr and a blog rss, incorporate them all into a single view – thus creating a new and unique service. It’s called a mashup:
In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool; an example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. [wikipedia]
IBM has been working for some time on develpoing a tool that would allow easy creation of mashups – IBM Mashup Center, that is now available free via IBM Lotus Greenhouse.CRN reviewed three mashup solutions: Google Mashup Editor Beta, IBM Mashup Center and Adobe LiveCycle. Here’s what they had to say about IBM Mashup Center:
IBM Mashup Center provides an easy-to-use, GUI-based method to combining maps, RSS feeds, and corporate data like customer lists into browser-based widgets. Creating a mashup here is as simple as dragging and dropping RSS feeds, mapping information, CSV files or other data sets onto a work board… IBM is targeting non-technologists—this is both less code-intensive and more business-friendly than Google Mashup Editor.
and closing with
The IBM Mashup Center provides a slightly more attractive alternative because of the platform’s flexibility and easy-to-deploy approach.
Mashups are definitely something that need to be in every CIO/CTO scope – the possibilities are endless, and those require little technical skills. Mixing up has never been so easy. Stay tuned for my first mashup… coming soon.
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.
As you know already, Lotusphere 2009 is already underway, scheduled for January 18-22, 2009. My colleague Mac Guidera is the manager of the Best Practices track, and is taking a very social approach towards gathering ideas. Basically, the Best Practices track has grown over the years to become one of the most popular at Lotusphere because it cover topics and has content that is relevant to you.
