macguidera.net

Lotus Connections on E2TV at #e2conf

2009-06-23T16:57:00.003-05:00

e2conf - a view from away

2009-06-22T13:32:00.004-05:00

If, like me, you are trying to keep up to date on the happs at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week in Boston, from afar; you may enjoy these on-line resources:
E2TV
Enterprise 2.0 Blog
E2Conf twitter account
E2Conf - The Back Channel

Also, have a look at the The Collaboration Soapbox blog for a day-by-day look of IBM at Enterprise 2.0.

Lotus Connections 2.5 Mobile

2009-06-17T08:26:00.004-05:00

Did you try out Connections 2.5 on the Greenhouse yet? Did you find the mobile browser interface? It really isn't that hard! http://greenhouse.lotus.com/mobile

Mobile browser access will be supported on iPhone, iPod Touch, and Nokia S60 devices. We're rolling out only a few of the services and devices to start, but see this as a growing interface, as the rest of Lotus does. I know you will get instant value in being able to pull up a Connections Profile, update your status, and blog from wherever.
If your looking for RIM's BlackBerry Client for Lotus Connections, let them know it.

Lotus Connections 2.5 in the Wild!

2009-06-15T17:07:00.004-05:00

My friends on the Lotus Greenhouse team, have successfully upgraded their Lotus Connections install to the 2.5 beta stream!
I know I've been missing in action for a bit, but this for me marks the beginning of the 2.5 release which is on target for third quarter this year. There's lots to say and do and I can't wait to do it, but for now please go enjoy our updates (including Files and Wikis)!

Yay FriendFeed!

2009-02-10T14:46:00.005-05:00

I really like FriendFeed. Maybe not as much as Scoble, but I am getting there. Up to now, I have been using it lightly for public feed aggregation but the feeds I am watching there and value I get from the service continues to grow. As I was clicking around on the site today, I found my new favorite feature, imaginary friend:

You can keep track of your friends that don't use FriendFeed by creating "imaginary friends." For example, if you know your friend's Flickr username, you can create an imaginary friend with that Flickr account, and you will get notified every time your friend publishes a photo.

The best part is that other people, your friends, can't see your imaginary friends. I love it! It takes friending to a whole new level.

"Lotusphere was great!", says my inbox.

2009-01-27T09:03:00.003-05:00

With the new year and the calm before the storm that is Lotusphere, I took the opportunity to reduce my inbox to nothing. And try as I did during the week, I could not keep up with it.
My apologies to anyone that is in queue, I am working on this with vigor today. And please, try not to become number 400!

Lotusphere 2009: GURUpalooza!

2009-01-17T07:12:00.003-05:00

Be sure to come to GURUpalooza!

This session is a must for anyone that is interested in what some of the best minds working in Lotus Technologies have to offer beyond their presentations at Lotusphere. Come here for more answers and insight into what has been covered this week. It's a relaxed Q&A, Thursday before lunch. See you there.

Session id: GURU101
Session date: 01/22/2009
Session time: 11:30am - 12:30pm
Session location: SW 5-10

All week you've been basking in the knowledge that has shone down upon
you from our tracks of experts. You’ve listened to their sessions,
“borrowed” their ideas, and have cornered them in the hallways at every opportunity to get that little bit of extra help. But, as always, there are more questions than opportunities for answers. We’re giving you one last chance to pick their brains —
and that opportunity is known as GURUpalooza. Bring those final questions, comments, and even a little bit of praise to GURUpalooza and let’s all have one more
collaborative "geek fest"before we draw Lotusphere 2009 to a close!

Lotusphere 2009 Party

2009-01-07T14:26:00.003-05:00

Found on the Lotusphere Online site:

Lotusphere 2009 Party
Wednesday, 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Universal Studios Florida

As a Lotusphere 2009 attendee, you will have exclusive use of Universal Studios, the motion picture and television theme park built with Academy Award-winning producer/director Steven Spielberg as creative consultant. The production begins on the Hollywood Street Set! Enjoy Terminator 2: 3-D™, Shrek 4-D®, and Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast™. Once you make your way to the New York Backlot Street Set, you will find the Revenge of the Mummy and for those with a sense of adventure, TWISTER... Ride It Out®. The fun continues in the Amity Backlot Street Set with Jaws®, Earthquake - - The Big One and Fear Factor Live®. Tired yet... we've got more: MEN IN BLACK™ Alien Attack™, E.T.'s Adventure and The Simpson's. With food and drinks, music and characters, there's something for everyone.

Lotusphere 2009 Sessions Wordle

2008-12-22T11:45:00.003-05:00

I've got Lotusphere on the brain! This wordle was created using the top 100 words in the session titles and abstracts. Enjoy!

Lotusphere 2009: Lotus Connections Wordle

2008-12-16T07:57:00.003-05:00

A wordle created using the session information for all Connections related sessions at Lotusphere 2009.

Mitch shows how he used Activities

2008-12-05T12:14:00.004-05:00

Mitch Cohen, has provided a great breakdown of how he used Lotus Connections Activities to put together his session at Lotusphere with Chris Whisonant.

I did the same thing and not only did it make working with my co-presenter easier, but it also brought my team into the conversation. By adding them to the activity, I was able to solicit feedback and work their comments into my different versions along the way.

Thanks to everyone that helped out!

Making friends with the Twitterpillar

2008-11-24T14:25:00.007-05:00

I joined Twitter a while ago and wasn't too impressed with the service. I applaud them for the concept and people for their willingness to share just about everything in this medium, but I think that as a content provider, they suck.

Of course like most everyone else, I don't like their intermittent service (that has improved), but I also have had trouble with Twitter being the only place to tweet. I know their are other mini/micro/nano blogs available. However, bloggers blog everywhere, it's no big deal, so why am I stuck using this service. I feel like I'm stuck using AOL IM and can't switch to anything else or I'll loose my buddy base and that blows.

As bad as they are, Twitter has provided a great API and is very open to applications that can utilize it in aggregation, or just simply pull a feed. These things are great and are probably it's savor for my use. Thanks to Digsby and FriendFeed (and many others) for taking full advantage of that.

With all that in mind, I've decided to be more active on Twitter. Thanks to everyone that has followed my silence there up until this point. I hope things are about to get better!

meh: http://twitter.com/macguidera

Lotusphere 2009: Lotus Connections Sessions

2008-11-19T17:27:00.008-05:00

From the Lotusphere site, I've put together this quick list of sessions covering Lotus Connections. This is going to be great!

JumpStart Sessions

The Office is Flat (coffee in SOHO)

IBM Lotus Connections: Up and Running

Futures and Innovations

From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration, Productivity, and Adoption in the Enterprise

Application Development

Lotus Workflow - Best Practices and New Possibilities

IBM Lotus Connections Customizations

IBM Lotus Connections ATOM API Deep Dive

Are You REALLY Taking Advantage of an Integrated Lotus Collaboration Experience?

Build for Success: Getting the Most Out of Lotus Collaboration and Social Software

Planning and Managing Your Collaboration Infrastructure

How to Expose People to People -- and People to Information

Integrating IBM WebSphere Portal with IBM Lotus Connections Using IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory

IBM Lotus Connections Deployment Architecture and Best Practices

Taking IBM Lotus Connections Mobile

What's Next with IBM Lotus Connections

Best Practices

Best Practices on Social Software Adoption

Show 'n Tell Sessions

Getting Your Feet Wet with IBM Lotus Connections

Lotusphere 2009 Sessions

2008-11-19T09:25:00.006-05:00

The Lotusphere 2009 Breakout Sessions have been posted and I wanted to say from my perspective that this is a huge relief! I can truly say that being a track manager is hell. I'm not saying that I haven't enjoyed it, but coming up with the right mix of sessions to have in the Best Practices track is a very, very hard job. There were over 300 submissions in the Best Practice track. Some of them stunk and some were so so, but most were great.

As I poured over the abstracts, I found it difficult not select too many for the track. It got harder and harder to whittle down the list and get to a point where I could bring forward my recommendation to the team. The amount of variables in making the final decision is ludicrous. However one variable that helped a great deal was what the community put forward on IdeaJam. Thanks to everyone who participated there, it was a big help!

If your session was not selected this year, please don't take it personally. I can say honestly, that I did not even consider speaker names until later into the cycle. My advice for next time (yes, there is a next time) is to shop your idea around more within the community, build up a strong case, and be very articulate in what you want to present and why when submitting your session. Find a topic that will be a benefit for a majority of the attendees at Lotusphere and then sell it in a way that will blur the thought of those uncomfortable conference chairs.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit and abstract. The Best Practices track is unique within Lotusphere and truly is dependent on your participation.

Also, I wanted to say thanks to Rocky for his hard work on this track as well. He's great to work with and I enjoyed his excitement and experience in all things Lotusphere. Thanks Rock!

Mac Daddy!

2008-11-06T11:15:00.003-05:00

Mac Guidera, 9 pounds - 10 ounces, 21.5 inches

Aside from a new job and getting more involved in Lotusphere I've recently become a father! Thanks to everyone for the well wishes and congratulations. I'm back on-online in a week or so and am enjoying some quiet and sleepless time here at the house.

Lotus CEO Community Collaboration Bundle

2008-10-22T18:49:00.004-05:00

I'm glad I caught this article this morning. It highlights how these products help people tap into resources and instantly connect with them, within the enterprise. By only implementing some of these technologies and practices, you're not giving your team all the tools to get the job done. The IBM Lotus Community Collaboration Bundle (announcement), is here to make it easier to share, capture, and reuse knowledge in real time.

Integrating IBM Lotus Connections, IBM Lotus Sametime, and IBM Lotus Quickr in an enterprise

<quote>
The Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus Connections products can provide a great deal of value to an organization individually. By having all three integrated within the same environment, however, you can realize an even higher level of value from this solution. It enhances communications through presence awareness and instant chat from multiple entry points, helps facilitate knowledge sharing through multiple product features, and improves workflow and work processes in the organization.

This solution is designed to organize and improve work efforts, provide productive teaming opportunities, help users find and access knowledgeable resources and instantly connect with them, and share and make available intellectual capital to the whole organization.
</quote>

What would you say...ya do here?

2008-10-10T08:37:00.002-05:00

Thanks to all for the congrats and well wishes on the new job. Transitioning from the Greenhouse to Product Management is a big gear shift. Working as a developer and engineer for many years has always meant that technology is the answer to IT problems. However, as I look at this new role, I find that I'll have to rely more on my people skills. Figuring out what Product Management is and how to jump into it, looks daunting. Luckily, as with most issues in the IT biz, Office Space has explained it nicely.

And I'll I have my assistant, Luis, to help me :)

A Season of Change

2008-10-08T20:30:00.001-05:00

Almost three years into my career at IBM, I find myself moving onto my third job for Big Blue. I joined IBM Software Service for Lotus, in January of 2006 after having worked as an independent Business Partner focused on Lotus Domino Web application development. As a Senior IT Specialist with ISSL, I designed and developed Domino, Forms, Sametime and Quickr solutions for customers worldwide. As Lotus Connections emerged in the field, I worked on many of the key projects for ISSL, providing architecture and implementation guidance to customers, business partners and colleagues. Last year, I transitioned to the Lotus Greenhouse team as their Technical Team Lead and helped bring in many of the Lotus technologies that are hosted there today. This week, I am excited to get started with the Lotus Connections product team and will be joining Suzanne and Baan as a Product Manager.

Lotus Connections, has taken off in the Enterprise 2.0 space and I am sure it will only continue to rise. I'm very much looking forward to bringing my background and experiences to this social software offering and can't wait to see what comes of this new job.

help me help you help us

2008-09-24T12:38:00.004-05:00

The use for IdeaJam for Lotusphere Best Practices has warmly been received by the community. I've been actively pushing aspiring abstract writers to the site instead of replying with support and an at-a-boy via email, instant message, or at conference cocktail hour. However, we need more action there. The deadline for session submissions is this Friday and I am sure that we could be contributing more.

Please take the time to weigh in on and contribute to the LS09 BP IdeaSpace. It's available 24 hours, 7 days a week, but we need you there by Friday!

Where's your name?

2008-09-11T22:50:00.003-05:00

Vote!

Best Practices: Freshen up!

2008-09-11T15:59:00.004-05:00

Working with Best Practices this year, I am hoping to bring in some fresh sessions and faces to the track. So if you've got a session idea that hasn't been seen before, then submit it! If you are new to presenting at Lotusphere, then I'd like to meet you. Either way, do not be shy about the call for abstracts. I can't tell you how many times I've already been approached via Sametime and email about some great session ideas (points for guessing by who first) and my answer to all of them is, get them in! And keep reaching out if you have questions!

However, if your session idea is a rehash of something given at another conference or previous year, then you should seriously rethink it. Go get a bedazzler and add some flash to that tired copy and paste job. I'm not looking for the same old song and dance and would much rather have attendees blown away with flashy rhinestone studs from someone wearing a jean jacket that says, 'Fresh!', than bring back what's expected.

Keep in mind, this track and conference is for you. Please be sure to put in something to get the best out. Even if you are not planning to present, post what you would like to see on in the IdeaSpace and comment on what is there.

I'm hoping this year to have the Best Practices track be at its best ever. We're off to a strong start with your help and IdeaJam. Thanks to everyone that is participating there. Be sure to keep it up!

Adopting Social Software in the Enterprise

2008-09-10T11:50:00.004-05:00

Join the Lotus Greenhouse in this webcast on how real companies adopting Social Software today. In this webcast, you will hear how organizations are deploying Lotus Connections and learn some best practices for getting started with your own deployment. The lessons learned from early adopters will help you plan your companies successful deployment of Lotus Connections. The webcast will be presented by Chris Lamb, Senior Offering Manager, Lotus Connections.

We've been quite busy with these webcasts be sure to catch up, if you missed out.

Lotus Greenhouse Webcasts

LS09BP + IJ = 4U

2008-09-05T09:07:00.004-05:00

For the most part, I see the Best Practices track as 'for the people by the people'. This track has grown over the years to become one of the most popular at Lotusphere because it cover topics and has has content that is relevant to you. As Chris pointed out yesterday, people are starting to put their plans together for Lotusphere 2009 sessions and no doubt if you are reading this you have peeked at the site and and had a look at the abstract submission form and may have even put your sessions in.

This year, I am suggesting we get social about this. If you plan on submitting or attending a session in the Best Practices track, then please head over to IdeaJam and write up what you would like to present or see at Lotusphere. No need to have a professional title and full on abstract there, I'm thinking more just a topic and a little detail on it. I think it would be great for the community at large to lay down what is important for us and what we are expecting from the Best Practices track.

Now for some disclaimers:
- IdeaJam is not an IBM site and is provided by Elguji Software.
- Having a top rated idea does not guarantee acceptance for Lotusphere.
- Posting a session idea on IdeaJam is separate from submitting an abstract at the Lotusphere site.
- Bitching is never allowed.
- You don't own any of the posted ideas.

IdeaJam - LS09 Best Practices Sessions

Lotusphere 2009 Best Practices

2008-09-03T08:50:00.004-05:00

As Rocky posted yesterday, I am jumping in as the track manager for the almighty Best Practices track at Lotusphere. I'll get more into that in a bit. At this point, I just wanted to say thanks to Rocky and the Lotus community. Over the years, I've watched this track become the best and most talked about at Lotusphere and can't wait to continue that growth. To do this we'll need your help, so be sure to stay tuned and get ready!

read more: A track is born.

Lotus Greenhouse Webcast on the IBM Mashup Center

2008-07-09T16:22:00.002-05:00

Last week, we deployed the recently GA'd IBM Mashup Center in the Lotus Greenhouse. I've been excited to get this going since January's Lotusphere, as it adds another leg for us in Web 2.0 Platform for Business strategy. Having Quickr, Connections, and Mashups together in a single environment will allow us to interconnect these product's services and content easily and demonstrate how the web can be used as a delivery platform.

Tomorrow, we'll host the product team in a webcast that goes over the basics of mashing. Come join us at 10:00-11:00AM EST US. An invite should be waiting for you in the Inbox. I hope to see you there!

Additional Mashup Resources:

Greenhouse Mashup Center Product page

Mix and Mash Blog

Lotus Mashups

InfoSphere MashupHub

Web 2.0 Goes to Work for Business

YouTube - It's Mashtastic