Over the last decade social tools have become not only prevalent, they have become critical to business. Just under a decade ago I created a LinkedIn profile. I doubt I was in the first wave of early adopters, but I was early. So early I forgot about it for a few years until I started getting lots of people connecting with me. Now any social business will use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool, maybe posting status updates of a new position but certainly checking out the LinkedIn profile of those who apply for positions. Twitter has changed the way people do ...
Last year I had the honour of answering a call for sidebar contributions to Ed Brill's book, "Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager". I had no doubt it would be a well-written, informative book. Ed's announcement today of his new role as Director of Market Management - IBM Mobile Enterprise has given the book an interesting angle as well. IT professionals are renowned for being great at doing, not so eager at documenting. At what point Ed's change in role started to come into focus, he has certainly left excellent documentation for his ...
It's been a busy week. Last Thursday I had a mixture of good and bad news. Two abstracts I was hopeful about we're rejected for IBM Connect, but a third was accepted. I'll be presenting with Mike McGarel - not the first time I've presented with someone who works for Czarnowski, but this time there isn't any plan for any costumes! We're doing a session Mike suggested, called "It's Not Herculean: Twelve Tasks Made Easier with IBM Lotus Domino XPages". (On reflection of recent announcements, maybe there's one word too many in that title!) The session is a fusion of two ...
Over on ZDNet site there is a debate going on at the moment about whether the social enterprise is fact or fiction. This is particularly apposite, at a time when social media is becoming more prevalent in business for some people whereas many people are still sceptical. My own views are no secret, based on previous blogs I've written on the benefits I've seen in my own business life from being social. Businesses who at least allow and at best encourage their employees to be social will reap the rewards. Employees who are social will also reap rewards, increasing ...
This morning I came across a tweet from Ed Brill about Symphony / Open Office with a link to this article about Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition. The article is positive reinforcing that although Symphony 3.0.1 is likely to be the last release, IBM's commitment to OpenOffice continues (as those of us in the yellow bubble have known for a while) both by feeding Symphony code back into the OpenOffice project and in the release of IBM Docs, announced last week at Lotusphere. But one point stood out for me in the article. Apache OpenOffice and the IBM Edition will not ...
Over the last week or so I've been making some major enhancements to the XPages Help Application I provided on OpenNTF earlier this year, now available at the shortened URL http://xhelp.openntf.org. The main areas have been adding dijit.Tree support for the navigation, but also fixing an issue that meant images didn't appear when viewed in Notes Client. I had a couple of queries - one about how to reference server-based images for XPages in Notes Client and the other about the correct syntax for dijit.showTooltip(). Both times I resorted to Google. The first answer I found in responses to a blog ...
Last week two announcements were made in the world of XPages that were worthy of further mention. The first was the new IBM course on Modernizing IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.2 Applications. The main author of this course is Jeremy Hodge, with whom I've been working on the upcoming Extension Library book. He has been involved in a number of other XPages courses for IBM and has also used some of my tutorials on Dojo charting in the courses. Given his expertise and willingness to draw upon the expertise of others, I have no doubt these courses are a ...
Two and a half years ago when I started working with XPages, there was a relative paucity of support materials. Declan Lynch's 50-odd introduction was a god-send as were blog posts from John Mackey and Matt White. The Dojo documentation was okay, but the implementation of Dojo 1.1.1 was very limiting. There had been sessions at Lotusphere 2009, but I was not able to go there, so that was not a reference site. But now, two and a half years on, we have a host of blog and wiki posts. There is the Mastering XPages book and if you've searched Amazon ...
The twittersphere and the internet are all buzzing with the news that Gmail has added a preview pane, learning from tablets. An article circulated from Twitter calls it "heart-warming" and "exciting" and says it will make Gmail "more awesome than ever". Google for "preview pane gmail" and you'll not find any shortage of articles. Excuse me, because I don't use Gmail. I've never used Gmail. I use a mail product that the internet shouts about "legacy", "dead", and many more derogatory epithets. You may have heard of it if you've been in IT for a while. It's called Lotus Notes. It ...
I'm sure most, if not all, of the people reading this have already seen the announcement by Ed Brill of the IBM Champions for Lotus Collaborations Solutions at PacLUG earlier today. It's an honour to be included in the illustrious company, many of whom I've become friends with at various LUGs and conferences over the last eighteen months. I'd also like to thank everyone at IBM for organising and adjudicating the programme, which reinforces what a vibrant community we have. A big part of my desire to become active in the community was to share my knowledge and help others, ...
My Lotusphere Review
Now the dust has settled from Lotusphere, I would like to offer my thoughts in review. First - let's get it over and done with - it was my first Lotusphere as a speaker. Hopefully it will not be my last. I certainly intend to submit abstracts new year. I had a great co-presenter in David Leedy. Yes, it was a lot of work, but if you don't put in hard work and preparation, I believe it shows in the session. And no matter how interested people are in your topic, if the material is not presented well, if you don't ...
I'm sure you're aware of the tag line for this year's Lotusphere, because you're reading this, so you're already getting social. I spoke a couple of days ago about my personal experiences, culminating in a very enjoyable and well-attended session yesterday. But I'm sure that will just be another small step down the road. I also met another example of social networks having a huge impact. If you're in the UK and follow cricket, you may be aware of @Aggerscricket and @theashes towards the end of last year. The cricket series between England and Australia is called The Ashes and a ...
Why “Get Social. Do Business” Makes Sense
The key topic of this year's Lotusphere was "Get Social. Do Business". The buzz phrase is Social Business. Outside of Lotusphere I wonder whether decision makers will understand what it means. Did I realise yesterday that the social business toolkit was relevant to me? Does the name tell me why I should use it? No. But Social Business - that makes sense. It's been a major aspect in my professional development over the last two years - yes, I was late to the party. But let me tell you why Social Business makes sense to me and why it is important to you ...
Lotus Domino IS an App Dev Platform
Like so many others, I was glad to read yesterday's article by Ed Brill about the IBM whitepaper on Domino as a RAD platform. This had come to my attention shortly before Christmas and although the timing was unfortunate in some ways, nevertheless it did provide Ed with the great opportunity to highlight it at the beginning of January and start well what I hope will be a good year. For too long Domino has seemed the neglected sibling of Websphere Portal when application development is mentioned. And following the release Q3 last year of LotusLive Notes, which ...
Three Announcements
It's been a busy couple of weeks at Intec. First there was ILUG, my third LUG of the year and a new session for me. Thanks for the evaluations, the comments were very encouraging. My concern when rehearsing it was echoed by one of the respondents, that there was too much material really for a one-hour presentation. The bad news is I didn't cover anywhere near all that is available in Dojo. The problem is there is just so much in the Dojo libraries that is useful. Hopefully with the demo application there is enough for people to feel comfortable ...
