Daily Archives: January 17, 2012

Jan 17 2012

Have you heard? Lotusphere 2012 is all about Social Business

 by Ruth Jarvis

In case you’re buried beneath a rock, ignoring all forms of social media including twitter hashtags, Facebook profiles, LinkedIn updates, and technology based new outlets, Lotusphere this year is pushing Social Business. It’s on signs, badges, videos, and napkins, allowing very few to ignore the statement at the annual Lotus event much to the chagrin of technical based developers and admins hoping to see the latest in the Lotus brand but great for LOB decision makers.

Day one started with Business Development Day (BDD) a full day of sessions, jumpstarts, and discussions for the IBM Business Partner community. Of course, we wanted to jump in and see what the brand has in store for various product bases but most important for us, IBM Web Experience Factory (formerly Portlet Factory). While it didn’t make much discussion during the BDD it did come up as part of the Web Experience Suite and the Intranet Suite discussion at the Opening General Session (OGS).

Speaking of the OGS, what were the big suprises? It started with the viral rock band OK Go, playing live with their fun and low-budget music videos, followed by a special and inspirational special guest, Michael J. Fox discussing how social networking effected how he was able to learn, update, and build a community around Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The last surprises were based on content, in fact for most of the conference, this long standing technical based event has slowly morphed into a joint technical and business conference. This year you could feel it more then ever, as the first hour of the OGS didn’t contain any mention of “Lotus”, “Notes”, or “Domino,” replaced instead by terminology like “social”, “mobile”, and “marketing.”

OK GO at ls12 OGS

MIchael J Fox at ls12 OGS

Notes/Domino Next

I will leave it to my technical Davalen peers to update you on what is happening in the tech-world of the brand as they are much better suited to do such, but I will provide some of my favorite shots from the event thus far, including new shots of my wonderful team: Len Barker, Managing Partner, Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, and my fellow female co-worker, Deborah Corcoran, Resource Deployment Manager.

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Jan 17 2012

The winds of change – there’s a new sheriff in the town

Len Barker

 by Len Barker

Once upon a time thousands of people from around the world descended upon Disney World to learn about the latest Domino release and the cool features that they could brag about to their user base when they got back home.  The winds are blowing in a different direction now and Domino has been relegated to a supporting role.  Notes and Domino wasn’t even mentioned in the opening session until an hour and a half into it.  And if you were looking to spend your Lotusphere attending technical tracks on Domino, you would have been disappointed.  This year’s event was all about making business social and Lotus Connections plays the starring role.

 

IBM is doing everything it can to help organizations take the first step to becoming a social business.  With Domino 8.5.3, Lotus Connections profiles and files are included as a free entitlement.  Once organizations get hooked on Lotus Connections, they will want to spend most of their business life on those social pages.  To help make that a reality, IBM demonstrated a completely redesigned interface for Domino email that is completely integrated with Connections.  This should be available in the next release of Domino.  Oh, and the Notes client won’t be necessary any more, even for Notes client only applications.  Notes client functionality will be available via a browser plugin in future releases of Domino.  As usual, IBM has seen the future before the rest of us and I think it makes a lot of sense.  In case I haven’t made it clear, the future is Facebook for business, aka Lotus Connection.  You will live in it and love it.

 

The warm Florida winds have blown a new sheriff into town and forever change our beloved Lotusphere.  Expect an even bigger social message next year and maybe some big changes to Domino.