Lotusphere 2012: Thursday Recap

And now we get to the last day of Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. Lotusphere 2012 was my 5th Lotusphere, but it was the first time that I actually stayed the full day on Thursday and left on Friday. Usually, I would head out to the airport Thursday at noon so I had never seen a Closing General Session or participated in a Blogger Open before. Like Sharon said, I'm surprised with the number of people who leave Wednesday night or super early on Thursday.

Thursday started like any other day with customer breakfast and then customer meetings. Then it was time for the Ask the Product Managers session. As usual, Mitch Cohen live blogged that session so you can see what happened there. It was an easy session for me since I only had to answer 1 question in the whole hour :) .

Leaving on Thursday also gave me a chance to connect with more people. At lunch I finally got to see Chris Whisonant if only for a few minutes and of course got my hands on the famous pretzel cookie.

After lunch, I took a very loooong walk encouraged by Alan Lepofsky. The last 7 days I had been trapped inside the Dolphin and/or Swan so it felt great to spend time outside and breathe some fresh air. I also had never been all around the property. Given the weather was so great, I had the opportunity to take some very cool pictures.

From there I headed to go see my first ever Closing General Session. The session was mainly hosted by Andrew Zimmern, who has his own TV show on the Travel Channel: Bizarre Foods.

Before the final session started, the big screen was showing tweets from earlier in the week. I managed to grab a couple of tweets but this is the best one that came out:

I think that tweet summarizes Lotusphere 2012 very well. Looking back on Lotusphere 2011, I think it was very focused still on the "Why Social Business", whereas this year with so many customers sharing their examples it was more about "How Social Business". And this was reflected as well on my 1:1 conversations with customers. They knew they had to become a social business and they were going to do it. They didn't need me to convince them of that. Rather, they wanted to talk adoption and roll-out strategies.

Finally, after the Closing General Session, we walked to the Blogger Open for some mini golf fun. It was awesome!!!! Our team didn't win anything (sorry guys!), but still had tons of fun.

I can't wait for Lotusphere 2013!!

Lotusphere 2012: Wednesday Recap

Hopefully by now you've been able to read some of my previous posts on Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. I've already covered some of the media coverage, my recap from Monday, and my recap from Tuesday. So let's get on with Wednesday.

Just like Tuesday, I had to wake up very early to attend a Birds of Feather (BOF) session, this time hosted by IBM Champions: Sharon Bellamy, Stuart McIntyre, and Simon Vaughan. For some time now, Simon has been managing the IBM Connections Users community in Greenhouse. This community is a community run by IBM Connections customers for IBM Connections customers. A popular part of this community is the idea section where customers and partners are coming together to submit ideas for feature enhancements and vote on these ideas.

If you are not yet a member of this community and you use IBM Connections, I strongly recommend that you join the community. Simon has been doing a great job as the community manager and knows how to engage the right IBMers to participate in the conversation.

After the session completed, it was time for the third keynote titled The Future of Social Technologies with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web. This was an interesting day to have him on stage as this was the same day that there was a global protest against SOPA. Berners-Lee was very enthusiastic during his talk and I could tell that he's very excited about the Semantic Web and the mashup possibilities that are possible when you destroy silos and bring data together. At the keynote, we also got to hear from Manoj Saxeona, General Manager of the new Watson Solutions group at IBM.

Of course, if you missed the keynote, you can watch the replay here.

ibmsoftware on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

The rest of the day was filled with customer meetings and my second session at Lotusphere 2012. This time I presented on What's New in IBM Lotus Quickr for Domino, what's coming very soon and what's in the long term roadmap. One of the things that I was very happy about in 2011 was how good the product did and how much the ecosystem grew. Many partners keep building solutions on top of Quickr and the customer base keeps growing. I also shared the news around the releases that were done last year.

During the session, I got the feeling that people were very happy with the roadmap. I did announce that there's a new release coming out in Q1 of this year. I'll be sharing more details soon as to the specific release date so stay tuned. Here's the presentation for those of you who couldn't make it.

ID224 - What's Coming Quickr Domino Next and Beyond

View more presentations from Luis Benitez

Towards the latter part of the afternoon, I joined a BOF that was hosted in Spanish. I think that was a first for Lotusphere (a BOF hosted in a language other than English). In the BOF we talked about social business challenges in the Spanish-speaking market. I got to share my own personal story of how I was able to overcome some common fears which prevent adoption, such as "knowledge is power". I couldn't stay for the whole session as I had a meeting to go to prior to leaving to the Wednesday night party.

After the last meeting of the day, I headed out to Sea World where I got to see Shamu (not the show but the mascot) and ride Manta and Kraken! Those two roller coasters were so much fun! And because lines were moving fast, I was able to ride the coasters multiple times. Sweet! The weather was just beautiful. Here are a couple of pics I snapped.

Overall a great day at the conference!

Lotusphere 2012: Tuesday Recap

Tuesday at Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 required getting up very early as Mac Guidera and I had a 7am Birds of Feather (BOF) session on IBM Connections Adoption and Governance.

The sun completely threw me off and I barely got out of bed in time. As I walked towards the Swan, the sun wasn't even out and I took and shared this picture on Instagram. I did make it on time, and was surprised that the room was completely full that early in the morning which led to a great discussion.

We talked about guidelines, gamification, integration, plugins, executive engagement, and other tactics to help the adoption of social business within an enterprise. To my surprise, Michael Sampson, author of the recently published book Collaboration Roadmap made it to the session! My favorite part was getting customers to talk to each other and share was has worked for them.

Day 2 keynote was right after our BOF so we headed back to the Dolphin. Mike Rhodin, Michael Chui from the McKinsey Global Institute and Wendy Arnott VP for Social Media from TD Bank were the keynote speakers. Wendy told various stories of how TD Bank has adopted IBM Connections and are becoming a social business. She also shared some tips on what has worked for them to drive adoption:

1. Get the executives involved from the beginning
2. Set up dedicated community managers
3. Get various business units involved: Marketing, HR, Communications, IT, etc
4. Don't overlook the minor details
5. Engage employees

And speaking of TD Bank (who uses Outlook for email), I was glad to see so many customers that use competing products such as Microsoft Outlook and/or SharePoint add IBM Connections to their stack. Other examples that came up at the conference were Electrolux, Bayer, and Continental AG.

Todd Watson has an amazing recap of this opening keynote. And, if you couldn't make it to the keynote on day 2, you can catch the replay right here:

After lunch, I headed down to the Social Café where it was my turn to take on my duties as a member of "Team Social". I had various persons come up to me telling me their company had deployed IBM Connections and just wanted help on the best ways to use it. I shared my experiences and got them to promise that first thing they would do once they got back was to start using IBM Connections more.

Another surprise of the day was when I learned that I had received an award: VideoFest 2012 Super Star. Sweet!!   VideoFest is now a yearly tradition where members of the community submit videos that show tips on how to use the various products of the portfolio.

And thanks to Mitch Cohen for capturing this pic:

A great day overall!

Lotusphere 2012: Monday Recap

Last Monday was the 2nd day of the Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 and was the day that the Opening General Session took place. I was part of the demo team so for me this was the day that Lotusphere actually started as up until then we were backstage getting ready for the big keynote.

As you probably know, the keynote was live streamed. The main speaker was Michael J. Fox and the opening band was Ok Go which made Lotusphere trend in Twitter. Michael J. Fox did a tremendous job on stage and was very funny. I'm sure that every time someone brings up a problem, I'm going to say: "Hey, a lady had a baby in a tree, what do you got?". If you don't get the reference, you'll have to watch the live stream replay here.

Or if you are short on time, here's the OGS in 60 seconds:

The feedback from the audience in Twitter was extremely positive. I loved every minute of the experience of getting the demo ready and getting to know what it takes to put together the best demo ever for Lotusphere. Hope that next year I get to participate in this as well. Here's a picture of the demo team taken by Alistair Rennie.

Immediately after the main keynote, customer and business partner meetings started. Throughout the conference, the attitude was extremely positive and everyone was very excited about what's coming in 2012.

At the same time, Guy Kawasaki took the stage for the Opening General Session at the IBM Connect conference. Guy had a great message around trust, where you have to trust others before they start trusting you. Guy also insisted that you have to accept others the way they are, and not to try to change them. Next, he emphasized the importance to always think how you can help the other person, and not how they can help you.

If you missed it, here's a quick chat recorded with Guy:

Watch live streaming video from ibmsoftware at livestream.com

or his actual keynote is here:

Watch live streaming video from ibmsoftware at livestream.com

Monday afternoon was also my first session of the conference where I co-presented with Mike Roche, Chief Architect for IBM Connections. Since our session wasn't on the Application Development track, we wanted to stay away from code and instead highlight the art of the possible and show how customers and business partners have extended the IBM Connections Platform. I often find that not everyone is aware of all the integration points that are available today so that's why we wanted to focus on that.

Here's the presentation that we used:

ID223 IBM Connections Platform Integration

View more presentations from Luis Benitez

Monday night, the OGS team headed out for dinner and it was great. I had such a good time. I think I hadn't laughed that hard before so it was a great way to end the day and hang out with colleagues who are often remote.

More to come in other posts...

Lotusphere 2012: Media Coverage

Just like last year, I am now back home and it's time to catch up with my feed reader and all the press coverage that was generated by #ls12 or Lotusphere 2012. Looking at the press generated this year and comparing to that of 2011, this year's coverage is **significantly** higher! To me, this has been my favorite Lotusphere and I'm extremely excited as to what the rest of 2012 will look like!

Newspapers and Magazines:
NY Times: IBM Makes Its Social Computing Strategy Smarter
The BrainYard: 10 Ways to Transform Into a Social Enterprise
TechNewWorld: IBM Hones Social Enterprise Tools (I'm featured here! :) )
IT World: TD Bank goes social 'inside the firewall'
eWeek: Electrolux Taps IBM for Social Software
V3: IBM takes on Google and Microsoft with cloud-hosted document editing tool
The BrainYard: IBM Aims To Be First With OpenSocial Embedded Apps
eWeek: IBM Bolsters Social Business Play with Analytics
(added on 24/Jan/2012) The BrainYard: TD Bank's Social Strategy: Start Small, Think Big
(added on 24/Jan/2012) ComputerWorld: TD Bank Gets Social for Better Business
eWeek: IBM: Defining a social business
eWeek: IBM Kicks Off Lotusphere with Focus on Social Business
eWeek: IBM Partners Prep for Social Business at Lotusphere 2012
CIO Insight: IBM Social Business Software is Bolstered with Analytics
CIO Today: IBM Launches Services To Help Businesses Go Social
SiliconANGLE: IBM Gears Up for Social Business: the New Enterprise
ZDNet: IBM rolls out new social analytics tools
CMSWire: IBM Connections: Analytics, Email, the Activity Stream, & More
ServicesANGLE: IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps
IT Jungle: IBM Gets Down to Social Business
No Jitter: Lotusphere: IBM Puts Meat on the Bones of its Social Strategy
UC Strategies: IBM Provides Analytics to Social Business
Technorati: IBM Adds to its Social Business Tools with New Analytics
MyCustomer.com: IBM continues social business expansion with new programs and partnerships
Channelnomics: IBM Eyes Partners to Expand Social Business
theflyonthewall.com: Electrolux enables a social, mobile workforce with IBM software
WebProNews: IBM Announces Social Analytics Services: IBM Connections and more, for the enterprise
IT World: IBM unveils next-gen Connections
CIO Insight: Social Business: If You Build It, Will They Come?
Information Management: The (IBM) Social Network
Destination CRM: IBM Brings Analytics to Social Business
TechZone360: IBM Connections Looking to Make the Enterprise More Social
Computerworld: Sharepoint is a 'document coffin', says IBM
V3: Lotusphere: IBM demos social lab projects including business ramification tool
eWeek: Lotusphere 2012: 10 Takeaways from the Show



Bloggers:

Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session
Alan Lepofsky: My POV on the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session
SmartPlanet: Is your company ready to be a social business?
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Monday Morning Press Q&A
Keith Brooks: Rachel Happe's Session at IBM Connect
Chris Pepin: Lotusphere 2012 kickoff
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session Tuesday
(added on 24/Jan/12)Todd Watson: Live @ Lotusphere 2012: IBM Customer TD Bank Makes Major Social Business Deposit
NTEK: IBM Takes The Power of Analytics to Social Businesses (Spanish)
@gawed: IBM Continues its Leadership in Social Media (Spanish)
Perficient: Lotusphere Session Highlights - IBM Connections Auditing and Compliance Infrastructure
Alan Hamilton: Lotusphere Business Development Day
Adam Brown: Why Gamification for IBM Connections
Perficient: Lotusphere Tuesday Keynote: Social Evolution with McKinsey, TD and FAST Company
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: Lotusphere 2012 Opening Session
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: Day 2 Kickoff Strikes Transformation Theme
PaulGillin.com: Live Blog: 3M Unites Global Workforce with Technology
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: IBM as a Social Business
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Customer Conversation - Russell's Convenience
Bill Ives: Lotusphere 2012 Notes: Opening Session Wednesday
mwd advisors: A new, confident IBM at Lotusphere 2012
GigaOM: Notes from Lotusphere and thoughts on IBM

(added 25/Jan/2012) Social Media Today: Lotusphere 2012 Touts Social Business But What About Social Media?
(added 25/Jan/2012) Inspirian: Shiny Social Tools Meet Practicality at Lotusphere
added 25/Jan/2012) Per Henrik Lausten: Thoughts from Lotusphere 2012: IBM Connections Next