Lotusphere 2012 Live Streaming #ls12

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Straight to the point… here's the live stream for Lotusphere 2012 !!! Watch carefully and you'll see me briefly during the Opening General Session on Monday January 16th @ 8am ET.



If you want to know what will be showing when, check out the Lotusphere 2012 Live Stream Schedule.

Enjoy!

How To Add Twitter Search Widget to IBM Connections Communities

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In my previous blog post, I shared how to add a 'Subscribe in iTunes' button to the Media Gallery in IBM Connections. In the video that I shared, you may have noticed a widget that I had added to my demo community in IBM Connections.

I've created a simple widget that exposes Twitter's Search widget inside of a community. You can configure this widget so that you can specify which hashtags to monitor. The widget updates in almost real-time every time someone uses the hashtag in Twitter. This is great if you want to have a community that supports a product launch, or a customer support community, or even a social media marketing community.

I'm working right now to get the widget posted in the Lotus App Catalog. Once the widget is there you'll be able to simply install it on your server.

UPDATE: 16/Feb/2012 - The widget is now available in the catalog here.

If you want to use it immediately, you can use the copy that's running on my publicly facing server by following these instructions:

1. Follow the steps here to check-out and modify widgets-config.xml
2. In the section for community add the following 1 line of code
   
   

   <widgetDef defId="TwitterSearch" url="http://blog.lbenitez.com/widgets/TwitterSearch/twitterSearchWidget.xml" modes="view edit" primaryWidget="false" iconUrl="http://www.twitter.com/favicon.ico" uniqueInstance="true"/>

   
   
   
3. That's it!! 1 line of code! Now, save and close the file and check it back in as documented in the instructions in step 1.

Once you restart IBM Connections, you'll be able to add the widget to any community and configure it for any hashtag. This simple widget took me about 10-15 minutes to code showing once again the extensibility and flexibility of IBM Connections. And because it was created by me, do note it's not officially supported by IBM and is provided as-is.

Here's a video that shows the widget in action.


Let me know what you think and if there are any simple changes you would recommend. I'll also be demoing this on my Monday session at Lotusphere '12 #ls12 so hope to see you there!

How To Subscribe To IBM Connections Media Gallery via iTunes

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One of the new features that was introduced in IBM Connections 3.0.1 is the Media Gallery which Suzanne demos here. Chris Crummey recently asked me how could he subscribe to the items in the Media Gallery via iTunes. That way, when he's traveling he can catch up with the videos that have been added to the Media Gallery.

As you probably know, IBM Connections provides a very easy way to subscribe to each page via feeds. iTunes also has a way for you to manually add a feed to subscribe to a podcast. Thus, you can manually copy/paste the URL provided by IBM Connections, add it to iTunes and voilá.

I wanted to take this to a new level. As I thought more about this, I realized this is a huge use case. Imagine using the Media Gallery as a way to store enablement sessions as part of a product launch. Now, imagine giving your sales force a 1-click ability to take the Media Gallery offline and get up to speed on new products on their own time, perhaps as they are traveling from one customer to another.

Having said that, I created a quick customization which enables this. If you want to enable this on your server, follow these steps:

1. If you haven't yet, copy footer.jsp to the customization directory. For example, copy <WAS_PROFILE_ROOT>/installedApps</cellName>/Activities.ear/oawebui.war/nav/templates/footer.jsp to <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates
2. Switch to the <IC_INSTALL_ROOT>/data/shared/customization/common/nav/templates directory
3. Open footer.jsp with your favorite text editor
4. Scroll to the very bottom of the file and add the following line of code
   
   

   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://blog.lbenitez.com/iTunesConnections.js"></script>

   
   
   
5. That's it!! 1 line of code! Now, save and close the file. This will make all the files uploaded to the Media Gallery and tagged with 'podcast' available via iTunes.

Here's a video of how this works:

I'll be demoing this in my session on Monday at Lotusphere '12 #ls12 .

ISW Introduces Gamification for IBM Connections

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What a great way to start 2012. IBM Business Partner, ISW (the same business partner that created iWildfire for iPhone and iPad and Wildfire for Notes) announced that it's now providing gaming capabilities within IBM Connections.

I caught a demo of the add-on yesterday and it looks very good. Out of the box, it comes with a variety of badges that users earn based on various metrics and achievements within IBM Connections. When you go to a user's profile, you can see the various badges that they have earned and their progress towards other badges.

Administrators can define their own badges and metrics (the actions that users must take to obtain a badge). For example, you can configure that a badge is awarded when 30 files have been shared with more than 100 tags as shown here:

You can even tie with external systems. For example, you can create badges that are awarded to members of the sales team once they achieve their quarterly quota and show that within Connections.

Gamification is a way to drive adoption of a new platform. For companies that have rolled out IBM Connections, you may want to consider this add-on to drive adoption of the platform. In the words of ISW:

ISW has performed many implementations of IBM Connections and we have found that a significant factor in organisations driving real business value is ensuring strong user adoption. In addition, providing guidance to users to leverage all of the capabilities of Connections rather than just individual capabilities is a key success factor. The key is to help users understand "Why?" they should leverage social software to work better. An important strategy for encouraging user adoption is providing reward mechanism's, both tangible and intangible. Kudos Badges for IBM Connections provides this strategy in a very powerful and flexible way.

To learn more about Kudos for IBM Connections, go here.

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Article originally published in Technorati: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/isw-introduces-gamification-for-ibm-connections/

IBM Connections Celebrates the Holidays

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Happy New Year to everyone! As I catch up with emails and get ready for Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 I saw an interesting "card" from a business partner in Spain.

They loaded profiles for Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men. The card is of course in Spanish, but you'll probably get a kick out of it as well.

May 2012 be an AWESOME year!

Enjoy!