Want to Drive Adoption of IBM Connections? Check This Out!

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From the Information Development team:

IBM Connections 3.0.1 has a new getting started experience to interactively guide users through steps for setting up and using IBM Connections. Each step lets you Learn more, Watch video or Do it. Want to see how other people are using IBM Connections to do social business? The new getting started walks you through the same steps others have taken to network with colleagues, join a community, start an activity, and share files.

Two ways to use Getting Started with IBM Connections:

1. Try out Getting Started with IBM Connections that uses IBM Connections hosted in Lotus Greenhouse. You'll need your Lotus Greenhouse credentials to log in.
2. Already purchased IBM Connections? Administrators can download the IBM Getting Started sample for IBM Connections and customize it for their environment. http://tinyurl.com/connections-gettingstarted

Here's how it looks:

Enjoy!

WebDAV for IBM Connections & Lotus Quickr

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One of the things that was very exciting about Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 is how the ecosystem for both IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr is growing. One of the business partners that introduced a solution is Lialis. They introduced a WebDAV add-on for IBM Connections.

So what is WebDAV? Let's not get into the technical details. Let's focus instead on what it enables. As per Lialis:

• Downloading synchronizing content from/to IBM Connections Files
• Deliver shared drives connected to IBM Connections to the users PC (OS independent)
• Allow easy archiving of content stored in IBM Connections by coping the files from the file share
• Readers apps supported: Goodreader, Readdledocs, Bitknex, WebDrive, readers for Android (*)
• Download files from IBM Connections, upload files to IBM Connections via WebDAV
• Delete files in IBM Connections via WebDAV
• Create communities or profiles inside the IBM Connections via Webdav
• Parallel user sessions supported

To me the most exciting feature is the ability to use IBM Connections as a mounted drive directly on your computer. For example, if have a Mac like me you could use this solution to mount all of your IBM Connections Files directly in Finder. Set up your Finder as described here in 3 steps and you are done! Very cool, right?

They have put together a quick video demonstrating the solution

To learn more, go here. And if you use Quickr, they also have a solution for you here: http://www.lialis.com/lotussolutionprovider.nsf/pages/quickrwebdav

Enterprise Social Media Trends: What's Your Take? #SXsocbiz5

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I'm currently working on my presentation for SXSW 2012. I can't believe that I'm going to go to my first SXSW in just 5 weeks. I'm so excited.

As we get ready for our presentation, I was curious and wanted to see what most people are seeing in terms of trends. How are you seeing social media being used by enterprises and what are some of your most favorite examples ? Let us know in the comments section below!

And by the way, if you are going to SXSW 2012, I hope to see you there. Here's the details:

Enterprise Social Media: 5 Emerging Trends
When: Sat March 10th @ 5pm
Where: Longhorn Ballrom @ Omni Downtown

We'll be monitoring the hashtag so sends us your comments/questions. We would love to hear from you! The hashtag for our session is #SXsocbiz5

Hope to see you there and hear from you!

Now Available: IBM Connections Wikis Tips & Tricks

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Recently, I've been working with a number of customers who are migrating content from other tools/platforms into IBM Connections Wikis.

Immediately, I started noticing a pattern in the questions and they were all trying to do very similar things. This gave me an idea to leverage the Best Practice sub-community of the IBM Connections Users community to share tips & tricks.

If you use Connections or if your company is in the process of deploying Connections, you MUST follow this community. I talked about the community last week as members came together during Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. The community is where a lot of Connections users from all over the world and from various industries and organizations are coming together to share best practices on adoption, deployment and more.

Inside IBM, a wiki had already been created to share tips & tricks. I was able to leverage that and make those examples public so that everyone could benefit from this great library of tips. In there, you'll find things like how to embed podcasts, video, Google Maps, and much more. Here's a screenshot of how it looks.

To access this wiki, click here and log in with your Greenhouse credentials. If you haven't registered yet on the Greenhouse, you can register here.

Enjoy!

Lotusphere 2012: Thursday Recap

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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!!