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Many of you may know Chris Martin who co-presneted the “Social Business Super Hero” session with me at Lotusphere 2011. While Chris really wanted to be at Lotusphere 2012 he was unable to attend due to his participation in the Grace Foursquare 2012 Haiti Mission Trip focusing on the Torcelle orphanage construction.

Here is the four minute recap Chris prepared which is well worth time watching:

 

In Episode 151 Julian Robichaux and I talk with Teamstudio about their Unplugged product which is a tool that helps you mobilize (as in mobile smartphones) your IBM Lotus Domino applications. Nigel Cheshire, president and CEO of Teamstudio, and Craig Schumann, Teamstudio senior developer talk about:

• The rise of Apple and iOS in the enterprise
• The rise of XPages in the Lotus developer world
• Teamstudio’s approach for adding a mobile interface to Domino apps
• Replicating data to and from a device for offline use
• Choosing a strategy for mobilizing your apps, to make sure your project is successful
• And more…

This episode runs 34:00.

Listen now >

 

IBM has just posted a new white paper on the evolution of email, written by IDC analyst Michael Fauscette. The paper discusses the history of email, how companies are viewing email in the context of collaboration and social business, and then takes a converged view of the future of email and its evolution into a social business tool. Social mail consideration and adoption are then discussed.
As social collaboration tools become more available and are deployed to more employees, some companies and individuals are looking for these tools to alleviate the growing complaints and irritation of traditional enterprise communication tools, particularly email.  This IDC study takes a look at the current state of enterprise email and the perceived and real problems that surrounds its use.  Rather than envisioning "a world without email", instead, a future is revealed where email converges with social tools and grows into an innovative hybrid productivity tool to help support the new collaborative enterprise.The paper is available on ibm.com, with an optional opportunity to register and allow IBM to follow up with you. Please share the web page link rather than the direct file link, as tracking the success of papers like this is what allows us to justify doing more of them...

Link: ibm.com: IDC White Paper - The Future of Mail is Social >

George Orwell's famous novel 1984 introduces the concept of NewSpeak, a language where certain thoughts and the communication of them are impossible since the vocabulary has been removed from the language. In IT and collaboration we do have an "inverted newspeak" problem. The (technical) language of collaboration are the protocols and data formats. The very moment your application does understand a data format and a protocol communication becomes possible. There is a very long list of protocols in use. Besides the open standards like HTTP, SMTP or IPv6 there are plenty of propriety ones like NRPC, MAPI or LU6.2.
I'm quite surprised how little corporate IT pays attention to protocols. I hear sentences like: "eMail is POP3, what else would you need?" (and then act surprised why messages on a mobile device and a desktop client aren't in sync) - IMAP4 would be the bare minimum there, only that mobile devices probably use ActiveSync and SyncML. Calendaring works using iCalendar, chat XMPP (which is now fully supported by all but one vendor) and telephony SIP. Interactive web applications want to use ws:// protocol and all mobile devices use IPv6. Each format and protocol comes with its own set of challenges (just look how well calendar clients and servers interoperate). With the push towards web2.0 that challenges seemed to have stopped, only to resurface in the different pace of HTML5 implementation (if IE is your standard and you are still on XP - too bad).
So I claim: Show me your protocols and I'll tell you if you missed the boat

XPages Portable Command Guide offers fast access to working code, tested solutions, expert tips, and example-driven best practices. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience as IBM XPages lead developers and customer consultants, the authors explore many lesser known facets of the XPages runtime, illuminating these capabilities with dozens of examples that solve specific XPages development problems. Using their easy-to-adapt code examples, you can develop XPages solutions with outstanding performance, scalability, flexibility, efficiency, reliability, and value.

Last Thursday Julian Robichaux and I spoke with Alan Lepofsky, analyst at Constellation Research Group, about the current and future state of Activity Streams in the enterprise. Our discussion included:

• What’s the difference between streams of information like Facebook and Twitter, and what we’ll see in business in the coming months and years?
• Considerations about filters, and making sure important information gets seen
• How does analytics play into all this?
• Is there truly “one stream to rule them all”, or does certain information need to be siloed?
• What about my inbox?!?
• Where will mobile devices fit into this picture?
• Once this all gets going, what are some of the advantages (obvious or not) with having a stream-friendly enterprise?

For more on what Alan has to say on the subject, also check out his Making Activity Streams More Manageable blog post from last week, and find him on Twitter at @alanlepo.

This show runs 41:14.

Listen now >

In a previous blog entry announcing last week's trip to Germany, I also mentioned plans to visit the Business Gets Social roadshow in Taiwan in March, and a possible stop at the Belgian Lotus User Group (BLUG). Well, a personal conflict came up around that timeframe, and I had to back out of both.

Instead....

I will be keynoting the 2nd Australian Lotus User Group (AusLUG) on 29/30 March in Melbourne. Subsequent to that, I'll be in Singapore on 4 April for the Business Gets Social roadshow event there. So I'm still getting a stop in the Asian market for the first time in five years, just a different place and time. As for AusLUG, they are assembling another awesome lineup, and I just learned that there is now a Momofuku restaurant in town...

IBM Press has followed up on last year's "Mastering XPages" book with a new title on XPages....



XPages Portable Command Guide offers fast access to working code, tested solutions, expert tips, and example-driven best practices. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience as IBM XPages lead developers and customer consultants, the authors explore many lesser known facets of the XPages runtime, illuminating these capabilities with dozens of examples that solve specific XPages development problems. Using their easy-to-adapt code examples, you can develop XPages solutions with outstanding performance, scalability, flexibility, efficiency, reliability, and value.You can get a 35% discount through IBM Press by using coupon code IBM3055 at checkout. Follow this link for more book details and to order.

Link: IBM Press: XPages Portable Command Guide >

After the German leg of my 2012 LCTY tour I spent Saturday afternoon with my old friend Siegfried Stadler CEO of HyperSkill in Munich, Germany. We share the curiosity about "what makes humans tick" and had a good chat on perception and communication patterns.
Perception forms reality and when the perception patterns of people don't match, they have a hard time understanding each other. Two prominent patterns I would call Darwin and Newton (note: that's the name I gave them, not a commonly accepted classification). The Newton pattern is the simple "cause - effect" pattern (like the apple hitting Isaac on his head) while the Darwin pattern is a hierarchical structure of one's perception. The differences can be very subtle but create quite warped conversations. Let's look at the example of a project:

For a linear thinker a project is a sequence of steps that follow on equal footing each other. The project phase is just an attribute of an individual step and doesn't require a separate consideration. Attention is on detail and continuous flow of steps. Everything is organised in sequences of start and end, cause and effect.

For a hierarchical thinker a project contains a series of phases that are assembled from a series of steps. The steps are just properties of a phase and need to be vetted in relation to their phase. Attention is on the overall composition of the individual parts. Everything is structured in qualified relations like "is part of", "has details".
Both patterns are valuable and valid. However when they are only implicit they can lead to confusion in collaboration and things get really complicated especially when you insist on your pattern to be "the one and only". Giving them a name allows to communicate about them (that's what some communicators call meta communication - talk about how to talk). So you can ask: "Are we talking Newton or Darwin here"? So what's your primary pattern? Talk about the big picture ore jump into the nitty gritty? Of course there is a third pattern: Talking about the big picture without a clue - usually to be found during popular games in large conventions.
Each of the pattern leads to different preferences for tools and techniques. Linear thinking favours list and tags, while hierarchical thinking favours mindmaps and taxonomies. I'm gravitating towards hierarchies, but find them difficult to agree on (there is debate even for the hierarchy of species) once a group that needs to use them gets larger.
An interesting observation in the use of relations by linear thinkers (which first were simple "tags") is the appearance of qualification (hierarchy can be seen as one form of qualification of a relation). Early on Facebook only had one relation: friend. Now there is "follows" and "is followed" which is already some kind of hierarchy, besides the family relation category (son of, father of). The question might be: when to use what?
So what are you, a Darwin or a Newton?

 

Shout out to Viktor who sent me this screenshot this morning. Very cool to see our baby SnappFiles has made the feature page!

We agree in principle...
Social software is the best way for organizations to organize "their single biggest investment, which for most companies is their people," [Jive CEO Tony Zingale] said. "They must adopt social business strategy or risk falling behind their competitors."Couldn't have said it better ourselves. However, I'm surprised where he goes from there:
IBM Connections is the "refurbished Lotus email system"Um, OK. Even the reporter isn't buying it:His slams against the completion are entertaining, but keep in mind that one of the definitions of "jive" is "to engage in kidding, teasing, or exaggeration" (or maybe "deceptive, exaggerated, or meaningless talk")But IBM Vice President Jeff Schick pwns the competition in the article's comments:
When I was growing up and people were talking jive, they were talking nonsense.
Nonsense that goes unchallenged becomes fact.
Tony made the statement that "IBM Connections is the "refurbished Lotus email system,".
This statement is plain jive talk.

IBM Connections is a Websphere solution based on open standards including java and opensocial . It is not a refurbished email system.
Tony should get his facts straight and stop with the jive talk.
Maybe he is getting his media training from Marc Benioff.

In IDC's marketshare surveys for the last two years on Enterprise Social Software, IBM is #1 and Jive is a distant #3. That is a fact.

Jeff Schick
VP of Social SoftwareI think I'm handing the win on this one to my boss :-)

Link: Information Week: Jive CEO: Social Tools Are Essential, Not Extras >

You may have listened to the podcast we did with Rick Turoczy who is part of the Portland Incubator Experiment also known as “PIE” back in August 2011. Well, the recent PIE class had their “demo day” back on January 17, 2012 and all of their presentations are now available for you to watch.

Before you watch these videos I wanted to let you know that applications for the next PIE class are now open and will close on February 24, 2012.

Here are the links to the 8 class graduates videos in alphabetical order:

Athletepath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhzP5upje6U&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=3&feature=plpp_video

Cloudability
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxDkZIyar4&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=1&feature=plpp_video

DailyPath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QwOTXBf5y4&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=6&feature=plpp_video

MoPix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JbGAYveOCw&feature=related

Revisu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbaaponbPaI&list=PL552B9270E869DC96&index=2&feature=plpp_video

Spotsi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XQdndRvF8c&feature=related

Stayhound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClznRU8-Xfw&context=C3165fbeADOEgsToPDskIKHrg16WY7vA8IWRTuabzH

VendScreen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATkV294wmqg&context=C3165fbeADOEgsToPDskIKHrg16WY7vA8IWRTuabzH

Rick will be joining us once again for a Taking Notes podcast to talk more about PIE and about all the great things the last class came up with.

On my flight over to Europe this week, I read Clive Thompson's column and was intrigued:When we get to the last week of February, open your Google Calendar and choose the Month view. You'll see the previous three weeks grayed out. Only the next few days will be "active." If you want to see what you've got planned for more than the next couple of days, you have to flip forward to March.

Now ask yourself: Why does Google Calendar--and nearly every other digital calendar--work that way? It's a strange waste of space, forcing you to look at three weeks of the past. Those weeks are mostly irrelevant now. A digital calendar could be much more clever: It could reformat on the fly, putting the current week at the top of the screen, so you always see the next three weeks at a glance.Interesting - this is exactly something we are working on for Lotus Notes Social Edition, a scrolling monthly calendar view. Beta coming later this quarter.

The article itself is interesting for raising the question, and the answer -- skeuomorphs. I have explored this topic similarly without using the clever word... it's the prisoner-of-the-installed-base situation. Years ago, I wrote a theoretical question -- what would a traffic signal look like today if we didn't have the historical example of a red/yellow/green light? The blog post is so old that it doesn't have the comments from the first iteration of edbrill.com. But it's the same line of question -- how do you get away from the things already established?

Link: Wired: Clive Thompson on Analog Designs in the Digital Age >

Just after Lotusphere, IBM released Lotus Symphony 3.0.1. This new version of Symphony features several incremental enhancements and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the OpenOffice-based desktop productivity market.

In my earlier blog entry, I indicated that our energy around the next release of Symphony is combining with the open-source community around the Apache OpenOffice project. Rather than continue Symphony as a separate fork, we plan to contribute the Symphony codebase into the project that should be released later this year as Apache OpenOffice 4.0. We've hired developers with deep expertise in OpenOffice; I'll be blogging about them later this week.

Unfortunately some headlines in the press created the impression that this merged effort with Apache somehow signaled IBM backing away from the desktop productivity space, and Symphony specifically. To be clear, Symphony 3.0.1 is the current release and will be until the Apache OpenOffice 4 release is done. At that time, IBM will distribute an IBM edition of OpenOffice, with extensions to integrate it with our other collaboration products, and with IBM support in exactly the same way that we support both embedded and stand-alone Symphony users today.

IBM ourselves are in the process of rolling out the upgrade to Symphony 3.0.1 to all 400,000 desktop users internally; we will upgrade to the OpenOffice 4 release once it is complete. All the file compatibility and investment in Symphony just carries forward into that new release, and in our internal work effort the contributions individual IBMers are making to OpenOffice 4 are in the same mindset and energy level we have had in building Symphony.

To help clarify the roadmap and strategy, we've posted a couple of resources.

1) Here is Eric Otchet's Lotusphere presentation; Eric works for me as the Symphony product manager. Eric is signed up as a committer on the Apache OpenOffice project, along with many other IBMers.

IBM - Lotus Symphony, Apache OpenOffice, IBM Docsroadmap  -- lotusphere 2012View more presentations from Ed Brill.

2) We've also posted a buzz entry on symphony.lotus.com, featuring an FAQ about the future of Symphony, the Apache OpenOffice project, and more.

Also, my colleague Rob Weir has written on the topic, and as mentioned, I'll have more to say after my visit to Hamburg during the week ahead.

It has long been my opinion that good software designers should understand the basic economics of trade. Ours is a highly specialized practice, and it produces an absolutely staggering surplus when we trade. But this can be very difficult to understand unless you grasp the concept of Comparative Advantage. (Understanding Asymmetrical Information is also a good idea, but let's save that for another day.)

Because of the absolutely marvelous title, I stumbled upon these videos from Professor Art Carden today. They are one of the clearest and simplest explanations of the incredibly counter-intuitive notion of Comparative Advantage. I cannot recommend them for IT specialists enough. THIS is why what we do is so damned valuable for the people that buy from us.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Side note: the characters of Fritz and Lou are a marvelous inside joke for students of Austrian economics. 10 points to the first commenter to explain why.

IBM.com has dates and locations starting to show up for the Business Gets Social 2012 roadshow - aka/fka Lotusphere Comes to You....



Link: ibm.com: Business Gets Social 2012 - Software Roadshow >

EXCERPT: This adaptive learning UI/UX will walk the user thru the use of the application and award them experience points upon reaching pre-defined milestones. As the user gains XP, you simply...

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