The (Social) Network Is Your Company
Fri, May 17th 2013 3:13p Alan Hamilton John Gage, the 21st employee of Sun Microsystems coined the now famous phrase:
“The Network is the Computer”
which became a prominent feature on the Sun Microsystems’ logo and motto. More than that it became part of their philosophy before the large scale adoption of the internet. They realised that the combined power of computers, interconnected, is the real computer – able to carry out more complex tasks than would otherwise be possible by the boxes we sit in front of today.
That s [read] Keywords: connections
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How I saved eight minutes today by doing nothing
Mon, Apr 29th 2013 3:16p Alan Hamilton This is a short example of something that landed in my inbox today which, I confess, I was so impressed with I just had to share it. In the nearly twenty years I have been working with Notes I have become accustomed to receiving emails with DocLinks, and more recently URLs to databases or other applications which a user wants me to interact with.
A DocLink, for the uninitiated, is basically like a URL but specifically for a Notes document in a database somewhere. This predates URLs by about [read] Keywords: connections
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Turning Blue
Fri, Mar 15th 2013 12:11p Alan Hamilton I am pleased to announce that from Monday 18th March I will have joined IBM to further my career in Social Business.
I am joining the world-wide ICS SWAT/Tiger team as a Social Business Consultant, focused on the UK, Ireland and Nordics.
I am really looking forward to some new challenges and perspectives having spent nearly 20 years in the IBM Business Partner community, so I hope you continue to follow my blog. [read] Keywords: ibm
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Using Activities to Restructure and Manage a Project
Mon, Mar 11th 2013 9:12a Alan Hamilton Earlier today I was preparing a project for handover to a colleague. Although we have a documented process we follow for the work, it is in the form of a Word document and can be difficult to track which steps you’ve completed and which are still to be done. So that my colleague and his manager can work through the steps to be performed in a set order I went about using one of my favourite applications within IBM Connections – Activities.
Activities is like a simple to-do list manager wh [read] Keywords: connections
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Integrate LibreOffice with IBM SmartCloud and IBM Connections
Sat, Mar 9th 2013 8:13a Alan Hamilton In a previous blog post I expounded the virtues of using the IBM Connections Desktop Plugin for Windows to make working with IBM SmartCloud for Social Business and also your own IBM Connections environment more seamless. In this post I am going to describe how to use a popular alternative to OpenOffice, LibreOffice, to access the same services from any platform using IBM’s CMIS integration services.
Content Management Interoperability Services is a standard used amongst enterprise conte [read] Keywords: connections
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How can we create Predictive Knowledge?
Fri, Feb 22nd 2013 3:10p Alan Hamilton Lew Platt, HP. “If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.”
Much is discussed these days about Big Data and the role of Predictive Analytics to help create better business decisions and provide information from data. How would it be, however if we could apply Predictive Analytics to knowledge?
What I am getting at here is the role that Predictive Analytics can play in recommending information to you, suggesting next steps for you in a business process, co [read] Keywords: connections
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Social File Sharing with IBM Connections Desktop Plugin
Tue, Feb 12th 2013 2:10p Alan Hamilton An often overlooked aspect of the IBM Connections social business platform is its ability to integrate itself with many different parts of the working environment. If you’re a Lotus Notes user you may be aware that there is an Activities sidebar. Did you know, though, that from the Greenhouse catalog you can also install the Files and Status updates sidebar to make dragging and dropping files in and out of emails much easier?
Even if you’re not a Lotus Notes user, you still have [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Color-coding diary appointments is not just for Outlook any more
Wed, Feb 6th 2013 2:10p Alan Hamilton In a recent migration from Exchange to Domino one of our customers complained that they thought Outlook was a much better tool because – and this was apparently the only reason – they could color-code diary appointments depending on the category they chose for the appointment.
Well, the good news is that IBM Notes Social Edition does that too!, behold:
You can set up the colors for the categories in a new tab in the Preferences, right next to the color-coding of emails you’ve [read] Keywords: domino
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Microsoft: Late to the Party Again
Mon, Feb 4th 2013 2:11p Alan Hamilton Microsoft recently published a white paper, “The new world of social collaboration” where they set out their vision for
“cultural, technological, business and industry trends that are driving social collaboration in the enterprise”
I invite you to have a read of it, if only for two reasons:
To recognize the same facts and phenomena which IBM and others have been evangelizing about for a very long time;
For the quote “Today, Yammer and SharePoint are connected throu [read] Keywords: collaboration
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IBM Connect Soccer Saturday – Social Soccer
Sun, Feb 3rd 2013 5:11a Alan Hamilton On the Saturday before IBM Connect kicked off some of the community staged a soccer match where the United Nations of IBM Connect came together to play the Beautiful Game. I’ll let you decide how beautiful this particular game was, but here are some of the highlights: [read] Keywords: ibm
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The Path to Social Business
Thu, Jan 31st 2013 5:13a Alan Hamilton The path to becoming a social business, one which has a more engaged workforce, customer-base and supply chain, is one which ultimately leads to greater business success. What components, however, do you need to consider putting in place from a strategic standpoint?
My graphic below attempts to put each of the components I feel any organisation should consider implementing or integrating into their social collaboration environment.
The Path to Social Business
(C) 2013 alanghamilton.com
The blue [read] Keywords: collaboration
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How to use any blogging tool to write your IBM Connections blog
Wed, Jan 30th 2013 1:12p Alan Hamilton Whilst at IBM Connect 2013 in Orlando I have been using my iPad for blogging, tweeting, and generally staying in touch. Thanks to the fairly-stable WiFi throughout the event it’s been easy enough to broadcast updates to my colleagues and give them updates on what’s going on.
One area I have struggled, however, is in using the IBM Connections App for iOS to update my Connections blog in the office. Currently it only supports plain text transfer of the blog article. This is natur [read] Keywords: connections
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applications
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Bring Social to your Business Processes
Sun, Jan 13th 2013 3:13p Alan Hamilton In January 2011 I attended Lotusphere and witnessed IBM’s entry in to the Social Business arena. It was a seminal moment for me, having been involved in IBM collaboration solutions for nearly 20 years. In my time I have seen collaboration described variously as groupware, document management, knowledge management, intranets and now social business. I am not saying that each of these solution categories are the same – they most definitely have distinct features and facets which distin [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Is culture slowly killing your organization?
Fri, Jan 4th 2013 10:14a Alan Hamilton The wrong kind of culture could kill your organisation
Let’s consider one simple scenario which would occur in any organisation. We have the company handbook, published by the management as a rulebook by which staff are expected to refer and abide. Typically the HR department will produce this document, perhaps in consultation with senior management, certainly seeking senior management sign-off.
Once it’s done it might be posted onto the Intranet and a news item put up with a link to [read] Keywords: email
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Your Social Business New Year Resolutions
Mon, Dec 31st 2012 11:14a Alan Hamilton We all know the pitfalls of New Year Resolutions. You can usually guarantee that that gym membership will be unused by February and that the old chocolate habit will be back the first time you need some energy. Turning your business into a Social Business – one which uses social collaboration tools such as IBM Connections to enhance the way people discover and share information – should be on your work resolutions list this year.
Maybe it was on your list last year and you went b [read] Keywords: collaboration
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The last post for 2012
Fri, Dec 14th 2012 5:13p Alan Hamilton It might seem a little early to be hanging up my blogging tools for the year, but I feel a recharge of my batteries is needed. Thank you again to everyone who gave me feedback and encouragement in my blogging efforts this year. Lots more to come in 2013.
Let me leave you with what I would like to be the enduring message from me for this year, the Social Business Equation: [read] Keywords: blogging
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Something for #noemailday
Wed, Dec 12th 2012 5:18a Alan Hamilton Today is a special day for lots of reasons, not least because it’s the last time for a very long time that we’ll see a perfectly repeating date: 12/12/12.
It’s also No Email Day – a day when us social types use social networks, twitter and all other “social” communication methods to show that email is less useful these days for collaborating with our colleagues than other media available to us now.
With this in mind, I have prepared the attached which you migh [read] Keywords: desktop
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IBM Docs – Social Document Creation
Tue, Dec 11th 2012 3:18p Alan Hamilton The recent announcements about the release into the wild of IBM Docs made me realize I had an opportunity at shameless self-promotion. At the beginning of this year I blogged about the features of IBM Docs beta as it was on Greenhouse.
If you’re looking for a quick summary of just how good IBM Docs really is, take a look at these posts:
Part One – Documents and interoperability with desktop software.
Part Two – Spreadsheets and Presentations. [read] Keywords: ibm
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IBM Champion for 2013
Tue, Dec 11th 2012 11:17a Alan Hamilton I’m very pleased to have been nominated and awarded the status of IBM Champion for Collaboration Solutions for 2013. It’s a great honour and I’m very grateful to everyone who nominated me. [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Making the Most of IBM Sametime Connect’s Managed Settings
Wed, Dec 5th 2012 9:11a Alan Hamilton The Sametime Connect and Sametime embedded clients are both based on the IBM Expedtior framework which is in turn based in the open source Eclipse system. As such this allows us to have great flexibility about the way in which the clients are deployed and the options which can be installed. It also brings with it a level of complexity which Domino administrators (who are usually the ones with the job of managing the Sametime client) are not familiar with and can find baffling.
There is good docu [read] Keywords: domino
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The Social Business Equation for Success
Sun, Dec 2nd 2012 1:11p Alan Hamilton Consider the following equation:
(desire to be social) x (social collaboration platform) = (explicit knowledge) + (business intelligence)
The equation above is simple enough for anyone in business to understand. The power of the equation, however, is only one which businesses are beginning to make the most of.
The use of collaboration tools in business has often promised much in terms of increases in performance, efficiency, better work/life balance etc. Any of us who have been exposed to th [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Social Connections IV: My PoV
Sat, Dec 1st 2012 9:11a Alan Hamilton Stuart McIntyre & Luis Suarez
I have found through my professional life that there are broadly two types of experts. The first type say a lot but don’t actually practice what they preach. The second are the true practitioners of their trade, the ones who can offer genuine insights into how they have solved problems. The best type of the latter expert is one who is also prepared to share that information.
These social experts, who believe that IBM offers the best and most compel [read] Keywords: collaboration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business: Steps 1 – 10 Roundup and Infographic
Thu, Nov 29th 2012 10:11a Alan Hamilton If you have been following my series, 10 Easy Steps to Social Business, then hopefully you’ve gained an understanding of:
Embedding social techniques into your business processes with some examples (more to come).
The need for customization of your social business solution.
Things to think about when preparing a Social Business Governance Plan.
Hire Social People with a great interview with Joyce Davis (@jadintx).
Leaders: Lead.
Evangelize and Enable
Communicate the Plan
Motivate [read] Keywords: ibm
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 10: Show the Metrics of Value
Wed, Nov 28th 2012 10:17a Alan Hamilton How do you improve something? Draw a graph.
If you want to see how well you are doing, how something is improving or how far you have moved, put it in a graph. A picture tells a thousand words and so therefore putting the practice of business analytics to work in your social collaboration environment will help you see how your business is improving. Armed with statistics like these you can be sure any executive will want to hear from you.
On a project I was recently involved in we actively had [read] Keywords: collaboration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 9: Reverse Mentor your Leaders
Tue, Nov 27th 2012 12:11p Alan Hamilton Douglas Adams
Reverse Mentoring is not some hairbrained scheme dreamt up by some new-age management gurus, in fact Jack Welsh as CEO of General Electric proposed reverse mentoring of the executives in an organization as a way to rapidly bridge the management technology gap.
As we have said on many occasions in this series of articles, it’s vital for the long term health of your social collaboration project that it gets the buy-in and active participation of your executives. The executives [read] Keywords: collaboration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 8: Motivate and Engage
Mon, Nov 26th 2012 11:11a Alan Hamilton Developing a social collaboration system in your organization is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to realize that you need to pace yourself – you need to know when the pace needs to get picked up and of course leave some energy for the last 100 yards.
In our journey to becoming a social business so far we have managed to get as far as releasing materials for others to pick up and start using for implementing social strategies in their parts of the organization.
This is all very well bu [read] Keywords: collaboration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 7: Communicate the Plan
Sun, Nov 25th 2012 3:10p Alan Hamilton In step 7 of the 10 Easy Steps to Social Business we focus on how to get other people to take up your plan. So far you have been in control of the action but now that you have a thriving social intranet in place you need to package up the goodness so that others can get started. So, how do you do it?
There are no hard and fast rules for packaging your Social Intranet Starter Kit, but here are some thoughts for what you might want to include:
Statement of the vision of the social intranet.
Evide [read] Keywords: collaboration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Steps 4-6 Infographic and roundup
Wed, Nov 14th 2012 7:11a Alan Hamilton If you have been following my series, 10 Easy Steps to Social Business, so far then hopefully you’ve gained an understanding of:
Embedding social techniques into your business processes with some examples (more to come).
The need for customization of your social business solution.
Things to think about when preparing a Social Business Governance Plan.
Hire Social People with a great interview with Joyce Davis (@jadintx).
Leaders: Lead.
Evangelize and Enable
Many thanks for the kind feedb [read] Keywords: policies
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 6: Evangelize and Enable
Mon, Nov 12th 2012 7:14a Alan Hamilton Step 6 – Evangelize and Enable is the one where you might struggle to keep momentum going. You might experience apathy, derision, and general “so what” from the broader population of users. When you reach this stage you will have established a thriving social intranet amongst like-minded individuals and hopefully managed to get your leader and some of the senior execs on board. Now comes the challenge of going from early adopter to mass market.
Inspiration in this stage of your Soc [read] Keywords: administration
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 5: Leaders Show the Way
Thu, Nov 8th 2012 7:14a Alan Hamilton Getting your executives to buy into the concept of a social business in most cases is something which they will either get straight away or not. Those who are switched on to “modern” technology will not need much convincing that implementing social technologies in the workplace will improve communications and enhance productivity. Those who don’t see the need for it, of course, require a little more persuasion.
I am not going to discuss the ways in which you might persuade [read] Keywords: policies
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business – Step 4: Hire Social People
Mon, Nov 5th 2012 9:14a Alan Hamilton It’s one thing to inject your social business platform with a big push of enthusiasm for your social business evangelist. It’s a completely different proposition three, six, nine and twelve months down the line when the initial project might have completed and normal business returns.
Normal business, of course, if your project is successful, should now be social business. There should be socialized business processes running in an environment users recognize, are at ease with and in [read] Keywords: collaboration
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My really simple guide for installing SugarCRM on SUSE Linux.
Tue, Oct 30th 2012 12:17p Alan Hamilton Download SuSE Enterprise Linux Server 11 from Novell – http://download.novell.com/SummaryFree.jsp?buildid=h0AOp5AT-18~
Install SuSE Linux and log into it so that you can access the graphical desktop.
Download the SugarCRM Community Edition for Linux FastStack system. http://sourceforge.net/projects/sugarcrm/files/1%20-%20SugarCRM%206.5.X/FastStack/sugarcrm-CE-6.5.6-linux-installer.bin/download
Open a GNOME Terminal:
cd Desktop
chmod ug+x sugarcrm-CE-6.5.6-linux-installer.bin
./sugarc [read] Keywords: admin
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Respond to a Tender using Activities
Mon, Oct 22nd 2012 12:14p Alan Hamilton Responding to a Tender, or similar Request for Proposal, is often a daunting task. It’s a classic situation where multiple copies of a file fly around between the different contributors, each one sending the same thing over and over. One way to retain your sanity, win some points with the IT department and avoid the inevitable word processor document corruption is to use a more collaborative approach.
One example of this is to use Activities in IBM Connections 4 to handle the tasks. [read] Keywords: connections
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business, Steps 1-3 Infographic and roundup
Wed, Oct 17th 2012 9:12a Alan Hamilton If you have been following my series, 10 Easy Steps to Social Business, so far then hopefully you’ve gained an understanding of:
Embedding social techniques into your business processes with some examples (more to come).
The need for customization of your social business solution.
Things to think about when preparing a Social Business Governance Plan.
Many thanks for the kind feedback and comments I’ve received so far. Steps 4 – 6 of the plan will be coming soon. In the m [read] Keywords: lotus
noteslotus
policies
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10 Easy Steps to Social Business, Step 3 – Set Governance Policies
Tue, Oct 16th 2012 2:11p Alan Hamilton An organization’s social media policy defines how your employees use and interact with social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and so on. As such, as well as laying down the law in terms of what is acceptable it should also guide, coach, mentor and provide useful resources to enable your staff to use social media channels appropriately. By “social media” channels I include those that you might create yourself – such as your social intranet, social ex [read] Keywords: ibm
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Step 1 – Integrate Social into your Business Processes (episode 2) – Customer Service
Sun, Oct 14th 2012 7:11a Alan Hamilton In episode 1 of our Social Business journey we looked at how we might practically socialize a sales team. In this entry we’re looking at how a customer service organization might socialize its process for greater customer satisfaction and better throughput.
In the picture above, the common issue with customer service in any organization is demonstrated. Your customer faces a number of barriers to communication with you (as your organization). Do I call, email, post a support request? [read] Keywords: connections
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Downloading IBM Connections 4? Here are the part numbers
Wed, Oct 3rd 2012 4:10p Alan Hamilton If you are an IBM Passport Advantage customer, or an IBM Business Partner, one of the easiest ways of downloading your entitled products is to put a comma-separated list of part numbers into the IBM website (PA or PW).
Finding the part numbers for the product you want to download is actually relatively easy. If you do a search for the product you want and then add “download document” you should find a document like this, in this case for IBM Connections 4.
The listing of part numbe [read] Keywords: connections
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How to cut your meetings from 1 hour to 10 minutes
Sun, Sep 30th 2012 9:10a Alan Hamilton Here’s an experiment we could all carry out. Evaluate the cost of your next meeting with this website. Now, in the comments to this blog post post a comment with the cost of your next meeting. Add to it any additional costs of travel etc.
You should find the answer a bit scary. That money has been blown. Straight off the bottom line, and in many companies needs to be earned at a ratio of 1:10 to cover costs. So for ever $100 in the cost of your meeting, the company needs to earn about $100 [read] Keywords: connections
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Using a wiki to write a sales proposal
Tue, Sep 25th 2012 6:10a Alan Hamilton In an earlier blog post I encouraged you to think of the wiki as a social content management system. Well, this time I am going to show how with a little thought you can make the production of proposals a social activity too.
In IBM Connections you could create a community as the hub of activity for an individual client. Then you could use the Wiki to create a master table of contents for each of the proposals you prepare. That way all the documentation, content, links and other material f [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Connections toolbar for Mozilla Firefox
Tue, Sep 18th 2012 12:10p Alan Hamilton They say “Ask and ye shall receive”, and that’s exactly what has happened to me this week. I was at the Cloud Social Redbooks residency last week and spotted one of the IBM’ers had a rather nifty IBM Connections toolbar for Firefox installed. A few tweets later and @dave_hay connected to the author of the toolbar. Today I am very pleased to say that the toolbar has now been released for the general public, and rather cool it is too. So thanks to a bit of social media and [read] Keywords: connections
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Is the wiki the hero of social content management?
Thu, Aug 30th 2012 4:13p Alan Hamilton Everybody these days is prefixing stuff with “social”. Even being social needs to be socialized these days. It’s not enough to actually go out and meet your friends, but you have to tweet and Facebook-post about it too – presumably so that your less social friends can feel socially-inadequate. Anyway, being as I am an advocate for social business, I have been thinking about what the BUSINESS bit actually relates to.
There are many descriptions out there. My favourite is t [read] Keywords: connections
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Why Build a Social Intranet?
Wed, Aug 22nd 2012 3:09p Alan Hamilton “One day soon, every employee, every retiree, every customer, every business partner, every investor and every neighbour associated with every company will be able to share an opinion about that company with everyone in the world, based on first hand experience. The only way we can be comfortable in that world is if every employee of the company is truly grounded in what their company values and stands for. Essentially the employee becomes an ambassador.”, John Iwata, IBM.
All organisations [read] Keywords: collaboration
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The History of Social Collaboration
Sat, Jul 21st 2012 11:12a Alan Hamilton File this post under another old-but-good-un. This is a really nice info graphic highlighting the growth of social collaboration over the years. Nice to see Mitch Kapor being recognised:
Click to enlarge.Courtesy of Central Desktop [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Building a knowledge economy with social business
Fri, Jul 20th 2012 2:12p Alan Hamilton English: Phillippine stock market board (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Something which we are all aware of these days is the state some countries have ended up in thanks to the economic crisis affecting Western Europe and America. Constraints on the availability of money has resulted in recession, stagnation and an overall malaise.
I believe the same analogy can be drawn in many organisations these days when considering how it deals with collaboration, knowledge management and generally being a bet [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Restoring the recovery partition in Mac OS X Lion
Fri, Jul 20th 2012 2:12p Alan Hamilton Time Machine on Mac OS X 10.5 (Photo credit: juancabrera)
Recently I foolishly zapped the hard disk of my Mac, removing both the main partition and the Recovery HD partition. I found that I wasn’t able to re-install Lion (or Mountain Lion) from disk or USB stick because the installer kept complaining about there being no recovery partition present.
Thankfully I had been using Time Machine on an attached drive so, after a lot of playing around, found the following procedure which might be [read] Keywords: apple
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Fixing IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on OS X Mountain Lion
Fri, Jul 20th 2012 2:12p Alan Hamilton This tip comes courtesy of an excellent suggestion by @stuartmcintyre…
After installing the OS X Mountain Lion GM seed, Lotus Notes gets moved into a Lotus Notes folder. On my machine, double-clicking on Notes.app within the folder causes Notes to start but when I double-click on an email or calendar appointment, Notes would crash.
A solution is to move the Apple Notes.app file into a folder and move Lotus Notes back to being the Notes.app application (into the same location as it was before [read] Keywords: ibm
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Building a knowledge economy with social business
Fri, Jul 20th 2012 9:13a Alan Hamilton English: Phillippine stock market board (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Something which we are all aware of these days is the state some countries have ended up in thanks to the economic crisis affecting Western Europe and America. Constraints on the availability of money has resulted in recession, stagnation and an overall malaise.
I believe the same analogy can be drawn in many organisations these days when considering how it deals with collaboration, knowledge management and generally being a bet [read] Keywords: collaboration
archive
community
email
wiki
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Fixing IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 on OS X Mountain Lion
Fri, Jul 20th 2012 6:12a Alan Hamilton This tip comes courtesy of an excellent suggestion by @stuartmcintyre…
After installing the OS X Mountain Lion GM seed, Lotus Notes gets moved into a Lotus Notes folder. On my machine, double-clicking on Notes.app within the folder causes Notes to start but when I double-click on an email or calendar appointment, Notes would crash.
A solution is to move the Apple Notes.app file into a folder and move Lotus Notes back to being the Notes.app application (into the same location as it was before [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
apple
application
applications
email
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Restoring the recovery partition in Mac OS X Lion
Wed, Jul 11th 2012 5:11p Alan Hamilton Time Machine on Mac OS X 10.5 (Photo credit: juancabrera)
Recently I foolishly zapped the hard disk of my Mac, removing both the main partition and the Recovery HD partition. I found that I wasn’t able to re-install Lion (or Mountain Lion) from disk or USB stick because the installer kept complaining about there being no recovery partition present.
Thankfully I had been using Time Machine on an attached drive so, after a lot of playing around, found the following procedure which might be [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
apple
applications
laptop
mac
twitter
Installing IBM Connections support in SugarCRM
Fri, Jun 15th 2012 8:15a Alan Hamilton Image via CrunchBase
This definitely comes under the category of how to turn SugarCRM into SocialCRM. Installing the excellent IBM Connections module into SugarCRM is quite straightforward.
Get the module from here. This will download a ZIP file. If you are using Safari, make sure it doesn’t unzip the ZIP file as Sugar wants the module in ZIP form.
Login to SugarCRM and go to the Admin section.
Scroll down to the Developer section and choose Module Loader:
In the Module section, br [read] Keywords: admin
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IBM Connections Client for iPad / iPhone / Android
Mon, Jun 11th 2012 11:17a Alan Hamilton
Using IBM Connections on a mobile device just got a whole lot better. In fact, I would go as far to say that it beats using it in a web browser.
The latest version of Connections for iOS and Android move the client application from being a thinly-disguished embedded web browser to a full native client which makes expert use of the REST APIs which IBM have published for their social business solution.
Particularly pleasing is the fact that the client now supports multiple Connections acco [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Alternative to Lotus Traveler client on Android
Wed, May 30th 2012 2:11p Alan Hamilton Something I have been trying out on my Lenovo ThinkPad tablet, which has found a new lease of life since the Ice Cream Sandwich update, is TouchDown HD for tablets. This is a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync client and provides full access to email, calendar, and contacts, as well as synchronising the photos you might have of your contacts.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong as such with the default Lotus Traveler clients for Android, and by all accounts they’ll get bette [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Using Activities as a Database in IBM Connections
Tue, May 22nd 2012 10:10a Alan Hamilton (Photo credit: Mónica, M)
I have used this blog to expound the virtues of IBM Connections’ Activities features before, but wanted to share this time the concept of using Activities as an easily-structured, highly-flexible database solution in its own right.
Don’t get me wrong, Activities are not going to replace IBM DB2 or Oracle any day soon, but for the simple lists and other small data collection exercises we all need to do at work, Activities is an easy way of putting it all tog [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Creating a Social Construction Project
Sun, Mar 11th 2012 4:11p Alan Hamilton In my last-but-one posting, The Social Construction Project, I promised to provide a worked example of how to socialise a construction project extranet to the benefit of those involved. So, here goes:
I am going to use IBM Connections as my example for customisation, but I am sure you could adapt these ideas for any social business solution.
In the Model 1 diagram above I show that the main areas concerning a construction project can quite easily be implemented in Connections:
Change Managem [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
applications
community
networking
twitter
websphere
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212
Looks like there’s a problem with Lotus Notes and OS X Mountain Lion…
Tue, Mar 6th 2012 1:13p Alan Hamilton I kept wondering where the Apple Notes application had vanished when playing with the Developer Preview version of Apple Mac OS X Mountain Lion.
I realised it wasn’t there because I had Lotus Notes installed. Both have an application icon with the name “Notes”.
If Notes is installed and you upgrade, you lose the Apple Notes application. If you install Lotus Notes after Mountain Lion, the install fails.
I am sure someone in IBM knows this….but just in case!
Living Social [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
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apple
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The Social Construction Project
Mon, Mar 5th 2012 12:16p Alan Hamilton I must confess that when I first heard about CEMEX’s successful use of IBM Connections I was amazed at how an apparently very manual, practical and non-IT-oriented organisation had become a social business:
It got me thinking about how I might apply a social business environment to other industries and I realised that the construction industry is an ideal place to deploy social business.
The Anatomy of a Construction Project
A construction project – building a new home, office block [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
policies
blogging
email
network
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security
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125
How to use a social intranet to unite a sales team
Thu, Mar 1st 2012 11:12a Alan Hamilton Setting up a structure in an intranet can be a tricky business. Many organisations follow the organisation tree and decide to structure sites, folders, etc based on the established hierarchy of the company. Others let it grow organically. In most cases the results of the former approach is that it turns into a data coffin because the only people who think along the lines of the org chart is the HR department. The latter approach, while encouraging adoption, just turns into a mess where no-one ca [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
sametime
community
email
facebook
twitter
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111
Manage any meeting with Activities in IBM Connections
Tue, Feb 28th 2012 3:11p Alan Hamilton One thing we all do in business is attend meetings. Often we’re at the sharp end – taking notes, running the agenda and assigning actions. How often do key activities get missed when you’re writing up a meeting? Isn’t it a chore to format the actions and send them out (by sending a link to the document held centrally, of course!) only to have your colleagues read through, capture their actions and have them log those actions into whatever system they are using.
At the nex [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
notes
taking notes
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153
Integrating Project Management with Sales using SugarCRM and IBM Connections
Mon, Feb 20th 2012 4:11p Alan Hamilton Every journey starts with the first step, and kicking a project off in the correct way is a sure first step to making sure that a quality job is delivered. We’ve automated these initial actions using Activities in IBM Connections and SugarCRM.
We have set up sections in an Activity Template which delinate the project into common phases, such as startup, shutdown and other phases. For those which have standard documentation types, we have created To Do entries with file attachments which ho [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
notes
blogging
community
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141
Who do your customers trust?
Sat, Jan 28th 2012 7:18a Alan Hamilton According to the Edelman Trust Report, 65% of customers see credibility in someone like themselves in your organisation – up 22% from 2011. Only 38% trust the CEO – down 12%. This decline in the CEO trust is the largest since Edelman started doing this work.
Making “the ordinary people” in your organisation engaged social employees means that your organisation’s brand reputation is more likely to be improved than when the CEO stands up and says you’re all grea [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
twitter
112
Enabling application installation in Lotus Notes
Thu, Jan 26th 2012 2:34p Alan Hamilton This is something I constantly have to search for when I am installing a Lotus Notes client and want to install something like the IBM Connections Status Updates sidebar plugin.
To be able to install new features into Eclipse (Lotus Notes client) it is necessary to edit the plugin_customization.ini file which is buried in the installation folder of Lotus Notes.
Full details of this procedure can be found here, but for my own benefit if nothing else, here is a shortened version of the instruction [read] Keywords: admin
collaboration
connections
domino
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lotus
notes
notes client
application
applications
eclipse
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Lotus Notes gets social
Tue, Jan 24th 2012 2:41p Alan Hamilton One of the main announcements at Lotusphere 2012 was the name of the forthcoming next version of the Lotus Notes client – Lotus Notes Social Edition.
It represents a re-focusing of the Client towards Social Business and encourages the use of many of the technologies in IBM Connections for a more productive work environment. From Ed Brill’s Flickr feed, you can see a screenshot of what it will likely look like:
Why is this important for social business, however? And would it encourag [read] Keywords: calendaring
collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
notes client
email
interface
microsoft
outlook
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Winning friends, sales and influencing people with social business
Sun, Jan 22nd 2012 2:50p Alan Hamilton Having just returned from Lotusphere in Orlando, Florida and just about shaken off jet lag, I have started to reflect on what was certainly for me the best ever Lotusphere.
Apart from the glitz, glamour and energy around, I was surprised by the number of people I knew. Most of them I had never met in person, but I was familiar with because of their online presence in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and the IBM community sites we all hang around in. Often I would introduce myself to someone who’ [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
community
facebook
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Social Business is all about ROI
Sat, Jan 21st 2012 6:43a Alan Hamilton In Social Business there are two types of ROI:
Return on Investment
Risk of Ignoring
Which type of business do you work for?
Living Social - An independent blog about IBM's Social Business, Analytics and Collaboration software. Follow me on twitter @alanghamilton. [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
twitter
80
The IBM Tech Trends Report
Thu, Jan 19th 2012 7:25p Alan Hamilton If like me you enjoy working with technology as much as encouraging others to use it, you should find IBM’s Tech Trend report interesting reading.
It presents the findings of a survey conducted by IBM with over 4000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 industries.
In summary it highlights the following technologies as being key in the next 24 months:
Business Analytics
Mobile computing
Cloud computing
Social business
Its a short-ish document and well worth a read by Business Partner [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
mobile
twitter
84
Lotusphere Roundup
Thu, Jan 19th 2012 2:28p Alan Hamilton What a roller coaster of a trip Lotusphere 2012 has been. It started off last Sunday with an excellent Business Development Day for Business Partners which was highly-focused, well timed and above all – relevant – to what we as IBM Business Partners need to understand from IBM.
There was a repeat of the request from Sandy Carter (@sandy_carter) to Live Social. To be successful in a social business world, and to be accepted as credible, frankly, by customers and partners alike, we mu [read] Keywords: atlantic
collaboration
connections
ibm
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104
Lotusphere 2012 – Day 1
Tue, Jan 17th 2012 6:35a Alan Hamilton Day one at Lotusphere was excellent. The opening general session kicked off with OK GO (the guys with the video of them jumping around on treadmills) playing a few of their songs together with the excellent videos that go with them. This got everyone pumped up but that wasn’t all.
The opening general session has a guest speaker. Last year Kevin Spacey (director of the Facebook movie, The Social Network) gave a very humorous and inspirational speech about giving back to the community. This [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
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lotus
lotusphere
notes
symphony
community
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google
integration
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Lotusphere 2011 wrap-up
Tue, Feb 8th 2011 1:32a Alan Hamilton Now that the suitcase is unpacked and the pile of washing is slowly being chewed through by our washing machine I thought I would jot down some impressions from my first trip to Lotusphere Orlando. I ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
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Day Three
Wed, Feb 2nd 2011 12:33p Alan Hamilton Day Three at Lotusphere and I think everyone is showing the strain of being up early, moving around all day and then being out late most nights. The opening general session was a bit more sparsely po ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
101
Day Two
Tue, Feb 1st 2011 10:57a Alan Hamilton Day two at Lotusphere is much more of a getting-stuff-done day. People are hurrying between sessions of all shapes and sizes and there's a general air of people getting what they came for. This mor ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
117
Day One
Mon, Jan 31st 2011 3:21p Alan Hamilton Day One of the official Lotusphere event has happened and got off to an impressive start. A huge hall decked out with screens and literally thousands of chairs was prepared for the Opening General Se ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
119
Lotusphere Business Development Day
Sun, Jan 30th 2011 1:44p Alan Hamilton Maybe I was expecting more from the Business Development Day, but now that I am more or less at the end of it, I have been left a bit flat. The formal part of the day kicked off with the General Sess ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
development
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Chasing the sun
Sat, Jan 29th 2011 4:59p Alan Hamilton Phew what a long day. It started with a taxi to the airport at 7am and has ended now, with me typing this at 1am UK time. Thankfully an excellent experience courtesy of British Airways - hot ... [read] Keywords: lotusphere
Using collaboration technology with the public
Tue, Jan 25th 2011 8:21a Alan Hamilton IBM posted an interesting video (below) of how social collaboration technology - what they've called a Jam - has been used by Coventry City Council to get public feedback on the regeneration of Covent ... [read] Keywords: collaboration
ibm
Bumping into an old friend
Fri, Jan 21st 2011 12:02p Alan Hamilton I bumped into an old friend at work the other day. I must confess that I had been neglecting him since I was first introduced years ago. But when we met again it reminded me of a better, simpler time ... [read] Keywords: notes
notes client
Making Notes work like Outlook...?
Sun, Jan 16th 2011 7:47a Alan Hamilton You might ask why on earth would you want to make Notes work like Outlook. But some strange people out there like the fact that Outlook automatically copies all your mail down to local storage and ta ... [read] Keywords: notes
outlook
110
Panic strikes
Fri, Jan 14th 2011 7:51a Alan Hamilton Do you know how much validity your passport has to have in order to get in to the USA? i.e. How long it has left before it expires. No, I didn't either. Last night I was woken from an otherwise res ... [read] Keywords:
