Joyce Davis has just posted an announcement in the Social Business Insights Blog. You will remember that earlier this year, IBM announced 50 new IBM Champions. Joyce provides a great summary of what we look for in IBM Champions:

These individuals spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources evangelizing for IBM, sharing their knowledge and helping grow the community of users and business leaders focused on our solutions. As champions, they will receive an IBM Champion merchandise package (apparel and some cool gadgets!), increased visibility on IBM sites, invitations and discounts to IBM events, recognition at select conferences, and access to key IBM business executives and technical leaders. Visit the IBM Champion site to read more about the program and get to know the current IBM Champions.

While at the Lotusphere #ls12 and Connect conferences in January, look for the IBM Champions by looking at the ribbons in their conference badges. And, as you can imagine, MANY of them will be speaking at sessions, facilitating Birds of a Feather sessions, conducting book signings, being interviewed on video, and a number of other exciting activities. You might even be lucky enough to witness a group of them sing karaoke ("We are the Champions!") in the evening if you head over to Kimono's. Check out the Lanyrd page for Lotusphere 2012 for more information.

Christian Henseler
Eric Carter
Fabrizio Marchesano, Frame srl
Glenn Kline, Perficient
Howard Greenberg, The Learning Continuum Company
Masahiko Miyo ef Co, Ltd
Mike Ostrowski, Ascendant
Peter Presnell, yellowverse.com
Rob Shoenfelt
Salvador Gallardo, Innexware
Sean Cull, FoCul, Ltd
Tom Simmons, Alacrinet
Weerapong Panpai, Zenith Comp Co., Ltd

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137

SNAPPS Announces SnappLinks for IBM Connections Tue, May 7th 2013 6:17a Luis Benitez Today, I'm glad to share the news that SNAPPS, a long time IBM partner and whose founder is an IBM Champion, has announced new extensions for the IBM Connections rich text editor. The rich text editor is part of several IBM products including Connections. The editor in Connections can be extended with additional buttons and features and SNAPPS has taken advantage of this. With SnappLinks™, you can use your editor -- in your applications with XPages or with the IBM products -- to create and s [read] Keywords: connections ibm rich text xpages applications facebook google linkedin linking twitter

142

Demo: Deep Dive of IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5 Thu, Apr 25th 2013 6:18a Luis Benitez The Information Development team has created this video to take a deep dive into IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5 which was released a little over a month ago. Earlier I had shared a high level demo of IBM Connections 4.5 so if you missed that, or you are looking for more details specifically around Connections Content Manager (CCM), then this is the demo for you. Here are the features you will see: Upload and sharing files Configuring library settings like draft approvals, document types [read] Keywords: connections ibm notes development

210

Demo: Mindmapping with IBM Connections Tue, Apr 23rd 2013 6:18a Luis Benitez Mindjet is a collaborative work management software for brainstorming ideas, organizing information and managing projects and tasks. As you start working on a project, you may start working on it by creating a mind map. Once you've visually outlined the information and are ready to take action, Mindjet can help you start tracking tasks towards project completion. Recently, Mindjet integrated with IBM's Social Business Platform, IBM Connections. As tasks are assigned and the project is updated, [read] Keywords: collaboration connections ibm wiki

152

Demo: IBM Connections Improves Contact Center Processes Mon, Apr 22nd 2013 6:18a Luis Benitez Today, I wanted to share this quick video with you. It shows IBM's Social Business Platform, IBM Connections, deeply integrated into the work life of a help desk representative. This allows an agent to reduce the amount of time required to find the right information to help a caller. Here's one of the examples shown in the video. A caller selects that they want help on increasing their credit limit via the automated voice prompts. In the agent desk, the IBM Connections community with this [read] Keywords: agent connections ibm community integration

150

Social + CRM = Spend more time selling with IBM Connections and SugarCRM Fri, Apr 19th 2013 1:31p Luis Benitez If you are a seller or have a sales team you may be aware of the time spent in a CRM tool such as SugarCRM managing sales opportunities. Now, what if every time you went into a sales opportunity you could have people and information surfaced automatically to the sellers that could help them close opportunities faster ? That could significantly increase revenues as sellers become more productive and can spend more time, well, selling. Highland Solutions posted this video to show the integration b [read] Keywords: connections ibm integration wiki

141

Webcast tomorrow: Transform your Business into a Social Business Wed, Apr 10th 2013 5:43a Luis Benitez Tomorrow I'm going to be participating in a webcast to talk about the business value of IBM Connections 4.5. At the webcast, I'm going to spend a good portion of the time talking about the benefits of deploying a social collaboration platform in the enterprise. In fact, we are seeing our customers really benefit of becoming a social business. In fact, here's a quick snapshot of some of the benefits you can achieve: And as I talk to many customers across all industries and geographies, I kno [read] Keywords: collaboration connections ibm enterprise

210

Activity Stream portlet for IBM Conenctions 4.5 Now Available Tue, Apr 9th 2013 2:14p Luis Benitez The IBM Connections portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal have been updated and are now ready for download! With this new release you can: Bring the Activity Stream experience from IBM Connections into portal - this means you can surface the microblogging capability of IBM Connections in the portal, including @-mentions ! OpenSocial Embedded Experiences are now available in Portal Enhancements to support ideation Support for Portal 8.0.0.4 CF1 Support for IBM Connections 4.5 With this rel [read] Keywords: connections ibm ldd lotus portlet websphere websphere portal

183

Check out the New IBM Social Business TV Ad Premiering Today Mon, Apr 8th 2013 9:24a Luis Benitez IBM continues it's big push on Social Business (one of the 4 key areas of our Smarter Planet strategy along with Mobile, Cloud, and Analytics). By now, you may have seen a recent article we published on the Wall Street Journal on competing in the Era of "Smart". This new TV ads are the next step in driving attention to the power of a social business. Starting today, the following TV ad will be running in the United States during the Masters Golf Tournament coverage on both CBS and ESPN. Chec [read] Keywords: ibm mobile

228

IBM Connections 4.5 Reviewer's Guide is Ready for Download Fri, Apr 5th 2013 5:31a Luis Benitez The news about IBM Connections 4.5 keep on rolling. Today, I'm happy to communicate that the Reviewer's Guide for IBM Connections 4.5 is ready for download. If you haven't read one of our Reviewer's Guide before and you are not sure what it is, here's the description: This Reviewer's Guide provides a brief summary of the applications that are included in IBM Connections 4.5. It is important to note that these applications can be used within an organization as needed—all together or as [read] Keywords: connections ibm lotus application applications