Do Something Utterly Meaningless

When was the last time you did something utterly meaningless and it made you so happy you have no idea why you don't continue to do it more often?

Some of you may know about my recent excursion before leaving IBM's Impact conference last Thursday. I
have been trying to do this for a few years and finally got to do it.

I took a cab out to the Pinball Hall of Fame/Museum as it is billed in Las Vegas.

Do you remember what it was like as a kid going to an arcade or miniature golf or whatever kid fun place and playing the newest pinball machines? The size of the machines, the noise, the depression when your ball drained or knowing your best friend beat your high score was all you thought of while playing. For you younger readers, think of your first game console or hand held game, but it really is not quite the same.

Why isn't it the same?

Because we never got bored by the pinball machines. And in my case I REALLY wanted to know how they were built, worked, basically everything about them. I loved the craftsmanship, the wood, the ideas behind the games. And along the way, I realized a few things that proved playing was not just meaningless time.

Don't do anything for the money
Well I hoped they had some ideas beyond "we need a new game this year". We know now that this happened at times, just like any industry. But at the end of the day, you need earnings, revenue, profits but that did not always correlate with the imaginative side of the business. No one likes games lacking in skill or some new enhancements.

Failure is one more step, okay many steps, to success
Do I sound old? Probably, but walking into the museum it was just like being 10 again, the age
my son is now. His interest in our pinball machine has waned since he beat my score. I need to beat his now because in each of us there is a fighting spirit.

Imagination has no limitations
Imagine walking up and down over 6 aisles of pinball machines from the 50's wood rails and white boxes to today's strobes, mirrors, black and digital. Pinball back glass that holds Pop Art rarely seen these days from days of old. The single player solid wood mechanical games with rollers for numbers from the early days up to the LED based units. Each game had a designer and an artist to come together and provide a finished product. The artistry in older machines at times is lacking in modern ones, but the modern ones make up for it by being infinitely more elaborate, energetic than their early days brethren. Multiple ramps, strobe lighting,
motions and levels of complexity usually only found in video games.

Perseverance in the face of antagonism
Originally just sight and bells or bangs was all you heard but along the way we started getting digital sound and if you remember Gorgar, the first talking, and taunting, machine? "Gorgar beat you!" was all I heard for weeks while I tried to defeat it as a kid. You can listen to the voice from a promotional 45 record that someone uploaded here.

Find your inner peace
So why am I extolling on the virtues of pinball? Because I spent 2 hours playing numerous games and letting my mind clear itself of conferences, meetings, work and other entanglements of life. Just playing
and watching and listening to the games was mesmerizing.

Love what you do, but love having fun too. While you were growing up you may have forgotten what it was like to be a kid and see the world in a different way. Go do something utterly meaningless and maybe you too will find that it isn't as meaningless as you remember.

The Cube Interview from IBM Impact

One of the interviews I did at IBM Impact was with Paul and John from The Cube.

Paul and I did a Google hangout last year after Sugarcon around CRM, link here.



I am #5 on the list found here: http://siliconangle.tv/ibmimpact-lasvegas-2014/

My Video (below) and some highlights from our discussion can be read here:
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/04/28/thinkrite-innovating-the-analytics-of-personnel-productivity-ibmimpact/

This time we hit on many topics, the Opening keynote, collaboration, HR, etch a sketch, analytics, messaging, conference calls, meeting analytics and Unified Comunications.

The Silicon Angle team has some great software to slice and dice video around topics, people or whatever.

Thank you to the IBM Impact team for fitting me in among all the IBM executives links below.

Showtime:

Monday, April 28, 10:00 am Pacific through
Tuesday, April 29, 5:00 pm Pacific

Guests*:

Monday, April 28, All times Pacific
10:00a Scott Francis, Founder & CTO, BP3 Global, Inc. , @sfrancisatx
10:30a Doug Balog, GM, Power Systems, IBM , @DouglasBalog1
1:00p James Taylor, CEO & Principal Consultant, Decision Management Solutions , @jamet123
2:30p Maribel Lopez, Founder & Principal Analyst, Lopez Research , @MaribelLopez
3:00p Judith Hurwitz, President & CEO, Hurwitz & Associates , @jhurwitz
3:30p Bob Picciano, SVP, Information & Analytics Group, IBM
5:30p Gal Shachor, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect, IBM Worklight
6:10p Steve Mills, SVP & Group Executive, IBM Software Systems

Tuesday, April 29, All times Pacific
10:00a Meg Swanson, Director BlueMix Marketing, IBM
10:30a Vijay Dheap, Global Product Manager, Big Data Security Intelligence & Mobile Security, IBM , @dheap
12:00n Ndu Emuchay, Distinguished Engineer, IBM
1:00p Matthew Webster, Senior Software Engineer, CICS Technical Planning & Strategy
2:30p Stephanie Trunzo, Chief Creative Officer, PointSource , @sltrunzo
4:00p Vishal Rajpal, General Manger, BPM, Cloud, Mobile, Perficient, Inc , @vishalrajpal
4:30p Inhi Cho Suh, Vice President, Big Data, Integration and Governance, IBM , @Inhicho

Kevin Spacey Rocks

When I heard Kevin Spacey was speaking at IBM Impact, I knew we would get a great session. 

It was 3 years ago when he spoke at Lotusphere 2011 and his "send the elevator back down" speech enthralled us all.

His speech at Impact pushed everyone to be disruptive or if you prefer listen attentively to what people want and give it to them.

"People do not care about the platform, they care about the content." and many similar lines were espoused.

Consumers may not care about the platform, but Enterprises do care. 

Maybe IBM or any business can change or come up with a new direction, but it is not easy and does require some thought and a little luck.

If you don't know what you want or need, someone will paint you a picture and they will be the ones to take over the world.

Do something new, do something different, bend the rules and you too may rule the world.

So said Keyser Söze

Showing Your Hand (IBM Impact OGS)

The show opened up with Tangerine Bank from Canada spending some time describing their Worklight roll out of a voice authentication system, among other benefits.

"Raising the bar on what customer experience should be in mobile banking." from their CTO

Nice not to hear from an IBMer first. And that seemed to be the sentiment from many around me.

Start with how people are extending the products, before you get to what's new with products or any other marketing fluff.

We talked about Building Block Approach. We used to say it was the Best of Breed. Time adjusts the verbiage, but the meaning never changes.

This year the show seems more open and forward thinking than last year's.

Robert LeBlanc than came out and demo'd the new IBM Marketplace. http://ibm.com/cloud.

And proceeded to open an account and provision a VM as his demo to show how easy it is. Granted basic server not a full SSL/VPN setup but for those who still do not believe it is as easy as we tell you, well, it is.

Cars2Go from Daimler outlined a direction where cars are more available for you when you need it and where you need it. If Google did autonomous driving cars this could be fun. Especially after a party night at a conference, I mean with friends.

Mobile Quality Assurance experience was shown to help figure out why people do not like your app. Comparison to competitors and other issues.

Everything is analytics, if you are not doing analytics you are can not move forward. having said that, getting the core logic and data with analytics takes time and effort. If you want to WOW your customers, think about yourself and what makes you excited.

IBM Impact, My 2nd Year

Wasn't sure I would make it to Impact this year, but thanks to Amanda's help, it all worked out.

As I sit here just prior to the OGS I am amazed at all the Lotus IBMers that are here. Sure some are speaking today and may not be staying but to see so many makes this conference feel less like an island to me.

Hopefully this year will get out more and meet more people.

In the mean time, follow along on twitter more or less for what is happening.

Eagerly looking forward to meeting and seeing more IBM WAS Champions.

I'm an IBM Champion Video

The video from the IBM Impact keynote this morning that has all of the IBM Websphere Champions who could make it to the video shoot.



See me and my friends do a "I'm an IBMer" type commercial.

Thanks to Daphne and Justin for editing and making it all happen.

Day 2 of Impact 2013

So what did I do on Day 2 of Impact? Today was The World in Motion.

Business calls most of the morning, bad wifi upstairs, bad wifi in OGS and the exhibit hall. A frustrating problem because if you needed 30,000 IP addresses or so, what would you do?

Duh, grab a Z series! Okay not exactly but it is a problem which should have been addressed Sunday.

Which brings me to what I did Tuesday, meetings, interviews, an ignite speech and a session I did with 3 other IBM Champions and a night cap of Matchbox 20.

So the OGS had BMI, one of the music publishing and royalties companies, explaining what they do and how they leverage IBM products while dropping song snippets from numerous artists. As an ex-ASCAP person it was nice to see and hear the industry has come a long way since the paper trails I used to audit.

Westjet had a video that explained what they needed IBM for and how they accomplished so much in such a short time. Nicely done.

Today's 4 things to know are:

1. 3.6B $ is spent on process reinvention
2. 25% productivitry improvement due to social interactions and software
3. 47% cloud process growth 
4. $100B big data business

There was also a demo of what a mobile app could be doing in the near future around auto insurance and an accident of a viper.

I then ventured off to the Social Playground, great name given we are in Las Vegas, and powered up my now worn down laptop and phone. Caught up on some emails met some people, committed to do another Google+ hangout and prepared for my Ignite talk.

The Ignite talk was fun, for me, and was not supposed to be a sales thing, but others did do it that way. I think I had the best slide though (see the slides here):

Afterwards I spent the rest of the afternoon in meetings or doing interviews with the Redbooks team, GWC (Global Websphere Community), Websphere Socmed team all before heading to my session.

We had an open panel on mobile plans and services. Fellow IBM Websphere Champions Yuki Kurosawa, Andrew Paier, Ashraf Souleiman and myself were joined by Phil Kelly of IBM as the moderator. Hope no one took my "Buy Apple" as a forward looking announcement or stock tip. 

We left there and headed to the BP reception which preceded the Matchbox20 concert. We had great VIP seats upfront, thanks Daphne! The band played for about an hour and a half and I now have Matchbox20 Twitter groupies following me. No doubt they are also following the other 9,000 people that tweeted tonight.

And the day ends with me finding out The Venetian does not do late checkout. Really? In Las Vegas? Oh well what can you do. Tomorrow I head home on the red eye. A day of meetings and hopefully some sessions is ahead of me. 

PS - The video we shot on Sunday debuts at the OGS on Wen. morning.

My Impact Ignite Slides "The Art of Troubleshooting"

I gave my ignite talk today and when the video or you tube is released will post it as well.

Here are the slides from slideshare.

The Art of Troubleshooting from Keith Brooks

Opening Day...of Impact 2013

Today started out like every other day, you know phone ringing at 5am and 6 and 7. Went to meet frineds for breakfast and then went over to the OGS where Champions had prime real estate. 4th row center.

Today was Business in Motion day.
Opening was a drum set and horn section that were quite good and then the star attraction a white Ford took the stage and proceeded to talk to us all.

Just kidding, the car said nothing, didn't even start, but Robert Leblanc came out along with a Ford executive to discuss why 16 million lines of code were in that rolling data center as they called the car. Video for the EVOS makes you want one. Gull wing doors and skeletal seats, it's still a concept but a great looking one.


Next generation of services and change coming for us to be a catalyst for the change.

We heard about 5 things business must embrace:

1. Put mobile first
2. Reinvent your business and design process
3. Adopt flexible and secure integration models
4. Be insightful and data driven
5. Build on open architectures

Then the GM for IBM Websphere Marie Wieck came out and laid out that MobileFirst, is the first point of contact for much of the underdeveloped world. They only have cell phones and in Africa they use them for everything and it is the only source of connectivity. There are over 4,000 PURE systems installed in over 90 countries.

The keynote was from Forest Whitaker who was discussing his partnerships that are aimed at bringing peace to various parts of the world through his Peace Earth Foundation. They leverage Skype for their interactions if anyone wondered.

Before closing Marie said that 71 countries are represented here at Impact in attendance and over 170 countries are watching or listening in on the internet.

After lunch I was in the Reference Lounge to give a Champion talk and we shot some more video interviews.  I made it out to a session or 2 and later did a hands on Worklight class. While it was not development, luckily for me, it was how to publish apps to a Worklight service and have your own App Store. I also spent time with the Worklight and MobileFirst teams today.

Seeing more friends I know from all over at the conference. Just amazing how it works out.

Tuesday I do my Ignite talk during lunch hour at the Social Playground on The Art of Troubleshooting and then at 5:15 I and 3 other IBM Websphere Champions will be hosting a mobile panel.

My First Impact Conference

As a long time Lotusphere person, I am reminded of Bruce Springsteen after he played, and won,  the Academy Award in 1994 for his song the Streets of Philadelphia and said this "And thank you all for inviting me to your party."

I came out to Impact not sure what to expect. At times Websphere is my friend and at times a hard companion, but I found a great community of people here so far that rival my friends in the Lotus/ICS world.

My journey to Impact 2013 held in Las Vegas at the Venetian hotel, started at 5:00am Sunday morning. Head over to the airport and got through security just in time to board my flight that left at 7:30 am  and on time I might add. We landed in Dallas on time, waited about half an hour and filled up with a few people, but most of the flight was empty. I guess everyone was staying in Dallas. We got to Las Vegas on time, my bag was the fifth one off the plane. Off I go to catch a shuttle and....my first delay. We waited almost 45 minutes for a shuttle to take us to the hotel and then it took about 30 minutes. Those of us hanging out already knew we were going the right place because Lotusphere backpacks, IBM paraphernalia was attached to each of us.

Obviously, I did not get that "I'm home" feeling, as I do when I walk into the Dolphin hotel in Orlando. My bewilderment at where things are and how to get there reminds me just how hard Connect must be for someone new to the conference. The Venetian is a beautiful hotel and all I can say is WOW! The Dolphin and Swan rooms have nothing next to the Venetian hotel! Vegas really knows how to take care of people. Once you get your bearings, you should be fine.

By the time I got registered and charged some devices, I missed lunch and most of BP day. Picked up my badge, business partners have blue pouches, and my Champion ribbon. Off I went to find where we were making a commercial shoot with the other 34 IBM Websphere Champions coming to the conference. What seems like a simple thing, repeat your line 3-4 times, turns into a lesson in elocution and stage voices. I think the Redbook video I did over the summer was easier, because it was less formal. Either way, I look forward to seeing how we all come out and hope you enjoy the videos too at some point once we can post them.

After the shoot, I went to listen to a session on leveraging IBM Worklight for your mobile needs. More on Worklight over the week. We have a break, when I went to call home and then down to the conference floor for the BP reception and first look at the exhibition hall. From the diagram it looks huge and it is. Inside the hall is "The Social Playground", in the back, where I will spend some time doing smaller talks and answering questions about being a Champion. I ran into a few old friends, met some new ones and joined the GWC, the Global Websphere Community, The GWC had a remote control car field setup and a race car sitting by their area. 

I am amazed at how many people there are here and the number of tracks and sessions. I thought Connect was over filled, this makes that look like kids play. There are over 40 sessions running concurrently at some points! It would take weeks to catch up to every session you missed. My guess is they can't really do this as a 2 week conference, but seriously, how do people get anything out of this when they are so overwhelmed with options. And great options usually too!

Looking forward to Monday, Forest Whitaker, a great actor and film maker, is the guest, THEY TELL PEOPLE in advance at IMPACT who is the speaker. Lotusphere and Connect we have had to wait to see who we run into in the Dolphin Rotunda due to the secrecy. Which actually to me is better due to the various betting and anticipation that we all work on up to the moment they take the stage.

Look for more tweets, posts and details over the next few days but I can feel the love of other Champions. Off I go to find the general populace and where they hang out instead of ESPN, Kimono's or the Dolphin bar.

PS - There is a contest on for everyone to take a picture with an IBM Champion and post them with a #ibmchamp if you want to find me, follow me on Twitter and 4Square as @lotusevangelist.