Captain Kirk, to the Bridge! No! Wait, Go to Engineering!

Apologies to +William Shatner (@williamshatner) for the title but let's talk about V'ger (@_vger), I mean The Cloud.

Cloud discussions may not come from IT, in fact, it seems IT is the last to know about the idea sometimes. While asking some fellow consultants and Business Partners, we are seeing an interesting situation arise and hope this example helps you to not find yourself in the same predicament.

Business leaders are making choices, then telling IT. The opposite of the way things have been done in the past. Not a bad thing entirely.

Is this a step forward for business and one back for IT? Have we finally reached the tipping point where the next generation of business leaders are technically proficient enough to make their own decisions? (If your decision makers at your company are not including you, that is another blog post.)

Let's presume you get included in a decision making meeting about moving email, IM, collaboration or whatever to a Cloud. But you are not invited to provide options and ideas, rather to be told,  "we are moving to this vendors Cloud".

Huh? What? You are knocked across the head like a hangover the morning after drinking some Saurian Brandy. Questions come to your mind, ideas fly from your tongue. All you can say is "Is this a done deal"?

Sound familiar? Is this how your company is going to The Cloud for mail and collaboration? Around you entirely?

When did the business leader get all technical? Or is this a case of someone handing you a carburetor and saying you need one of these because they heard cars have them? When did the leader become Captain Kirk? Let me explain.

Kirk, as many will know, could often be found doing engineering work on the ship, or patching a rocket launcher out of sticks and stones. I did not attend Starfleet Academy, but from my reading, it seems that a Captain does stints in all types of areas of the ship. They also get  class room training time, not just the Kobayashi Maru simulation, and first hand knowledge about other areas as time moves along once the cadet was shown to be captain material. Once you are a captain, evidently you know every Jefferies Tube in your ship and every panel/wiring circuitry in case you need to do some amazing things and save your ship, usually, all withing 50+ minutes. 

Surprisingly, the business leader is not a captain, although they may have the ability, does not have the depth of knowledge of all of your infrastructure to know what is or is not running. Making a decision to go to The Cloud should not exclude your trusted and knowledgeable IT staff or partners/vendors. Each situation is different but moving your email, may or may not break numerous applications.

How can moving your email break applications? Many ways! Here is just one example. 

If other applications rely on a specific directory of your employees for security, how will you access it once it is in the Cloud? If you can access it, what will happen to the application, if the Cloud is down? Or your ISP is down (Spock says this is statistically more probable) how will people work? Is there a size/usage limit for the number of requests sent back and forth before you get charged some exorbitant fees? It is not always about the money, sometimes a little planning goes a long way.

All we ask of you business leaders is you keep us in the loop and work with you.

Let us help you reach your goals without causing problems to your services.

May your company live long, and prosper.

Who Saw Your Slides? Part 2

The 2nd part of my "Who aw your slides?" post is live at the IBM Social business Insights Blog.

After you give a presentation at a conference, do you remember to post and share your slides with those who didn’t attend? Besides posting through the organization that ran the conference, you can also publish your presentation on your blog or at SlideShare, which can both feed to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. But in order to get shares, first you’ll need memorable slides!

In my previous post I shared four starter tips on improving your slide presentations to increase the likelihood of them being shared among your colleagues. Here are some further suggestions to strengthen your presentations and increase your shares.

Read more here.

A New IBM Redbook is out on CCM

Happy to announce that after a few months of effort, our Redbook is available for everyone.

Making the move to IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Connections Content Manager

Our leader, Whei-Jen Chen deserves the credit for getting us all to finish on time and stick to her plan.

Hopefully it will help you in your quest to migrate from Lotus Quickr and into the IBM Connections.

Thank you to everyone that took part in it, including the IBM team behind CCM who answered our numerous questions around what was still in beta code when we were writing this Redbook.

I am also pointing everyone to Luis Benitez who provided these two great blog posts:

Demo: Deep Dive of IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5

A Little About IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5

Do you know what today is? Vampires Get Social Day

57 years ago, the world lost a master craftsman. His repertoire on stage and screen was legendary.

I am of course talking about Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, better known to you and I by his stage name, Bela Lugosi.

Yes he had off screen issues, but what Hollywood actor/actress doesn't? The Vampires represent so much of what is wrong in our world, the xenophobia, the lack of understanding, the limitations imposed by outside forces are not just how we see them, but really how we see ourselves as well.

I have a new post over at the IBM Social Business Insight Blog and since I did not think IBM wanted to commemorate Bela's untimely death, I figured I should.

Here is the introductory paragraphs, please go enjoy the rest of it, especially the postscript on the IBM site.

Fear is a strong motivator, sometimes for change and other times for stagnation. Even if you’re afraid to move forward, eventually you’ll need to act. If your organization is averse to using social media for business, does that come from management, your culture or the individuals themselves?

Maybe the reason we have no vampires in modern times is because they have become afraid of social media. Bela Lugosi, leveraging his authentic looks and natural voice, could scare people really well - but even monsters have an Achilles’ heel. Dracula's downfalls were fire, sunlight, garlic and supposedly wood stakes to the heart. However, something even more insidious was at work that brought the vampires down: it was modern man.

*No vampires were harmed during the course of writing this blog post. Any inference of living or undead is purely a coincidence and at the whim of the author. You can register as prey at www.preyforvampires.com where replies will be swift.

The Power of 30: It Takes 30 Days and 30 People

As part of being a Redbooks Thought Leader my first post for the IBM Social Business Insight blog is live today.

These posts which are posted to this site come from many different perspectives, not just mine. Posts are about becoming more social, internally or externally, leveraging the tools you have now or could have (IBM Solutions) but also guides that will hopefully help those in need of some help in just getting their heads around the Social space.

Here is just a snippet, please go read the rest at the IBM site.

Did you ever wonder how many man-hours and people it took for NASA to design the Apollo Lunar Orbit Rendezvous Module?

It took "more than one million man-hours of some 700 outstanding scientists, engineers, and researchers". (link)

In case you were wondering, "four thousand IBM employees, most of them from the company’s Federal Systems Division, built the computers and wrote many of the complex software programs that launched the Apollo missions and guided them safely to Earth." (Read more about IBM and the moon missions).

Why bring this up? Because not only did some of those efforts eventually trickle down to everyday systems, think about how much faster, one would hope, it could be done today. For example, SpaceX took 10 years to get to space properly and now they have the ability to return the US astronauts to space and the International Space Station.

When did you first "get" Social Business?

20 years ago when I first saw Lotus Notes.


How our business benefits:
How Social Business helps in my day:
The Commercial we did for Redbooks:


Bloopers Reel:


Thanks for watching and keep reading Redbooks!

Social Residency a Review

   

graphic originally from Femke's blog

I am now an IBM Redbooks Thought Leader along with five other friends and the original six which were the startup guinea pigs of the IBM Social Residency. Now we are The Social Dozen. We also use the hashtag #ibmsocialbiz and you should follow it if Social Business, Connections or anything else is of interest.


A week in Raleigh is what it takes to enter this special group. Okay, that and an application which gets reviewed and it helps to already be blogging, social, into IBM Connections and other ICS solutions and have something unique to say at times. I was the only American in the group or if I use my irish citizenship...we were all foreigners. Something which we discussed as well along the way.

Not for the faint of heart, there are manufacturing ghosts from decades past, a surplus depot which is to die for if you are a true tech geek (oh the things one can find), lunch and coffee was a mile hike inside the building(I love old IBM buildings for their architecture, design and signage that provides us glimpses into what it was like in prior times) and many other unique items along the way of your travels, like pirates and skeletons, The Whole Internet and which beer indicates your social aptitude (pics from class of this here and here) among other interesting discussions. But enough sightseeing, what did we do and what does it all mean?

The idea was to bring in people from different parts of life such as technical, sales, blogger, wiki writer, IBMer and Business Partner. we had a great group and our evening activities only spurred us on to greater topics the next day. Indeed we felt it was like Lotusphere in some ways because it was very social and no one was left out of any outings. I guess you can't take the Lotus out of us.

The sessions we experienced spanned the ICS offerings in addition to hitting on IBM Watson, IBM Content Manager, IBM SmartCloud, IBM Cognos (which I already blogged about) and some more formal IBM guideline sessions for our blogging.

We will eventually become part of the blog posting members of this site:

screenshot from the original IBM site

But what will we discuss? This was the question which ran throughout the week in our sessions with numerous IBMers and our own brainstorming sessions.

For me the brainstorming sessions were very useful because when I blog, and presumably for most people it is the same, I rarely have a queue of topics/ideas. I have some posts on save/hold but rarely do I have a title and then go write. This forced each of us to produce 3-5 topics and titles which we then hashed out some details.

Along the way during the week we tested some ideas around Gamification, Klout(it worked), Google Plus +1, social media, Facebook Likes, customer engagements and work around when faced with challenging situations.

What does all of it mean? It means we were free flowing ideas, looking at angles to discuss and blog about and work to a greater good. It is not all altruistic, it is in essence a way to get ourselves and our companies and blogs to a new group of people who trust Redbooks and we hope in turn trust us to work with us in the future.

We shot a few short videos which highlight our usage of social tools and just before leaving we did an impromptu commercial for Redbooks. After 20 years of reading and using them, I thought we should give something back for the IBM team to show their management what we all think of Redbook's and luckily so did everyone else.


We have a weekly conference call to maintain updates on blog posts and other ideas and/or IBM info so we will maintain our efforts and not forget what it was all about. A very critical point, just because the heavy work is done, does not mean you should forget about the customer. I look forward to those calls.

It is expected we will produce 1 post a month on average with the first one due about 2 weeks within completion of the residency. The posts are reviewed for IBM guidelines among other items and then set to publish which is when I can start encouraging others to read it and mention it on my social networks. You have been warned...social media efforts will be published.

If you ever get a chance to be a part of the Redbooks you should because IBM Redbooks ROCK!

Want to do a residency? Go here to see what is available.

Not Excited About IBM Cognos?..You Should Be

As part of the IBM Social Business Social Residency this week, run by the IBM Redbooks, we had the luxury of having a great conversation with Mark Heid from IBM. (I hope to publish more on this for the IBM Social Business Insight Blog in the near future.)

Mark is the Program Director of Social Analytics at IBM and luckily, he is based in Raleigh. His session was the highlight of my week by far! As I tweeted earlier today, I am such a geek and have fallen in love again with a technology.

No slides, no marketing pitch, just here is what we do and what YOU can do with a product like IBM Cognos Consumer Insight. Man have I been an idiot to ignore this for so long. but let me backtrack a bit.

Most likely I can not do the product justice, but here is what we gleaned from today and see if you agree with me. I suspect most of my technical friends will agree, for the rest of you I am going to try to shape the description in a way to help you see why this is just so cool.

For those that do not know what analytics are, analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It is the idea that one can measure or chart details culled from disparate sources of data into an algorithm which could lead you to a conclusion about, well, anything.

Big Data is a term for all the mounds of data streams that companies, even you at home, amass but are unable to sort properly or see the string which holds it all together.

When you combine analytics with your Big Data you start to find patterns that emerge that can be very meaningful to your business or life.

As an example, if a store or restaurant has a loyalty or rewards card, as many do, your purchases are recorded and in most cases scoured for tangible information to assist the business in providing you even better service next time or perhaps coupons to match your lifestyle.

Before you cry foul over privacy, IBM does not perform any analysis unless you have opted in. Businesses let you know when you get their cards that the data will be used potentially and you have the right to opt out of this analysis. I doubt many of you have opted out or even thought about it. But that is another blog post for a later time.

While I am in Raleigh my credit card companies are probably trying to gauge if I will be returning again soon or was this a one off event, like a vacation. If the same credit card companies followed my social media stream they would of course realize this is a class which we have come to Raleigh and not likely to return in the near future.

In contrast, I am quite sure most of our credit card companies recognize that we all "vacation" in Orlando every January around the 3 rd week of the month. I know Disney looks forward to us coming at least.

Think about the upcoming US Presidential election and how much sentiment is being expressed online over it. Poring over the data and analysis could provide a much better indication of who might win over any data those annoying robocalls or political pollsters can provide. Anything which gets rid of political robocalls and pollsters calling me I am VERY in favor of helping.

Real time analysis of what is happening in your IBM Connections world could be greatly beneficial to your HR staff as far as understanding employee sentiments, to Finance around perhaps costs which are not always so clear for some projects and from a Sales angle you could glean which of your sales people is up or down at any given time. No more guessing.

The cost for the full product is not cheap, it is a 6 figure deal and then some. But there are numerous uses for this even without looking at a retail angle. As a Business Partner I see numerous ways to work with the product and I would imagine so would you. Think of government entities which need to analyze their usage of consumables, small businesses which want to find what holds their client base to them or a financial institution looking to plan for offerings not seen before but gleaned from the data.

What is the downside, aside from the cost, you ask? It sounds too good to be true. The part for IBM Connections is real time for the last 2 years but if you wanted to devour lots of data and social media, the process will take a little longer. The reason is because syntax and tweaking of the searches, data review and such is time consuming and we don't all have IBM Watson in our offices. The programming language which would require one to invest quite a bit of time as well to be able to make the data turn into gold.

Why write this 2 years or so after Connections was an entitlement to Cognos 10? Because like you I watched or listened to various presentations, read posts but it never spoke to me like Mark did today and that is what made all the difference. As a long time Lotus person my focus was elsewhere, and for good reason, but as we evolve as partners and the technology evolves in looking for that next ledge to jump off, this is a good one.

I hope Mark will continue his relationship with all of us and thus future blog posts can delve into this deeper, but for now I feel like a new window has opened and I "get" it and I hope you can appreciate why as well.

Lastly, if you want to see it in action you can go to this IBM page and test it out.