The IBM Ver, Ver, Ver, Ver, Ver, Ver, Verse

Sorry Duran Duran for taking liberties.

By now IBM has done their marketing show to bring you the “new” email client called Verse. Those from the outside and even within will say it is the new iNotes or Webmail. They would be correct in that description. It is. But it is also so much more.

It turns out, for whatever cyclical reason, which is beyond the space time continuum, Microsoft, Amazon(?!), IBM, Google and numerous others are presenting new ways and formats of email. Oddly enough Facebook dropped their pointless email program…only to come back at corporations with a “business” Facebook. As I said in Stockholm right before they announced it, who would trust Facebook with ANY business information? Evidently Facebook thinks someone would. Just. Say. NO.

Is this truly a reboot of email? Did J.J. Abrams put you all up to this?

At the same time as we, and you IBM, are trying to convince people that email is ubiquitous and passé in the social/collaboration space, you at the same time hedge your bets with a reborn email client?

As a long time messaging adviser I am excited by all the new efforts being put forth. Verse will be on premises and in the Cloud. V’ger is coming to a desktop near you. Email that knows what you want, when you want it, who you want to work with and all your history. Cool! Right? Baby Watson under the covers?

We've been here before, remember Actioneer? SwiftFile? Numerous other software sidetracks along the dead product highway. So this is the modern  version. All those bits and pieces were building blocks to get to this point.

There is a Freemium model which is 15 years to late to many of us that have been on Yahoo or Gmail for an eternity, but then see the second paragraph above and you wonder if IBM has an idea here. What I mean is, yes, this all looks on the outside like an odd solution, but from within IBM there is a movement afoot to gain a foothold while Microsoft sleeps. My competitive mind says Gmail should be the aim, and maybe it is, but it seems that the IBM teams have a plan to expand Watson, as well as the rest of the portfolio.

Could we really be n the cusp of a product so expansive  that it would dwarf the existing ecosystem around IBM Connections? Could this truly raise Notes and Domino from the moribund state it has been hanging out in lately?

I don’t know. As much as I love messaging, I don’t think it should be all encompassing. Do I need to know that I email my boss more than my wife? Shouldn't it also be saying to me, “Go outside and play ball with your son.” Or maybe it should be saying, “abstracts are open for a conference that would fit well for you”.  I want real information that is useful to me, not just to business.

As an entrepreneur I can see how insights could be helpful, after all I can only read 1/314159265359 of the internet, if that much, on any given year so who wouldn't want some genius mind helping us?

Hang on, one might be thinking, you are over thinking what Verse does or will do. I don’t think I am. I am extending what I want it to do for me and isn’t that what the whole point of an email client is? To work for me in the best way possible? IBM researchers, and newer designers re thinking about some of these ideas right now, or have been the last 2 years and they want your input as well.

No doubt many reading this post will question my thoughts, but if you will suspend the “email” discussion for a minute, how about this idea….can Verse replace one’s manager?

After all, if it can tell me what I should be doing, then why would one require a manager? Is this another nail 

in the coffin for the middle managers and lower managers? Will we finally be the masters of our domains and be independent contractors within our companies to provide our unique actions to the greater company at large?

Call it what it is, collaboration, knowledge, experiential, whatever other synonyms for analytics that provides HR the ability to finally reach Big Brother mythical status. Providing everyone to be on a new level of productivity. A double edge sword which could be just one of many outcomes. Maybe it really is just another mail client with some nice extras that will require too much effort to build or maintain? 

Is this even feasible today? If so, it would require some serious efforts, which are being done, to bring some of these ideas to fruition. Automation, Artificial Intelligence, programmatic cues to trigger functions…all very HAL/SkyNet like to me. IBM is trying to reboot themselves, Verse may not be the whole solution....yet, but it looks to be a step in the right direction.

So come on, you know you want to try it out, maybe it will help you even get on Jeopardy. That would be an awesome way to get a large amount of people to use it by the way, hint, hint IBM.

If you want to play with Verse, go here to sign up and getan account.

What if Darth Vader won?

May the Fourth Be with You!

Ever wonder what it would be like if Darth Vader won?

Could Darth Vader have won instead of the Rebels? Could it be that a strong network of Sith Lords could control the masses through social media efforts using The Force? These may be strong words, young Padawan.

There is an amusing Twitter account I follow called @DeathStarPR that brings my point forward. What if social media was used as an insidious effort to gain the upper hand against the Rebels? What would the Star Wars universe look like decked out in only black and white?

To read more hop over here to the IBM Social Business Insights Blog.

Blogging Time: Why it Matters

My latest post over at the Social Business Insights Blog has been published.

What is it that makes people read one of my blog posts? I write two primary blogs and guest write on at least three others, but then people say to me, “You have way too much time on your hands”—presumably because they feel I am just sitting here writing these blog posts for eight hours a day.

 

Sorry to disappoint you all but I only spend seven hours a day writing them. Kidding, just kidding. For more read it there

Analytics and Crickets

While hanging out at #Sugarcon this week with good friend Stuart Mcintyre we were struck by what we saw as a lack of socialness (made that word up) from the attendees. Granted this is in contrast to the obscenely over the top socialness of my fellow IBM friends which can be zealous in their path to be social.

SugarCRM itself is fairly active as are Larry Augustin CEO and Clint Oram CTO on Twitter. Keeping in mind we can only really see the tweets or posts if #sugarcon was in the tag or discussion. So where is everyone?

In this graphic on the left, courtesy of NextPrinciples, which by the way you can click on and move any of the links and connections, a very nice benefit, you can see who had tweets retweeted or was the primary creator of the original tweets. You can see about 30+ accounts were pretty active although over 700 tweeted something, see Engagement below. If I presume about 1,200 people attended then about 2-3% are active socially. And since I know many of the names, they are business partners. Begging the question, where is the audience? Where are the customers? The lines to the small balls in the graphic are more customers but still the audience was not heavily active. Even at the voting for the AppTakeDown winner it was about 25% that voted. See graphic on the right.

How do we engage people better? Are we happy with this little or this much engagement? 

Let's look at this information, again from NextPriniciples. Keep in mind these are just for the few days of the show and do not imply anything other than what went on at the show. In some cases SugarCRM people themselves or their accounts were excluded in these graphics.

Sugar7 is announced, but no you tube videos for it? Lost opportunity. Customers like videos, social media people love graphics. perhaps they were posted, but just not included in the analytics.

 

This is hopefully untrue, but only 10 blog posts? I wrote 2 and Stuart 1, but surely there were more. maybe my friends at NextPrinciples can help with this.  A lack of primary bloggers may be hurting. then again, if we look at a week long view, will we see better details? 

The last graphic is probably not as helpful because I do not believe @sugarcon is an account on twitter so it is not surprising that there was no growth in followers.

Large numbers of followers, attendees that are social, bloggers and more all help to provide proper analytics but I was surprised at the details for the conference. If you can't get people excited enough at your annual show, I wonder what the analytics look like during the year.

Now look at  this graphic that shows the top 20 7 Hashtags:

IBM was a Diamond sponsor, no doubt this helped raise the Hashtag, but also many people expressed there impression that IBM was not the older IBM. Nice to see IBM getting that traction and awareness.

We were probably too small to get #sugarcon to trend on Twitter, but then I don't think the keynotes were livestreamed for those that could not attend which could have helped grow more awareness. 

I'd like to see more reach out to the world by SugarCRM. Their product is great, they have a great executive team, they are priced appropriately. How will they reach the goals that Larry Augustin mentioned at the opening keynote? Without leveraging their social customers they are missing a great opportunity to enhance the brand and value of the product.

30 Minutes to Upgrade to IBM Notes & Domino 9

This morning, like so many others, I downloaded a few GB of code so we could install and upgrade our server and clients to IBM Notes and Domino 9.

Along the way, also had to grab Traveler, Swiftfile 4.2 (Oh I missed you during beta!), Install SHield tuner (No changes in it, but always like to have it), readme file, MAC client, 2 different Linux clients, Multiple server codes and the OpenSocial Extensions piece too.

This is a P4 with 2GB RAM and handles a bunch of websites, blog links, internal Sametime, Traveler plus multiple directories and at one time also Quickr, since moved to a different server.

First thing you realize is Notes is much faster than it appeared previously. Every version gets that much better.

Love the multiple color schemes for calendars and as posted previously, enjoy having secondary languages in my contacts list.

Speaking of contacts there is now a duplication option. Under the More toolbar option when you have Contacts open is a "Remove Duplicates" option.

 and then  shows this window, because you may be worried...

For you to safely maintain the duplicates, just in case, because you know, you don't trust these computers anyway.

For those that want newest mails on top, or on bottom, that preference setting is found in the Preferences-Mail-last option at the bottom of the page, you may need to scroll down to see it. Looks like this:

Domino side there is a warning to Upgrade your Directory, you have been warned. So if you do not say Yes or No, you will be waiting a while.

So many new things to look at and watch. I like the checks it ran against Domino during install. Nice little warnings I saw too, pays to watch your console, doesn't it?

03/21/2013 10:21:52 AM  Lotus Traveler: WARNING *system Status change from Green
 to Yellow: Disk space for C:\Lotus\Domino\data has 5 percent free.

iNotes Init: Credential Store Configuration not enabled, less secure mode. 

03/21/2013 10:26:36 AM  HTTP JVM: 14797 [Traveler-InitConfig-a24] WARN  - Notes
Traveler server will use 1.2.3.4 which may not be the correct address for
your environment.
03/21/2013 10:26:36 AM  HTTP JVM: 14813 [Traveler-InitConfig-a24] WARN  - Please
 configure NTS_HOST_IP_ADDR in notes.ini to specify the correct host address to
use. 

Notes Browser Plugin works only with Windows (I believe) and is installed when you install the Notes client. Try it by typing notes:home in the browser. (NOTE: Notes client should NOT be running. also you will need to logout or close the browser to start notes again)
You get prompted for a login/password and poof, just like you would be in a notes client. EVEN YOUR WORKSPACE!

My home page links are there, click right to everything and within a browser, who needs a Notes client now? No doubt more will be written on this benefit from any angles.

I have not configured the Open Social Components yet, sorry, those too will be forthcoming in a post.

Some simple and great things to see, play with and that upgrading is not as bad as people say it is. Just remember to test it all first, before you do anything to break your environment and it's special needs.