NCUG Session on Admin Hacks for Users and Your Sanity

Admin Hacks for Users and Admins Sanity from Keith Brooks

Aimed at New and Old admins. Focus on the Rooms and Resources database changes we have made over the years and ideas for the future of the template.

The Download of the RnR Template is here.

UPDATE: Paul Withers (Lifetime IBM Champion) let me know there is an Xpages RnR template on Openntf.org,
https://www.openntf.org/main.nsf/project.xsp?r=project/ResX%20-%20Resource%20Reservations%20Extended
It mostly added functionality for multiple events and other items including a longer than 24 hour meeting, for those asking about it.

My Flame Broiled Admins .png or the file itself is here.

The Rebellion Strikes Back

My apologies, this was scheduled incorrectly.

If you were not at the HCL Factory Tour Part 2 recently in Milan, you may not appreciate all the Star Wars references but, us being geeks, we go with the flow.

There were about 100-120 customers, business partners, and IBM Champions in attendance, many of us worn down from travel to/from Think in San Francisco barely 10 days ago.

We converged on the HCL offices in Milan, Italy with Richard Jefts and his crew of ex-Empire leaders.

We proceeded to have 2 full days, 3 if you stayed for Portal day (I did not due to flight schedule) of sessions. Myself and a few other IBM Champions were tired from all the learning. 

We are used to doing the sessions not attending so many in a row.

I messaged my kids at one point that I was reminded how they feel every day at school, been 26 years since I finished my MBA.

Nothing, was boring.

There was a track for technical and a track for Business. I skipped the developer sessions, I am sure my developer friends covered that stuff very well or will soon enough for your review.

Business partner sessions, sales sessions, HCL services, the future of the Champion program session, and some other ones I can’t really discuss publicly, as much of it is not written in stone until the deal is finalized and should properly come from HCL itself.

However, we did get to weigh in on many aspects and I think the partner community will be quite happy.

We also had the pleasure of walking around Milan on our way to dinner the first night, and as you can see from the picture below, we all did a group photo at the Duomo in the center of Milan. 

Thanks HCL for a great time and, my luck, got to spend time with Russ Holden at my table who now heads all Notes and Domino development (maybe more, but if you know Russ, then you know it is in great hands) and Richard also sat with us but, as the host, was quite busy.

So what can I tell you? Let’s talk about the current and future of Notes Clients/Verse, Sametime, Nomad, Places, Technical Advocacy (near and dear to my heart) and closing speaker @VoWe.

V10 highlights on the left graphic and Verse on Premises upcoming Features and you can read them on your own. 

An interesting highlight, for me, is while web browser apps will maintain all languages, Notes and Domino and on premises applications are going to lose some languages, including Hebrew. So if you are from a smaller country, you may want to verify there will still be a client in your language. It is a monetary decision based on licensing and number of users. I hope to change their mind, will see.

There was some discussion about a mix of Verse and NOMAD, the application to read your Notes applications(except mail) via a browser and not the old NOMAD of running Notes from a USB. Ideally it would be good but doesn't sound like a true panacea just yet.

V11 Notes client is shaping up. Plans are to do a release a year (YEAH!) and over time make it easier to update your clients. There is of course the Verse client that was meant to be light weight and the “future”, but undoubtedly, due to key customers, the Notes client as we know it, java et al, will continue on.

Not surprising, the UI teams efforts, while clean, were reminded that the, ahem, elder employees, need more contrast schemes. It looks a little cleaner, some things are getting reworked and less “html section” like so the UI appears to all be one window.

Sametime Update

There will be a release, the Limited Use V10 version out soon. As you can see below some of what is included but the main item is Persistent Chat is part of it. 

We will have to wait until the end of the year for the next full version of Sametime which will also be numbered in synch, and possibly emerge, at the same time as Notes and Domino 11.

 

Unfortunately we did not get the previews of the revised templates coming but it sounds like at Engage, in May in Brussels, they may appear. 

The team was quite surprised but our enthusiasm to see/hear and give feedback about some core templates in need of modernization and not just UI.

At the end of the 2nd day, Volker Weber gave us a history of Lotus coupled with his take on the HCL/IBM deal and future. Always great to see him and spend some time talking with him.

Overall, what I heard and saw was impressive. Yes some items are off limits until the deal closes but you can see the fun is back in people's eyes, something we have been missing for quite a few years now. Now to see if the tide can turn and give Notes and Domino a Renaissance like when Steve Jobs came back to Apple.

Dear IBM

As Yom Kippur starts for me here in Israel in 2 hours I want to publicly ask IBM, well everyone who reads this blog and knows me in one way or another, for forgiveness for all the things I may have said, or did, during the last year that just made you want to nsd -kill me.

A few things come to mind:

• Calling in a PMR as a Severity 1 when it probably was a 2.(I only did that once last year...I think)
• Screaming at the Fix central site for numerous reasons I will not mention but if I can ask one question, why can't I just enter my customer number to get a file? hmm?
• To all the Product Managers I have loved and lost and found, thanks for always answering the questions, no matter how difficult, even if it was to say it will be in a future release. 
• Whomever manages the certifications and virtual badges I only have 1 question, why doesn't it come in Yellow any more? Otherwise I know it is not your fault, you are just following orders.
• The QA teams. You must exist, I hope you exist, but sometimes I have my doubts. I apologize for the voodoo dolls.
• The naming committee members, oy, I am looking at a small quota on my mail file for those thoughts aren't I?
• PartnerWorld, I apologize for screaming at the most recent changes and it will not happen again...until next year's redesign if you remove my saved links again.
• Watson Workspace team for not creating a 32bit client and driving me crazy trying to get it to work, sorry about all the IMs.
• The NWTL team because I kept losing my links and having the patience to answer me 5 times where to upload the files. Sorry did not get to do it again this term.
• The content management teams that asked for guest blog posts, I find it very hard to write for a non customer facing product so I apologize for anthropomorphisizing Websphere. But #DominoRocks via IBM Notes.
• HCL I am really sorry I could not use my Golden Ticket. #Domino2025 will be here soon and I look forward to what you bring us.

I'd also like to apologize for the number of times a year I say, Quickr would work so well for this project.

Breaking the Unwritten Rules of IT for Your users

At Social Connections XIII this morning I gave my presentation on how to work with the unwritten IT rules.
Break the rules, tear down the barriers, ask more questions, ask for help.

For those who want the slides, here you go...

Breaking the Unwritten Rules to Help Your Users from Keith Brooks

FudBuster Friday 2018 Edition: That GDPR = Dead Domino

"From the ashes we can build another day.."- from "Story in Your Eyes" by The Moody Blues

Every once in a while I feel the need to publish another FudBuster Friday post, yes it has been way too long but "fake news" makes these posts almost superfluous. I could write 10 a day and still never get them done.

Over the last few days some people I like, trust and learn from, were bothered by a "op-ed" type Press Release from the CEO of a company that obviously makes their money by moving IBM Domino shops to Microsoft.

Their own website even states in absolute terms "Our mission is to develop user-friendly, cost effective technology solutions to help companies escape the IBM Domino/Notes application landscape.:"

From their site I get the impression they have not been around for a long time but obviously are unhappy that people use Notes and Domino. This is their prerogative and in business there are many ways to make money. However, FUD ways are not funny, nor valid reasons to ever do something.

In this case they try to angle that the old solution is not up to par for the imminent on May 25, 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU. For a great article about it read this. 

GDPR is a regulation that requires businesses to protect the personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. It also is applicable to US companies that STORE the data.

Taking a few items to task, let's start with 

"It is compelling because organisations are expected to create a single view of a customer – leaving data in old Notes databases is likely to render users non-compliant"

No explanation is provided and it is "just a fact". There is no requirement, that I found, requiring a single view of a customer. And even if there was, given Domino is a flat database solution, the data is sitting in one nsf although it may be called and referenced by others. Of course you may have data shared in various formats across your CRM, your SAP, your individual sales people as well. This would not change no matter what or how you store your data. What becomes incumbent on companies is the need to document their data workflows and processes for reporting breaches of the said data. 

Domino non-compliant? No way.

He then goes on to lay out a process of three steps that are required to help you meet GDPR requirements, namely: Discovery, Data Extraction and Archiving. In truth none of these steps do anything except pad a consultants pocket and sell, as we will see, many software licenses.

Discovery phase in which they inventory your Domino servers looking for applications. How exciting! our interns can and should do this for us if the built in tools of Domino can not.

Again, this has nothing to do with GDPR or Domino, it is just a normal project process. 

Data Extraction

"A key area of importance to the GDPR compliance directives is being able to get to all the data that is held on an individual so that, for example, a request to be forgotten is executed with a high degree of certainty. This means that getting data out of the Notes databases into an easily searched Relational Database is critical."

What? A did not go to B and definitely did not reach C in that sentence. If you already mapped out your data workflows and locations, then you would have a process in place to eliminate the data asked to be forgotten.

You do not need a relational database to do an index lookup, Excel does it quite well and so does your own internal search solution hopefully. If not, you may want  to invest in a corporate search appliance but this is still no reason to give up on Domino nor does it prove any non compliance. Just bad FUD.

The author then goes on to elaborate about how data could be dumped out of Domino into not one (MS SQL), not two (MS Dynamics), but three (Alfresco) different solutions and somehow this is a better idea? Imagine how many licenses and servers and billable hours this requires compared to your existing team looking at your data and mapping it out.

Archiving of data is always fun. those of you with 20 year old tapes of customer data, how will you rectify this? There is a serious business. This however is just bad rhetoric. Do you really need an all encompassing search solution? Perhaps, but if you have workflowed your data, you should know exactly where it resides and be able to easily identify what parts need to be marked/deleted.

Again, Domino is no different than any other database when it comes to finding your data.

The gist of the PR is a SQL server will give you better control, indexing, deletion of the data. No, it will not and no matter what database or solution you use if you do not document it or manage it properly you will face some huge fines. Any business no matter how small or large if you have personal/private data of EU members you will need to sit down and sort yourselves out.

In the end, no, moving to Microsoft SQL server will not be more compliant for GDPR than Domino.

You will have spent way too much money to move data from one solution to another for zero, I repeat zero reasons other than you were blindly following some entity because you were ignorant and uninformed!

I welcome feedback, further details which maybe I have neglected to research thoroughly enough or even an official statement from IBM or HCL that provides me with a reason to edit this post.

6th Time IBM Champion Thoughts

I think last time I pretty much laid out everything I wanted to say on being a Champion and what one can do to become one. Turns out it was a very popular post.

Thank you to my customers from other partners and projects, my clients, my friends (inside and outside IBM) and family for nominating me or voting for me. Especially like to thank everyone in the various forums, chat groups, bloggers that help me succeed in my day to day world as much as I hope I have helped them in theirs with my support and posts and archival code :-).

More details on the 2018 champions from Libby here. 

The IBM Champions program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community and rewards these contributors by amplifying their voice and increasing their sphere of influence.

An IBM Champion is an IT professional, business leader, developer, and educator who influences and mentors others to help them innovate and transform digitally with IBM software, solutions, and services.

1400 nominations

650 Champions Elected

62% renewing

38% new Champions

38 countries represented

6 business areas, including Analytics (34%), Cloud (25%), Collaboration and Talent Solutions (24%), Power Systems (9%), Storage (1%), IBM Z (7%)

If you are going to IBM Think find me and my fellow Champions on User Community Day / IBM Champion Sunday.

If you go to any IBM events this year and see someone in IBM Champion logos or jackets or backpacks or whatever it might be, stop and say hi and meet some awesome people from the sales, technical, marketing and business world. 

My ITA Conference Slides

Today I presented on getting the most out of your PC.

The Israel Translation Association works on behalf of the many translators in Israel. They cover all languages and people come from all over for this annual event.

This is my 3rd time speaking at the ITA.

IT people know a new machine is usually the answer when the old one is slow or perceived to be slow. But for some people the price point is not practical and this session was an overview of what one can do to speed up their system.

Windows and Macs were included as well.

This and other slides of mine are available on http://slideshare.net/kbmsg

Faster Translations Start With A Faster Computer from Keith Brooks

How much are your Domino Applications Worth? DAC Knows

Most of you reading this are my Yellowverse bubble, BPs, consultants, advisers, fellow IBM Champions and a few friends so this will not be new news to you.

To the few, the proud, the admins and executives who are blessing me with a few minutes of their time, this may come as huge news, or not.

You already moved your mail to the IBM SmartCloud Notes cloud mail, humor me for a minute even if you have not yet. You are sitting on a small server farm or VM landscape supporting your core, enterprise grade, money making, workflow functioning Domino applications.

Obviously because you did not like the idea of co-location or you would have done that at least 10 years ago.

Probably you never wanted your proprietary data to be residing permanently outside of your firewall and did not look into any hosting options, public or private, even if Prominic has been hosting Domino for decades?(I do not work for Prominic but have used their services over the years)

Officially you say you would never let your data outside your site....and then the CFO or CEO says kill the servers by Dec 31. What do you do?

Road Trip!

Yes your data is about to go on a one way trip. One way because who brings everything back in house once it is out? Do you have your post college married children living at home with you now? Don't answer that.

IBM has decided to help you and if you can meet the requirements, your applications will get the VIP treatment(you pay for it of course) and you get some benefit as well, like no more 3AM server down emergencies.

For $27 PER APPLICATION, IBM will host your app at the Domino Application on Cloud (DAC) server in a data center near you, well your country not city, in a Docker container with a Linux machine (I'd like to think there is a beautiful Z series doing this someplace) which means you get most of the comforts of home providing you meet some requirements as follows:

• The application can not be larger than 25GB (unknown if this includes the index or not)
• The app must start with the letter L
• Bring your existing IBM Domino license
• You must sign on for a year upfront (this isn't Burger King's "Have IT Your Way")
• Seems like you need a minimum of 10 applications although I am sure IBM would be happy to charge you $270/month for 1 application if that is what you really want. If you think about it, hosting your own server will cost at least that much once you figure in all your costs so it's a good deal?

Want the full details? Here you go the full slide deck: https://goo.gl/hDurDG


You get all the nice parts of an IBM Domino Utility server so NO mail functions. See above where I mentioned the mail in the cloud part.

So how much are your Domino applications worth? $324/yr/app seems ludicrously low to me. Your applications run your business and bring some serious value to you, don't belittle them.

However, you probably stopped asking for big budget money for your Enterprise solution years ago, so your boss thinks this is a steal. Which it is and if you act in October when it becomes available your local IBM rep or BP(ahem, ask me about it) will love you even more. 

PS - Just kidding about the app must start with the letter L, everyone knows it is the letter I

My Session at Social Connections 9

My Spotlight talk hopefully was well received.
The slides really tell you nothing about the session, you would need my speech written out.

The gist of it all was around what it is like to set aside everything, your phone or email your office, your work for 1 day a week.

In the end, this was not the text I used, but what I built to start from. Edited after I posted as format was not copied over.

Hello Everyone,

My name is Keith Brooks, some of you may know me from my blog, others may know me from Twitter, Facebook or previous Social Connections or IBM events and the rest of you here have no idea who I am.

I am a dual IBM Champion for Websphere and Lotus/ICS/ESS and have been working in IT since 1990 with Fortune 50 companies down to a 1-2 person businesses across over a dozen industries, multiple governments and military organizations and even did a few years managing across EMEA for Lotus.
We are involved in a religious battle which has changed over time. We previously fought Microsoft or Novell or Google and that was technology evangelism. With the advent of ESN’s (Enterprise Social Networks) like Connections, we now have many, many more religious battles.

For Example:

To Folder or not to Folder

 To Search or not to search

Notifications vs. Email vs. Updates vs. IM vs. pick up the phone!

Email vs. Socmed in general

Accountability vs. CYA (see my previous social connections slide decks on this topic)

But today I am taking a step back from all of this fun, you can talk to me afterwards about any of the topics I just mentioned, or other topics. But we are here to discuss in our few minutes the possibility that shutting off everything is possible for you.I come at this from a religious perspective, not a technical one.

You see as a practicing Sabbath observant Jewish person in the 21st century, we shut everything electronic down for 25 hours every week. No matter what state work is in, who I need to respond to or if I forgot to return a call, off it all goes. Laptop, server, phone, iPad, ISP Router, TV, Radio and I get 25 hours of peace and quiet, every week. As far as I know, aside from the Amish and some indigenous tribes, we are the only modern people to do such a thing, which sometimes makes it hard to explain to the rest of the world just why I can’t call you back.

Why is this important and how did this topic get accepted to present this talk? Easy, there are fears we all have of being left behind, not being in the know, missing out on something be it a pub crawl or a cute dog/cat picture. Ok, maybe you really are afraid by not answering your boss’s email you will get fired, or worse, have to work late even more than usual. Maybe you work for IBM and just feel the need to always be on and answering IM, email, updates, requests, sows, whatever.

When we talk about life balance, I don’t see it enough from everyone, even myself, but technology makes it easier to be accessible, right????…except when we aren’t.

Have you ever been on vacation and done any of these:Check and thus reply to emails? Drag a laptop, just in case, or an iPad or tablet, because an emergency might come up? Ruin your vacation by working on something which you thought needed to get done, instead of waiting for you to return.

I’v e been there and done that as I am positive have some of you in this room.I don’t have this problem! I have it in spades worse. Why? Because the first thing I do after Shabbat, EVERY SINGLE WEEK, is boot my machine and turn on my phone to check if any of my clients are in an emergency mode. Ok, sometimes I have plans and unless it is urgent I get back to people on Sunday. Sunday is a work day in Israel, which is where I live these days after moving from Florida last year. Friday is not. Which is a problem I deal with when I manage US teams and customer sites.

Speaking of which….Out of curiosity, how many here are technical/support people?

How many business or non- technical?

Did you know there are 2 types of support people in the world? No, really there are, developers and admins… just kidding. The ones that say yes to everything or no to everything, again, just kidding.Seriously speaking, there are Friday or Monday emergency people.

As a test, how many of you are Friday emergency people? Monday Emergency People? Probably because I would leave early on Fridays, I became a Monday emergency person because some things from Friday or the weekend just did not get done, correctly. Also the last thing I ever want is to work on my weekends, no matter where I live.

In either case, you can see and plan your world when you understand where the pitfalls are found. If you are going to shut down your equipment, at least know what you are in for and select a good time to do it, not like 9am on a Monday.

Some of you may wonder how I managed to survive in IT and management when I am shutting down weekly and in the case of September like this year, lose about 6 more days in the month due to other holidays, not to mention losing my Fridays as I will explain shortly. Here is the key.

In about 25 years of doing this I have experienced office fires, terrorist attacks on the WTC, earthquakes, power outages due to hurricanes, snow storms, flooding, over 100 degrees(40c) temperatures and in one case snow in a data center as well as the run of the mill emergencies of IT like server crashes, ISP failures, hardware issues.

Aside from 2 incidents which took place over a Shabbat or holiday, there has never been anything that threatening to the business, the systems or the people that I failed to be available for my coworkers and customers. I think that is a pretty good ratio, don’t you?

Usually I have coverage from friends or other coworkers when I am unavailable, but not always. In one of those 2 cases because I was the only support person to reply to a customer and follow up with them, they became a permanent client and fired their other support companies. Why? Because they sat for over a day with zero working in their offices. ZERO! Timing is everything. Thank God. If you learn nothing else from this talk, always remember to be responsive to customers however big or small they are because you may be the only one who replies and wins the day.

It is because of this statistic, 2 emergencies in 20+ years, I can safely shut down for 25 hours a week and spend my time reading, real newspapers and magazines, hang out with friends and family, sleep, watch sunsets or sunrises and not feel guilty about work or hurrying to get here or there. If I can’t walk to it, I can’t get to it on Shabbat and so my world is local and often enjoyable.

Tonight, and tomorrow, I am in Stuttgart because I could not fly home in time for Shabbat so anyone that wants to hang out or buy me drinks, I am at the Marriott. From 4:38pm tonight to 5:44pm tomorrow I am offline so best to tell me before 4:30 if you will come by and when.

How does one balance their religious needs and their professional needs? Not easily. As an IBM Champion I am honored and humbled to have been selected, and nominated, more than once as I feel I do so much less than others given my limitations of time, kids, Shabbat and holidays. After all I am unavailable for at least 75 days a year, which when you realize that is 20% of the time when you would be working, you start to realize the extent of this difference that I overcome.

I am not backed by an employer, I am my own employer.I also home schooled my kids the last 2 years and even now help them to some extent with their Hebrew homework. The downside to religion, in my case, is I have been unable to attend or speak at at least 4 events this year because of scheduling holidays or Shabbat and already know some are out next year. Great events like Engage, ICON UK, AdminCamp, and other European events that present scheduling conflicts may never get to see me. I do not have extra time to write all my blog posts I’d like to accomplish but somehow do get some done as well. I also guest blog at a few sites, so my time is thin.

What about you? What are you doing? Can you even go a lunch hour without looking at your phone? Can you even go this 15 minutes without it? Some of you think this is crazy, but I have spent years training my employees and managers around my limitations.

Did I lose jobs because of it? Yes, awesome ones too! Like working for Capitol Records, you know, The Beatles record company?…twice! It sucks, but then I have worked with so many major companies across so many verticals that I am lucky to have done what I have over the years. Not to worry some jobs were fun too, I worked on Broadway for a theatre for 2 years as well.

Do you remember what it was like before your phone was your world? I do, it was around 1995 when I got my first cell phone. I was an oddity, few had them and they were not much better than walkie talkies, but they got the job done. I lived through the Palm phase, Crackberry craze (I supported them but only carried one for a few months), then smart phones and it was only once apps and data became ubiquitous that we started having problems. Well I should say until Facebook for Blackberry came out and you all got on it! By the way, I wonder if adults would ever get to Facebook if that had not happened. But I digress.

I imagine when Television started it was the same arguments. And yet here we are and while the screen shrunk it is still a TV. An infinitely smarter, funnier, helpful TV, but still a TV.Social connections means we should be social, not just digitally, but in person as well. We don’t need to be a slave to our devices and we don’t need to feel like we are missing something. We need to spend more time with our family, our kids, our parents, our friends and our coworkers, rather than our phones, email and IMs.

If I can do it, you can do it. And I don’t do it as well I used to either, but then more of you are pinging me now than ever before.

Technology is fun and we can learn a lot from it but there are other things more important than your phone or your company email and status updates.

When phones can turn water into Scotch, beer or wine then we will have a reason to keep them on all the time. Until then, just shut it down and take a break. Like Kit Kat ads say in the UK, Have a Break, Have a Kit Kat.

Peek a Boo with O365 and Bits

Collaboration means different things to different people. Business collaboration is about sharing of
information, ideas, details, actions, and presuming everyone does the same in return so you truly reach that 1+1=3 world.

I am spending sometime on a side project with a company that is leveraging O365. On the outside looking in, it seems to be just what one wants for work. Online shared space for files, email, IM, ESN(Enterprise Social Network), team/group space, Office tools, and much more all wrapped up in one price and available only in the Cloud.

The first thing I experienced, and keep in mind I am accustomed to being the admin usually, was my name was spelled incorrectly. In general, not the end of the world, however, in some cases, my logins were correct, but it appears not in AD. When I asked IT to correct it, they told me it would take most of a day to do this because they would now have to go change all the other systems that I have logins for and fix them as well. SSO is not available in O365? And to rename an ID takes hours? As an admin, I am bemused at the discussions.

Normal users probably just shrug it off as IT time and plans.

My login aside, the quirks of O365, as some of my friends call them, are more a skewed view based on other products and our own expectations.

It seems one can not change the colors on screen for Outlook (2010 edition they use here). The choice is limited to 3 colors, none of which are even remotely exciting, Blue, Silver, Black. Cowboys and Raiders colors? What about us Dolphin fans that want orange or green? Or just set to Windows Desktop theme colors? Evidently 2013 is no better about this.

I will post this next bit, as it is important, but want to point out it is not unique to Microsoft. The multiple profiles, pictures, details issue is a major PITA to employees. Why can't the entry in AD cover the basics of the person (name, photo, phone, location, email, etc..) and have that, via LDAP, or AD itself, pushed out to any other system connected to it for user accounts? Instead there is Outlook, SharePoint, Yammer, and whatever the O365 bit itself is called all not sharing ANY details, in the case here, not even my login and password for the domain. Yes, WTF indeed.

Off I went to create profiles, about me docs, upload photos, enter office details because this is posted on the Yammer home page:

When signing up to Yammer can you please add a recognisable photo of yourself, so people can easily identify you in the office. Also add your phone number(s) and where you are located, including which floor you are on.

As it turns out SharePoint is not connected to O365 here, so I understand that...as an IT person. As an employee it would make me wonder why, if I cared enough, which maybe no one does anymore. Thus why adoption of an ESN is not an easy task inside companies and why I try to help it best I can.

Before some friends jump on this, as some have, be careful, IBM in this case does not handle it any better. Sametime vs. Connections profiles/photos vs. Domino data/profile/photos. Same problem, no solution. I understand why, in both companies products this exists. Simply put, if they have no way to know what "solution" you are installing, they have no way to provide the details efficiently. My argument has always been it should reside in the Directory (AD, Domino, whatever) and let everything else pull it from there. Whatever, live with it, do not slam either for this shortcoming.

The login and password thing is more bewildering to me. My Windows Domain login and password do not match my Outlook or Yammer ones but does SharePoint. A hybrid model that works as designed I guess but SSO or SPNEGO or even Oauth, anything/something would be a better solution.

On the plus side, the Yammer mobile client looks good and works well albeit in a multi step process just to message someone. I wait for the "Skype will rule it all" day coming soon, but for now, tick the box, they did mobile. You need to flip back and forth to the option menu to read group messages or the "stream" and to message someone takes 4 steps but it is a simple UI and easy to respond to posts in the stream or groups.

Yammer desktop, in short, does not exist. This is a frustrating thing for someone like myself so used to just sending IMs easily for the last 17+ years from a list in my tray. While one gets notified when there is a message, if you want to send someone a message you have to login (or keep a browser window open) just to then get to your list and try to message the person. I say try because I have not found a way for the web client to sort people by online status or even by alphabetical order. The Skype transition/integration can not come fast enough in my opinion.

Yammer Desktop Notifier is mostly a waste of time since it does NOTHING. To be fair, it has 3 options, (Inbox, Notifications, My feed) that when clicked take you to a browser and the messages. And if something is waiting for you, it has color codes to let you know in the little icon in your tray. But lookup people? Send an IM? No and No. In a corporate desktop world, this is frustrating. In a mobile, non desktop world, this is fine presumably, I have not loaded it yet on my iPad so I have no direct knowledge at this time.

The discussion around dropping SharePoint in favor of Jira is a conversation which I have not gotten into previously but would seem to be a major question/issue for companies that are using SharePoint or any ESN as a project management workflow tool. I may write more on this in a future blog after some further research.

Overall I can't say anything has blown me away that I must have it, aside from Skype. Perhaps Microsoft and other companies providing Enterprise solutions now find themselves in an unusual situation, big ugly/heavy clients that we use 10% of the benefits have passed their sale dates. When you really have better apps on your phone than your office, we are no longer on the "when will we get updates" discussion, but on the "why can't we use this app" or just doing it anyway. This is not a new opinion, we have been discussing it for years, but as I saw first hand, when IT people and executives are no longer willing to adjust to employees needs, then we in IT have failed and it matters little which vendor you chose.

Breaking Out of The Bubble

What an amazing day I had yesterday! So full of life and learning, every day of work should be this great!
How did it get to be this way? What did I do? Who did I meet? Where was I?

My day started out like any other day, get up, wake up the kids, walk the dog, drop the kids off at school and then head East for about 15 minutes to the nearby city of Modiin. Modiin is about 10 km east of Ben Gurion Airport, 35 km southeast of Tel Aviv and about 30 km west of Jerusalem and 20km from Rehovot where I live.

In Modiin some people I know set up a shared work space called MESH, the Modiin Entrepreneurs Startup Hub. There are hubs like this across the country. If you have never been to one, they are a reasonably inexpensive way to get work done outside your house. You get the basics included like network and wifi, desks, chairs, open spaces and offices, meeting rooms, printers and a fax (don't ask, but many things here need it)and drinks. There is even an onsite chef who makes lunches for those who want to pay for it.

I headed out to MESH for 4 reasons. First, having never been to it I wanted to see what it was like as each of these work spaces are very different form each other. Second, to see and meet my friend Daniel about an idea I had for camp for the kids. Third to catch up and listen to my friend Alan Weinkrantz a fellow technology evangelist who works with RackSpace, that I met early on when we moved here. Alan was having a breakfast discussion on PR for startups, his slides are here, I love slide #6, Above The Code: 10 Principles of Startup Communications. Lastly I wanted to see, and hear, what other people, there are about 30 companies there, are doing and thinking about as ideas work better when you collaborate with others and gain insights form them.

If you read Alan's slides, (you did right?) you would see that PR is a process which can be enhanced by having content accessible for your business. The focus was on blogging which many startups do not get around to doing for many reasons (an upcoming blog post). I volunteered, to those gathered, that this blog is just about to reach 1,000 posts and discussed how it has helped me, and others, in business.Someone asked how often they should be updating their website. I pointed out that if your blog is posted to your homepage, and your website, you are updating the site automatically. SEO problem partially solved. Thanks Alan for reminding me why I blog and to get back on track.

After the discussion, Alan gave out the gapingvoid  t-Shirts which everyone wants to have, and we posed for his scrapbook. 

Me and some of the MESH Startups

Yes, I got the t-shirt but also had some great discussions. While comparing marketing and developers with user specs and needs I suggested CRM apps suck because who wants to fill in dozens of fields when it should be a 2 or 3 field entry and finished. That discussion led to my tweeting another friend, Jon Ferrara of GoldMine fame and now CEO of Nimble. Jon and I occasionally get into deeper CRM discussions and while I really like Nimble, I do not use/need a CRM right now. I really recommend everyone look at what he is building at Nimble. Anyway, Jon agreed that the app should scour the Internet for what you need and not make you do all the work and reminded me that Goldmine was the first to populate fields for you when you entered your zip code.

Note to startups, why could we do this 25 years ago and you can't do it now? A small thing to a user maybe a big thing to a developer but it tells me the UX may not be so great. Hey it's my M&Ms tell.

Looking around the room I could see some business opportunities with everyone that are outside their comfort zones and more in mine and so a side business may get started.

My discussion with my friend Daniel and some others at MESH about camp was interesting and while it may not be feasible for this summer, I think we will do it for next year. More on this at a later time.

MESH is a great place, happy to see it was not as claustrophobic as some of the work spaces in Tel Aviv I have visited. If I had some clients there or in the nearby area, I can see working out of their spaces more regularly. The interaction everyone has makes the 30 companies feel like one big company with many divisions. While many are developers, there are sales and marketing people too and a mix of global, local, profit and non-profit companies. This is probably the one thing I miss working remotely, the open discussions that just happen and people join in. Skype chats and Twitter threads are good, but I don't always get the same excitement feelings.

After MESH I went by to see an old friend of mine from college that I found out moved here 8 years ago and since she is not a tech person basically was out of site for a long time. It was a Facebook post that we were both "Look! It's you!". Since moving here this happens quite a bit, so many people from my ancient history are here and I will get to see you all one of these days.

Went home, picked up the kids from school, they are done at 1:45 and started to catch up on emails and messages. I saw two different emails returned with good news for me. One was to meet with a company that might need my advice and the other a conference owner which I hope to help out with as an IBM Champion effort.

While I had a bunch of work to do in the afternoon and watch over a server migration at night, we had time to get out and party with our friends over bbq and drinks, which is really how every day should end.

How was your day?

SOCCNX 8 Invades Boston And I will be Speaking on Single Malt Vs. Blended

I expect a few vendors to order Magic 8-Balls (US people know what is, for everyone else see this page)

For those who do not know, Social Connections (SOCCNX) has been running across Europe for the last few years and providing a different type of event. Not as much of a user group as an affinity group for people that want to be social and collaborative. The dates are April 16-17, 2015 in Boston. Register to attend if you have not already.

Ideally it represents IBM Connections and some derivative topics but also hits on user adoption, employee engagement and in my case, Single Malt vs. Blended.

Yes, I, along with a few other IBM Champions, IBMers and friends, will be presenting on a slightly different topic from last time, the official title is:

 "Single Malt vs. Blended - The Email vs. Status Update Game"

Based on the description someone submitted, I will be discussing the following:

In a perfect world, we would not be using email. Everyone would just leave status updates around like cigarette butts. Sorry, bad image? Now imagine that the 182.9 BILLION emails sent a day are in your social media status update “drawer”. Ick is right. So if Email is so bad for us, why do we use it? Shouldn’t we be doing something better with our lives? Listen not to just facts and numbers, but ways in which you can limit the abuse of email and free up more time in your day to get work done. Do not try this game at a bar, it will be very expensive.

LOCATION: Auditorium 1DATE: April 16, 2015TIME: 2:05 pm - 2:35 pm
Whether or not you think email, or status updates should win, the point was that we have a problem and we need to manage this now before it is too late.
This session has not yet been sponsored by a specific Scotch or Whisky, so if you work at a spirits company, or know someone that does, and wish to help brand this session, please let me know.

The ConnectED 2015 Edition is Closed For Renovations Until Further Notice

This is the first Lotusphere (that is what a very yellow clad IBMer proclaimed) in years I did not do any blogging. Not a daily, no recaps, no massive posting. Just one posting, my SpeedGeeking session slide deck.

Why the silence? I chose to follow IBMs lead.

No fanfare, no big PR team push, no daily main tent sessions, no branding on stage. IBM hit the target, they wanted it to feel like a LUG and it did. Friends gathered, speakers presented, SpeedGeeking rocked, as usual, and somewhere in between it all, I, for one, found myself happy throughout the few days.

Happy. Been a few years since I was this happy. 

Not sales happy, but maybe it was the premise that this may be was the final swan song for a brand previously known as Lotus. We wanted to see friends, IBMers and our Kimono’s and Dolphin bar waitresses one last time. Carpe Diem did not exactly happen but there were many nights in a mostly quiet Dolphin Rotunda just talking about life and things that were beyond the Yellow universe. No late night meetings at 2am with IBM execs, well, the usual ones, and we even got kicked out of Kimono’s early , for us, on the last night. Yes it was different.

Kind of like the ending of St. Elmo’s Fire.

Did IBM hit the technical mark for sessions? Debatable, but I am not the target audience and neither are most of the bloggers and Champions. 

The newbies and first years said  ”it was mind blowing”, “amazing”, “too much to take in at once”. Really, they loved it. And, believe it or not, there were quite a few newbies. Some even thanked me for my blog post from before the event. I got to meet some more readers and Twitter followers too.

Sadly, they also realized what they had been missing out on all these years and most likely will not get to be a part of in the future. LUG events are great and will provide that needed adrenalin that keeps developers and administrators crushing their work and deadlines. But they can’t replace having 80 or so IBM Champions, dozens of bloggers and people that have shaped this universe, in one way or another all in one place.

I would ask IBM to reconsider dropping Lotusphere, but maybe we overstayed our welcome. It was a great run, but the new kids in town deserve to have their fun too. Maybe Watson should get its own conference, or maybe IBM Connections should since both of these are the next generation of front facing solutions that people can touch see and feel in some way that they will never do for Rational, Tivoli or Websphere.

The meetings I had with IBMers were interesting and led to some more discussions that will pan out further this year. I did not get to many sessions, but did get to some friends sessions to wish them well and rock their sessions. I could not be there for all of them, but I know from my past sessions, it provides that extra push when your friends are with you. 

Hope you all aced your sessions! Based on the Twitter feeds it sounded that way.

Sure things were odd this year compared to previous years, change is hard for some of us dinosaurs. We can’t go back. Neither can IBM. It must go forward and try to bring everyone along with them.

Did a case study, did a video, roamed around the show case floor, possibly walked more than previous years. I got to meet some people, way too many to list, that only existed as Ids on my computer with avatars that did not always show their faces. Evidently I am now part of the Italian team, thanks Matteo and Andrea but we missed Giuseppe and I am always happy to come to Italy if you need me.

Thanked other Champions that really helped me in times of need and found some friends that while outside of the usual suspects, fit right in with everyone. It is great when your worlds collide and nothing explodes beyond your fresh beer being opened.

Seeing and hearing from some of you that were unofficially hanging out with us because you also just wanted one last hurrah made it all the more special. Since I am now overseas, for me especially, I am less likely to come over as often for different events.

This was not the end, it is just a new beginning.

One which may not include many of us, but we will always have these moments and we are all just a Skype chat away from each other. 

May you all live long and prosper, seems an appropriate way to end this post.

SpeedGeeking 2015 "How to Manage Exchange Admins (and their servers) with Domino"

Speedgeeking was awesome, as usual. We hope you enjoyed it, learned something, and of course drank, ate and had fun.

For those that ask, here are my slides up in SlideShare, these are the clean editions, if you were there, you will understand.

Going to IBM ConnectED...ME TOO!

So you, thought you, might like to, go to the show. The annual Lotus, IBM show known as Lotusphere IBM Connect now IBM ConnectED. Well, you got lucky today. I am going to give you some insights to this year’s edition.

Whether you have a room at the top of the world of the Swan or Dolphin or just out on 192 or by the Downtown Disney area, you are getting ready for what will be a condensed, packed schedule of mostly hard core development and administration related topics across the IBM spectrum.

So far, the weather looks good, and no one will need to seek shelter from the storm, as we did in past years. Just the same, please if you are coming from a warm dry place, remember to take the weather with you, so we can all enjoy the time in Orlando.

There are unofficial activities starting Saturday, or so I heard, but since I will not be there till Sunday. I will trust you have read other blogs, websites and emails to know abut them.

If you are new to the show, just go to the Dolphin bar, ask where it is if you need to, people will gladly point it out to you. Once you find it, realize all your friends are there, you just haven’t learnt all their names yet. It’s just like going to the Cheers bar, you want to go where everyone knows your name.

The stars may be in your eyes, SMEs, IBM Champions, IBMers, Business Partners from all over the worldwide pop in for this event and odds are you will recognize some names or faces from Twitter, Facebook or however you get your ya yas out in the Lotus/IBM world.

Almost everything, except the Dolphin bar, will take place just down the road from the Dolphin at the Swan Hotel. Less walking, more talking than past years. From the beginning you will start at the Registration desk where you will receive your golden ticket known as “The Badge”. You do not want to lose it because the last thing you ever want to hear is “where is my badge!”. There are no do-overs, you would have to pony up for another ticket.

Classes start the afternoon on Sunday, so if you never went to Sunday school, now is the best time of your life to start. The schedules have been posted, but always check the room you are going to in case of any last minute changes. In the heat of the moment room changes occur, it is not a communication breakdown, you just can’t be expected to read everything that is posted. BUT, maybe the class is more what you want anyway. It’s okay to be in a state of confusion at times, in fact, some people say it is the only way to walk. So walk this way, if you can, and experience some accidental serendipity.

Sunday night is the welcome party which is usually on the beach between the Swan and Dolphin hotels. If it is not there this year, just follow the crowd, don’t go down the rabbit hole or a road less traveled, you want to be part of the herd in this case. Awaiting you will be food, drinks, people and discussions. This is a social event, even all of us introverted exhibitionists need to get out and shine at times. There is no shortage of opportunities to talk to people. One caveat, try not to say “I’ll talk to you later” because sometimes you may not see that person again. It happens when you have 1-2,000 people or more hanging about.

The fanfare starts Monday morning with the OGS. The Opening General Session sets the tone for the whole show. Try not to get trampled under foot by everyone looking to get a good seat. There are large TV displays and great sound systems in place so don’t worry, be happy. Usually everything kicks off in a blaze of glory and the pace for the rest of the week is like a New York minute. Take your time, do it right, you do not have to go to 6 sessions all in a row, no matter how enticing they seem. Breaks are provided and you should stock up on drinks and munchies. Also remember to visit the vendor area as the partners are here to help you and advance your careers at work by making you look like a shooting star, because that is what you are, otherwise you wouldn't be at the show.

Lunch time is for meeting people as well. IBM and Disney try to give the people what they want by making it easy to just sit anywhere and provide the infamous Lotusphere Cookie. Find a table, sit down and find out where people are from and how you can make the show a better place for them. It is not easy being green but you have the advantage of not knowing anyone. Yes, I AM also going to be there and still manage to meet new people even though I have been going to the show for many years.

Developer or admin, business line or executive, there is something for everyone. It’s amazing, it’s a long road, it’s the start of a new year and a continuous journey. Everyone have fun, but not too much fun, even if there is good rockin’ at midnight, which is early by the way. I’ll be seeing you in a few days and until then always look on the bright side of life.

PS - I can be found, aside from my Twitter and Swarm/Foursquare tweets, on Monday night at 6pm in the TechOasis doing SpeedGeeking. For those that don't know, SpeedGeeking is 12 of us (admins, developers) doing 5 minute "demos or talks" of something cool, unusual or just outright brilliant as you move around the circle every 5 minutes. Best hour of knowledge you will get at the show!

My topic is How to Manage your Exchange Admins Using Domino see you there!

A Few New 2015 IBM Champions I want To Thank

Oh the stories we could tell...

Many of us know each other, if not in person, then online and usually we found each other through blogs and sessions we gave at various events. Or at a User Group event or Lotusphere, IBM Connect, now IBM ConnectED. But sometimes we never meet which is a shame and some people, myself included, never know just how much we helped or are helped by others until they come up and tell us.

I was named a 2015 IBM Champion for ICS for the 3rd year in a row. I don't know what I did to deserve it, but I do know a few new people and why they deserve it from my view. I nominated some, and they were accepted, which is always nice to hear. First and only IBM Champion for ICS based in Israel, I now have some serious evangelizing to do to get ICS a bigger push here.

There are a few people I want to mention that I am really happy to see today including:

Daniel Nashed probably has done the most for me from his blogs and especially his AIX perspective over the years with his scripts. I can't thank him enough and very happy to hear he is an IBM Champion. Thank You!

Richard Moy who has tirelessly made MWLUG the great user event that is each year. Very happy to see him, and many other LUG founders/leaders named IBM Champions. My only regret is I did not make it this year, we were moving country at the time. If you are in the Midwest you should go to the next event held in Atlanta in August 2015, it is in a different city every year. Richard also works with me on some client applications and has never let me down.

Kim Greene whom I have worked with in the past, I greatly respect not just for her iSeries knowledge but her excellent sessions on troubleshooting and maintaining Domino servers. If you have an iSeries or Power and do not have her working on your servers, shame on you.

Mark Myers who puts all he has into his work and his presentations to provide some absolute genius development code. And reminds me why I should not code. Ever. A great man that probably has no idea how much we all love him and appreciate him. Let him know next time you see him.

Thank you to the review board and to our chief cat herders Oliver and Amanda who somehow keep sane while dealing with all of the things we manage to raise awareness about over the year.

Congratulations to all 96 of us who made it this year. You can read the full list and official announcement here. Oliver published this post about the process IBM made to find the new IBM Champions after my post went out.

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

My Sametime JumpStart Session at Connect 2014

I am happy to announce we will be doing a JumpStart session about how to enable the IBM Sametime Voice in Sametime 9. 

 

For those that are unaware, SUTLite is now known as IBM Sametime Voice and is no longer an added license expense. You can load this up on your own and off you go! It is FREE!

But wait, you say you do not know any telephony? You are not the PBX person? You have no idea what a PBX is or does? 

 

Well, come on down to Orlando this winter, the week of Jan 26-Feb 1 and get hands on walk through session on how to start leveraging the best part of IBM Sametime 9.

I will be presenting with Jeremy Sanders, our ThinkRite CTO, who will be coming from the UK and we look forward to seeing you at IBM Connect 2014.

Official information for our session:

1633 : Calling Home: Enabling the IBM Sametime Voice (Phone) in ST9

Program Stream 2: For IT Practitioners

Track: 9: JumpStarts and Master Classes

ABSTRACT:

IBM Sametime has so much to offer, but most customers still are using it only for instant messaging. Do you want to help your company enable everyone to work remotely and provide them with phones and video conferencing options from your IBM Sametime client? If the answer is YES! Come learn directly from the team that manages IBM Sametime Unified Telephony worldwide for over 150,000 people. Step by step, we'll walk through how to set your employees free. No extra infrastructure costs are involved as the IBM Sametime Softphone (SUTLite) is already part of your license and adds additional productivity to existing IBM Sametime Infrastructure and software suite.

Took Vacation, Came back an IBM Champion

IBM has announced the new Champions for ICS and I am honored to be named, for the second time in a row, as an IBM Champion for 2014.

While on vacation with a cell phone that only makes and receive calls and no laptop, just an iPad. I was really only logging on in the morning and evening and Israel is 7 hours ahead of Eastern time. When i got back Thursday night my streams were filled with the news.

Very happy to hear my old friend from Lotus days, Oliver Heinz, will be handling us this year.

What is so amazing about this time?

For one, some really incredible people like my friend Ray Bilyk is now an IBM Champion and Stuart McIntyre has returned after his one year sabbatical.

My fellow IBM Redbook Thought Leaders are now IBM Champions, Wannes Rams and Sarah Carter. in addition to Salvador Gallardo and Femke Goedhart that return as IBM Champions as well.

So many great people and many of the IBM Champions are not only coming to Connect 2014, but presenting at it as well. Me too, more in a later post.

Congratulations to all 87 of us and let's have some fun out there!