If You're going to San Francisco...

"You're gonna meet some gentle people there" 

- So sang the late Scott Mckenzie in May 1967 as an advertisement for the then upcoming Monterrey International Pop Music Festival.

One of them will be me, as I have been asked to speak about one of my clients about their journey to the IBM Connections Cloud.

The abstract officially says(link):

Getting to the cloud is half the battle; while getting your users to follow you (let alone understand what is where or how) is another story entirely. From CAPS-happy users to 75% traveling executives, and clients that are so well known we have perpetual attempts to defeat our security, these are some highlights of our experiences moving from on-premises to Connections Cloud.

Moscone West, Level 2 - Room 2011

Wed, 22-Feb 01:00 PM - 01:45 PM

(time, date and location may change before the event)

This is a new location, a new venue, a new conference with the same friendly and smart people you know from past years plus more people from across the tech scene which we have yet to know and become friends and family with over time.

Many of my fellow IBM Champions will be there, presenting and attending as will IBM Product Managers and if you look hard enough, the IBM Developers. 

The future which includes an expanding universe of Watson Workspace, Verse, Verse on Premises, IBM Connections, plus some surprises I am sure from the opening keynote to keep everyone excited during the show.

See you all in San Francisco!
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/collaboration/events/connect/

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.

Sales Presentations That Suck

Did you ever have to sit through a presentation? By default, the definition probably means 45-90 minutes and just feel bad for the speaker?

Ever leave early? Probably not if you were in an office setting. But IT people have had a macro button for years to cause their pager, phone, or whatever to go off, so they have an excuse to leave.

Not so easy to do in a sales presentation.

In the past, I rarely used slides for presentations unless asked/forced to do so. Why? Because on any given day, I may be off, or the executive in front of me may be rushed for time, and I never wanted to be one of those salespeople that asked for more time because they had more slides.

When I was presenting to some military brass on a road map that our sales team asked me to handle, after 1 slide, ONE SLIDE, it was clear the leader was not going to go for it.

So I stopped. In mid-sentence to turn around and ask, what is important to you? He told me, and we had an hour and a half of serious discussion. No telling, just sharing of information.

Don't suck. Pay attention to your listeners and attendees. Doing a webinar? Ensure the chat room is open and watched by someone else who can let you know when people are dropping off or showing their boredom. You know it when you see it if the conversation has little to do with your product or solution.

We all go to conferences, and some have better speakers than others. But if you pay for an event, you deserve to voice your opinion. What about when you are not really paying for the conference? Does your free pass get you to be bribed to talk nicely? Do you drop out of the conference because it turns you off?

Large conferences still have many other sessions, and no doubt you can find the better sessions.

The meeting in your office, much harder. Do you throw out the sales rep? What if it is your own employee? Hopefully, you will be helping them to understand a better way.

Reverting to your social media "out" is the easy way out.

Stand up and make your case because you will help others get better because otherwise, you are just as responsible for the failure by NOT saying anything.

2nd Session Speaking at SugarCon 2012

 

An even bigger surprise to me yesterday when I was researching something for SugarCon and found out I was doing a 2nd session!
The first time, I found out via blog post, this time via Google search.
I had wondered about the session because it is one which I am quite sure no one else was doing, namely:

Full Power Collaboration with IBM SmartCloud Engage and SugarCRM

The session was meant to be about the points of integration between SugarCRM and LotusLive IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. However, it was also about how to integrate older  Domino CRM applications into SugarCRM. Since SugarCRM bought the iEnterprise CRM solution it is not such a rip and replace.


ideally we want to help every company with a Domino infrastructure looking at SugarCRM to recognize that it is not an all or nothing effort. There are choices and using 2-3 client case studies we will be outlining the options and demo them as examples, where posible.


So if you will be in San Francisco April 23-26 let me know and if you have SugarCRM questions or Domino CRM questions ask away.

I will be Speaking at SugarCon 2012

Decided to go back to where it all started for me. Databases and CRM.

Eons ago I wrote some of these in Dbase 3+ and through the decades went through the ACT, Goldmine and Lotus Notes home grown written CRM apps. Speaking of which John Ferrara of Goldmine has a new CRM offering, check out www.nimble.com if you like Tweetdeck and are in Marketing or Sales it has some great promise.

Since looking into CRM's again I realized something has not changed. It's still a "look at me and use me" world but it's full of "let someone else do it people". So in the spirit of Social, Collaboration and CRM, and a bit of competitiveness, I submitted an abstract:

  

Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn’t Use SugarCRM

CRM is a huge investment by your organization. Yet why do many Executives not take an active role in it's usage? Don't they want to be social? The answer is not so simple and sometimes even the opposite of what you may expect to hear.
We will discuss some reasons for this problem and how to work around them.
We will encourage others to take the first step to a better dialogue with your clients. SugarCRM is that first step in so many ways but so few make good use of it.
Strategies used by other vendors will be touched upon because there are personality types you need to understand.
How to encourage management to embrace the Social Business aspects is key to helping your business go up against your competition...shouldn't your executives be in on this?

I know a bit self serving of a title, but the reality is some of the same issues we face on the Lotus side appear on the CRM side as well. The SugarCon blog posted this about my session:

This one’s not just about Sugar, but really about all CRM applications; one major reason for failure in all CRM implementations is the lack of executive buy-in. Keith Brooks of SAS Group plans to talk about the reasons behind this phenomena and he’ll suggest ways to negotiate different executive agendas. What does he want people to learn from this session? “How to be a social business no matter what your executives think, say or do,” he says.

So there you have it, a little social, a little CRM, a little psychology and we will learn some things along the way too.

On behalf of my partners at the SAS Group  I look forward to representing us in San Francisco at SugarCon 2012. April 23-26 at The Palace Hotel.

Maybe this time I will get to hear and meet Guy Kawasaki, sadly I missed him at Lotusphere last month.

What if Your Presentation Sucks

"That was all they let me do", "they edited out all the good parts", "hard to make developing code fun", "It's 25 steps and we need to get through it all". So what? Don't you still have your brain and mouth? Slides are just for archival material.

A Twitter conversation and a blog post later and see what happens?

Luis Suarez of IBM, the master of living without email, posted this yesterday. Titled, Improving Your Presentation Skills – Part Deux.

Luis points out some excellent ideas and references for speakers and presenters. Go read and listen/watch it all RIGHT NOW, I will wait patiently.

Welcome back!

So now you have some excellent ideas for presentations....except many of us are not freewheeling presentations on discussion topics. Many times we are performing instructional or deep technical sessions.

Yes, humor helps as does crazy animation of your body and gesticulating like crazy, but really you need more than this to truly have an enjoyable experience at a learning session.

Years ago when I was inside IBM we built demonstrations around a pub, bar or restaurant because it was a universal concept. Did not need to worry about generational issues, politics, translations, it just worked. Need a workflow to order more alcohol, track the number of cups used, validate the login at the cash register and you get the idea.

People do enjoy the story and the journey is what they will remember about your session, so much more than a piece of technical wizardry or wonder you showed them. Well maybe just me, my memory is horrible, else I'd be a developer by now.

So for my sessions at The View I have planned 2 out of the 3 sessions "themes" that should help keep a story line together. That and my editors, thanks Celia! I need to conjure up a 3rd but haven't finished it yet so the jury is still out on the best way to do it.

As an example, because someone will naturally ask, one of my sessions is about DDM and monitoring your environment. Take a car and all it's warning lights, aimed at preventative maintenance, now to think about which car to use. I can't adjust the whole look and feel of the slides, they frown on that, but the overall discussion and graphics will be tweaked to feel that way. Plus what I show on stage is not what gets distributed.

Usually I try to rig my demo server with some fun names and options inside it about the city we are in. Kind of like going to a concert and the singer says "Good Evening Miami or in this case Las Vegas".

Have fun and tell a story, even in the not so exciting "how to" sessions.

One Special Session at Lotusphere 2011

No, this isn't about the students, but god knows they should have been at the session I am about to discuss. In fact, part of this session should be the opening act at the OGS for LS12.

Late on Wednesday there was a session done by someone who will probably live in Lotusphere lore.

The Title of the session was BP106 Titled "Where is the Love? How to get Your Users to fall in Love with IBM Lotus Notes".

By Mat Newman, which is Australian for Master Presenter.

A very packed room filled with everyone from IBMers to customers to bloggers and no doubt Microsoft people, if they were still there.

Mat proceeded to remind us all that we could do our jobs better to help people but aside from his guidelines which were simple enough to follow, he put on a 10-15 minute overview of what a Lotus Notes client can do....without discussing email at all.

Most people have a hard time expressing what can be done with Notes which is why, I and others usually like to explain and show the different ways to work and enhance your daily routines.


Yes his energy was everywhere, fueled by his yellow suit and the energy in the room he hit on:
sidebar apps
enabling widgets
live text connecting with Google maps
basic keyboard strokes like ctrl-home and ctrl-end
copy selected as table
what a journal/notebook is for
search ideas, UI nuances not everyone plays with

And so much more. While I know some one that videotaped it, hopefully the demo part will be posted someplace, I will update this post with it, if someone points me to it.

If you were not there all I can say is hopefully Mat will do it again next year.

Thanks Mat, safe travels.