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I am absolutely delighted to announce that I'll be back at the awesome Netherlands Lotus User Group (NLLUG) in a week's time (September 9-10, 2010).
As one of the larger user groups around, NLLUG is a brilliant example of what can be achieved by true collaboration amongst a group of committed individuals:
2 Days - 4 Tracks - 55 Sessions
3 Sub-themes - Social, Cloud and XPages
Amazing location - the Amsterdam ArenA (home of Ajax)
Product Showcase - 24 booths
300+ registered attendees
In addition, NLLUG is a superb demonstration of what can happen when Lotus business partners come together to work for the good of the community and the brand - NLLUG 2009 was the start of the Lotus Loves People campaign, and this is back for 2010 - I can't wait to see what they've achieved in the year since I saw the launch.
So what am I doing at NLLUG 2010?
Presenting on Lotus Connections 3.0 - a technical view on what's new:
Stuart McIntyre is one of the very few people who could get his hands on version 3.0 of IBM Lotus Connections. While the product is still in beta, Stuart is allowed to give you a sneak preview and tell you a couple of things that otherwise cannot yet be revealed.This is scheduled for 16:15-17:00 on Thursday. I am delighted that alongside my session, Suzanne Livingstone (Connections product manager) will be delivering an overview of the Connections 3.0 product itself in her session The future of collaboration: Lotus Connections 3.0 at 15:00 on Friday. There are also a number of other Connections related sessions including real-life use cases and a customer reference from BASF.
He will do his presentation from a more technical view: what has changed since 2.5, what difference to scaling, how will organisations upgrade, what customisation is available and more. This session is quite technical and interesting only for those who have actually seen and 'touched' Lotus Connections before.
On top of all that, there is a keynote from Chris Reckling (of Project Vulcan fame), and speakers including Maureen Leland, Gab Davis, Mary Beth Raven, Paul Mooney, Bill Buchan, Chris Miller and Mikkel Heisterberg amongst many other well-known names from conferences such as Lotusphere.
So, all in all, NLLUG promises to be an amazing couple of days. If you are attending, please please come up and say hello - I would love to meet you ;-)
P.S. Darren and I will also be recording an episode of This Week in Lotus from the conference on Friday, so watch out - I'll be on the lookout for panelists and will be recording interviews around the conference to include in the show!
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 1 September 2010 14:35:17 | Tags: nllug connections lotus presenting
The latest in the 'Man Who' series - 'The Wisdom of Swarms':
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 26 August 2010 14:36:19 | Tags: connections youtube
An interesting conversation between Forbes.com's Dan Woods and IBM's VP of Social Software Jeff Schick covering the use of Connections Activities for knowledge capture and discovery:
Personally, I'm not sure about the term 'collaborative dial tone', but a useful discussion nonetheless.Dan Woods: Why is it important to look beyond the collaborative dial tone and explore the opportunity for knowledge capture and process discovery?
Jeff Schick: There are people who know how to do things and people who need to know how to do things. Whether the activity is on-boarding an employee, submitting a patent, or creating a proposal to win business, we all benefit when we capture what we learned and expose as much as possible in repeatable patterns. Both the creators and users of knowledge are interested in such a process if it is easy enough to accomplish.The opportunities for efficiency and productivity are tremendous.
What are the preconditions for knowledge capture and process discovery in activity templates?
The starting point for most work is a search for people, IP, or some sort of knowledge. You don't have to start right away with the idea of creating repeatable business processes. The first goal is to use the collaborative dial tone to create a body of work. This means having a repository so staff can find people that may help them, identify intellectual property that may be applied to a problem, and search other bodies of knowledge collected in all sorts of ways.
The next step is prescribing work to others with knowledge attached. To do a certain task you may need to refer to a certain set of people, IP, and other knowledge. This is where the idea of the activity template is crucial. The template collects not only information but the steps involved in getting the work done and a description of what happens in those steps. If it is easy to capture information about the task and the steps, certain activity templates will grow into fully formed descriptions of processes, so staff do not have to re-invent the wheel and can do work more efficiently with higher quality.
More >
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 24 August 2010 10:15:12 | Tags: connections lotus collaboration forbes
The techies on the Lotus Greenhouse team have been busy this weekend - Lotus Connections 3.0 Beta is now available on the Greenhouse...
Whilst there are still some issues to be ironed out, it looks as though the first deployment of the Connections 3.0 beta onto the Greenhouse has been a success. Check it out!
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 9 August 2010 07:46:30 | Tags: connections 3.0 beta greenhouse
Just in case you're not on the mailing list for this kind of Lotus Connections information from IBM:
You are invited to an IBM Technical Exchange Webcast call about Lotus Connections deployment best practices. There is no charge for participating. The topic and dial information for this call is:
Title: Lotus Connections V2.5 Deployment Best Practices
Date: June 23rd, 2010
Time: 10 am - 11 am eastern US time (2:00 pm GMT)
Webcast access: https://www.lotuslive.com/en/join?schedid=4419191
Audio by phone:
Toll free US: 866-803-2143
Toll call US: 210-795-1098
International Numbers: Click here: http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21433894
Confirmation Code: CONNECTIONS
Please dial in 5-10 minutes early to allow time for registration of all participants before the presentation starts.
Open Mic calls are Question & Answer sessions with a panel of subject matter experts covering your questions without going thru a slide presentation.
Webcasts are slide presentations by a single presenter followed by Questions & Answers related to the material covered, as time permits.
You can submit your question in advance via our forum, "developerWorks Lotus Connections forum". Questions should be of general interest. Troubleshooting of specific problems should still be handled by Technical Support, not by Webcast calls. We will collect questions, which have been posted to the forum topic announcing the call, and address as many of them as possible on the call. We will also take questions not submitted in advance.
You will need to provide your name and company affiliation when dialing in. You will need a touch tone phone to be able to ask questions. The presentation will be recorded and (in potentially edited form) made available via the web page containing dial-in numbers above.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 17 June 2010 08:12:35 | Tags: connections lotus 2.5 deployment webcast
IBM have now released new trigger code to resolve this issue.
The steps are simple
- Stop the application
- Backup the DB
- Run through the code to remove the Trigger
- Recreate the Trigger
- Start the primary server and test
- Assuming all is well start the other App Servers in the clusters
As yet IBM are unsure as to how they are going to release the fix as it falls out of the typical iFix scope.
If you are seeing this specific issue please contact the Lotus Connections Support team who will furnish you with the appropriate code to resolve the issue.
As soon as I have confirmation on how this will be distributed I will add what will hopefully be the final update to this on-going saga.
Big thanks to Kieran Reid at IBM and Andrew Frayling and his team at Cardiff Uni for assistance and support in resolving this issue. Great work all round.
By: Sharon Bellamy | 0 Comments | On: 15 June 2010 09:43:26 | Tags: oracle connections resolution mutating trigger
Authored by ISSL (IBM Software Services for Lotus), this new whitepaper (PDF) is a good first step to gaining some clear measurements on the value generated by social software deployments within an enterprise. Well worth a read.The "Measuring the Value of Social Software" white paper focuses on helping organizations answer the question:
How can we determine if our social software initiatives are successful and are providing the anticipated return on technology investment?
This white paper looks at how to measure the effectiveness and value of a social software initiative, what tools are available to capture key metrics, and what to take into consideration when establishing a measurement approach.
Contents
- Why measure?
- Defining objectives
- Types of measurement
- Measurement levels
- Measurement tools
- Sample reports
- Creating a measurement approach
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 14 June 2010 08:44:32 | Tags: social ibm connections lotus value
Technical DescriptionDefinitely worth getting that FixPack2 on your system ASAP, particularly if your Connections environment is internet-facing.
Multiple vulnerabilities have been identified in IBM Lotus Connections, which could be exploited by attackers to bypass security restrictions or gain knowledge of sensitive information. These issues are caused by input validation and design errors in the Dojo, Community, Homepage, Bookmarks and Blogs components, and other unspecified modules when processing user-supplied data or when connecting to certain web sites, which could allow information disclosure, or cross site scripting and phishing attacks.
Affected Products
IBM Lotus Connections versions prior to 2.5.0 Fix Pack 2 (2.5.0.2)
Solution
Upgrade to IBM Lotus Connections version 2.5.0 Fix Pack 2 (2.5.0.2)
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 7 June 2010 14:11:07 | Tags: connections lotus 2.5 fp2 fixpacks
At last it appears there may be a *real* fix for this .. IBM have changed the trigger code which should hopefully fix the mutating trigger issue we see when deleting files ..
I will be testing this today and if it works rolling it out to my live environment over the next week.
I will attempt to get some confirmation if this code will be fixed in all new fix packs and APARS - watch this space and hopefully some great news
By: Sharon Bellamy | 0 Comments | On: 1 June 2010 08:17:17 | Tags: mutating trigger
The patching process for Lotus Connections 2.5 has been getting ever more complex and time-consuming just recently, what with Fixpack 1 to apply, then over 100 (yes, that's one *hundred*) individual fixes to install once Fixpack 1 was done. On some slower systems, applying FP1 then the individual fixes has taken well over 12 hours to complete. Not great for system availability in non-clustered environments.
For that reason alone, I am delighted to see Fixpack 2 is now soon to be available. This technote details the fixes included and the installation instructions.
Key details are that:
- there is a new Lotus Connections Update Installer WebSphere Update Installer for Lotus Connections Version 2.5.0.2
- there is fix to TDI that must be applied manually
- all customisations must be backed up and then reapplied.
Update: It looks as though the actual Fixpack itself is not yet available to download from FixCentral, but should be there soon and can be downloaded from this link.
By: Stuart McIntyre | 0 Comments | On: 28 May 2010 21:29:37 | Tags: connections fixpack 2.5