Collaboration Matters!

I registered a couple of good domain names a year or so ago, and haven't quite figured out what to do with them, though I am sure they'd be useful to somebody...

notesanddomino.com
notesanddomino.info

If you think they'd be relevant to you personally or to your organisation, then please drop me a line.

... perhaps "changing of the guard" is more appropriate?

Organising an event? Then you should learn from this post:

Promoting an event like Going Solo is a huge amount of work  often more than what youd imagine (and more than what I imagined initially). Thats why everything the community does to help counts.

So, Ive tried to make it easy for you to do something to help get the word out about Going Solo Leeds (to your readers/network/community/friends) if you feel like it.

First, logos and blog badges which you can easily insert in a blog post or a sidebar by copy-pasting the code we provide, like these two for example:





(You can find others on the Promote Going Solo page.)

Second, the Going Solo Leeds home page provides you with the main information and links, as well as a brief description of the event if youre looking for some stock text (we encourage you to speak in your own voice, of course, but sometimes its handy to know what the key points are).

Third, the videos and photos of the Lausanne conference are available (and embeddable  Flickr and DailyMotion) as illustration material. I guess this is particularly relevant if you were present in Lausanne and want to point out one of the highlights of your Going Solo experience to tempt others to follow in your steps.

Fourth, there are events on Upcoming and Facebook (as well as a Facebook group) to which you can invite your friends very easily (you certainly know how it works if youre on one of those two services).

Fifth, if youre into offline stuff, you can ask me (steph at going-solo dot net, or @stephtara on Twitter) to have a box of Going Solo MOO cards sent to you, or print out our posters and plaster them all over your neighbourhood:



And sixth, so that you dont have to figure it all out for yourself, there are two links you can use to point people to registration:

 * http://goingfar.expectnation.com/gsleeds08/public/register/order is the direct link
 * http://leeds08.going-solo.net/registration provides some extra information.

While were at it:

 * http://going-solo.net is the Going Solo blog
 * http://leeds08.going-solo.net is the Going Solo Leeds website

Happy blogging, thanks in advance, and let us know if you dont see your post appear in the coverage list soon!

Isn't that great? Everything you would need to blog about or to help promote the event.  I think this could easily be a template that we should all use in the future for any event we organise or wish to tell others about.  Great work @sephtara.  Oh and by the way, the conference sounds great!

My tools - an occasional series of posts on the tools of my trade - the technology that I couldn't live without...

A rather obvious start to proceedings, but probably the most important item in my kitbag - my laptop.  

Like most of the folks in this industry, I've spent most of my working life sat in front of a Windows PC - I was on an IT placement from University when Windows 3.1.1 for Workgroups was released, then had just started at my first proper full-time job when Windows 95 became available.  The company I started out with, Dyadic Systems, were a Microsoft development partner, and so I played with most of the Windows betas as they came along, then adopted the gold versions as soon as they were available.  So, I can almost mark the key moments in my working life my the beta or gold code I was running at the time - scary that Microsoft has had such an influence really.  

However, as Dyadic was inherently a Unix shop - we designed, implemented and supported high-end IBM RS/6000 (and then pSeries) systems running AIX - I spent a lot of time sat in front of a Unix command line too.  I always liked the ease of use of Windows, but adored the power of the Unix command line - I still think in terms of greps, pipes, redirects, awks and seds even now.  That lead me into playing with Linux, right from the early 0.99 kernel days, through many versions of Redhat, SUSE and now Ubuntu.  I'm comfortable on that platform and push it as our server platform of choice, particularly for smaller businesses, but have never truly adopted it as my desktop during all these years, mainly because of lack of application or device support.

Then, of course, there is the Mac. I first spent time on the Macintosh platform back at school, probably c. 1989/90, writing up my A-level reports on MacWrite and adoring the Wysiwyg interface when everyone around was still fighting with text based word processors. However, I then didn't touch another Apple product until a colleague, David Hiley,  joined Dyadic back in 2003. He had an adorable Powerbook 12", and proceeded to show me the OS X user interface, the great Mac apps that were out there, and why this really was the client platform of choice.  While there were certainly some major issues with using the Mac in an IBM BP environment (Notes 6 for the Mac anyone?), it certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities.  When my wife needed a new laptop later that year, I bought her a Powerbook G4 15", and since then we have had many more Macs through the household.

So, the point of this story... When I came to set up Collaboration Matters at the start of this year, I needed to buy a laptop that would be with me for the first 2 years or so of running the business, consulting for my customers, designing solutions, testing new products, blogging, developing new ideas and generally as my main sidekick whilst earning my living.  What would it be?

Continue Reading "My Tools - the laptop" »

I've always believed in imitation being the highest form of flattery, and hence I am going to shamelessly steal an idea from another blog... In this case, from Graham Chastney (@grahamchastney) over at Oak-Grove.  I've been a fan of Graham's for a while now, as he blogs beautifully and covers a a wide area of topics that really interest me.

So anyway, this post is to launch a series on "My Tools", the hardware, software, sites and technologies that allow me to do what I do - running my business Collaboration Matters, consulting for my customers, delivering quality collaborative solutions, publishing the blogs, and generally keeping my life on track.  There will be some that will be obvious, and a lot more that you may not be aware of.  Hopefully either way, you'll get some benefit from the posts and maybe find some tools that will help you do what you do even better, and I'll realise just how many important (or not) some of these items are to my daily existence.

As always, feedback is the key, so please do leave comments where appropriate - I'd love to know whether you use the same tools as I do, or if not, what do you use instead?

First post to follow later today!

As many of you will be aware, IBM announced Lotus BlueHouse at Lotusphere 2008, their new midmarket-directed SaaS hosted collaboration solution.

Since then I have been following the progress of the BlueHouse closely, and was delighted to be invited to take part in the "high-touch" beta programme over the past couple of months.  Since then, I have moved a significant portion of my company's collaborative interactions onto the platform, including sharing documents and folders, running webconferences and much more.  It really is coming on very nicely indeed.

Back in June IBM announced that the beta version of BlueHouse was now open to all US-based organisations that wished to try it out, and I am pleased to pass on that this has now been extended to UK-based companies as well.  So if you are over this side of the pond and interested to experience what BlueHouse has to offer, then get over to the website and request access.

In the meantime, the BlueHouse team are running a series of webinars covering the offering in a lot more detail.  The first one is coming up TOMORROW, Wednesday 16th July, so if you are interested, it would be well worth making the time to attend.  It's a great solution, with huge potential, so I do recommend you get onboard ASAP.

Webinar details:


More details over the fold: Continue Reading "Where’s the bear? In the big "BlueHouse" of course ;-) " »

"I am, I am... Superman, and I can do anything...  Superhuman software"

You all remember the great R5 ads, right? That multi-million dollar campaign back in 1999/2000 that we all regard as the heyday of Lotus marketing? (If you don't, check the ad here.)

Well, what did I come across as a full page ad in the Telegraph yesterday?



Any ideas? I'll give you a clue, it's a technology company... Click through to find out.

Continue Reading "Superhuman!" »

Two desirable items that hit my feed reader today, that I just want need so much ;-)

1. The new Blackberry "Thunder"

That's right folks an anonymous tipster has sent us shots of the highly anticipated BlackBerry Thunder. The Thunder also known as BlackBerry 9500 will feature a huge 360x480 touch display and will apparently run on OS 4.7. This device will be a great multimedia player and could bring CDMA carriers true iPhone competition. The Thunder will run a carrier music store which similar to the iPhone's iTunes store and will allow users to purchase songs from their device. The display on the Thunder most likely will be a glass surface similar to the iPhone.

I so want an iPhone 3G, but can't have one for a couple of reasons - first, cos' I really couldn't give up my Blackberry for email purposes, and secondly, I wouldn't touch O2 (the chosen iPhone carrier here in the UK) with a very long barge pole. This might just provide a very nice alternative - at least if Blackberry sort out their Mac syncing issues.

2. The "YellowCube"

Decided to test the waters with our new product. As we found the Lotus Foundation Micro2 server not really practical for my clients, we decided to up the ante.

What if that micro2 was a little bigger, and had 2 drives, 4gb of RAM or more and a really fast processor?
You could load Lotus Foundations, Linux, Windows or whatever else you want on it too!
And it was preloaded with Domino with Sametime or Quickr or ...
What if you could pick it up and take it ANYWHERE, ANYTIME?
And what if it came in Yellow?

Now, this is a great idea, Keith, and one that I can see being very very popular.  Nice one!

Heidi Votaw and Suzanne Minassian join Neil Burston and I to talk about the newly released Lotus Connections 2.0 social software solution.  During this episode you will learn about:

• What is Connections? Why is it important?
• What's new in the 2.0 release?
• How successful is Connections as a product?
• Who has deployed it, and what benefits did they gain?
• What did happen in the Enterprise2.0 shootout with Microsoft?
• What's next for Lotus Connections?

This podcast is 22.6mb and runs for 49 minutes at 64kps. Enjoy!

Collaboration Matters Podcast - Episode 3 - Lotus Connections 2.0

(for iTunes: http://feeds.feedburner.com/collaborationmatterspodcast )

Courtesy of GeekandPoke