The Connections Blog

One of the most common areas in which Collaboration Matters is asked to consult with our customers is to assist them with driving adoption of Social Collaboration tools - finding the right ways in which to encourage an organisation's users to embrace the new technology, to make it part of their regular working practices and thus to (eventually) change the organisation's culture towards being a more collaborative one.  

You may ask why do you need to 'drive' the adoption of such tools when they are intended to be very intuitive to use, beneficial to the end user and to (in many cases) grow organically?

Put simply, because as individuals we're all busy and we're all different.  We all have too much to do in too little time, have established methods of working, are continually being asked to take on more.  That makes it hard to 'make time' to adopt new tools, even if they will prove more useful and thus make us more productive in the long run.  Different? Every organisational culture and individual working practice varies and which adoption trigger works for one user (say, a 21-year old marketing intern in an advertising company) isn't necessarily going to work as well for another (a 50-something Operations Manager in a manufacturing business).  

Done well, a plan to drive adoption will make your investment into Social Collaboration a worthwhile one, with high rates of use, employee satisfaction and real productivity gains.  Done badly, social software could be seen as a white elephant - an experiment that never worked... We all want to avoid that scenario!

At Collaboration Matters we are steadily extending our portfolio of services to help our customers to drive adoption of all Social Collaboration tools, particularly Lotus Connections, and so I was interested to see that IBM had clearly identified the need to assist customers in this area too.  There's nothing too ground-breaking in this new whitepaper 'Driving adoption of Lotus Connections', but it provides some common-sense approaches all the same:

Enterprise social software is gaining practical currency now as analysts' auspicious forecasts begin to be realized with the first wave of early adopters. This new class of software taps informal interactions and relationships among workers with complementary interests, skills, and knowledge, offering new ways to engage the collective intelligence of organizations towards achieving business ends. As such it represents an evolutionary advance in collaboration as a means to higher productivity and competitiveness.

The industry's first integrated suite of enterprise social software, IBM Lotus Connections, became available in June 2007. Featuring five Web 2.0-based components - Profiles, Blogs, Dogear (social bookmarking), Communities, and Activities — Lotus Connections provides a full palette of capabilities that help people find expertise and information and build new relationships based on business needs. Since coming onto the market, sales of this product have continued to be robust. And now there is a growing body of deployment tips and best practices new purchasers can employ to promote steady adoption and productive use of these tools in their own environments.

If you are thinking about bringing Lotus Connections into your organization in future or have already purchased it and are planning how to manage the introduction to your user population, read on for tips about getting started.

The whitepaper takes this methodology:

* Plan for success
* (1) Identify goals for the deployment
* (2) Pilot the application(s) being rolled out
* (3) Define and execute an adoption plan for the wider community
* Repeat

and then expands on each area, e.g.

(1) Identify goals for the deployment

Goals should be business goals, not just usage goals. That is, they should target specific business advantages that use of the new tools might be expected to yield because adoption of this software has to be driven by business need and culture - the technology alone cannot drive it. Any task, activity or process that can be accelerated, enriched, made more productive, cost-effective or innovative by people sharing what they know could be a suitable focus for goal-setting. Some examples might be to:

  * Enable employees to locate expertise and information on topics they need faster
  * Facilitate increased communication across teams, business units, geographies while reducing the burden on email, which is not designed to be a many-to-many communication platform
  * Stimulate creativity to generate new ideas for products, services and go-to-market strategies
  * Improve ability to respond more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries
  * Reduce rework and improve quality of people's delivery materials
  * Decrease the learning curve for new employees
  * Make better decisions, knowing they were vetted by experts across the organization and reflect past experience

Goal-setting can of course be an iterative process, and there will be short-term and well as long-term goals. One way to approach the first round of goal setting is to think about groups of people in the organization who may be particularly well-suited to participate in a pilot, because the choice of a pilot audience can influence the selection of initial goals. You may want to identify your pilot population first and then mutually agree on the goals with them instead of doing it the other way around.

The document is well worth a read, if only to confirm your own approach to deploying Lotus Connections or other social tools.

Remember, unless your organisation is 100% staffed with tech-savvy, self-training, self-motivated, evangelistic knowledge workers (!) just 'throwing' tools such as Lotus Connections out there isn't going to work.  You need to find the right methodology to make Social Collaboration a success, just as you would with any other IT investment or organisational change.  If you'd like to find out more, get in touch.

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 5 February 2010 06:12:43 | Tags:  connections  lotus  adoption 

This news was announced at Lotusphere during a session featuring a representative from the team responsible for putting Connections 2.5 into production within IBM.  They themselves are running Connections on zLinux (i.e. on Linux on a mainframe) in order to get the scalability and performance they require.  Here's the key elements of the announcement:

Support for Linux on IBM System z is being added to IBM Lotus Connections 2.5

Support for Linux on IBM System z is being added to IBM Lotus Connections 2.5. You can choose from a broad range of deployment options including Linux on IBM System z.

To order, contact your IBM representative, an IBM Business Partner, or the Americas Call Centers at 800-IBM-CALL.

Planned availability date
February 4, 2010: Electronic software delivery
March 5, 2010: Media and documentation

Note that this means that Connections will run on Linux on System z, not natively on the mainframe - there is a difference.  Good news all the same!

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 26 January 2010 13:29:19 | Tags:  connections  2.5  zlinux 

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 18 January 2010 20:33:50 | Tags:  lotusphere2010  ls10  liveblog 

Well here we are again, approaching another exciting Lotusphere event.  Thoughts move to what aspects of Lotus Connections might be announced or clarified at this year's OGS, or at other sessions during the week.

At the end of Lotusphere 2009, we'd heard about plans for Connections 2.5 (dynamic communities, files/wikis, status updates and much more), RIM's plans for a new client for the Blackberry, and generally a lot of discussion of how well Connections was doing in the marketplace.  Nearly a year later, we have Connections 2.5 (released in late August, phenomenally well received by customers and press alike, doing well with the analysts and having sold millions of new licences in late 2009) and RIM have just announced their Connections client for Blackberry 2.3.  

All in all, 2009 was an awesome year for Lotus Connections - IBM promised a lot and delivered even more.  Connections is as good a product as any in the IBM Software Group portfolio right now. We at Collaboration Matters are doing a massive volume of work for customers deploying, upgrading and enhancing Lotus Connections 2.5 installations, and I'd like to say well deserved 'Thank You' to all those in the Connections team at IBM for providing such a fine release.

So what do I hope to hear at Lotusphere 2010?

• Details of Connections Next (one assumes 3.0). A number of journalists have already been briefed about an announcement of the next version at Lotusphere 2010, so that seems a dead cert.  I would imagine that 3.0 will be less revolutionary than 2.5 was, with a more natural evolution of the features already in 2.5.  In particular, I'd like to see:
  • More consistency across the features, particular around administrative control and editorial management of content, notifications, UI layouts, ability to update status from all features and so on.
  • An administration panel that covers all features, including statistics, trends, user counts, admin rights and more.
  • An end user "account" or "preferences" panel that allows an end user to reset their password, change subscriptions, allow/disallow board comments, remove colleagues etc.
  • The ability to have multiple networks of colleagues ("IT", "Strategy", "Football", "Social" etc) so that more control can be gained over status updates and notifications
  • More granular control over access to content, particularly profile details.
  • An unauthenticated homepage.  The Home Page feature in Connections 2.5 is fabulous - I and all my customers love it!  In some ways it is the ideal intranet site, except... unauthenticated users get presented with a sign in page and no content.  There needs to be a Home Page that pulls together all the public content from the Connections environment, before the user logs in.
  • Multiple blogs, activities etc. in a single Community
  • Continued improvements to installation and upgrade procedures.  This has been massively improved but there is still some way to go.
  • More integration with the Notes client - all 8 services should be accessible from within the Notes client, particularly the update of status, upload of files etc.
• Federation of multiple Connections environments - this is the *BIG* one for me.  More and more organisations want to have multiple Connections deployments, whether for geographical reasons (users in Australia and the UK for example) or for multiple user types (students vs. staff, internal vs. extranets) or for special events/communities (conferences like Lotusphere!), and there needs to be a way to get Profile data in particular (though ideally more content from other features too) between the environments.  If this is going to happen in Connections Next, I will be a very very happy man!
• More info on how organisations are using Connections and justifying their investment in the technology.  We need more use cases, references and advice on how to convince organisations to move forward with social technologies

and lastly?

• How much you all enjoyed attending the two sessions I'll be co-presenting at Lotusphere 2010:

If you do attend either session, please come up and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you!

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 1 Comments | On: 16 January 2010 09:33:11 | Tags:  lotusphere2010  connections 

Great new Lotus video on YouTube about social software in general and IBM in particular, such as IBM Lotus Sametime IBM Lotus Quickr and IBM Lotus Connections.

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 14 January 2010 20:01:52 | Tags:  social  connections  youtube 

Now here's an interesting new site - SocialSoftwareMatrix.org:

This website is a resource to help you find the social software tool that fits best your company’s needs.

We believe that merely comparing features is the wrong approach towards selecting enterprise social software and this is why we compare the major products by evaluating them in a set of relevant business use cases, technological product dimensions and vendor qualities. Each rating is explained with a short evaluation text and screenshots give an impressions about how it is to actually use the tools. We will continuously extend the list of tools covered with a focus on solutions that are capable to act as a companywide internal or external social collaboration platform for medium and large sized enterprises. In addition we will publish updates about social software tools as well as Enterprise 2.0 related articles translated from our German blog besser20.de.

I really like the work they've done on this site so far, in particular the matrices themselves:



A really great start, and it helps of course that they are complimentary about Lotus Connections!

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 12 January 2010 10:06:06 | Tags:  social  connections 

If you're still running Lotus Connections 2.0, why? (all my customers upgraded to 2.5 last year...)

Seriously though, if you are still running Connections 2.0, this might be a very useful resource:

Webcast: Upgrade and Migration from Lotus Connections V2.0 to V2.5

Abstract
IBM Development and Support are hosting a Tech Exchange Webcast and call on the topic of "Upgrade and Migration From Lotus Connections V2.0 to V2.5".
 
Date: January 13th, 2010
Time: 9:00 am - 10:30 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: See list below
Confirmation Code: CONNECTIONS

For international dial-in numbers and more details, check out the invite page.

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 6 January 2010 07:26:17 | Tags:  connections  webcast 

Lotus certification is pleased to announce the availability of the Connections exam: "Administering IBM Lotus Connections 2.5".

This exam permits certification in Lotus Connections 2.5 System Administration, earning the professional certification title: "IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5".

Path for IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM Lotus Connections 2.5:

Pass Exam 987: Administering IBM Lotus Connections 2.5

To learn more about the resources currently available to help you prepare for this exam please follow the link above.

This test covers the following areas:

   * Install and Configure
   * Manage and Maintain
   * Security
   * Customization and Integration

View a complete listing of exam 987 competencies

As a member of the team that created this exam, I am delighted to see it into general availability. In upgrading the test from the 2.0.x version, we tried very hard to focus on real-world scenarios that the team (comprised of IBM consultants, IBM support staff and business partners) had experienced, on administration topics (vs information recall) and on aspects of the supporting products (WAS, RDBMS, TDI and LDAP) that solely related to Connections 2.5 admin.  

I personally think its a very fair and comprehensive test of your knowledge, so if you want to prove you know Connections 2.5, now's your chance!

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 2 January 2010 06:37:39 | Tags:  connections  certification  2.5 

A seasonal reminder of the benefits of micro-blogging and Lotus Connections 2.5 status updates:

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 24 December 2009 06:48:17 | Tags:  connections  youtube 

Ever considered rolling out (or piloting) Lotus Connections 2.5 in your organisation, but were scared off by the complexity, the system requirements or just the non-Domino-based technology that's involved?

Rob Wunderlich and Stuart McIntyre's Lotusphere 2010 session could be just what you needed:

Session track	Track Four: Best Practices
Session id	BP112
Session date	01/18/2010 (Monday)
Session time	1:00pm - 2:00pm
Session location	DL S. Hemisphere III
Session name	Twelve Things Your Mother Never Told You About Installing IBM Lotus Connections
Session abstract	It’s a classic case of the “bark is worse than the bite.” Installing Lotus Connections – admittedly – is a complex process, with many pre-requisites to be met, environment-specific decisions to be taken and almost endless opportunities for customization and integration. It might appear daunting at first; but don't fret just yet. This session will make it a whole lot easier! We'll use our in-depth real-world experience of installing Lotus Connections at many organizations in the US and Europe to explore a dozen lesser-known details of the installation process that are key to successful deployment. We’ll show tips and tricks, “cheat sheets,” install checklists and share the stuff that isn’t in the manual. Priceless resources! Stuff even Mom never told you!
Speakers	Rob Wunderlich Stuart McIntyre

As you can see, the date/time and room have now been allocated (Monday 1pm, Dolphin S. Hemisphere III), so make sure it's on your schedule if you're attending Lotusphere 2010!

By: Stuart McIntyre - Connections | 0 Comments | On: 22 December 2009 06:06:19 | Tags:  lotusphere2010  connections