Tag: ibm champion

Stuck in Brussels

Atomium

I woke up this morning to a text message telling me that my plane was cancelled. Stuck in Brussels an extra day. What to do?

I spent this week at the Engage conference, which this year took place in Belgium. I gave a presentation yesterday about a solution that my colleagues at iSi have made. People went “wow!” when they saw it. Which was nice, and I sent them a message telling them that they had impressed people.

The venue was the awesomely cool museum Autoworld, with a huge collection of vintage cars and vehicles.

The conference is focused on the collaboration tools from IBM, like Notes/Domino, Sametime, Connections and others. It also deals with third party tools that interacts with these systems, as well as general talks on user adoption, development and administration.

Over 400 people were at the conference, and as always it was a wonderful opportunity to meet old friends, make new friends, engage in discussions, learn, teach, make contacts, make deals and just having a good time. So once again: Thanks to Theo & Hilde for another awesome event.

But I woke up this morning to a message telling me that my plane was cancelled, and that they had re-booked it for me tomorrow. So I had to extend my stay at the hotel one more day. I’m not even sure if SAS will cover it, since this was because of an air traffic control strike. This means it’s out of their hands, and is deemed to be an unforeseen event. EU regulations stipulates that they won’t have to compensate me then.

It also means I will spend our constitutional day (our 4th of July if you will) on planes on my way back home tomorrow. That’s one holiday down the drain. Bummer.

So I spent the day walking 15 km around downtown Brussels, taking in the sights. And I stopped at watering holes every now and then, where I took out my computer and worked on the photos I took at the conference. After four stops, and a little work back at my hotel, the photos were finished. They can now bee seen in my photo album on flickr. You can also see some photos of the car exhibition, as well as some photos of the world famous Atomium  building.

I will write a blog posting about the new stuff I learned in the coming days.

Enjoy the photos by clicking on the title of the photo album below:
Engage 2019

Back to School? You Betcha! Learn About Domino Query Language. For Free!

Domino Tech School

Did you think all the news around Domino V10 were over? Oh no. Now IBM offers you free courses to learn all the cool new stuff that’s in Domino V10. Register here! First out: Domino Query Language Continue reading Back to School? You Betcha! Learn About Domino Query Language. For Free!

Ask Me About IBM Notes/Domino

I’ve worked with IBM Notes/Domino (formerly known as Lotus Notes/Domino) since 1997. In those years, the death of Notes/Domino has been predicted so many times. But it hasn’t happened yet.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it could have been at better health than it has been for years.

But as I’ve written several times in this blog, a new initiative has been started, lead by HCL taking over the development of the platform. And they’ve got hundreds of people working on it.

In the past weeks I’ve been part of a group of people who have given input on the design of the user interface for IBM Notes v11, which most likely will appear next autumn. And it looks very promising.

However, there are plenty of new stuff coming for Domino v10 as well. I’ve summed that up in this blog posting. Check it out for all the goodies.

If you need need an expert on IBM Notes/Domino. Or if you want to know anything about the future of Notes/Domino v10 that is out in October. Or if you need a skilled Notes/Domino developer. Or if you need help with your licensing. Or maybe you want to webify your notes applications and make them available on cell phones and pads? Or do you simply want to make your native Notes applications look more modern and sexy?

We in Brainworker can help you. Please get in touch!

Look, I even got a certificate to prove it:

Life of an IBM Champion

EgoAs some of you know, I turned 100% freelance last year, and my income is now all down to me in my pursuit of assignments. If you want to book me, either as a user trainer for effective use of mail and calendar (Outlook IBM Notes or Gmail), general courses about IBM Notes, IBM Connections, general collaboration, social media, Microsoft Office, writing and photography, as a developer/architect or writer and photographer, get in touch.

I’m gonna be more active around here from now on. So first a recap about what I’ve been doing lately.

First of all, I was actually made an IBM Champion again for 2018. This year my fellow Norwegian, Robert Farstad, was named a champion too. Yay!

November and December was filled up with me doing user training in IBM Connections for the worker’s union Industrienergi, on behalf of Item. The feedback was great and I’m going to do even more user training next week and later in February. Last time I taught them their new intranet, which is running on IBM Connections, the news stream, how to stay updated on what goes on in IBM Connections and Files. For the latter I also helped them set up the IBM Connections plugins for Windows, Outlook and IBM Notes, as well as the mobile app. The reason I focused mostly on Files is that in my experience that is the ticket in for most users. That’s what makes them really see the potential in a collaborative solution as Connections. The next courses will be all about Activities, another neat feature in Connections.

I also did an IBM Notes project for a company just outside of town in December and January. It was good old fashioned Notes development, with lotusscript and Notes design elements. It was great fun, but I’m trying to get them to see the advantage of starting to go in a more web enabled direction.

As the leader of the Norwegian IBM Collaborations Software User  Group (ISBG) I’ve also been busy arranging meetings and webinars. All our webinars can be seen on our Youtube channel. The webinar is the last Tuesday of every month. If you want to do a presentation, please get in touch with me.

I’ve also done loads of journalistic and photographic assignments. Some of them will be presented in this blog during the spring.

And lastly: If you are thinking about going to IBM’s Think conference this year, get in touch with me as well. I can give you  a $100 discount.

Expect a new blog posting soon.

We are the Champions

IBM Champions in San FranciscoLast year I was fortunate enough to be named IBM Champion for 2017 by my peers in the IBM Collaboration Solutions community.

It has been great. I have made even more friends in the community, I gotten my foot inside the door of places that were closed to me and I’ve been allowed to partake in various IBM stuff. In addition, you sometimes get news and announcements before everybody else.

You are also given access to people and resources that you normally wouldn’t be able to reach, and that is very beneficial for your organization and my customers. More than once have I solved a problem for a customer, thanks to my network that I got by becoming an IBM Champion.

If you feel that you should be an IBM Champion, nominate yourself and give me a shout, and I will nominate you also. And if you would consider nominating me, I would be most grateful.

The nomination form is here. Nominations must be in by November 13th.

If you want more details about the IBM Champions program, read this.

IBM Notes and Domino Version 10 – A Glowing Saphire?

IBM HCLIBM made some pretty big announcements tonight. First of all, Notes and Domino will have a version 10 released in 2018. Yeah, I know. I am as shocked as you.

Secondly, IBM is now leaving all the development of the platform to their partner HCL. IBM has already a partnership with them on several other products in their portfolio.

So what does this mean? It means that the platform is not dead, something which we’ve heard since around 2002 from people.

It also means that for the customers, there will be no change in their relationship with IBM. HCL will do the development, and maybe a times help out IBM. But sales, support, PMRs, licensing, Passport advantage will all still be done via IBM.

So the biggest change is that HCL takes over the development. IBM and HCL are committed to make sure that support, development and continuation of the platform will not be disrupted.

The journey starts now, and thus far the next version of Notes, Domino and Sametime is going under the name “Proejct Sapphire.”

Other stuff to look forward to:

  • Domino will now support the Mail client for Mac as they already do for Outlook via Exchange ActiveSync
  • There will be constant development for the Domino platform, so that it will be easier to integrate with other platforms and solutions
  • IBM will hold jams (currently called Domino 2025) for ideas about the future of Notes/Domino where people will have meetings, talks and other ways to give IBM feedback
  • IBM Champions and the user groups will be invited to be much more involved in the future
  • The Think conference (taking over for Lotusphere/Connect) will have a much larger presence for Notes/Domino than what we feared

And just to be clear: This covers the entire family of IBM Notes, Domino, Sametime and Verse, both on premise and in the cloud.

Here’s the portfolio that’s a part of the HLC partnership:

IBM Notes and Domino

  • IBM SmartCloud Notes
  • IBM Notes Traveler
  • IBM Mobile Connect
  • IBM Verse
  • IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook(IMSMO)
  • IBM WISPR
  • IBM Enterprise Integrator (LEI)
  • IBM Sametime portfolio
  • IBM Connections Chat/Meetings
  • IBM Client Access (ICAA)

I was today on the IBM Champions call where we were introduced to this. And some of the questions raised in the Q&A was: Is this too little too late? Will we be able to get customers to invest in Notes/Domino? Will the platform be relevant?

Let’s find out. The journey is #2025.