#ISWINSIGHT - Mark Anderson

For our latest #ISWINSIGHT we are introducing Mark Anderson - Business Development Manager for Tasmania.

1) What’s your name and what exactly do you do with ISW? 
My name is Mark Anderson and I am the Business Development Manager for ISW in Tasmania. I started in 2010 and I really enjoy providing technology solutions for people and as technology advances so do the possibilities for innovative solutions. I work with a team to provide applications and systems to help solve business problems and demonstrate how new application can be utilises to improve productivity and reduce inefficiencies. There is always new applications to learn as information technology advances and has become an important part of our lives both socially and professionally.   


2) What is the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?
Pigeon when I was in Hong Kong many years ago. It tastes like a mixture of duck and chicken and the beak is crunchy. I haven’t had it since and I am less adventurous to try any more weird foods. 


 3) What is the worst thing you did as a kid?
My younger brother and I accidentally set fire to the back fence of our home while lighting a fire in a barrel. The worst part about it was our dad found the fence alight and that the fire was next to our 5.3m Pride Albatross boat which was not only made of fibreglass but had extra fuel tanks onboard! It would of lit up the neighbourhood if it took hold. Thankfully we put it out in time but it was not a smart thing to do. 


4) What do you consider the greatest invention EVER!?!? 
Wine. The cultivation of wine and the storage of wine lead to the wider use and development of glass. The use of glass lead to the development of lenses and optics which lead to creation of spectacle, microscopes and telescopes. Thus, scientists and scholars could read and write past their fading eyesight and make important discoverers in the field of medicine, astronomy and physics. I support the discovery of wine when every possible. 


5) Tell an interesting fact? 
I have an airline metal teaspoon collection. I happened to collect them while I was travelling as a qwerky memento when all the cutlery on airlines was metal and I just happened to end up with about forty or so metal teaspoons from different airlines. Some airlines are no longer operating such as Pana Am, TAA, and Ansett, and some airline I have only occasional travelled on including Air China, Air Iceland and Ryanair. I am not a collector as such and wouldn’t say I have an obsession but as most of the cutlery on airlines today is plastic I just happened to have airline metal teaspoon collection. 

Mark's Social Profiles:

LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markanderson5/

KUDOS BADGES WINS - Innovation in Social Business Application Development

Wow!! I am absolutely stoked that ISW and Kudos Badges has just received notification that we WON the IBM Collaboration Solutions Award for Innovation in Social Business Application Development!

Now the IBM Connect conference will be an celebration for Team Kudos and our awesome clients. I have to say I am so proud to be part of the team that created Kudos Badges. Andrew Welch, Jay Agrawal, John Bilson, Scott Headlam, Scott Leis, Meg Woolley, and everyone else involved have truly created an outstanding solution for IBM Connections that our clients all around the world have taken up with passion.

Kudos Badges was built from the ground up for IBM Connections and as such we have taken advantage of all the great capabilities the Connections platform offers. iWidgets, OpenSocial, Activity Streams, Embedded Experiences, Mobile, etc have all added to our ability to deliver an exceptional user experience and add real value to users of Connections.

Since launching Kudos Badges this time last year we have grown our user base to hundreds of thousands of users around the world with clients now in the UK, Finland, Switzerland, USA, Australia, South Africa, India, Germany, The Netherlands, Mexico, and a few that I am sure I have forgotten. We have some awesome partners that have taken to Kudos Badges and now offer it as a default part of every IBM Connections implementation they perform.

So THANK YOU IBM for your support and this recognition. It really does mean a lot for this Australian company to be recognised on the world stage along side our peers.

Award Info:

This award will be presented to a Business Partner who provides the best solution for creating an Exceptional Customer Experience or a Smarter Workforce through the use of IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) application development tools. The offering must leverage new technology innovations such as the Social Business Toolkit, XPages Extension Library, Web Experience Factory builders, or Mobile Controls. Submissions for this award should be solutions that leverage these new technologies to address a specific business need by:

• Enabling interactions with customers or employees through online social networks (on-premise, cloud, or public social network sites)
• Enhancing situational awareness through analysis of social data, or
• Supporting contextual collaboration by integrating social capabilities into existing or new business applications leveraging OpenSocial gadgets and creating an embedded experience

Selection Criteria: Special consideration will be given to developers new to Social Business application development with solutions that:

• Leverage multiple IBM Collaboration Solutions development tools and products (e.g., IBM Connections, IBM Lotus Notes and Domino - especially Domino Designer, XWork Server and XPages, or the IBM Web Experience - especially IBM Web Experience Factory, and IBM Worklight entitlements to Web Experience).
• Support multiple types of devices, including rich client, web, mobile, smartphone or tablet
• Are deployed in a production environment, and are public references.

Also a big congratulations to all the other winners and finalist. IBM Collaboration Solutions has a truly impressive list of organisations building solutions around the ICS solutions! Keep innovating!

Sogeti boosts adoption of IBM Connections with Kudos Badges

Sogeti has selected ISW's Kudos Badges for IBM Connections to help accelerate their worldwide adoption of IBM Connections. Sogeti is a leading provider of professional technology services, specializing in Application Management, Infrastructure Management, High-Tech Engineering and Testing. With 20,000 employees across 15 countries Sogeti is an outstanding example of an organisation that gets Social Business and is leveraging IBM Connections to drive business value throughout their organisation. Sogeti also understands the importance of having strong user adoption strategies to ensure that they are able to deliver that business value. We are very proud that Sogeti has chosen Kudos Badges as part of their strategy to help them continue their adoption of IBM Connections and to "Boost/Accelerate" their Social Business evolution.

“Sogeti was one of the first companies in the world, as early as 2009, to implement Connections, IBM’s leading social collaboration platform. Since then, the company has undertaken a fast-paced evolution towards becoming a social business by focusing strongly on the adoption of the tool. Today, proud of their 10,000 users, they have decided to give a boost / accelerate this evolution by implementing a gamification solution called Kudos Badges by ISW. Indeed, generating adoption and in-depth usage of the tool at the scale of 20,000 people spread across 15 countries is a challenge. Sogeti thus believes that gaming power can attract more users but also can help its people to gain a better understanding of the tool’s functionalities and therefore improve the usage they make of it.”

Lucile Leclercq
Global Social Collaboration Driver | Sogeti Group

As Sogeti is a multinational organisation the requirement to support users across a variety of languages is essential. Kudos Badges 1.3 released in April this year delivered full support for multilingual deployments of IBM Connections. With the ability to support all 25 languages supported by IBM Connections, ISW has already translated Dutch, German, French, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), and are working to shortly also deliver Dannish, Spanish, Thai, Russian, Arabic, Hungarian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. The way the language module of Kudos has been developed clients are easily able to add their own translations for Kudos, as well as completely change the language and words used throughout the entire solution.

Another key capability of Kudos Badges that is key is the fact that Kudos Badges is "Content Aware". I am going to blog more about this shortly however in brief Kudos Badges is able to be targetted to reward users for actions around specific Communities, or specific Content and People within IBM Connections. This is essential in ensuring that the users aren't just rewarded for actions and the quantity of activity but more importantly quality of activity and content created. For example if you upload a File you may be awarded some points. If someone comments, recommends, or downloads that file then they may also be awarded some points, but importantly the creator of that file could also be awarded additional points as the content has been deemed valuable by their peers. It isn't just the actions that have been taken but importantly the actions in context that gain rewards. This capability also allows us to build rewards and drive motivation within specific Connections Communities or forums. More on this later...

The ISW team and I are very much looking forward to working with Sogeti to implement Kudos Badges and learning together from our combined extensive experience in driving real value from the IBM Connections platform.

Kudos Badges for IBM Connections 1.3

The team at ISW has been working hard on the latest release of Kudos Badges, Version 1.3! Since Lotusphere we have had our clients provide plenty of feedback and ideas on how to leverage Kudos Badges to encourage user adoption of IBM Connections and these ideas have been added to our development cycle for the products.

Here is some of the new features and capabilities in our latest release:

Kudos Leaderboard

Our new Leader Boards are Context Aware and feature Time Based Ranks to be more relevant and competitive.

• The Context Aware Kudos Leaderboards display the ranks relative to the person logged in. This lets the user see his immediate competition with the option of navigating through the ranks.
• Time Based Ranks on the Leader Boards can now be filtered based on Time enabling new and existing users to start afresh and to always keep the competition alive. By Default the time intervals are set to 30 days, 180 days, 365 days and All-Time but they can be changed to suit your environmen. 
• Leader Boards in the Communities are now based on Content and Members in the Community! The Ranks in a Community therefore reflect the actual contribution from the members to the Community’s content.

Kudos Profile Progress Widget

Encourage your users to get started in Connections! - The Profile Progress Widget displays a progress bar indicating a Profile’s maturity level and gives users ideas to improve it based on what the Profile is lacking. This can include content items such as Contact Information, Tags, Background, and Photo's, as well as Actions the user should take such as join a community, create a blog post, tag another user etc! This widget uses existing Kudos Metrics to measure in real-time the level of completion of a Profile. What makes this feature really powerful is that it is completely configurable allowing you to fine tune it to your environment and what you would like your users to do!

Multilingual Support

Kudos Badges now has the option of defining and editing Badges in all the languages supported by Connections 3.0.1 with full character support. This capability is clearly required for global organisations that utilise IBM Connections across multiple languages. The great thing about how this works is that it is on a per user basis so the users can choose which language they want Kudos Badges to display in, exactly the same way as IBM Connections does!

Kudos Filters

Easier More Powerful Configuration of Badges and Ranks - In addition to Kudos Metrics we now have Kudos Filters. Filters can be used on Base Metrics to narrow down the search criteria with the use of Parameters. This makes the configuration of Badges and Ranks much more powerful. You can create Metrics and Filters for every single action that someone can take in IBM Connections, as well as Actions that other users take on another users Content!

Improved Kudos Awards Engine

The Kudos Engine responsible for awarding the Badges is now enhanced for performance and scalability. This enables even the largest IBM Connections implementations to utilise Kudos Badges as well as allowing you to award users more frequently for better feedback to the users.

We have already started working on Kudos Badges 1.4 with some exciting new capabilities and if you have any ideas on how Kudos Badges can help to further improve user adoption of IBM Connections we would love to hear from you.

If you would like an update on Kudos Badges please Contact Us or one of our various Partners around the world.

Announcing Kudos Badges for IBM Connections!

 I can't tell you how excited I am to finally announce Kudos Badges for IBM Connections! I have been holding my tongue over the last few weeks before we were finally ready to launch what I believe is an awesome capability for Connections. I have been doing a few sneak peak demos for a few clients, friends, and colleages and have received fantastic feedback so I am pumped to finally put it out there for all to see.

 We have put together www.kudosbadges.com with plenty of information and screenshots of the product so that is the best place to get the details.

So in short what is it?

Kudos Badges for IBM Connections is a flexible gamification engine for IBM Connections. By providing achievements and rewards (Kudos Badges), rank and leaderboards (Kudos Rank), and missions (Kudos Missions), organisations can dramatically improve their user engagement and adoption of IBM Connections.

In addition Kudos Badges is an extensible platform that can leverage game theory to provide performance management mechanics and reward systems for applications outside of IBM Connections such as HR, Sales Force Management, Help Desks, and many more.

So why have we built it?

Well ISW done plenty of roll outs of IBM Connections and we firmly believe that the key to success with Connections is driving user adoption. We have a number of strategies to this effect that we execute with our clients and this is now a new one to add. Gamification really does work. I have seen the results in our own organistion and look forward to seeing the results with a few clients. In designing Kudos Badges for IBM Connections we have put a lot of effort into trying to ensure it isn't just about earning Kudos Badges or moving up the Kudos Leaderboard, but rather encouraging users to explore features they may have not tried yet. Education of the capabilities and the "Why I should use it?" is a key driver for user adoption so we have tried to ensure Kudos Badges helps deliver on this.

In addition we wanted to be able to add value to Connections and enable our clients to reward users for not only their work in Connections but also their work outside of Connections. I will blog more above it in coming days however in short the Kudos Badges engine is AWESOME! The system is driven by creating metrics that track activity, both inside of and outside of Connections. These metrics are then used to create rewards, Kudos Badges, and allocate Kudos Points for leaderboard advancement. For example one client after a early demo of Kudos Badges asked if we could use it to recognise people that have been thanked by their peers. After about 3 minutes thinking the answer was absolutely yes! We now have badges awarded for people that are thanked within Connections by their peers a number of times. The great thing about all of this is that the Kudos Metrics and Kudos Badges are all configured via a special interface within Connections that administrators can have access to.

So how does it work?

Kudos Badges works by tracking metrics around what users do within IBM Connections. For example when a user posts a Status Update, they get a Kudos Point. When they create a blog, they might get 5 Kudos Points. When someone recommends a file that someone else created, they get 1 Kudos Point and the receiver of the recommendation gets 3 Kudos Points. There are hundreds of potential actions within IBM Connections and Kudos Metrics enables us to track them and reward users for their behaviour.

Kudos Metrics are used to award both Kudos Leaderboard points as well as award Kudos Badges. All of the metrics can be customised and you can even create your own metrics and badges. Kudos Badges comes with a heap of predefined metrics and badges to make it easy to get started. They have been designed to not only reward behaviour but also to encourage users to take further action and educate them on the broader capabilities of IBM Connections.

In addition to metrics within IBM Connections, Kudos Badges enables you to create metrics for actions and behaviour in external systems. These external metrics can then be used to award custom badges as well as contribute to a users leaderboard score and rank. For example you may have a sales force system that you want to encourage specific behaviour. Or maybe HR Performance Objectives that you want to reward users for achieving. The options are endless!

One of the keys to Kudos Badges is the fact that while you get rewarded with Kudos Points for your actions, such as uploading a file to share, you gain even more points for the actions of others, such as recomending your file as valuable content. As in real life the most valuable Kudos is awarded to you by others!

Another great capability is the fact that all the Kudos Metrics and Kudos Badges are completely configurable all via a Connections interface for Administrators. If you think a particular action is worth more, you can change it. If you want to create your custom own Badges then go ahead! The system is incredibly flexible and while we have provided heaps of rewards by default you can tweak them or add to them as you please.

I would like to recognise the efforts of the Kudos Team. You have each done a great job in taking the vision of Kudos Badges, and not only making it a reality, but taking it well beyond the initial ideas.

We are already planning the next release of Kudos Badges for the next quarter and have some great ideas that will take the product to another level. We are also working on our next Top Secret solution for IBM Connections, this one being a whole new capability for Connections! We would love to hear your ideas of what else we could do and off course if you would like to try Kudos Badges out please do get in touch!