Inform Australia (a.k.a. AusLUG) call for Speaker Abtracts

The awesome team organising Inform Australia 2014 (previously AusLUG) have announced the new dates for the event, being Sept 4th & 5th Sept in Melbourne. This will be the 4th annual event and it is great to have it back in Melbourne for the 2nd time.

Inform recently announced that the event is open now for speakers to submit abstracts. Having been fortunate enough to speak at the previous events I can only encourage everyone to have a go and share your knowledge. Developers, Administrators, Users, Managers, Business people, IBMers....all sessions ideas are welcome and the audience tend to be great and interactive. Connections, Domino, Sametime, Traveller, Smartcloud, Talent Suite and Kenexa, Digital Experience, Forms, Portal, Worklight, User Adoption, Success Stories, technical or business, or even just a general topic related to collaboration.

So go on, give it a go. I guarantee you won't regret it. To submit an abstract just head over to the Inform site, register, and then just submit a session from your Profile page.

A pre-Connect 2014 teaser: Announcing Kudos Boards for IBM Connections

Well in the tradition that is Kudos and IBM Connect we love to announce new products leading up to Connect. And this year we have a doozy! We have been working away for quite a while on our latest idea to make Connections even better. What we call Kudos Boards for IBM Connections.

We love Activities in Connections. They are awesome! Working together on projects and leveraging Social Tools is a very powerful way of getting stuff done. However some Activities can get BIG! Sometimes users want to look at things in a slightly different way or organise the Activity slightly differently. Sometimes users don't need to see everything that is going on but just one part. Sometimes it would be easier if Activities was more VISUAL.

Wouldn't it be great if you could visualise an Activity...as a Board....similar to a Kanban Board, so you can drag and drop to organise Tasks and Entries. Wouldn't it be neat if you could filter the content of your Boards by Person, by Priority, by Colour code, or by any other filter you want? Imagine a visual Board where you can quickly create new sections....or Lists. One click to create an Entry or To Do......then quickly drag it to another List....or back. Wouldn't it be great if Boards could refer to other Boards. Wouldn't it be great if when you updated your Board everyone else that has that Board open has it refreshed instantly. Now wouldn't it be even better if you could take an existing Connections Activity and do all of this, and syncronize in real time every change back into the Activity. Best of both worlds!

Now take it to another level and imagine a way to visually group Boards/Activities together by category, or project type, or what ever you want! Pin your favorite Boards for quick access even. Kudos Boards does this and a whole lot more all seamlessly integrated into the IBM Connections interface. If you think that Kudos Badges was designed well then Kudos Boards will rock your socks:)

We will be announcing more on Tuesday the 21st of Jan, just before IBM Connect. Might even get a video published so you can see Boards in action. Then off course you can see it live at IBM Connect. Just look for the Kudos Ped 113 on the showroom floor. Watch this space! For now here are some screenshots and you can find out more at KudosBadges.com

Hmm. A new button in Activities. I wonder what that does?Kudos Boards - Visualize your Activity!Simple Drag and Drop of List and Cards on a Kudos BaordEasy Click and Edit of Lists and Cards. One Click to add a card!

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.

ISW Social Ignition for Lotus Notes 8.5.3

For those that have not noticed yet IBM has just announced the release of IBM Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.3. This is a great release and one that I know many clients have been looking forward to. You can find out all the information on the formal IBM Annoucement here.

Of particular note however is the following:

Entitlement to IBM Connections Files and Profiles, for no additional charge, allows you to tap into the knowledge of networks of professionals with a single click. This helps users to quickly find skills within their organization and to easily share content with other people and remove the need to send large files through email.

THIS IS AWESOME! ISW has been working with many clients implementing IBM Connections and now to have a entitlement to Profiles and Files as part of your Notes/Domino 8.5.3 licensing adds significant value at no extra cost. So as IBM are adding so much value ISW has decided we had better join in.

ISW are excited to announce a special limited time only Ignition offer on the back of IBM's release of Lotus Notes 8.5.3. The latest release of Lotus Notes includes, at no extra charge, license entitlement to two IBM Connections 3.0.1 features; Profiles and Files. What an opportunity for Notes customers to begin their journey as a Social Business! We all know Notes has been a social platform for many years but now this takes it to a whole new level.

In order to take full advantage of these Connections features, ISW has created Social Ignition, available until December 31st 2011.

What is Social Ignition?
Sure, IBM have given you ‘free’ access to these features, but we want you to enjoy the complete benefits that come from a professional, experienced installation and integration. Get started quickly without the hassles of learning how to install and implement Connections.

This limited time offer will get your Connections Profiles and Files installed and seamlessly integrated into your Notes environment at a pace we challenge you to beat.

$4,500+GST will get you set up either on premise or in the cloud. You will be enjoying your brand new social features faster than Mark Webber does a lap of Albert Park (well almost)!

To make it even better, clients that make the move this year will receive a free entitlement to ISW’s Wildfire Social Aggregator Sidebar Plugin and for clients that we really like a free entitlement to iWildfire ISW's iPhone and iPad App for Connections.

Don’t have the Infrastructure? Need some hosting?
That’s OK, we can do that too with full integration into your Notes/Domino environment. Just ask us for a quote on monthly hosting in the cloud.

To find our more about the offer, visit ISW's website. Or contact us in Australia on 1800 456 001. Or you can tweet me at adambrownaus.