We are a week away from the start of IBM InterConnect 2015, and this week it's all about getting ready for that conference. And I'm definitely looking forward to the concert on Wednesday with Aerosmith and "the Sharks" at the keynote. I've been getting addicted to Shark Tank recently so can't wait to see them in Vegas.
Let's talk sessions. As part of InterConnect, there's a System of Engagement track where you'll find all sessions around Social Business. Here's the full list of those sessions:
One of the sessions that I'll be presenting at is What is New and Coming in IBM Connections. If you weren't at IBM ConnectED 2015, this will be similar to that session. I'll cover the business value of social collaboration, what's in the product today and what's coming tomorrow. In fact, check out this podcast episode where Jim Claussen caught David Brooks (the IBM Connections architect) and myself after our session at IBM ConnectED 2015:
As we continue to wrap up from IBM ConnectED 2015 (and get ready for IBM InterConnect 2015), I wanted to highlight a new solution showcased at ConnectED 2015. The solution comes from AppFusions and brings together many cloud file services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive directly into IBM Connections.
For example, IBM Connections users to access, preview, edit, share, upload, and locally download OneDrive files directly from the IBM Connections platform.
Here are the features that AppFusions calls out (note: if you are not using Office 365 and instead you are using Google Drive or another cloud file service, you can pretty much substitute OneDrive below for your cloud file service.):
Natively authenticate, access and navigate your OneDrive/Box/Dropbox/Google Drive file directory, including sub directories, from IBM Connections
Preview files
Edit OneDrive files in Office365 from within IBM Connections, regardless of OS or Browser
Save back edits, direct to OneDrive/Box/Dropbox/Google Drive, from IBM Connections
Upload local files to OneDrive, from within IBM Connections
Download a copy of any OneDrive file, locally
Share OneDrive files (and identify share settings), from IBM Connections
Supports: Office365 native file formats, Adobe PDF files, Zip files, text files, etc.
Want to see it in action? Check out the quick 2 minute demo:
To learn more, check out the solution page in the AppFusions site for the integration that you are looking for:
I'm finally back in the office after 2.5 weeks on the road: first for IBM ConnectED 2015, then on to Austin to meet with the IBM Design team and work on IBM Connections Next. In between all that, however, my Mac decided to have a meltdown. Luckily, it was the Tuesday after the keynote at IBM ConnectED. My big worry, though, was, since my Mac died on January 27th and I knew my last Time Machine backup was on January 21st... how much was I going to lose ?
So when Tuesday comes along, I opened my Mac and the screen was just blank. So I did a hard power reset and it seem to then come back. It looked like I was able to log in, but then it would just get stuck on this screen:
I frantically started to search the forums and nothing that they suggested helped. Then all of a sudden... "did I just lose all my IBM ConnectED 2015 demos, presentations, content, etc???"
I ended taking it to the Apple Store last week while in Austin. The Apple Genius ended up wiping my disk clean and resetting and said it was an issue with File Vault and Yosemite. Once back home, I restored from Time Machine and did notice I lost 2 files that for some reason I hadn't stored in my IBM Connections sync folder. But that was a lesson learned... from now on, all my work is going to the IBM Connections sync folder, especially given I have 1 TB of space to store files in the cloud.
Yesterday I posted a recap of the IBM ConnectED 2015 OGS. Today, I wanted to focus on the What's New in IBM Connections session that I presented at after the keynote. The intent of the session was to recap our deliveries in 2014 (which were a lot!) and then give you a glimpse at what's coming next.
There were two things that I called out to the audience. First, for those of you who are running IBM Connections on-premises, you should definitely be looking at what we are doing in the cloud. We are going to continue our cloud first model where every several weeks there will be new features showing up in the cloud. Then at some point in 2015, we'll take what's in the cloud and ship it to our on-premises customers.
Second, the product management and development teams continue to monitor the ideas and feature requests that YOU are giving us. In fact, everything that's coming in 2015 and everything that we showed in the session comes directly from the ideas submitted by our users. If you would like to see the ideas that others are submitting and vote on them, or better yet, submit your very own feature request, go here.
For those of you who couldn't make it to IBM ConnectED 2015, I've posted a copy of the deck online here:
Here's a recap of the tweets during the session. The session repeated twice on Monday (and yes, my brain was about to explode!) so you may see tweets out of order here.
It's hard to believe that just a week ago was the keynote (aka OGS ... aka the Opening General Session) at IBM ConnectED . This year I again had the opportunity to demo during the keynote and present IBM Connections Next, the next iteration of our market leading enterprise social collaboration platform.
Prior to the demos, some interesting stats were shared. The one that caught my attention the most is that the IBM Verse announcement gathered more impressions than any other IBM announcement, including Watson, the IBM + Apple partnership and the IBM + Twitter partnership. That's HUGE!
The onto the demos. This year, Scott Souder focused on IBM Verse and I focused exclusively on IBM Connections. I wanted the audience to take a way a few things: 1) our focus on design, 2) our focus on helping people understand what's important so you can work on what matters, and 3) our focus on reducing interruptions.
Updated 11/Feb/2015: Here's a recording of the OGS (and you can skip to 37:30 for the IBM Connections demo):
For another perspective, one of the attendees in the first row captured the keynote and made it available in YouTube. Enjoy the keynote here (and you can skip to 54:00 for the IBM Connections demo):
And here's a sampling of the tweets during the OGS:
Beyond IBM Connections Next, there was also an announcement for a new IBM Connections offering that's just for Files. This will be the lead offering to compete in the Enterprise File Sync and Share space. This is in response to many users loving our file sync capabilities, and in some cases asking for just that (without the other collaboration aspects from Connections such as Communities, Wikis, Blogs, etc). Analysts have also already highly rated IBM as a leader in the Enterprise File Sync and Share space.
This new offering will give you Files only, along with expertise search, social analytics and access to our desktop and mobile apps. Users will have the option to buy upgrade to other cloud offerings such as Chat, IBM Verse, Web Meetings, IBM Docs, etc. The offering will be available as part of our March 2015 deployment.
Additionally, customers looking for compliance will be able to start using the Actiance Vantage offering with IBM Connections Cloud soon.
From the OGS, I headed over to the Dolphin for the What's New and Coming in IBM Connections and IBM Connections Mobile. I'll cover that in the next post.
There were two things that I called out to the audience. First, for those of you who are running 