Tags: IBM, developerWorks, alphaWorks, Emerging Technologies, QEDWiki, ThinkPlace, Innovation, Slideshare, DevEngage, Many Eyes, ManyEyes, Collaboration, Communities, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0

I am sure that by now most of you folks, who have been reading this weblog for a little while already, know about developerWorks. You may have even read over here about some of the different emerging technologies that IBM is putting together outside ibm.com under alphaWorks and some of which I have been commenting over here already: QEDWiki, ThinkPlace. However, what you may not know much about is alphaWorks itself and how it actually works.

Well, this may well be the perfect weblog post for you then. Some time ago I attended an internal conference call where I was introduced to alphaWorks with a very nicely put together slide deck. I thought the session was rather informative and educational and right away I asked whether it would be possible to share those presentation materials or not with an external audience. Right away I got the answer that it surely was possible to do that and this is the post where I am going to be sharing the materials with you so that you can have a look at some of the exciting stuff that is going on at alphaWorks and some relevant emerging technologies over at IBM.

I have shared the presentation in Slideshare already and will be embedding it over here very shortly, but just wanted to mention a couple of things on what you can expect to find in alphaWorks, taken directly from the slide deck, just to give you a brief introduction to what you will find further:

"— alphaWorks is a proving ground for emerging technologies and ideas
— Facilitates immediate feedback from early adopters and targeted communities
— Helps determine new markets for technology, including commercial interest
— has established market leadership: over 800 technologies published, many graduations to products and open source."

From there onwards you would be able to get good overviews of technologies like DevEngage and Many Eyes, amongst others. Thus without much further ado, here is the embedded version of the slide deck where you would be able to check out what is going on inside IBM with regards to some emerging technologies:

Oh, and stay tuned, because very shortly I will be sharing some further thoughts on one other addition that has been put together recently and which I think will be a huge time saver for everyone out there who lives on the Web…

Tags: ECKM, ECKM2007, ECKM-2007, Barcelona, Spain, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Academics, David Gurteen, Gurteen, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Holidays, Vacation, Tapas, Life, People, Sightseeing

It has been a while since I last mentioned over here an interesting Knowledge Management conference that I would want to go to, but that I can’t for whatever the reason. Well, in the last few weeks I have found another one: the 8th European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM2007) that will be taking place in Barcelona, Spain, on September 6th - 7th 2007.

Yes, that is right, the ECKM 2007 conference would be one of those really cool events that I would want to go to, but that, unfortunately, I will not be able to. At least, not initially. I first heard about it from David Gurteen, who mentioned to me in a Skype chat, he was going to be there. Then I went into the official Web site and checked out the impressive agenda put together thus far and it really made me think about wanting to go. Desperately. What a fantastic line-up of KM topics!

If you check out the agenda itself, you would be able to see the wide area of areas and topics covered related to Knowledge Management, and although there doesn’t seem to be lots of interest, nor sessions, on social computing per se I still think it would be one of those events that I would seriously consider going to. It is always good to know what is happening at the other side, don’t you think? Although if you come to check some of the sessions and also some of the lunches put together social computing and social software *is* going to be on the table.

Alas, and like I mentioned above, I will not be able to make it this time around. The price tag seems to be rather expensive, unfortunately, for me to pay it as an individual, since I doubt my organisation would be able to finance it. And to make things even more difficult, I am actually going to be on holidays!! in Barcelona!!! How cool is that?

Yes, that is right. I already got the flight tickets and the hotel booked and will be there from September 5th till the 16th, enjoying one of my favourite cities of the world that I haven’t seen in a few years. Last time I was there I was still living in The Netherlands. And somehow I thought it would be appropriate to come back at that time of the year, since the weather would still be nice and, hopefully, things would be a bit quieter, after the holiday period.

And then you have got the ECKM 2007 event! Goodness! How much of a coincidence is that? Well, not much. Because I already planned to be in Barcelona around that same week, but instead of arriving later in the week I thought I would be arriving earlier so that I may be able to catch up with folks before, during or after the conference.

As I said, I am not going to attend the conference for some of the reasons I mentioned above, mainly the price tag, but it would surely be really cool if any of the regular readers of this weblog, who may be coming along, would want to get together to go for a drink and some lovely tapas. That would be really nice, wouldn’t it? That with the excuse of the ECKM 2007 conference and me being on holidays over there we would get a chance to meet up, enjoy a couple of drinks and catch up with each in real life.

Thus are you going to be there? Will you want to get together? If, yes, feel free to drop a comment over here or contact me offline and we will arrange something. Oh, and if you are new to this weblog, but still going to the conference and wanting to meet up let me know as well. Why not? It’s got to start somewhere, right?

(I am not sure just yet how much I would be able to continue with my blogging activities while I am there, since I am currently debating taking the computer with me or not. Still undecided. Not to worry, though, if I take it, it is not going to be because of work, but because of processing the huge amount of pictures I will be taking from one of the most breath-taking European cities out there!! Hello Barcelona! Here I come!)

Oh, oh, and here is an appetiser for you:

Tags: WhatItOnceWas, Gran Canaria, Fires, Incendio, Presa Soria, Soria’s Dam, Flickr, Photography, Photos, Nature, Healing, Life, Dams

Continuing further with the weekly series on What It Once Was here I am again at it. This week sharing with you folks some pictures from one place in Gran Canaria that I have always found very very special. Not just because it is the largest reservoir dam there is in the island of Gran Canaria, with a capacity of 40.288.625 cubic meter (m³) of water, but also because some of its surroundings are just spectacular. Truly spectacular!

It may take a while before the area would recover from the fires, but it would certainly be one place that I will keep coming back and see how little by little it would recover. It is going to be a slow process, I know, but precious gems like this one do leave a mark and always make you come back. Yes, indeed, I am talking about Presa de Soria or Soria’s Dam. One of those magical places that will show you nature at its best in a magnificent and breath-taking surrounding.

I have taken lots and lots of long walks over there over the course of time, and time and time again I keep having that strong feeling I need to come back again. Yes, I know, one of those special places. Thus here I go sharing some more pictures I took not long ago, and before the recent fires created havoc all around the area, so that you get a chance to admire such incredible place while it slowly comes back into shape.

It kind of makes you wonder what people were thinking about when provoking those fires. After seeing some of these pictures, and the whole lot more I have shared over at my Flickr account, I still cannot find the words. Seriously. Still can’t … And here is why:

Tags: IBM, Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes 8, Notes 8, Domino, Domino 8, Dennis Howlett, ZDNet, Atlassian, Confluence, Ed Brill, Ben Poole, Alek Lotoczko, OpenNTF, DominoWiki, Integration, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Innovation, Social Software Adoption, Enterprise Collaboration, Enterprise Social Software

While the news items and further weblog posts keep coming up all over the place on the official launch of Lotus Notes and Domino 8, I thought I would go ahead and share with you one particular weblog post that I thought was rather interesting as well as it touches base on something I have been talking about over here for quite some time now. The weblog post comes from Dennis Howlett, over at ZDNet blogs, with the title: Old meets new: Lotus Domino and Atlassian, and it has also been referenced by Ed Brill, Ben Poole (Part of the story) and Alek Lotoczko (Main protagonist from the story itself)

In that particular weblog post, Dennis gets to detail a previous conversation he had with Alek Lotoczko, where Alek is explaining how he actually made use of the fine OpenNTF DominoWiki application, that Ben Poole put together some time ago, just because of its simplicity to get the job done. From there onwards, things have developed with the deployment of the fully funded  Confluence wiki engine (That IBM, by the way, is also making use of both internally and externally) that will be fed by that same DominoWiki engine in such a way that the Confluence wiki would be the main tool used, but still in conjunction with the already existing one, which by the looks of it, it is not even going to disappear any time soon.

This is certainly a great story to catch up with and read some more about it and, from my point of view, it comes to validate something that I have been saying all along about social software tools reaching out to enter the enterprise: The key towards a successful implementation and deployment of social computing tools behind the corporate firewall is not going to be on the substitution of already existing collaborative tools, but in the integration, consolidation and augmentation of what is already available, as I have mentioned over here not so long ago.

That, to me, is where the key on the success of adoption some of these tools is going to be. Forget about finding the way to remove or replace what you already have for something that still has got to prove its value, to some degree, according to what some other folks out there keep saying over and over again. Instead, show that business value by providing different ways on how those same tools would merge and integrate with the collaboration and knowledge sharing flow of what is already available out there. That is what will help on the successful adoption of these tools and not in the continuous struggle that some folks seem to be going through all this time.

And Alek’s story detailed by Dennis is just a living proof of that. Thus thanks much, Dennis, Alek and Ben, for sharing this great story with us and for helping spread the message of how that integration could work out successfully. We really appreciate it and are very grateful for it! It is going to be such a huge time saver!

(Amongst some of the pearls of wisdom that Dennis has shared towards the end of the blog post:

"— Current project success was driven by tools that deliver immediate user value
— Open source can open the door to commercial solutions
— There is no requirement to ditch incumbent applications that continue to deliver value" [...])

Tags: IBM, Lotus Notes, Notes, Lotus Notes 8, Domino 8, Notes 8, Ed Brill, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, E-mail, Calendaring, Applications, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Enterprise 2.0, Slideshare

And to tease you folks some more, here you have got a PDF file that I have uploaded into Slideshare and which you can also grab from here, that details some of the stuff that over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you over here in much more detail about today’s announcement of the final gold release from IBM’s Lotus Notes 8. It is a very short presentation, but in it you would be able to see why plenty of us are excited about this final release, perhaps one of the most important ones in the last 10 years as Ed Brill has mentioned already.

Thus without much further ado, here is the link to the embedded presentation below on IBM Lotus Notes 8:

Still think that Notes 8 is just another e-mail client? …

Tags: Dennis Howlett, IBM, Lotus Notes, Notes, Lotus Notes 8, Domino 8, Notes 8, Ed Brill, Volker Weber, YouTube, Screencast, Videocast, Demo, Lotus Notes 8 Support, Notes 8 Support, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, E-mail, Calendaring, Applications, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Enterprise 2.0

I bet that Dennis Howlett is going to enjoy this one quite a bit I am pretty sure that by now most of you folks out there have been exposed in one way or another to one of IBM’s major announcements in months! Yes, that is right! The moment that quite a few of us have been waiting for, after putting to the test several different betas month after month of one of the most powerful collaboration tools available out there: Lotus Notes.

Please allow me to introduce you to Lotus Notes and Domino 8! Yes, the final gold release with all of the different support resources available as well!

As you may have guessed already, you would be able to find all of the various information details on the announcement and whatever else may be happening over at Ed Brill’s weblog. I am sure that you would be able to get all of the details you need from his Web site, but just in case you may want to get a little bit of a teaser to see where all of this excitement comes from, let me share with you a couple of links you may find interesting to get you going:

— To get you going a short demo on some of the most powerful new features put together for this particular release, where you would be able to see how Lotus Notes 8 is just so much more than just another e-mail and calendaring client.

— And secondly, here is a YouTube video, referenced by Volker as well, in which Ron Sebastian, executive architect for Lotus Software, gives you a 10 minute tour of some of the new functionality provided. Worth while a look if you would want to see it running live:

I will not entertain you any longer. I will just let you go and get right into the action following up what Ed and other folks have got to say about this major announcement from IBM in the collaboration space and from here onwards and over the next few weeks, months, I am hoping to be able to share some further insights as to why I feel this particular release will prove that Notes is just a whole lot more than just an e-mail client. But one step at a time. First, let’s go and download it today!