Collaborative Technologies Conference
Today was the first day of the Collaborative
Technologies Conference in
Boston. Almost all of the conferences I've previously attend are
either Lotus related or MS related. This was totally different, instead
it was an "industry event". The list of speakers was incredible.
(still is, the event has 2 more days). There were multiple
keynotes this morning, with presenters including John Seely Brown former
Chief Scientist at Xerox PARC, Mike Rhodin the General Manager of Lotus,
Matthew Glotzbach Head of Enterprise Products at Google, Jason Fried CEO
of 37
Signals, and others. (see
the agenda for full details).
The first breakout I attended was "Microsoft vs Lotus: Comparative Analysis" hosted by Peter O'Kelly and Mike Gotta of the Burton Group. They did an excellent job at explaining how both Lotus and MS have gone through significant changes since 2003. Peter detailed how IBM has done a tremendous job at clearing up the "mixed messages" that were being sent a few years ago around Notes/Domino and Workplace. He clearly articulated to the audience how Notes/Domino are here to stay, as they are a central part of the Lotus family. Mike covered the MS side of thing, including products like Office, Exchange, and SharePoint. He emphasized several times how going with a complete MS stack requires considerable up front architecture decisions now that all the products are "integrated". Where in the past your Portal IT group may not have been the same as your Directory IT group, as your Search IT group, as your Email IT groups, etc, etc, now they will all need to work together very closely, as one decision can effect everything else. If those decisions are not made correctly, you can be in A LOT of trouble. With Ray Ozzie taking over in a few years, what direction is MS going in? Is the MS future about the products that we know today, or some type of "Live" software as a service hosted on the web?
My second breakout was hosted by Ross Mayfield of SocialText. I loved this session. Rather than row after row of chairs, with all of us starting at slides, the room was instead turned into a giant circle of chairs, with Ross in the middle with the mic. The entire hour was open conversations with the audience about blogs, wikis, social networking, etc. I spoke several times (I'm so shy!), sharing my experiences as a blogger, and how it allows me to interact with all of you in ways that I never could have before. I was very impressed with how ahead of the curve IBM seems to be in our use (internally and externally) of these technologies. I left the session very encouraged that we are developing exactly the type of things the industry is talking about. I'm excited that soon you will all be able to use the next versions of Sametime (with some awesome Social Networking capabilities such as SkillTap that are FAR beyond just normal chat), Domino based blogging, and tagging software such as Dogear. The next few years are going to be exciting!
My final breakout of the day was a panel discussing the potential use of open source software within enterprises. There were two consulting companies (system integrators) as well as representatives from Zimbra and Alfresco. They addressed some of the common misconceptions behind open-source solutions not being supported, not being robust, and about the costs (or lack of) involved. They of course positioned their products as viable alternatives to the closed-source offerings from other large vendors. One of the advantages they pitched was how these open-source communities help each other solve problems quickly, and how their own companies can potentially have much closer relationships with their customers than the larger vendors can. They also pointed out how large of a supporter IBM is to the open-source world. I'll admit I don't know a lot about Alfresco, but I am really like some of the innovative ideas Zimbra has built into their email/calendar client. I liked the session, but I'll leave it to you to judge if these types of solutions are right for your company.
My head is spinning. Lotus, Google, Zimbra, SocialText, and so many other key collaboration heavyweights in one day! Again, it was heart warming for me to see how well positioned Lotus is in this "next wave" of collaboration. I know "cool" may not be the first thing you associate with "IBM", but trust me, get yourself a demo of the things Big Blue is doing, you'll be impressed.
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The first breakout I attended was "Microsoft vs Lotus: Comparative Analysis" hosted by Peter O'Kelly and Mike Gotta of the Burton Group. They did an excellent job at explaining how both Lotus and MS have gone through significant changes since 2003. Peter detailed how IBM has done a tremendous job at clearing up the "mixed messages" that were being sent a few years ago around Notes/Domino and Workplace. He clearly articulated to the audience how Notes/Domino are here to stay, as they are a central part of the Lotus family. Mike covered the MS side of thing, including products like Office, Exchange, and SharePoint. He emphasized several times how going with a complete MS stack requires considerable up front architecture decisions now that all the products are "integrated". Where in the past your Portal IT group may not have been the same as your Directory IT group, as your Search IT group, as your Email IT groups, etc, etc, now they will all need to work together very closely, as one decision can effect everything else. If those decisions are not made correctly, you can be in A LOT of trouble. With Ray Ozzie taking over in a few years, what direction is MS going in? Is the MS future about the products that we know today, or some type of "Live" software as a service hosted on the web?
My second breakout was hosted by Ross Mayfield of SocialText. I loved this session. Rather than row after row of chairs, with all of us starting at slides, the room was instead turned into a giant circle of chairs, with Ross in the middle with the mic. The entire hour was open conversations with the audience about blogs, wikis, social networking, etc. I spoke several times (I'm so shy!), sharing my experiences as a blogger, and how it allows me to interact with all of you in ways that I never could have before. I was very impressed with how ahead of the curve IBM seems to be in our use (internally and externally) of these technologies. I left the session very encouraged that we are developing exactly the type of things the industry is talking about. I'm excited that soon you will all be able to use the next versions of Sametime (with some awesome Social Networking capabilities such as SkillTap that are FAR beyond just normal chat), Domino based blogging, and tagging software such as Dogear. The next few years are going to be exciting!
My final breakout of the day was a panel discussing the potential use of open source software within enterprises. There were two consulting companies (system integrators) as well as representatives from Zimbra and Alfresco. They addressed some of the common misconceptions behind open-source solutions not being supported, not being robust, and about the costs (or lack of) involved. They of course positioned their products as viable alternatives to the closed-source offerings from other large vendors. One of the advantages they pitched was how these open-source communities help each other solve problems quickly, and how their own companies can potentially have much closer relationships with their customers than the larger vendors can. They also pointed out how large of a supporter IBM is to the open-source world. I'll admit I don't know a lot about Alfresco, but I am really like some of the innovative ideas Zimbra has built into their email/calendar client. I liked the session, but I'll leave it to you to judge if these types of solutions are right for your company.
My head is spinning. Lotus, Google, Zimbra, SocialText, and so many other key collaboration heavyweights in one day! Again, it was heart warming for me to see how well positioned Lotus is in this "next wave" of collaboration. I know "cool" may not be the first thing you associate with "IBM", but trust me, get yourself a demo of the things Big Blue is doing, you'll be impressed.
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