IBM Collaboration Solutions Community Meeting - Tuesday 26 July 2011

This from Joyce Davis, Community Manager, IBM Collaboration Solutions and Social Business

Hi all - I hope you'll join us for our July IBM Collaboration Solutions community meeting! Below is an outline of this month's agenda and a link to register for the call. 

Date: Tuesday, July 26th 10:00 AM Eastern time (US)

Agenda:

• 
Community updates (including a social media update!)
• Community member spotlights:

  • Eileen Fitzgerald, GSX

  • Colleen Walker, IBM
• Special topics:
  • Symphony update - hear about the latest fixpack and how community feedback led to product improvements (Leah Backus)

  • Overview of IBM Collaboration Solutions community - a demo of the online community, with suggestions on how to participate, and how to find the information or people you're looking for (Joyce Davis)

Click here to register: https://www-950.ibm.com/events/swgeer/swgeer06.nsf/signin?openform&seminar=kwojdas8c7la5〈=en

 

To learn more about our community, including how to participate, visit our community landing page at: http://bit.ly/icscommunity

RT @CuriousMitch - Using the DB2 Control Center to Connect to a Remote Database

This is very timely, because we've had a similar requirement here, where our DB2 servers are running on "headless" Linux servers ( for some reason, I always think of Harry Potter when I write "headless" ).

Thanks to "Curious" Mitch Cohen for this rather useful blog post: -

When using DB2 you might want to use the Control Center GUI to query or manage a database that resides on a remote machine, took me a little time to work out and I promised others I would share this.  I am sure there is more then one way to accomplish this, your mileage may vary.

Before you begin you need to collect the following information

• Fully Qualified Hostname where the DB2 database resides

• Services file entry for the database – this will include the instance name and port number (default is 50000, but could be different depending on your DB2 Configuration

• The Database Name to connect to

• The operating system of the DB2 Install

• Username & Password to connect to the Database

IBM Webinar - Drive revenue and increase brand loyalty by creating personalised web experiences

This from my IBM colleagues in the Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) team.

E-commerce is no longer simply about selling online, it's about delivering a tailored shopping experience across all customer touchpoints.

Register for this webinar to discover how IBM are bringing together the capabilities of their Web Experience and IBM Coremetrics web analytics solutions to provide you with real time insights into how your customers are interacting with your brand online and across multiple channels, and how this data can be used to optimise your customers' interactions.

During this session we will provide you with insights into: -

• Current Trends: social, mobile and email
• The Challenge: customer engagement
• Creating compelling experiences
• Consumer insight and relentless marketing
• Real life case studies

Webinar details

Date
26 July 2011 @ 14:00 UK

Presenters
Mike Spradbery, UKI Business Leader, IBM Web Experience Software

Neelam Kharay, Solutions Architect, IBM Coremetrics

Duration
60 minutes


URL
http://livedemos.coremetrics-events.com/livedemo-webinar.php

Bling with WebSphere Portal - A tutorial in five parts

On a random Google, looking for information about iWidget performance in the Page Builder theme in WebSphere Portal 7, and found this useful series of articles from Mr Cody Burleson Esq: -

You want to whip out a kick-ass portlet base for your next application? I got the mojo right here, baby. In this series, we'll build a new portlet from scratch; JSR 286, Spring, Dojo, Ajax, Apache Tiles, and SLF4J over LogBack for logging – all the latest bling, bling. Today, we'll start by creating a basic portlet in Rational Application Developer (RAD).

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 1

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 2

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 3

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 4

WebSphere Portlet Mojo with Spring and Dojo – Part 5

Must find some time to run through the tutorial ....

Want to learn HTML5 ? If so, has developerWorks got an offer for you .... ? Well, yes, it has :-)

A nice little series of articles up on the IBM developerWorks site

Part 1: Getting your feet wet

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article is the first in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design, the creation of forms, the use and value of the APIs, and the creative possibilities that Canvas provides.

Part 2: Organizing inputs

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the Web and in the cloud. This article is the second in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design; the creation of forms; the use and value of the APIs; and, finally, the creative possibilities that Canvas provides. This second part introduces the concept of HTML5 form controls and touches on the role of JavaScript and CSS3.

Part 3: The power of HTML5 APIs

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way you now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article is the third in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, beginning with the new tags and page organization and providing high-level information on web page design, the creation of forms, the use and value of the APIs, and, finally, the creative possibilities that Canvas provides. This installment introduces HTML5 APIs, using an example page to demonstrate functions.

Part 4: The final touch

HTML5 reflects the monumental changes in the way we now do business on the web and in the cloud. This article, the fourth in a four-part series designed to spotlight changes in HTML5, introduces the HTML5 Canvas element, using several examples to demonstrate functions.

Nice :-)

Social Connections - the very first ever IBM Connections User Group meeting ever anywhere

As previously mentioned, I took some time out today to pop along to the oh-so-shiny headquarters of The Salvation Army, in Queen Victoria Street in London, to attend the inaugural Social Connections event.

This was ably organized by Sharon Bellamy and Stuart McIntyre, along with a cast of many, including Mr Mark Calleran, CIO of The Salvation Army.

Arriving around 0900, after an excellent walk along the the Thames, with my friend and colleague, Alastair Hillis-Wragg of the IBM Betaworks team, I was soon into the important part of the day - the coffee :-) Sharon and I did a good job of getting through the first few flasks, but the catering team were way ahead of us, and kept the beverages flowing.

Apart from the kind hosting from Mark and his team ( who also doubled up as cameramen, audio experts, key grips and general goto-guys ), the event was sponsored by three BM partners, ATech, Collaboration Matters and Portal, and supported by IBM ( there were a fair few IBMers there, so it gave me an opportunity to catch up with those people who I see so infrequently, thanks to project fun off-site ).

Despite a few hinky travel-related moments, Stuart kept things running to schedule, and I was enthralled by presentations from: -

Daniel Siddle from Headshift

Jon Mell from IBM ( Portal and Social Sales Leader for North-East Europe )

Joseph D'Armi from Portal

Mike Roche from IBM ( Chief Architect for IBM Connections, Dublin Labs )

Michael Ahern from IBM ( Connections development team, Dublin Labs )

- Michael even managed to squeeze in a real live demo of that "Norwegian Army Knife" known as Tivoli Directory Integrator ( TDI ) - also known as IBM Blue Glue :-)

Sadly I had to leave and go do some "real" work after lunch, so missed presentations from Mark, Andy Piper, Claudio Proccida and others.

Even more sadly, I missed out on the opportunity to go for beers with the team after the event :-(

On a more positive note, I believe Stuart is going to ensure that the presentations are posted on-line soon, so I commend you to go and take a look ....

In the meantime, I gather that the live streaming was well received, judging by the Tweets directed to the back of my head :-)

So, in closing, a great session, well organized, well-run and well delivered - my thanks to Sharon and Stuart and the rest of the hard-working band.

Looking forward to the next event - which is, apparently, in Cardiff, which is in Wales :-)

Get Social, Do Business - And have fun - Social Connections, 4 July 2011

This from @StuartMcIntyre

Good morning.

The first Social Connections event is now just days away, taking place on Monday 4th July.  Thank you for registering for the event, we can't wait to meet with you on Monday.

The event takes place at Salvation Army's International Headquarters in London.  The address is:

The Salvation Army
International Headquarters
101 Queen Victoria St
London
EC4V 4EH

Here is the Google Maps link. There is no parking available on site, so public transport is definitely the preferred method of getting there.  The Blackfriars underground station is closed at present (though the mainline station is still operating), so use either Mansion House (Circle/District Line) or St Pauls (Central Line) - both are within 400m of the location.  On entering the building reception, turn right to go down a level to the Cafe 101, a you will see signs pointing you to the area being used for this event.

Registration opens at 9:00am, with the welcome and keynotes kicking off at 9:30am.  Thanks to our great sponsors (Portal and Ascendant Technology), breakfast will be served as you arrive, and all refreshments will be provided through the day. Sessions will end at approximately 5:00pm, with the option to retire to a local pub or restaurant for those that wish to continue the conversation - more information will be provided at the event.

The full agenda has been published on the Social Connections site - we have a packed schedule lined up, with a series of 30 minute sessions to keep the pace high and the topics varied.  We have a mix of great speakers from IBM UK, the IBM Dublin labs, business partners and customers, and will be covering both technical and management areas.  There is also the opportunity to provide feedback directly to Mike Roche who heads up the Connections development team in Ireland on new features for Connections Next, to ask questions of an expert panel, to discuss how this user group moves forward, and to network throughout the day.  In fact, we will encouraging all our speakers to make time to speak with you - there is no speakers' lounge at this user group, it's all about the connections we can make in the precious time we spend face-to-face.

In short, the organising committee is really excited that so many of you have registered and thank you for making the effort to attend. It will be a great day!  See you on Monday.  If there are any questions before then, please do not hesitate to ask.

(If for any reason you cannot attend the event, please could you cancel your registration on the Social Connections site.  Having an accurate count of numbers really helps us with catering requirements. Thanks.)

See you there :-)