News

Latest news from the Let’sConnect user group

16/032019

Welcome Matteo Bisi to the Social Connections team!

News member, socialconnections, team by Matteo Bisi

Hello everyone, I’m the new guy of the outstanding Social Connections Crew!

To those of you who don’t know me, my name is Matteo Bisi, I’m from Italy and I work as s System Engineer for Factor-y, supporting our customers on IBM Connections and WebSphere Portal environments.

I’m a 6 times IBM Champion for Collaboration solutions , from 2014 to 2019!

A few days ago the crew asked me to join them and I was incredibly happy to say “YES , I cannot wait to be able to help you and our outstanding community!”

See you in Munich for Social Connections 15 , I’m sure we will have an unforgettable event!

04/032019

We welcome you to submit your abstract for Social Connections Munich 16-17 September 2019

News abstract, connections, hcl, ibm, ibm connections, session, sessions, speaker, submit, submit abstract by Maria Nordin

We have opened our call for abstract and speakers for our fall conference in Munich.

Submit your abstract here

As always we are looking for speakers who are passionate about collaboration solutions. It can be deep-dive technical sessions, best practices, use cases, success stores, catastrophe stories. Or something unique, that just you thought of. For inspiration, see below.

Do you have any questions? We are here for you: info@socialconnections.info

We are inviting sessions in the following tracks:

Administration – sessions relating to administering collaboration platforms. It could be the design and build of infrastructure, upgrading, managing users, migrating to the cloud, integration with other services or platforms etc. Sessions relating to cloud, hybrid or on-premises infrastructures are welcome!
Case Study – We love case studies! Sessions focused on telling the story of existing collaboration projects. And the more honest the better! Ideally these sessions should feature at least one speaker from the company that uses the platform, but they could be accompanied by a vendor or partner.
Development – how and why to develop for these services. We’d love you to share your tips, techniques and experience of developing solutions or applications, where you might hit issues, and how you overcome them.
Future of Work – sessions in this track should explore topics around the area of improving the productivity of individuals and organisations through the use of collaboration platforms.
Management and Adoption – sessions that take a higher-level view of the issues, challenges and opportunities that surface when deploying collaboration platforms.
Spotlight – this track is designed to give new (or experienced) speakers the chance to present a short session on a topic of their choice. Think of it as being akin to TED talks, but within the framework of Social Connections. You can choose to use a presentation deck or not, to prepare earnestly or to speak from the heart, the choice is yours. What we’re after is insight, interest and passion – the rest is up to you!
New Technology – We also want to reach out to new things, if you feel you have an interesting session on a new technology, please submit in this track.
Sponsor – for those organisations that are sponsoring the event at Gold level or above, there is the option to submit a Sponsor session for the conference.
Workshop – For hands on training. Please supply all information needed on what you need to be able to run it.
Academic – For faculty, IT staff or even students of any academic institution who want to share what they have achieved with collaboration platforms and how they see the future of collaboration.

22/022019

Announcing location of Social Connections 15 – we are going south

News 15, conference, connections, germany, hcl, ibm, munchen, munich by Maria Nordin

After a period of long thoughts, pondering, discussions, interviews we have decided the next location for our fantastic collaboration and networking conference known as Social Connections.

For the first time ever we stay in the same country as our previous conference, Germany. The reason for that is simply that the community asked us. And who are we to say no. At least for this time only. 😉

So buckle up, we are going south to the beautiful Bavaria and the city of Munich! The home of Lederhosen, Dirndl, Beer and Cars. All with a fantastic mountain backdrop.

We welcome you all to submit your session abstract and register for the conference as soon as we open our systems which should be during the next coming days.

See you in Munich, 16-17 September 2019 for Social Connections 15!

20/022019

The Social Connections team went to IBM Think in San Francisco we are bringing back all the news about Connections to you

News connections, letsconnect, soccnx, think2019 by Wannes Rams

We are super excited about the announcements and vibe around Connections at IBM Think

To start off with, just days before the conference, IBM released CR4 for IBM Connections 6. You can find a full description of what is new in that release here, but we wanted to share some highlights.

#New Community Catalog Page
The new design is following the Orient Me experience, with a large quick filtering bar on the top and a nice community list, that allows you to have a quick glance at what the communities are about and of course a link to enter them.

#Customizer light
It is now possible to install Connections Customizer without installing the rest of the component pack. This should make it lighter and easier to get started.

#File sharing via link
You can now easily share a file via a link that gets generated, to give read access to personal and community files

IBM has also announced CR5 to become available next quarter. We have seen a recent ramp up in pace in the release cycle that makes us very happy and grows confidence about the future of this great product.

Danielle Baptiste (Director, Offering Management, IBM Collaboration Solutions) also mentioned in her session that they now have over 4,500 ideas in the ideation system for Connections. If you don’t know how to access the ideation system, please check out the following link. Offering Management of Connections is listening to you, the customers. So go in and submit your ideas!

But probably the most exciting news for Connections was the announcement for the Jams. Following the successful pattern of Domino Jams, the Connections Offering Management team is announcing Jams for Connections in April and May. Please check this link to register.

There will be Jams in the following locations early this year:

Brussels (May date to be confirmed)
Stockholm (date to be confirmed)
Paris (April 5)
Frankfurt (April 1)
London (May date to be confirmed)
Charlotte (May date to be confirmed)
Asia Pacific (locations and 2H2019 dates to be confirmed)

But they will continue on later in the year as well. We are looking to add one to our next Social Connections event on September 16 and 17 and we are working to host one in Stockholm in April or May.

Last but not least we want to list some interesting content for you from the conference. Check out the following links to learn more about the bright future for Connections.

Connections: The Future Looks Bright
The Connections keynote with Danielle Baptiste
Think-ing from far away Part 4 – It’s all Connections
Listen to this podcast on all the news on Connections from Think. One of the participants on the podcast is one of Social Connections board members Wannes Rams
Prentation about Connections Customizer from Wannes Rams

08/022019

Connections User Group – The start of a new Era

News 2019, collaboration, connections, europe, hcl, ibm, september, socialconnections by Maria Nordin

The times they are a-changin! And we are super excited!

As you probably know by now HCL has signed an agreement with intent to acquire Connections along with many other products in the IBM Collaboration portfolio. It’s a huge step and very interesting times for all of us using IBM Collaboration Solutions.

For us in the Social Connections team it is great news and we are very positive about the future of IBM Connections. We saw the velocity with Domino being worked on by HCL and look forward to the dedication and execution of HCL on Connections.

We firmly believe Connections is in good hands!

Therefore, we can’t hold back the enthusiasm when we now announce our next Connections conference. The one-stop place for networking, knowledge sharing and hearing the latest news about Connections.

So join us 16-17 September 2019 for Social Connections 15 in EUROPE!

Platinum sponsor:

Keynote speakers:

Richard Jefts
Vice President & General Manager Collaborative Workflow Platforms

Andre Hagemeier
Director Of Engineering at HCL Technologies

11/102018

Vamos a la playa – join us for some evening fun in Berlin!

News evening, gala, soccnx, social connections by Maria Nordin

The moment you all have been waiting for has arrived! And trust us, we have been waiting for it too!

Long we thought there was not going to be an evening event this, the 14th edition of our conference. We just couldn’t see how. It actually was a terrible feeling as we know that the evening event where we round off day 1 of the conference, is one of those things that our attendees value the most. To relax after a day of conferencing, have dinner and some fun with that person you tried to chase all day to have a moment to talk to. To make new friends, catch up with dear old ones, and to tie those so important business knots.

Then a series of unforeseen events occurred which made it all possible! Happy faces all around. So what should we cook up this time? Those of you that have visited our conferences before know that we always want to do something more for you all. Good meal and drinks, yes. But also that extra quirky thing, like a special venue, some crazy activity or just something that make you smile.

For example, we have had our events at a playground with go-carts and climbing wall in Stuttgart, a table tennis bar in Chicago, Hockey hall of Fame (!) in Toronto, a Photography Museum in Stockholm or a Science Museum with dinosaurs in Boston.

So, therefore, it’s totally natural for us to invite you to a beach party in Berlin! Yes, you heard right. Beach party.

Welcome to Beach Mitte which is an indoor and outdoor venue with good food and fun games, and an outdoor beach! Enjoy archery at the outdoor bonfire station or challenge your colleague on table football, XXL Jenga or table tennis.

The address is as below and it takes approximately 30 minutes by public transport from the conference venue.

BeachMitte
Caroline-Michaelis-Str. 8
10115 Berlin

We start at 19:30 and continue into the night.

03/102018

Sponsor highlight: ISW / Kudos

News adam, analytics, awards, badges, boards, buzzy, calendar, connections, ibm, ibm connections, ideas, isw, jay, kanban, kudos, maria, mark, mindmap, project, timeline, view by Wannes Rams

Our next Gold sponsor you might know as the Aussies (new: now also with a Swede), a k a ISW and the app suite Kudos Apps. One thing is certain though, Kudos Apps constantly evolves to meet the users’ needs.

Not only is many of the apps available for both On Premise and Cloud, they have also added on some fantastic things in the blockbuster Kudos Boards. Users who previously were working with the very popular Kanban view of their task can now also reach a whole new level of task management with 2 new ways on looking at the tasks. First we have the Timeline view which lets the user to see a calendar with all tasks clearly visible on the specific dates. Second we have a Mindmap view which lets you have a great overview over the whole project. And of course as earlier, drag and drop tasks in between lists and dates.

Your projects has never been more easy to manage and keep track on.

So come to our booth were you can take a closer look on these new major updates on Kudos Boards and see our other apps such as Kudos Ideas, Kudos Buzzy, Kudos Badges, Kudos Awards and Kudos Analytics.