Author: Bruce Elgort

You’ll find this technology professor – an award-winning instructor at Clark College – working hard to inspire and challenge his students with meaningful web development and programming experiences. With a skinny vanilla latte (no foam) in hand, Bruce loves to tinker and test the boundaries of existing and emerging technologies, to then guide hungry minds through memorable, educational journeys to showcase with passion the ever-evolving innovations of society. An industry leader, Bruce is known for co-developing Elguji’s IdeaJam software, and is recognized by IBM as an ‘IBM Champion’ for being an innovative thought leader in cloud technologies.

Podcast: Opting In – Ed Brill talks about his new book

Today we spoke with Ed Brill (http://edbrill.com), Director of Social Business and Collaboration Solutions at IBM, about his new book. It’s called Opting In: Lessons in Social Business from a Fortune 500 Product Manager, and it’s available both on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Opting-In-Lessons-Business-Fortune/dp/0133258939) and directly from IBM Press (http://www.ibmpressbooks.com/store/opting-in-lessons-in-social-business-from-a-fortune-9780133258936).

We discussed:

  • Why did you write this book?
  • Who is the audience?
  • What is the message of the book?
  • What has surprised you about the book?
  • What’s going on at IBM Connect related to the book?
  • And more…

Listen now >

Podcast: The IBM 2012 Tech Trends Report

On this episode we interviewed IBM’s Paul Brunet, Vice President ISVs, startups and academic relations, IBM about the recent release of the IBM 2012 Tech Trends Report. During the interview we talked about:
Paul’s role at IBM

  • What exactly does the Tech Trends Report covers
  • What surprised Paul in the report
  • The growing skill gaps in technology
  • What IBM Is doing to help shrink the skills gap
  • Paul’s advice for developers and IT admins that are trying to keep up with all of the changes in IT
  • Social Business and Collaboration. Did the report uncover anything interesting in those areas?
  • and much more…

On the recording you will hear the show be identified as episode 172 when in actuality it’s really 173. The show runs for 28:08 minutes.

Listen now >

Please pray for a truly special young lady and her family

From my friend and ICS community member Chris Byrne:

My 17 year old daughter Grace, a senior honors student in high school who is dual enrolled at the University of Georgia, was running with friends after school last Friday.  When crossing the street, she was struck by an SUV.  She is now in the intensive care unit of a local hospital being treated for severe brain trauma.  Grace is a multi-sport athlete at her school with varsity letters in Tennis and Cross Country, and was the MVP of the Junior Varsity Soccer Team.  She turned to tennis as a sport after breaking her foot too many times playing soccer.  She has also completed two half-marathons, the most recent in October (the picture of her is after that race).  The outpouring of love and concern for her from our community in Athens has been unbelievable because she has touched so many lives and made such a difference in her young life.

graceathhalf

Our family firmly believes in the power of prayer and are asking people to pray for our beloved daughter and her sister.  Specifically we are asking that people carry a walnut, which represents her head and when people see or touch the walnut to say a little prayer that her head be basked in a healing light.  Her friends have started a Twitter hashtag of #Walnuts4Grace

Must watch video for all XPages developers: What’s new in Domino Designer 9.0

Matt White has just released a free video that walks you through some of the new things you will find in IBM’s forthcoming Domino Designer on his XPages 101 site. Matt will be presenting at IBM’s Connect event and I highly recommend that you make time in your schedule to attend his sessions.

 

A change of seasons

Starting on January 7th, 2013 and going through June, 2013 I will be an instructor in the Computer Technology program at Vancouver’s Clark College. The four classes are:

Winter 2013 Quarter

  • Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving (CTEC 121)
  • HTML Essentials (CTEC 122 – two classes)
  • Introduction to PHP (CTEC 127)

Spring 2013 Quarter

  • Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving (CTEC 121)
  • HTML Essentials (CTEC 122 – two classes)
  • Advanced PHP (CTEC 127)

Teaching is something that I have always been interested in doing career-wise and, this opportunity provides me with an opportunity to give it a try. Over the last couple of weeks I have been guest lecturing and so far so good. The students are amazing and it’s a huge departure from the “enterprise” world that I came from. They offer a totally different perspective that I am welcoming with open arms.

At Elguji we are hard at work on IdeaJam 2.0 which is going to be a groundbreaking release. We have learned a lot about running a micro-ISV both in the on-premises world and the world of cloud computing. There are some amazing things you will be seeing from Elguji in 2013. We recently launched V1.3 of our popular IQJam product.

I will be at Connect 2013 with Gayle and will be delivering three sessions:

  • Apps, Apps, and More Apps: Meet the Very Best Open Source Apps from OpenNTF (with Niklas Heidloff)
  • Meet the Java Application Server You Already Own – Domino (with Serdar Basegmez)
  • How We Built CollaborationToday.info in a Matter of Weeks (with Per Henrik Lausten)

2013 is shaping up to be another amazing year and I would like to thank Gayle, my family and friends for their support.

Podcast: Learning XPages with NotesIn9

Today we had the pleasure of interviewing the creator of the awesome NotesIn9 screencast – David Leedy (@notesin9). We were also joined by special guests Paul Calhoun and Dr. Mark Roden. We talked about:

  • How and why David got started with NotesIn9
  • Where the name for the show came from
  • What goes into producing a show
  • What community resources David provides
  • The XPages Cheat Sheet
  • What is the “Drive to 99” Event?
  • The number of shows David has published
  • The number of contributors who have appeared on the show
  • How people can get involved and contribute to the show and what do they need to do
  • Which XPages topics do people want to learn more about
  • and much more…

The show runs 31:36 and best listened to while eating Pennsylvania OR Texas BBQ.

Listen now >

Podcast: There’s Gold in Them XPages

We talked with XPages developers Jesse Gallagher (@Gidgerby) and Dr. Mark Roden (@markyroden) about:

  • How Jesse got started with Notes/Domino
  • How Jesse’s interest in Ruby on Rails spilled over into XPages
  • How a Notes/Domino programmer like Jesse has approached and been successful with XPages
  • How to approach XPages app development
  • What about Lotusscript?
  • How to write “clean” code
  • Using source code control
  • Moving from Lotusscript to MVC
  • Why Expression Language and Java are important
  • What XPages can offer that other platforms cannot or offer in a different way
  • The adaptability and flexibility of the XPages platform
  • and much more…

Listen now >

Podcast: What’s New with IBM Wikis

We talked to IBM User Experience Development team members Amanda Bauman, Craig Lordan, Kevin Giles, and Mike Stewart about what’s going on these days with the IBM Wikis. Topics included:

  • History of the IBM wikis
  • Types of content on the wikis (it’s not just random information spread across various pages)
  • New features in the latest iteration of the wiki template
  • Improvements in navigation and search
  • Dynamic content control
  • And more…

Bonus trivia: did you know that the short URL to the Lotus (aka ICS) wikis is wiki.lotus.com?

Listen now >