After serving the IBM community for over 9 years, new idea submission, voting and commenting has been turned off on the http://ideajam.net site. The site will remain available in “read only” mode for the foreseeable future.
The site collected 4,581 ideas, 12,346 comments and 108,544 votes.
The last year has been a total absolute blur. Between teaching at Clark Collge, working on projects at Elguji, volunteer work and more has consumed every available minute of my time. I have also been quiet on a few fronts on purpose. Let me first start with Elguji.
Elguji has been very fortunate to have a loyal (and still growing) Notes and Domino customer base. While sales of our flagship IdeaJam for Domino have slowed down a bit, we are still serving dozens of customers around the globe. In fact, we are hard at work (and have been for some time) on IdeaJam 2.0. IdeaJam 2.0 is not simply an upgrade to IdeaJam 1.9.2 but, a complete re-write of the core application made to be “mobile first”. Yes, it will still be a great web application that will blow your mind and we are very excited at the progress we have made. For now just know that we have done our best to include the feedback we have received from our customers. Stay tuned for more on IdeaJam 2.0.
Where Elguji has really transformed and rolled with the times is with our “event-based” IdeaJam cloud platform. We are now providing customers around the globe with what we call “event-based” jams. These jams can be provisioned in 60 seconds or less. Jams run anywhere from 1 day to 3 months. It’s whatever the customer needs. Some of you may have seen that we are running jams for IBM Rational, IBM Websphere and IBM developerWorks. In fact, we just completed a project directed by IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. Our customer work also includes colleges and universities, branches of the US Government and many other global institutions. We couldn’t have done with without the professionals at The London Developer Co-Op.
You might ask “who is driving all of this business to Elguji?”. Let me tell you that there are two primary product evangelists for Elguji 1) IBM and 2) Existing customers. IBM is constantly referring customers to us, primarily for our event-based jams. One of the worlds largest financial institutions who will go unnamed has also sent us plenty of new customers. We are very fortunate to have such great relationships with IBM and our customers.
Elguji is also cooking up a brand new product that frankly, I’m super psyched about. It’s 1,000 times bigger than IdeaJam and I am lucky to be working with some of the brightest people in the world on it.
In October I departed the world of OpenNTF and not longer after that the community which I was part of for over a dozen years gave me the most wonderful send-off I have ever seen. Dozens of blog posts, tweets and more – all with the #thanksbruce hash tag. I wanted to thank everybody sooner but as usual, life got in the way. Thank you to all my friends and colleagues for their heartfelt love on Wednesday, November 2, 2013. I owe much of my success in this world to many of you.
I am now wrapping up the development of a new website for OpenNTF with Niklas Heidloff, Per Henrik Lausten and Martin Rolph (Oval Systems). A new website was long overdue for OpenNTF and I felt compelled to see the project through it’s fruition. It will be a few more weeks before you see the new site. We are now in the user acceptance testing phase.
Once the website launches, I will remain an Honorary Board Member and continue to help support the efforts of the open source community. I do however wish that the IBM Connections team would embrace OpenNTF more than they have. It’s important for the overall IBM Collaboration Solutions app dev community more than ever. </getting off my soap box>
Part 2 coming on Monday.
I’m so glad that we named our product IdeaJam and also trademarked the name. Notice that Jive uses “Idea Jam” and not “IdeaJam”. Ninety percent or more of the prospects that Elguji sees lately think that IdeaJam is an IBM product. It’s actually quite fascinating and we are very blessed. Our event-based IdeaJam cloud services are booming.
Elguji Software just wrapped up an IdeaJam event for the University of Texas, LBJ School of Public Affairs that took place last week. In the mail today we received a handwritten thank you note from the jam’s primary stakeholders. Gayle did an awesome job as the success manager for this event.
I absolutely love what we have done and continue to do with our IdeaJam product. We get to work with so many great companies and organizations from around the world. We are truly blessed.
If you haven’t checked out Panic’s Status Board app for the iPad I highly recommend that you do. Using a combination of the IdeaJam API’s and RSS feeds I was able to put together the status board that you see above. The super cool thing about status board is that you can use AirPlay to beam it to an Apple TV connected to an display panel. You can also direct-connect the iPad to a display panel like Panic talks about in their blog entry.
Each of the panels auto-updates every minute. In addition to the panels you see on the screen I have created some others that chart various other IdeaJam metrics. If you have Status Board and want me to send you the IdeaJam status board just let me know.
IBM developerWorks has launched the developerWorks LIVE Jam which runs from June 11-18. Here you as a professional developer can give the developerWorks team your thoughts on how you prefer to learn technical skills, share your expertise, and build your online reputation. You can use your IdeaJam.net registration to participate in the jam. If you are not already registered you can register here.
Registration for the IBM developerWorks Live! Jam is now open. The jam will open on June 11th and will focus on the following themes:
If you have already registered for the Jazz Plan Jam, the VoICE Jam, the Info Experience jam, the Inner Circle Jam or any other IdeaJam powered event you are good to go. If not you can register at http://dwlive.ideajam.net/register.
A week doesn’t go by without a call or an email from an IBMer referring a prospect or customer to Elguji. IBM is now Elguji’s primary sales channel for our IdeaJam and IQJam software. Whether it’s for an IBM Notes/Domino shop, a new Connections customer and of late for a cloud based IdeaJam. We also continue to work more with IBM as an Elguji customer. Last week we launched the Rational Jazz Plan Jam which is part of the Innovate 2012 conference being held at the Dolphin and Swan in Orlando, Florida this week.
The Jazz Plan Jam was coordinated with a team of IBMers from the developerWorks team and Jazz teams. We went from zero to jam in just a matter of days. The jam is now in it’s fifth day and is set to run through Wednesday, June 6th.
The feedback Elguji has received from the jam participants has been incredible. Many of them are wanting to learn more about Ideajam and how they can use it with their company and customers. None of them asked what technology was used nor did they care.
So on behalf of the Elguji team I want to thank the entire IBM Collaboration Solutions division for their continuing support of our success. We couldn’t have done it without you. We also want to thank the Websphere, Lotus, Rational and IBM CIO Office for being Elguji customers.
Oh and here’s what the Jazz.net home page looked like a few days ago. Notice the “Come jam with us” graphic. Good stuff.
Bruce Elgort 