Taking Notes Podcast – Bruce Elgort

They are the Champions: Part 1

Last week IBM announced a new class of champions for 2014. This blog post is the first in a series highlighting the great work of some of them. Here I go:

David Leedy

I first met David in New York City in October 2009 at the Tri-LUG user group meeting. While we had perviously met virtually, this was the first time we met in person. We shared a few beers and dinner and at that time he had given to Gayle and I an awesome set of all things Elguji branded coasters that he and his wife Becky made. It was truly an awesome gift. David and I have developed a very rewarding friendship. I can talk to David about anything and he is always there to listen.

As many of you may already know, David is the producer of the very successful NotesIn9 Screencast. Not only has David produced over 130 shows. While the screencast focusses primarily on IBM XPage technology, it also includes other topics including mobile app development, source control and much more.

David is also a strong and vocal advocate for IBM XPages technology. He is like no one else in this regard. David has published several versions of the XPages Cheatsheet.

David, thank you for all you do in this world. You are not only an IBM Champion but a personal hero of mine.

Julian Robichaux

It’s been a little over ten years since I first met Julian. We met at a blogger meet-up in Orland, Florida. I remember telling Julian I really liked the design of his NSF Tools website. The NSF Tools site was one of my favorite go-to reference site for advanced Notes and Domino code. It was truly a great privilege and honor to have met Julian. I felt as I was in the presence of one of the greatest coders I had ever known. This still holds true today.

It wasn’t until November of 2006 that I approached Julian to do a podcast. Thinking back, I had no idea why I approached Julian specifically to do this. Long story short, we started the Taking Notes podcast in 2006 and recorded 177 episodes. While we haven’t recorded any episodes since March 2013, the podcast is in temporary hiatus.

I am very grateful to call Julian a friend and to have had the honor of working with him on Taking Notes, several OpenNTF projects and application development projects for Elguji.

Podcast: Online Learning with Lynda.com

Today we interviewed Lynda.com author Jess Stratton. Jess has been a member of the IBM Collaboration Solutions Community for over decade. She has spoken at Lotusphere and other industry events. Jess now works for the online learning company Lynda.com where she helps author video training for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office and other products and technologies.

Rather than listing out all of the super cool things Jess talks about we suggest that you just push play and start listening. Jess does recommend that you “Like” the Lynda.com Facebook Fan Page where you can find out about the latest tutorials and promotions.

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 >

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 >

Podcast: What’s new in IBM Connections 4

IBM Connections product managers Suzanne Livingston, Mac Guidera, Baan Slavens, and Luis Benitez fill us in on the new features of the Connections 4 (IC4) release, including:

Embedded experiences and activity streams
Improvements to the home page
Easily sharing information from any context with the Sharebox
What’s coming in the Connections mobile apps
Reporting and metrics (over 100 new reporting capabilities)
Bridging content from external websites and news sources
And more…

Here are a few links to help get you up to speed on Connections 4:

What’s new in IBM Connections 4?
IBM Connections 4 Reviewer’s Guide
New Capabilities in Connections 4 (there’s also a YouTube video link on that page)

Listen now >

Podcast: The Evolution of XPages

Russ Maher of QDiligence (@russelmaher) and Paul Calhoun (@ptcalhoun) of NetNotes Solutions talk to us about the evolution of IBM’s XPages rapid application development platform. Russ and Paul are also the instructors of The View’s popular XPages Bootcamp which is taking place in Las Vegas and Chicago this Fall. We would like to thank The View and their XPages Bootcamp for sponsoring this show.

We talk about:

History of the XPages Bootcamp and how they kept the course material in-line with the XPages point releases
Upcoming changes in Domino 8.5.4 (Niklas Heidloff’s blog post)
The new Java jar design element in 8.5.4
Server-side JavaScript Debugger in 8.5.4
What OSGi plugins are
OSGi and the Extension Library and how it has evolved
How XPages in Domino 8.5.4 has evolved since 8.5.0
How OneUI has grown over the years
Dojo and how it has evolved within the context of XPages
XPages in the Notes Client (XPINC) and how it has evolved
and much more..

The show runs 44:50.

Listen now >

Podcast: IBM Connections, Social Recognition, and TemboSocial

Steven Green, CEO of TemboSocial (@TemboSocial), tells us all about The Hive. It’s peer-to-peer social recognition software that integrates with IBM Connections to help share knowledge, stories, and corporate culture among employees. Topics we covered included:

The importance of awards, achievements, and peer recognition
How all this ties into corporate culture and values
400,000+ stories on The Hive site for TD Bank since 2009
How does this integrate with IBM Connections?
Is it difficult to get management and/or employees to use something like this?
The way that stories become company assets
Analytics and reporting
The use of promotional banners to bring employees back the site

As we mentioned in the podcast, there is a video demo on YouTube and plenty more information on the TemboSocial website. For more information, Chris Miller also has a video interview with Steven Green you can check out.

This show runs 39:32.

Listen now >