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I’m Bringing IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson to the Classroom

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I am very happy to announce that students enrolled in my “Intro to Programming and Problem Solving” class at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington will be using IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson this week in class. Students will be building a language translation program and a tone analyzer program using the Python programming language.

Many thanks to IBM for their “Academic Initiative” program which makes it easy for educators to get access to IBM Bluemix for a limited time.

Students in my other programming language course will also soon be using Bluemix and Watson.

Stay tuned.

Network World: What’s next for IBM’s enterprise social business

IBM Enterprise Social Solutions GM Jeff Schick emceed the company’s recent Connect conference in Orlando, where Big Blue updated customers and partners on its latest collaboration, mobile and cloud efforts, emphasizing a message of “Make Every Moment Count.” Schick managed to squeeze in a few of those precious moments for reporters to follow up with him on the company’s direction in social and collaboration business, an operation that he’s been part of since 2006, including as the creator of the IBM Connections enterprise social platform.

Here’s a slightly condensed transcript of Schick’s thoughts on where IBM is headed in this area:

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Jeff Haynie: Five things I will do different for my next startup

Jeff Haynie, CEO and Co-Founder of Appcelerator just published an article entitled “Five things I will do different for my next startup“, which is well worth a read.

Here are the five lessons Jeff learned:

  • Monetize earlier
  • Scale slower
  • Burn less
  • Automate and outsource everything
  • Measure everything

Read Jeff’s article >

Say What? IBM and Education

Last night the Dean of my divison at the college sent an email that she received from the Washington State, Center of Excellence. In the email were many things, but one of those things caught my attention. Here it is:

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The IBM BlueMix team offers IT instructors to enroll in a “no-charge” program called “IBM Academic Initiative for Cloud/BlueMix“. I’m going to see where this takes me. Stay tuned for details.

Network World: In Search of IBM Verse

Network World’s Bob Brown published an article entitled “In Search of Verse” where he talks about Verse and Toscana. It’s a nice summary and worth a read.

It’s been almost exactly 10 months since IBM formally launched its analytics-infused messaging system called Verse, and while the company’s announcement of “software for a new way to work” initially generated a relatively positive blast of press and analyst coverage, buzz about the cloud-first product has dwindled since. So I went in search of signs of excitement, or even signs of life, for Verse at the IBM Connect conference this week in Orlando.

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