The One Product to Go and See at IBM Connect 2014

If your company is using or plans to use IBM Connections I highly recommend that you go and visit the Kudos booth at IBM Connect to see a demo of their Kudos Boards app.

We love Activities in Connections. They are awesome! Working together on projects and leveraging Social Tools is a very powerful way of working. However some Activities can get BIG and sometimes users need to look at their tasks or organise the Activity slightly differently. Sometimes users don’t need to see everything that is going on but just one part. Sometimes it would be easier if Activities was more visual.

So wouldn’t it be great if you could visualise an Activity…as a Board….similar to a Kanban Board? Imagine if you could drag and drop your Tasks and Entries within Activities as progress and circumstances change . Wouldn’t it be neat if you could filter the content of your Boards by Person, by Priority, by Colour code, or by any other filter you want?

Here is something Adam Brown from ISW put together to showcase what Kudos Boards can do for your employees:

 

I’m also proud to say that I have been an adviser to Adam and ISW for both Kudos Badges and Kudos Boards.

IBM Connect 2014: Must-Attend Sessions for App Developers – Part 1

Here are some of the “must see” sessions for IBM Connect 2014:

SHOW303 – Proper Connections Development for Proper Domino Developers (Matt White and Mark Myers)

Tuesday | 10:30-12:15 | Swan Osprey

This is a session with a mission: to take a much loved IBM Domino app and deploy it to a client’s new IBM Connections environment. We’ll show different solutions such as the use of iWidgets or creating a REST API to make the application available to IBM Connections users and walk you through the process, from beginning to end. If you’re an IBM Domino developer who knows nothing about IBM Connections, this is the session for you.

BP201 – Creating a Mobile Application Framework with XPages (Matt White and Rich Sharpe)

Tuesday | 15:00-16:00 | Dolphin S Hem III

If you create a lot of mobile web applications, you may notice other frameworks such as JQuery Mobile and the XPages Mobile Controls just don’t do exactly what you need. So we created our own, specifically designed for XPages. In this session you’ll learn about the open source framework that’s been have created. We’ll show how it allows you to quickly drag and drop standard custom controls into an XPage to create a mobile application. We’ll also talk about the process of creating an open source project and future plans.

Don’t reinvent the Wheel – (Re)use Open Source Software from OpenNTF (Christian Guedemann and Niklas Heidloff)

Wednesday | 10:00-11:00 | Dolphin S Hem IV-V

OpenNTF is THE open source community for IBM Collaboration Solutions with a focus on IBM XWork Server and IBM Connections. Come to this session to learn about the latest and greatest open source apps, gadgets, controls and other assets developed by community developers, business partners and IBM that are available on OpenNTF.org. We’ll also introduce additional community services OpenNTF provides like the news site for IBM Collaboration Solutions CollaborationToday.info, technical webinars and much more.

BOF – Creating an Open Source Unplugged Mobile Controls User Group

Time and Location TBD

Most User Groups meet up at tangible, real world locations. We’d like to create a User Group for the Open Source Unplugged XPages Mobile Controls Project that would be virtual (mobile) and get input from what developers would like to see included in this project. We will discuss how we can set meeting times and places on a wider (global) scale and discuss what other UI frameworks (Bootstrap JQM etc) have that the current project does not and how we can each contribute to extending this project.Debates on what people have used that have worked well, and not so well as well as performance tips to get mobile apps that use these Controls running faster.

SHOW104 – Practical Java (Mark Myers and Julian Robichaux)

Sunday | 13:30-15:30 PM | Swan Osprey

Take a whirlwind tour of the many ways in which Java can make your life better as a developer. We’ll use Java in IBM Notes, Eclipse, and the latest IDEs. And we’ll show you examples of best of breed libraries that can analyze data, create PDFs, and perform image processing on the fly. Get connected to IBM Connections, access relational data, open sockets, and parse feeds. And along the way we’ll throw in tips for testing, performance, and writing good code.

Startup Weekend Access Portland – I’m a Mentor

I am pleased to announce that I have been asked to be a mentor for the upcoming Startup Weekend Access Portland event taking place on February 7-9th.

A crash course for those curious about entrepreneurship! You’re invited to attend Startup Weekend Access, a Startup Weekend focused on making entrepreneurship more accessible to everyone. Our mission is to create an environment where anyone can innovate together. We’re focusing on accessibility to provide better access for people with disabilities and fluid collaboration amongst every participant. An appropriate accessible environment with the necessary auxiliary aids support services will be provided!

Startup Weekend’s a 54-hour event where aspiring entrepreneurs, developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and entrepreneurs of all abilities come together to share startup ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups. Essentially, it’s a crash course in entrepreneurship that lets you experience what it’s really like to build and launch a startup.

Whether you have an idea for a new mobile app that will make your life easier or just want to learn more about entrepreneurship, we encourage you to attend.

Why? The statistics are clear, people with disabilities are not only less likely to be employed, but also less likely to pursue entrepreneurship. We hope that Startup Weekend Access will ignite your entrepreneurial spark!

Register now >

Random User Generator: Like Lorem Ipsum, but for people

What is RandomUser?

RandomUser is an API that provides you with a randomly generated user. These users can be used as placeholders in web mockups, and will save you time from creating your own placeholder information.

More >

Ten Years Ago Today

It was this day in 2003 when Danielle passed away at the age of seven. She was born with a low grade astrocytoma brain tumor. Dani was an amazing little girl. Dani never talked or walked but, was the most loving little girl you would have ever known. She was full of kisses, knew where all of the sweets were in the cupboards, was adored by her classmates in elementary school, was Alyssa’s buddy and so much more. Oh, and she absolutely loved those frozen mini-pancakes.

Dani Elgort

Dani would have turned seventeen this month. The last ten years have flown by and, not a day goes by when Gayle or I don’t think about Dani. Many of my memories were shared on my old blog. I want to thank all of you for your support over the years and especially those of you who were there ten years ago when Dani was ailing.

Today we remember Dani.