What is Social Business Online?
by Volker Weber
Each year for Lotusphere, now Connect, IBM sets up a portal. It assigns you an email address, which you will never use, it will not let you change spelling mistakes in your name, it won't let you change your password. You can fill out a profile, you can build a social network, and after a few weeks, IBM kills the site.
That is Social Business Online.
Comments
I thought they had listened
idonotes.com/IdoNotes/idonotes.nsf/dx/lotusphere-2011-online-closing-and-they-listened.htm
My words....
It's just getting more ridiculous year after year. Claiming leadership is easy. Demonstrating leadership is more important. SAP and Microsoft have been doing it for years.
'Edit my Profile' does not work in Chrome. It does work in IE though :-(
The screenshot above is from "Edit my Profile". In Chrome.
I am getting Unexpected runtime error when I try to post a status update there.
That aside, I'm confused by the "official" number of sites that are part of the IBM Connect/Lotusphere experience. ATM there are 5 that I know of:
1) The IBM Connect home page (Marketing, registration, etc)
2) The Session Preview site
3)The Social Biz online community
4) The Vivastream online community
5)The IBM Connect Social Aggregator.
That's not including Greenhouse, Twitter, Foursquare, etc.
This is not a first year conference, and yet every year it seems as though this is the first time they've ever hosted a conference. Streaming of the OGS? That's a relatively new experience. OGS available shortly after the actual event occurs? That, too, is somewhat a new experience.
Then, look at the available free IBM-centric conferences held around the world every year. These conferences, while not as large as this one, have the online experience down. How is that possible, given that the free conferences are organized and presented using resources that are free. Like "free beer." And, for the most part, the presentations and content is available all year, every year.
As pointed out by Alan, there are way too many sites associated with this conference. It's almost as if there are competing agendas, and each member of the committee does his/her own thing, irrespective of the greater good.
It will be my 9th Lotusphere. And I've never used the features of the portal, mail or whatsoever. Only the session schedule is usefull for me.
Maybe that's because I'm also confused about the site and the parts as Alan is. Or maybe because I just don't get it?!
We have Colleen Burns and Joyce Davis on TWiL today, so we'll be sure to cover both SocialBizOnline and Vivastream amongst other topics.
I've never understood why they don't just use Greenhouse, and create a private community for registered attendees.
This is at least the 5th concurrent IBM system where I've had to "edit my profile".
Wonder why one cannot simply log in using one's IBMID.
IBM never gets to building "exceptional web experiences". That only seems to run on PowerPoint.
Mat, even if it is a separate profile (which is bad) why was it not pre-populated? They have the information from our registrations.
What an embarrassment.
Vivastream is closed now. use IBM SOcial Business Online 2013 only.
@Frank, say that ain't so... Now that is a great shame.
17-Jan-13 09:31 GMT
VivaStream is still open and running. Sorry Frank you're mistaken.
