Libby Says...

 
 
Friday, October 31st, 2008 Author: Libby Ingrassia
Lotus Collaboration Summit in SA/DFW Next Week Time: 09:56:14 AM
Comments? Add / Read (0) Location: planning mode

My company, WorkFlow Studios, is hosting two Lotus Collaboration Summit events in San Antonio and Dallas next week. The event offers an opportunity to learn about the Lotus collaboration strategy and technology, network with customers, partners, and IBMers, and have a lovely catered meal. Please join us if you're in San Antonio (November 4) or the Dallas-Fort Worth area (November 6).  Full event details, including session abstracts are available at the WorkFlow Studios' Lotus Collaboration Summit page.

 

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Thursday, October 30th, 2008 Author: Libby Ingrassia
Eunoia and Elections Time: 12:22:50 PM
Comments? Add / Read (2) Location: closing tabs

This is mostly a closing links kind of post - been sent a few good ones the past day or two...

Eunoia is apparently the shortest word in English that uses all 5 vowels; it is also the title of a book that the BBC mentioned today (thanks for the link, Richard). In the book, the author writes fiction wherein he uses only one vowel per chapter. Funky, crazy... but also kind of interesting for those language or poetry geeks among us. While the writing is fiction, because of the only one vowel at a time limitation, the excerpts come out feeling much more like poetry to me. I found A and U painful, E and I lyrical, and O, well, sort of... rotund. :-) And while I've found it on Amazon (published in 2001?!), I much prefer the cover shown in the BBC page... Maybe one of my UK pals can help me out with that.

Next up, a moment of politics. Election day is, after all, next Tuesday, although Philip and I have already voted. This comes to me via my friend Allison who says she shamelessly stole it from Bill in Portland, Maine (Daily Kos):

   Closing Appeals

        Dear America,

        Mine.

        Mine mine mine.

        Me Me Me Me Me Me Me!

        Mine mine mine mine mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine!

        In conclusion: Fear fear fear fear. Very scary fear!

        Sincerely,

        The Republican Party

        P.S. If you liked Joseph McCarthy, you’ll love us!

    -

        Dear America,

        We.

        Us. We. Together. Americans. United States.

        Hope compassion equality inclusiveness competence.

        Brains common sense community respect hard work accountability.

        Action change responsibility. More viewpoints, smarter solutions.

        In conclusion: Yes we can.

        Sincerely,

        The Democratic Party.

        P.S. Vote.


I know that not everyone who reads my blog has my political leanings or is even from the States, and I know also that this is biased, and simplified, and generalized, and satirized. But it made me laugh and Philip channel his inner goblin bringing it to life, so... Vote!

 

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Friday, October 17th, 2008 Author: Libby Ingrassia
SF, Half Marathon, and more Time: 12:31:45 PM
Comments? Add / Read (1) Location: dashing around finishing last tasks and packing

Well, I've been busy traveling for the past little while, with short trips to Dallas and Nashville over the past two weeks. Nashville was great - I enjoyed making some new friends and connections, catching up with some from the "old days," and getting the skinny on WebSphere Portal and the accelerators. While I didn't stay for the entire week, I did learn some things that we'll be putting into play soon. I'm looking forward to adding some additional portal work to what we do at WFS.

Now I'm getting ready to head out on another trip - to California! I'm visiting my college friends in San Francisco and running a half marathon. Okay, let's be honest. I'm not going to actually run this one, as my training has been crap. Instead, this one will be a run/walk with the emphasis on walk. I can do that for this event, as they're pretty generous about the time limits. I can't, however, do that for the next half marathon I've got scheduled - in Houston, in January, right before I head out to Lotusphere, as they're much more strict (training in Houston is much easier in the winter, though!).

Still, even when I haven't gotten fully trained, I'm glad to be doing half marathons. I started running during a very sad, painful time in my life, and it was the one healthy thing I was doing for myself at the time. It continues to be a time when I can either have a nice talk with a friend or with Philip, or it can also be a great time for some silent meditation - time NOT to think - just to be. My yoga studio has been closed for the past 2 months, and meditating at home hasn't been working extremely successfully for me, but when I run or walk, I get it. So, I'll run/walk/meditate through my half marathon on Sunday and come back to Houston ready to train much more actively for the next one.

Then I'll head down to southern California to visit my Oma for her birthday. I hope to be as full of life...well, even now, as she is in her 90s. I won't be taking off from work completely, as I've got plenty to do to get ready for the Lotus Collaboration Summit that we're hosting in San Antonio and Dallas (if you're in town, sign up and spread the word!). Still, a short trip with Philip will be relaxing, giving us some time to talk and plan for the future, and will be a chance to see some of the folks I care about.

 

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Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 Author: Libby Ingrassia
Teaching End User Notes Class: Lessons Learned Time: 08:30:56 AM
Comments? Add / Read (1) Location: in my new chair

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week teaching a class in Dallas. It was an end user Notes class. To be honest, it's been probably 10 years since I've last taught an end user Notes class (or maybe more). It was a great experience, although more tiring than I remembered. Here are a few things I learned or discovered while teaching this class...
  • My students were, for the most part, existing Notes users who were preparing for a move to 8. There were so many things that I taught in this class that are NOT new to 8, but they didn't know them. This isn't a new realization on my part (Ed and I used to talk about this in our Selling Notes Internally session), but it became clear once again how vital end user training (of some sort - it doesn't have to be instructor-led) gives users the ability to get value from a company's software investment. We got behind on our courseware because the students had so many questions - business processes that weren't working for them because they didn't understand how they worked in the software. So, once again, let's remember that Notes investments can be protected by ensuring that our users know how to do what they want to do... and know what features Notes offers that let them do things they might not even have thought of doing! Here are some specific examples of questions they needed an answer to...
    • Is there a time limit on recalling messages? Yes, there is a time limit on recalling messages. This is a server setting, so the administrator has control over it. The default is 14 days.
    • Where are preferences like spelling stored, especially in cases of a shared mail file? Preferences that you'd find under User Preferences...Spell Check are stored in the user's notes.ini file, so they would be individual to each user. Preferences found under User Preferences...Mail  are stored in the mail file and are the same across all users and replicas of the mail file. You can find out even more details at this link: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=475&uid=swg21283416
    • How does hyperlinking on Notes documents work? By default anything with a URL (including protocol) should work fine. If not, check two things. First, make sure the user preference is set to Make URLs into Hotspots (File...User Preferences...Basic Notes Client Config...Additional Options). Second, check the Web Browser preference to be sure you know what browser is supposed to launch when you click a URL link.
        * Default trash interval is also a user preference. The default is 48 hours.
  • I really still like to teach. When I left high school teaching to come back to the technology world, I was clearly burned out on teaching (well, burned out, period, thanks to two years of working and grad school and etc), but what I realized as I helped students in this class is that I'm not done with the vocation. I also realized how different classroom teaching in a public school is from teaching technology - different hours (a one hour course, repeated 6-8 times per day) versus an 8-hour course. My voice was gone by the time I was done Tuesday. Teaching different aspects of a single topic - deeper focus, rather than the across the board focus high school teaching required. Not sure what that means for me going forward other than I plan to get my CLI active again so I can do some teaching when it fits in to my other duties. ;-)
You probably already knew the little tidbits of technical tips that I added to this, but to me the more important truth is that education is a superb sales and marketing tool - teaching can be, and often is, evangelism. So think about who you're learning from, and who you want your clients, customers, and managers learning from.

 

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