Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Lotus Market Researchers On The Social Business Market Opportunity

Whew.  Well, I seem to have scooted out of Orlando JUST in time.  As my JetBlue flight was careening down the runway prepared to take off for Austin, I was able to see the massive Boeing 747 that is Air Force One parked just across the tarmac.  Apparently, President Obama was in town to talk tourism at the Magic Kingdom.

But I didn’t leave before I had the opportunity to interview key IBM Collaboration Solutions market researcher, Carol Galvin, and senior consulting strategist, Catherine Lord, on the business opportunity and market landscape around social business.

If you’re trying to get a better understanding of “where’s the beef” around the social business opportunity, this is a great place to start. Let me just share one whopper of a sound byte that should capture your attention: The social business market opportunity is expected to reach $99 billion by 2015!

A special thanks to Scott Laningham, my remote videocaster-in-chief, who stopped working on his skateboarding bulldog videos long enough to help produce this video via Skype from Dolphin Studio 8004 (better known as my hotel room).

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 3 General Session: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Father Of The Web

This morning, Lotusphere 2012 had a very special guest, one whose vision and insight changed the world as we know it, but also my own world, helping create a career path that heretofore didn’t exist.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee graces the audience at Lotusphere 2012 with a brief history of the World Wide Web, and some suggestive comments about its imminent future.

I’m talking about none other than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web.

And how ironic that Sir Berners-Lee was speaking to the Lotusphere faithful about the open, semantic Web on a day when so many are protesting the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, as it’s come to be known) as a means towards protecting intellectual property online.

(If you’re interested in learning more, Google has put up a landing page to explain their perspective on the legislation, but in the meantime, properties ranging from Wikipedia to BoingBoing have gone dark and silent in protest.)

As for Berners-Lee message, it was both history lesson and reminder from the past that’s what past is prologue. After Vinton Cerf invented TCP/IP to create the “internetwork” of all those computers, it was Berners-Lee who figured out a way to link all those computers in a more user-friendly (through the HTTP protocol via the WWW).

Now, we’re moving ever closer to the Semantic Web, where not only people, but machines, can understand instructions so we’re eliminating even more friction and sharing that much more information.  Berners-Lee seemed to throw a bit of a dart at the siloing of new unstructured data, like certain social networks who have walled off much of their data, but he seems bullish that the continued need to separate data from applications will differentiate the value of that data.

By way of example, Berners-Lee explained that people should be able to look at the same map, on Google Maps for instance, and the separation of the GPS data from the actual application has been what’s facilitated that.

So things that have previously been in those silos, Berners-Lee suggests, will not enable the same value creation should they stay in those silos, and the new value of social business is having people collaborate with all this information and with one another.

Watson, Come Here!

Next on the stage was Manoj Saxeona, general manager of IBM’s recently created Watson Solutions Software Group.

Hard to believe, it’s been a year since Watson beat the best “Jeopardy!” contestants in the world in a widely televised and celebrated match.  Now, Saxeona explained, it was time for Watson to stop playing and get down to work.

Manoj Saxena, the new general manager of Watson's Software Solutions unit at IBM, explains how Watson is quickly moving from play to work, and may even play a role in helping find a cure for cancer.

As Saxeona explained, currently, businesses are dying of thirst in an ocean of data.

Quick, somebody throw me a POWER7 lifeboat!

What most folks didn’t see behind the scenes during the Watson challenge was all the great technology that made Watson possible.

Watson brings together a set of transformational technologies that cultivate the following:

1. An understanding of natural language and human speech.

2) Generation and evaluation of hypothesis for better outcomes.

3. Adaptation and learning from user selections and responses.

The system is built atop a  massively parallel, probabilitistic evidence-based architecture optimized for IBM’s POWER7 processors, so it can process 200 million pieces of information in three seconds, which was the threshold it needed to perform and win at “Jeopardy!”

But what about in your doctor’s office.  Could Watson help your physician narrow a wide field of diagnoses into a very specific condition?

Absolutely.  In fact, medical information is doubling every 5 years, much of which is unstructured.

So for medical diagnostics, Watson can quickly sift through symptoms presented, along with background information like age and other relative demography, medications the patient is taking, and so forth, and then arrive at a narrower list of possible diagnosis.

It doesn’t replace the doctor.  It helps the doctor make a more informed decision.

We’ll just have to wait and see as to Watson’s bedside manners!

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 2 Vodcast Summary — Getting Down To The Business Of Social Business

Another day, another vodcast.  Scott Laningham and I teamed up again late yesterday afternoon to try and effectively summarize some of what was spoken about here at Day 2 of Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012.

Chief among the topics was the business of getting down to the practicalities of social business — including a case study of IBM customer TD Bank, the 6th largest in the U.S. — as well as some insights on enterprise gamification and collective intelligence.  The later of which Scott and myself have certainly not cornered the market on.

I want to thank Scott in advance for including that particular frame of the video by which to start this vodcast (you know, the one where I’m squinting like Uncle Scrooge?) Nice editing, amigo.

That’s okay…I’ll get you back, just when you least expect it.

You’ve never had to contend with an exploding microphone on camera before, have you, Scott?  Kind of like those exploding golf balls my dad used to exchange on the tee?

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day 1 Vodcast Recap

Scott Laningham is not here at Lotusphere 2012 this year…at least, not corporeally.  But he is here in spirit, and yesterday afternoon, I spoke with him live from Studio 8004 here at the Dolphin Hotel in Orlando and debriefed him on all things Lotusphere Day 1, the Turbo POV, for The developerWorks Podcast.

We discussed day 1 themes and talks, including that wonderful keynote from actor Michael J. Fox, as well as some of the key announcements and an overview of the IBM social business strategy.  Keep an eye out here on the Turbo blog and Twitter to be reminded of future Lotusphere podcasts…in the meantime, let Day 2 begin!

Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Day One Announcements – The Setup

It’s become self-evident the profound effect social media and networking have had on society and culture: The Arab Spring, the Japanese earthquake, the World Cup, even the tragic sinking of Costa Concordia over the weekend.

What’s new, however, and has gone largely unnoticed, is how this shift is causing a ripple effect in the business world.  Though many companies are focused on building out their own in-house social networks, the real opportunity will be for those who can gain real-time intelligence on the data being generated within those communities and to use that information to be more competitive in their markets.

Here’s some facts:

• With more than 800 million Facebook users and 200 Million Tweets a day, the growing popularity of social networking has also created a social savvy workforce.
• IBM’s 2011 CIO Survey of 3,000 global leaders indicated that more than 55% of companies identified social networking as having a strategic significance to their company’s growth.
• Forrester Research estimates that market opportunity for social software is expected to exceed $6 billion by 2016, an increase of 60% annually from 2010.

This shift of consumer to business networking, also known as “social business,” has become the next big challenge for organizations who are looking to more quickly adopt these skills into their businesses to better reach clients and suppliers, while swiftly gaining insight on the data being created in these networks.

The winners in this challenge will be able to react more swiftly to customer trends, and to out-innovate competitors.

IBM is unveiling this week new social business software and services that bring together the power of analytics and flexible delivery models such as cloud computing and mobile devices.

More to come very shortly…

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Download Social Business white papers

Social Business: advent of a new age (959KB)

Becoming a Social Business: the IBM story (180KB)

Register for the IDC Report:  Social Software and IBM

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Live @ Lotusphere 2012: Michael J. Fox Comes Back From The Future

I woke up this morning in spite of the assistance of my alarm clock, a small Casio gizmo I bought 15 years ago in the U.K.

My little Casio has kept me from missing many a meeting and flight, but today she failed me.

Lotusphere 2012 kicks off with a performance by OkGo for the thousands of attendees convened in Orlando, Florida.

So I can only say it must have been fate that I made it downstairs in time to see the musical kick off of OKGo, and shortly thereafter, the guest speaker for the opening session of Lotusphere.

Of course, if you know anything at all about Lotusphere, you know the lore behind the guest speakership.  It’s a closely-held, top secret until the very last minute, and even then within the IBM whispermill, you probably didn’t hear right.

Me, I’ve learned to roll with it, and just not worry about who the guest speaker is, which is why I’m so incredibly glad my body clock told me to get up when it did, because this year’s Lotusphere guest speaker was truly special.

You might remember him from “Family Ties,” for which he received three Emmys and a Golden Globe.

You might remember him as Marty McFly from the “Back to the Future” trilogy.

Or you may have seen him most recently as attorney Louis Canning on one of my my new favorites, “The Good Wife.”

But however you remember Michael J. Fox, he’s not one to let you easily forget.

As soon as fellow Canadian and Lotus GM Alistair Rennie announced Fox’s name this AM, there was a roar from the crowd and an immediate standing ovation.

And for those who know Fox’s backstory — his early and celebrated thespian success, his diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease at the ripe old age of 29 — well, you could easily have found yourself among them.

I know I did.

Celebrated Canadian thespian and Parkinson's disease advocate Michael J. Fox charms the Lotusphere 2012 audience with his inspiring and optimistic message.

Fox himself has admitted in his first book, Lucky Man, how it took him seven years to accept his diagnosis, and through a thalamotomy and ongoing treatment with Sinemet, he’s been able to manage the disease.

But from his discussion this morning before the Lotusphere audience, it was obvious he’s also transcended it.  He’s refused to let the disease define him, and just like his role on “The Good Wife,” he’s allowed it to simply just become another part of him.  Nothing less, nothing more.

As for Fox’s message to the audience, we’ll get to that, but know it was artfully woven between the conceit of one funny joke after another, so before long you’re thinking, “if this famous gentleman with Parkinson’s Disease can stand there and tremor and laugh at the same time, what the hell kind of problems am I having today??”

And in fact, that was part of Fox’s message.  Known for his eternal optimism, he shared a story of a woman who, in the midst of some major flooding in Mozambique, had to scramble to the safety of a tree to deliver her baby, in the tree and above the rushing waters.

Fox then forcefully re-emphasized the storyline here: A lady…had a baby…in a tree!

Fox had some simple truths that he also shared, for acting and for life.  For one, as an actor, you can never play the result.  If they’re about to throw a pie in your face, it has to be as big a surprise to you as it is to them.

Two, life is all about possibliities.  You may feel your life is certain and set and headed in one direction and you’re going to play a certain role and…well, then suddenly, it’s not.

What do you do then?

Fox has done quite a bit, actually. He’s been a strong advocate for Parkinson’s research, including stem cell therapy, and The Michael J. Fox Foundation was created specifically to help advance every promising research path to curing Parkinson’s.

He’s also testified before Congress, purposely skipping his medication that day in 1998 so that the legislators could see the full impact of the disease.

A very different kind of bravura for a very different kind of performance.

So what has all this to do with the matter of social business?  Fox turned to online communities when he first received his diagnosis, and after going public with Barbara Walters and in People magazine, he realized the positive impact his going public was having on others.

He could sneak into chatrooms and compare his experience with others, and realized quickly this was his opportunity to reshape his own destiny.

Remarkedly, we have all been the beneficiary of both: His commitment to improving the world through Parkinson’s research, and in his continued commitment to acting (if you’ve not seen Fox in “The Good Wife,” now would be a good time to get introduced).

These days, his “Foxtrot Finder” is helping connect Parkinson’s patients to clinical studies. So, social business has everything to do with Fox’s endeavors, as it’s helping patients who need help come out from behind the shadows and get it.

Finally, back home, to Canada, to hockey.  Like many young Canadians, Fox was a hockey nut, and Bobby Orr was his celebrated idol.

Many years into his celebrity, Fox was invited to play in a celebrity old timer hockey match, and when he came face to face with his idol, he was speechless.

Then, at one point in the match, Fox approached Orr rapidly on the ice and was able to sneak the puck between his legs and into the net.

Only later did Fox realize that that’s probably what Orr was explaining to him before the game, that he was going to allow Fox to make that score.

Or perhaps not.  Perhaps Michael J. Fox really did score a point on the infamous Bobby Orr.

Regardless, he absolutely scored with the Lotusphere audience this morning here in Orlando.

Though I’m not one to necessarily buy into inspirational talks, I walked out of Fox’s keynote feeling as optimistic as ever.

But I will admit to being just a little sad about my ever-faithful alarm clock shirking its duty!

Social Media ROI Doubts R.I.P.

Never mind that the following blog post was written by one of my favorite bloggers (Marshall Kirkpatrick) at one of my favorite blog sites (ReadWriteWeb).

As another Marshall explained (McLuhan), “the medium is the message,” and the message IBM delivered yesterday with its social business services and education announcement is that social is here to stay.

As our own study cites from McKinsey, “…9 out of every 10 businesses using Web 2.0 technology are seeing measureable business benefits from its users.”

And as someone who jumped on the “Cluetrain” back in 1999, this isn’t a surprise to me.  What is a surprise is the continued hesitance to “cross the chasm” (thank you, Clayton Chistensen) and to start to throw more  organizational weight, not to mention real budget, into the social business realm.

It’s no longer just about having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, boys and girls.  It’s about fundamentally reassessing and optimizing your business processes end-to-end to take advantage of the enormous collaboration and business process productivity that can better bring all your value chain constituents into alignment, like so many stars in the solar system.

From here, I’ll hand it over to Marshall who did a really elegant job of capturing this announcement.

But for those of you who will be in Orlando starting next Monday for the Lotusphere and IBM Connect events, you’re going to have the opportunity to learn about this immense opportunity in much more detail.

Follow me here on the Turbo blog for extensive coverage, and also via Twitter at #ls12, #IBMConnect, and #IBMSocialbiz.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Rest in Peace, Social Media ROI Doubts: 2006-2012

IBM Invests In Social Media Business Skills, Services

As part of its continued commitment to fostering growth in the adoption of social media and social business, IBM today is announcing new programs, services and partnerships to help organizations develop and deepen skills to accelerate business opportunities being driven by the rapid adoption of social networking in the enterprise.

The IBM Connections mobile app for Apple iOS allows busy professionals to conduct their social business wherever they may have a data connection -- typically in airport lounges that don't offer nearly a good enough variety of Scooby snacks.

According to Forrester Research, the market opportunity for social business software is expected to grow at a rate of 61 percent through 2016, reaching $6.4 billion, compared with $600 million last year.

And per a 2011 AIIM survey, over 50 percent of user organizations now consider becoming a social business to be imperative or significant to their business goals. However, many organizations use social technologies only to find them fall flat.

This is often the case because of a failure to align their Social Business strategy to their unique, organizational culture. According to the 2011 State of Community Management Report from The Community Roundtable, culture is the hardest thing to change in an organization. According to a survey from the report, 28 percent of respondents said that their organizational culture was either resistant to sharing, controlling, or paranoid.

With today’s news, IBM is investing in its clients and business partners to develop the skills, technical support and industry resources that will allow them to effectively adopt social networking capabilities to transform their business operations.

Workshops, Services, & Online Training

The offerings include introducing new technical workshops designed to improve skills and consulting offerings to help develop a business culture that fosters open collaboration and sharing among employees, clients, and business partners.

Through the use of interactive online courses, live support and one-on-one guidance with IBM Social Business experts, IBM is working with organizations across the globe to educate them on the benefits of applying social networking technology to their organizations, while at the same time helping to assess the barriers of social business for faster adoption.

As the industry leader in social business among the first to embrace social internally and to develop social computing policy and guidelines, IBM is poised to help organizations exploit the transformation into a social business, helping them to build stronger relationships among their employees, customers and business partners and make better decisions, faster.

Education & Enablement: Key To Social Business Success

A successful social business must combine the use of social technologies with a business culture that promotes transparency, trust and information sharing among the workforce. Quite often, organizations need guidance around developing social policy, governance, the skills needs for compliance and connecting social technologies to business processes.

Through the new social business initiatives, IBM is delivering the right set of skills, technical support, development resources, and industry expertise that will allow clients and business partners to expand their social business capabilities effectively and accelerate adoption. This includes:

• Strategic Consulting from IBM Global Business Services to help organizations better understand their current adoption of social business tools for both internal and external purposes and helps to articulate how social business accelerates and alleviates business challenges.
• Global educational and mentorship programs for clients and business partners on how to become effective community managers, the fastest growing job in social, while increasing employee engagement over top, line-of-business communities on the social software platform.
• Technical certification programs that help customers and business partners validate and demonstrate their skills through assessment exams and training resources so that they can plan for and perform the installation, configuration and day-today tasks associated with ensuring the smooth and efficient operation of social software solutions.
• Social Business Agenda workshops on IBM’s Virtual Innovation Center providing immediate access to discussions forums focused on the benefits of becoming a social business, providing clients and business partners with case study examples of successful social businesses, and helping them to develop an agenda for driving social adoption. 

Partnering With Social Business Leaders: The Dachis Group

IBM is also announcing a partnership with The Dachis Group, the world’s leader in powering the design, development, management, and measurement of Social Business performance, to help organizations quickly drive adoption success through a social business adoption quickstart workshop.

The workshop combines IBM services for the implementation of Social Business solutions for enterprises with additional services from The Dachis Group and focuses on the use of social business technology while fostering cultural skills and engagement.

IBM is also collaborating with Group Business System, an IBM Business Partner, to help IBM clients convert IBM Lotus Notes applications into applications accessible on the Web or via mobile devices.

The new IBM services offering will help clients retain the value of their significant investments made over the years in the Lotus Notes and Domino platform while enabling them to take full advantage of the latest web technology to support their business.

“The opportunity to transform into a social business can be stunted without a focus on engagement, culture change, and policy.” said Alistair Rennie, General Manager, Social Business, IBM. “Social technologies, when combined with the right skills and culture, can truly unlock the potential of people within the organization to collaborate, innovate, make smarter business decisions and ultimately drive their bottom line.”

Visit here to get more information about IBM’s social business initiative or follow #IBMSocialBiz on Twitter.

Lotusphere And Connect 2012: Making New Connections

Greetings.  I meant to say in my post from earlier today a big congratulations to the U.S. Team which held on to golf’s President’s Cup after a week of turbulent golf down under at Royal Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia.

Lotusphere 2012 will be held January 15-19, 2012, in Orlando, Florida, and will feature the two-day "Connect" event for those looking to go deep and long on social business.

Despite the controversy around U.S. Captain Freddy Couples “captain’s choice” of Tiger Woods, who hasn’t exactly been at the top of his game of late, it was Woods who, two President’s Cups in a row, clinched the cup in a singles match Sunday against Aaron Baddeley.  Woods won 5 and 3.

Tiger Woods is back.  Yay for golf!

And as professional golf in the U.S. fades further into the sunset of winter, not to be fully awakened until early January, we do know what happens in Orlando, Florida, in mid-January: Lotusphere 2012, and this year’s sister event, “IBM Connect.”

For those not in the know from years past, Lotusphere 2012 is a five-day technical conference that covers a broad array of topics focused on social business, ranging from strategy and best practices, adoption and deployment, to capabilities and solutions. As usual, there will be the familiar session tracks, labs, and the Solutions Showcase.  And of course, yours truly, along with my developerWorks livecasting guru Scott Laningham, will be in attendance conducting interviews and covering the event tidings for the blogosphere.

But, there’s more.  This year, the larger event will also be hosting an “event within the event,” in the form of “Connect 2012,” a two-day social business conference that will provide a venue for company leaders and IBM experts to share strategies, challenges, and best practices (not to mention a few Twitter IDs) for exploiting pervasive social technologies to achieve tangible advances in company performance.

So, if you have a few business leaders that you’re still trying to get on the social cluetrain, IBM Connect could be just what the doctor ordered — make sure you get them the invite info.

Here’s a breakdown of the topline “tick tock” for Lotusphere and IBM Connect 2012:

• Business Partner Development Day (Sunday, January 15)
• Connect 2012 (Monday and Tuesday, January 16-17)
• Lotusphere 2012 (Monday-Thursday, January 15-19)

Here’s a link to everything you’ll need to know to register and make sure that Lotus Knows you’re planning to attend Lotusphere and Connect 2012.  Until December 2, 2011, Lotusphere registration is a mere $1,995 (U.S.), but goes up to $2,295 on December 3rd (Connect 2012 is $995 U.S.)

So register while there are still seats available, and know I’ll be sharing more details as we get closer to the two events.

Just Checkin’ In

I survived Lotusphere 2011.

And SuperBowl 45.

And the horrific lineup of this year’s SuperBowl ads.

I would normally have chimed in yesterday with my witty two cents worth about the ads, but the only one that seemed to have even any motivating, selling power was the Eminem “Detroit’s Back” commercial, which I thought while watching was a full minute but turned out to be two.

Meanwhile, I’m back in Austin where we had our once-in-a-decade snowstorm last Friday.

Today, I spent much of the day at the TechTarget Online ROI Summit roadshow, learning about the latest and greatest in content syndication, e-nurturing, lead management, and yes, even social media and communities.

If you’re in Paris and/or London or will be there on April 14 or 12 respectively, then prepare to check it out firsthand (particularly helpful for you IT marketers out there).

Me, well, after Lotusphere, I’m knee deep in email and catchup.  I’ll hope to catch up with you all again very soon.