Almost all of the people reading this love their User Groups. For us it is a chance to meet old friends and reaffirm our belief in the products that we build our work around.
I was at the fantastic UKLUG this week but this time it was a different experience for me. I was lucky enough to be there with a new colleague from outside the ICS community who will be joining our company in November.
Although Jane has been a very IT literate Lotus Notes user for 15 years she is a “Line of Business User” to use the Jargon. She is a business user trying to work as efficiently as she can to manage her priorities and get her work done to the best of her ability.
Two things really struck her :
1) How friendly and welcoming everyone was.
2) The power of IBM Connections.
To be fair I have been slow to push Connections awareness to our customers. We have traditionally worked within the infrastructure that people have had in place. I had thought that these “Social” tools would be some way down my customers priority lists and that the barriers to deployment were too steep at the moment.
It could well be that this is still the case but Jane’s very positive reaction to IBM Connections as a potential business user has made me stop and think.
I am not sure how we can get the message out to Line of Business users but Simon Vaughan’s work with the Students at Cardiff is certainly an inspiring example and is hopefully converting a few graduates along the way.
Thanks to Warren Elsmore ,his team, the sponsors and the speakers for a great event.