Monthly Archives: January 2014

01.23.14
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Announcing A New Kind Of Event For The UK

I’m very happy to announce that, together with our friends at LDC we are putting together a technical networking event in London this March. This is something new and different and we hope people will come to exchange ideas across a broad range of topics, share what they are working on and learn from others.

Collaboration Stack Community Event
Do you work with collaboration platforms? Meet your peers at an informal, technical get-together. Whilst making valuable new contacts, you can share ideas, debate best practice and explore emerging technologies.

We hope to have interactive talks on broad topics such as security, development languages, and single identity including round table discussions where we can brainstorm ideas.

The date of March 21st is set and it will be in central London. It will also be free.

This is a community event, we will not be having a sponsor area , but if you or your company want to get involved please contact anyone from Turtle or LDC. We will be looking for topic ideas and round table moderators as well as session leaders.

Watch our site http://cscevent.com for more news and registration details.

01.13.14
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One Of Our Sparks Is Missing…

Stupidly amongst all my cutting / pasting last week to get the Sparks in place on the Nerd Girls blog I completely lost one of them.  Apologies to Stuart McIntyre who spotted he’d been lost in the shuffle, I think you’ll agree his is one not to be missed.  I’ve updated the Nerd Girl Blog as well

Is love enough? The passion to help children find a home for good (Stuart McIntyre)
Parents to two boys and two girls (currently 9-16 years old), home educators and business owners, surely life is chaotic enough already? Why would we want to throw open our doors to other children (and their birth parents), let alone those with possible addiction, behaviour or other issues? Hear why Stuart and his family entered the exhausting approval process, why way more than just love is required, how fostering is working so far and why it might just be something for your family to consider!
01.09.14
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My Search For The Perfect Doorbell Is Over (Yes Seriously)

Last March the build of our home office was completed.  It sits at the end of our , not very long garden and is s our primary place to work now.  We love it.

About 20m from the back of the house

About 20m from the back of the house

The only downside to the office is that it’s the full length of the house and the length of the garden away from the doorbell.  We order plenty of things for home delivery and our poor neighbours were having to take things in because we never heard the bell ring.  So we tried a few things

1. Buying the most expensive doorbell in Homebase that claimed the furthest range (25m).  Didn’t work at all

2. Importing a doorbell from the US that cost 140 USD plus import charges that claimed a 100m range.  Worked intermittently but not well enough

Finally Carl sent me a link for a new product that hadn’t yet launched called the Doorbot. The Doorbot connects to your wireless internet and has a mobile app that works on iOS and Android , when someone rings the bell the app launches.  You register the app with the serial number of your doorbot(s)) and you can “answer” the bell which triggers the video camera and a microphone. For me it means I’m able to trigger the mic and talk  to the person at the door as well as   see who’s there and if I even want to answer it (hello 6pm Jehovah’s Witnesses)

Since it uses push notifications there’s a small delay but at home it’s not even  a couple of seconds. Maybe when I’m away from home and on 3G it might be longer but my use case for talking to someone at my door when i’m away from home is small.  We received it Monday (14 quid import duty) and set it up and had 3 deliveries Tuesday and 3 visitors Wednesday all worked beautifully.  For some reason other people aren’t as excited as I am when I open the door and explain how thrilling our new doorbell is, I guess if you don’t know about it, it’s just a doorbell.

I had no solution for what we’d do if the Doorbot didn’t work so very glad it does and highly recommended for anyone who has trouble getting to the door on time or wants to keep an eye on people who ring their doorbell.

Doorboat

01.08.14
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Connect 2014 Sessions, Plans For The Month & Thank Yous

Let’s start with the thank you’s - I was delighted to be named an IBM Champion again for 2014 and for that I have to thank the (anonymous) people who nominated me.  I find the whole nomination / tell us why you’re good process very difficult to work with as I think I lot of English people do.  Being self effacing is more our style but this year I made a promise to myself that if I were nominated I would take a deep breath and fill in as much information as I could on why I thought I should be a champion. I think that exercise was good for me and appreciate both the reward and the journey 🙂

Moving On !  It’s January so this month is jam packed.  I actually leave for Florida on the 19th  so only 10 days to go for me and much to organise.  The presentations are written but there’s the Great Geek Challenge to organise, gifts to ship, banners to print, Spark Ideas to blog  and a surprise put together by Chris, Julian, Kathy and myself which may be as fun as we think or fall flat as a stone.  We’ll see.  Meanwhile the week is filling up and I’m very excited about my presentations now they’re complete..

Monday BP304 What We Wish We Had Known: Becoming an IBM Connections Administrator with Paul Mooney

Dolphin S.Hem 1 at 3.45pm

This is where Paul and I attempt to share all the stupid mistakes, bad decisions and dumb moves we made when first starting out with  IBM Connections and how much easier it is if you just know.. stuff.  We’re trying something very new in the format of  this presentation and I’m nervous about that but pleased with the work and what we have to tell you.

Tuesday NERD101 Spark Ideas ! (brought to you by Nerd Girls)

Swan Mockingbird 1 & 2 at 11.15am

This is our 4th year for Spark Ideas and we have a packed lineup that doesn’t include me.  I’m just logistics girl and I’ll be acting as MC with my friend Susan Bulloch acting as roper to drag people off stage if they run over their 6 minutes. If you’ve never seen a Sparks session check out our Vimeo channel.  6 minutes to share an inspirational idea. More details on that soon but thanks in advance to  Bill Buchan, Colleen Burns, Deborah Cole, Julian Robichaux, Norman Cox, Stuart McIntyre, Tim Davis, Gaby Spaszewski and Jamie Magee.  Watch out on this blog and the Nerd Girls blog for details of their talks.

Tuesday BP101 Adminblast 2014! with Paul Mooney

Dolphin N.Hem E 3pm

Another year another new Adminblast - Paul asked me to join him putting this together last year and we’re joining forces again this year.. some new tips, a few favourites and more slides than are sensible.  This year I hope not to be ill , nearly pass out on stage and remember almost nothing.  Last year I was saved by an ice cold bottle of beer handed to me by Mat Newman as we were about to start (just to keep from overheating)….

Wednesday BP104 : Simplifying The S’s: Single Sign-On, SPNEGO and SAML with Chris Miller

Dolphin S.Hem III 10am

This session will be an overview of all your options with regards to single sign on and single password and will be performed entirely as a series of mimes.

Wednesday SHOW401 : Taking IBM Sametime Mobile with Paul Mooney

Swan Osprey 1&2 4.30pm

This is a Show and Tell , 270+ pages on how to take a standard Domino server and turn that into Sametime on a mobile device , every step explained and detailed including our tips along the way about firewall rules, SSL certificates and performance.

Wednesday Great Geek Challenge

Fountain Restaurant 8pm - 10.30pm

Thanks to  generous sponsors the best night out at Connect is back for our 4th year.  Come and queue early, when we hit capacity we have to close the doors (well there are no doors but we’ll stand a bouncer at the gate to stop you coming in!)

So that’s my week.. in between I hope to find time to do everything else include visit the labs, meet with customers and hang out with friends.  Oh and attend a few sessions!  Mostly right now I’m looking forward to some sunshine.

See you there

Gab