Lauren Cooney's Blog

New Changes, New Places, New Faces

So, as some of you may have heard, today is my last day at IBM. It's an AMAZING company, and I can't say enough about the fabulous, bright, driven, and super smart people I have worked with there over the past 2 1/2 years. Working with Anant Jhingran (my manager, and Info Mgmt CTO) and the folks on my team, the Emerging Tech team (David Boloker, I still love your skater sneakers, they beat Rod's cowboy boots out any day), and all the other groups has been truly one of the best work and learning experiences in my professional career. I hope to be working with these guys going forward as well.

We have a great product that will launch soon (IBM Mashup Center - InfoSphere MashupHub is the piece that is near and dear to me) and expect news on that to still be seen here. I have to say, from my (now independent) perspective, it's the most technically solid product out there for enterprise mashups. And I have loved every second driving that and Info 2.0.

But, as opportunities come up, people have to move on. In a few weeks I'll be making the move to Seattle (yikes!) and starting at Microsoft. There I'll be running a team that focuses on web strategy and some other critical elements of community and software development. I am super excited to be helping Microsoft add to their already vibrant developer community, adding in some more open community aspects (with products to match, I hope!), and to be working with a kick-ass team. I'll have more to say on my role specifically in a later post, but stay tuned here for more information.

You guys can all reach me at laurencooney@gmail.com - my computer access will be spotty since I have to turn in my laptop soon, but I'll do my best on twitter, FB, Brightkite, Dopplr (ha! and the list could go on!) to keep you updated.

Get ready for some fun stuff guys, this is going to be an awesome ride! /LC

TweetClouds, Twubble, & a FB/Twitter App

For any twitter folks out there, here are a few links that are pretty cool.

(1) TweetCloud: This creates a cloud of all your twitters - See HERE for mine.

(2) Bob Lee (better known as Crazy Bob) from Google created Twubble, an app that can help you find more folks you may know on Twitter based on your friends. I am pretty sure it maps off of Google's Social Graph, which is pretty neat.

What I'd like to see? An app that utilizes the Open APIs that Facebook and Twitter have so that I can figure out which of my 500 FB friends use Twitter. Anyone interested in building this for Web 2.0 Expo? If so, I'll buy you a beer next week. If you use Social Graph to build it too, that would be pretty neat... is it possible? /LC

Be a part of our Web 2.0 Expo Talk - you ask, we'll answer. Anything. Yep, Really.

I'm moderating a discussion (debate!) between Stephen O'Grady and Anant Jhingran at Web 2.0 Expo next Thursday, April 24th, titled, "Creativity v. Control: The Debate Continues - Can Enterprises Have Both?"

Background here: Anant thinks that enterprise customers need more control in their Web 2.0 products (which I too, have witnessed w/ customer visits) and Steve believes that more focus needs to be on the creativity that each individual brings to the enterprise through new Web 2.0 style tools, and that the benefits really lies here (which I also am a firm believer of). That said, I'm not giving justice to either stance w. this, so ck out the links below for more detail.

Anant's stand is here.

Steve's is here.

I evidently get to hold the gavel (or the mic) for this debate (which is usually a show in itself, pls laugh at my jokes, but forewarning, I can be pretty damn sarcastic) but before I create my questions, I wanted to ask you guys - what are the tough questions you want to ask? Anything goes here, so let me know - how does this work in your company? Do you think it should be more focused on the creativity new tools have brought to the table, or control that IT wants over this data? Will this affect how data is freed up to be used in mashup and situational apps? If you're a CIO or IT leader, what is your stance on this?

Here's a quick session abstract:

Creativity is at the heart of Web 2.0, and has been the key factor in growing this phenomenon on the Web and throughout the enterprise for the past four years. With enterprise organizations adopting Web 2.0 (coined Enterprise 2.0), there is a new level of “control” that customers and users may want to include in their applications, while preserving the creativity of the application users and creators. But the question remains: is control stifling creativity? Will Enterprise 2.0 succeed if employees are forced to comply with certain rules and regulations of the enterprise? Who wins here, and is it possible for both to live within the enterprise ecosystem?

This topic will be presented by Anant Jhingran, CTO of Information Management at IBM, and Stephen O’Grady, a top industry analyst with Redmonk. Topics include specific enterprise and customer scenarios, examples of emerging creativity with Enterprise 2.0, and views on specific ideas around control with Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Also included in this discussion will be security, governance, and other key issues that are related to this debate. The audience will be asked to voice their opinions on this topics at the end of the presentation.

/LC

IBM Mashup Center: Insider Details Revealed... (shhh)

Yes, I know you can't download IBM Mashup Center yet, but you will be able to very soon, I promise. I've been heads-down working with our awesome dev teams getting this ready for beta, but unfortunately, we're just not ready for a public beta _quite_ yet. So, here's a deck that I pulled together that I just got clearance to blog about today that reveals some additional details of Mashup Center, Lotus Mashups, and InfoSphere MashupHub -

Yesterday we formally announced "IBM Mashup Center," an end-to-end solution for organizations looking to Web 2.0-enable their existing infrastructure as well as build mashups and situational apps for internal and external use. The key here is that the product is actually simple enough for business users to utilize... (I, for example, have built a few "HelloWorld" apps in my day, and I can use the transformation capabilities, which is probably the most difficult - if you want to call it that - feature).

Here's a brief deck that overviews IBM Mashup Center (with some details in here that weren't revealed in yesterday's PR or the IMPACT presentation) for you guys to check out. Specifically, this digs into a lot of the features that InfoSphere MashupHub has - like transformation capabilities, connectors to existing systems, catalog features, etc. It also digs a bit into Lotus Mashups, which is another key product we partnered with to create Mashup Center.

If you recall from my previous posts, MashupHub is not only built with an APP based open API structure, but it was also built with the idea that not only mashups could consume the information created in the Hub, but things like mobile devices, other apps, etc can consume this information as well. More on that later...

With no further ado, here's the deck. Questions? Find me on Twitter or ping me direct.

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I love it when people "Get it." Mike Ferguson, you are my new hero.

I love that feeling, when you are talking to someone and the light bulb finally goes on. Even if it's something you have been talking about and feel like no one gets, and then finally, BAM. You literally can see it happen.

Today was one of those days. We've been talking about MashupHub (officially it's IBM InfoSphere MashupHub now, but we'll forgo the corporate garb here) for awhile and its capabilities, but to be honest we've really been limiting its capabilities to what it will be able to do with Lotus Mashups and a few other products out there - which is awesome stuff, don't get me wrong. But we've got additional plans, right? We do have plans to release a standalone MashupHub (can't comment on that date yet, sorry). And man, Mike Ferguson just nailed them today. He gets it, and I LOVE IT.

Mike has been writing an ongoing article I've been following on mashup technologies, titled, "Web 2.0 and Business Intelligence: How do they fit together?" Now, I've never met Mike (I don't think...) and I opened my reader today to see his article, focusing on mashup products, but specifically calling out MashupHub, and the product formerly known as QEDWiki (these capabilities will be available in Lotus Mashups VERY soon).

Mike writes about MashupHub capabilities here, and says (I have highlighted the important parts):

This server [MashupHub]takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed.... Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

There are a few key points here that Mike hits on that we've been thinking a lot about:

(1) The separation of the mashing of data and the presentation of the mashed data, which relates to how the information can be output.

(2) The different applications and devices that can consume this mashed data.

(3) Information can be combined together without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(4) Also relevant here is our Open API strategy, which David Boloker and I spoke about in March.

Below is the diagram and an excerpt from Mike's article, but be sure to read it as well. It's a terrific read, end to end, but kudos to you Mike. You made my day. /LC

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The other way to create mashups is the buy option (i.e., to buy a mashup server from vendors like Kapow and IBM). Other mashup editors include Microsoft PopFly, Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup Editor. Also, EII vendors such as Denodo are also pushing into this space. Figure 3 shows an example of the IBM Mashup Hub. This server takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed. In the case of the IBM Mashup Server shown in Figure 3, the data is presented to the user using a presentation component called QEDWiki. When I first looked at this product all I could think about was that it looked similar to ETL workflows. Essentially, data such as RSS feeds and XML data from remote web services is taken in by the mashup server, any necessary filters applied, and the ‘mashed’ output made available for presentation.

 

Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/7168)

Why Should I Twitter? Clue me in!

I signed up for Twitter quite awhile ago (to grab the user name "laurencooney") but I rarely use it. Recently I've had a lot of people (well, about 20) add me as someone they are following on Twitter. I'm not quite sure why, but I'm willing to take a stab at Twittering if someone can give me some good reasons to why I should use it... I get the part about following conversations, or asking questions that you need answered at that moment, and it *seems* like it might be convenient...

Can someone clue me in? Am I missing something here? I feel like the last person invited to the biggest party of the year... help! :) /LC

You Know You've Been Traveling Too Much When...

.... you roll out of bed in the morning, thinking you're late, and grumbling about how the hotel operator forgot to give you your wake-up call... only to realize that you're in your own bed, in your own house, oh, and it's a different time zone - you're up 3 hours too early. And the worst part? There's no room service waffles/coffee on the way.

I got back from NYC late last night, mainly due to delays in flights from high winds, and sore from flying coach (yes, my whole management team does Coach travel, FYI - we save money!).

This weekend I'm working on reworking our Info 2.0 website - hopefully we'll have it refreshed by next Friday. We're getting closer to announcements (yay!) so time to get this rolling.

Hope you all have a great weekend... /LC

Info 2.0 API Strategy: Presentation with David Boloker

This week I'm in New York City - on Monday I attended and presented at Mashery's "Business of API's" Conference at the Yale Club, and Tuesday I presented with Mark Heid at AjaxWorld on Info 2.0.

It's been a great week so far - from getting stuck in the middle of the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the WORLD (which was actually pretty darn fun - pics to come) to chatting with the folks from Nexaweb and Appcelerator today at AjaxWorld, all who have pretty interesting (and perhaps complimentary, in some ways) solutions. I'll have more about AjaxWorld a bit later, but I wanted to give you guys the presentation that David and I delivered to about 200 folks at the Mashery conference on Monday.

In summary, we discussed Info 2.0's API strategy and delivered an overview of some of our current plans in the works. Our engineering teams put some great thought into this - essentially the history of it is that a few years ago when we started building out this product, our guys recognized that it's pretty difficult to access disparate enterprise systems, so we built our product around the APP (or Atom Pub, from what I hear the "new lingo" is) so folks could access our API to build plugins to their systems (if we didn't offer it in the product). So, we're Atom based, we've got a slew of programming interfaces, and we focus on REST. We're offering up several connectors, to DB2 (given), Oracle, MySQL; we have an excel plugin we're working on, and there are more coming. It's only a short time now until we get the beta out there, and I've got lots more to talk about - so stay tuned here for further info.

Enough of me jabbering - check out the deck below, and let me know what you think. Open for questions... Oh, and this is my first time using SlideShare too, so let me know how it works for you./LC

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SMash donated to OpenAjax Alliance

For those of you who haven't heard, we announced SMash yesterday (secure mashup technology), and donated it to the OpenAjax Alliance. The net-net of SMash is that it allows information from different sources to communicate with each other, but the sources are kept separate to prevent the spread of malicious code. It essentially keeps code and data from each of the sources separated while allowing controlled sharing of data through a secure communication channel - easing worries about security when building mashup apps.

(a) This is a very cool technology, and I'm excited about that but...

(b) I am *really* happy that this landed in the OpenAjax Alliance. I always like to see good technology being used and adopted by the community, and I think this especially makes sense for OpenAjax, as this is a great fit - essentially enabling safer client side cross-domain access to multiple sites - allowing for easier, secure mixing of different technologies. Let's just say it will help a lot of devs sleep better at night knowing their stuff is secure :)

This is exciting too, as we head into AjaxWorld next week in NYC. I'll be there talking about Info 2.0, as will David Boloker, Mark Heid, and Dan Gisolfi - and a few others from IBM. And if you're in NYC early, David and I will also be speaking at the Mashery.com API conference - so swing on by...

/LC

The Rest of the Visit to China: Info 2.0, PureXML, and Beijing Research Labs

I got back from a great, but very, very busy trip to China last Friday. The trip looked something like this:

• Saturday Night: Lauren gets to Beijing, suffers through a little bit of jetlag and a police station
• Sunday: Sightseeing at Ming Tombs, Forbidden City, Great Wall; Sunday night: work prep for Monday
• Monday: Work in the AM, Dinner with Jing Wei (IBM China technical guru) and a partner; Phone calls until midnight
• Tuesday: Meet with Peter Cheng (www.huihoo.org) for breakfast, PureXML event in the AM/early PM; Flight to Seoul, South Korea in the PM; arrive at The Shilla at 10pm
• Wednesday: Meeting with IBM South Korea folks, customer event, return to hotel at 7pm; phone calls until 10pm
• Thursday: Return to Beijing, More work based on what we'd learned from those meetings
• Friday: Pack up (which was no small task, let me tell you) and head to IBM Beijing Research Labs. Afternoon - hour cab ride through backstreets of Beijing (super cool, btw) and back to the airport.

Here's a pic of Mark presenting in Seoul for one of our customer events.

And here's a pic of the IBM Beijing Research Labs team:

I'll be following up shortly with slides from the PureXML event, but for now, check out more info on PureXML here. Also, here's a link to some demos. PureXML is a cool, relatively new technology (featured with DB2 9) that handles XML as a new type of data that is stored differently than relational data, so it can be quickly integrated and therefore speeds app development, search performance, and also allows for both SQL and XQuery to query XML data. Check it out... it's pretty kick-ass stuff./LC