Hello community !!
This is a short post to remind you of this upcoming HCL Webinar, “HCL Connections v8 and Roadmap Update” scheduled for Wed, Mar 2, 2022 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CET.
As you know, HCL is currently developing V8, and some month has passed since our event (May 2021) when HCL unveiled some of the new features, so don’t forget to register here , to have the newest roadmap, features and possibly an ETA for V8.
Stay safe and see you soon !
We are happy to say that we have lots of good content for you to watch and read from Let’sConnect Connects!
We give you for example several sessions from HCL on where HCL Connections is heading, a keynote from Richard Jefts and Andrew Manby, a session on how you can customize HCL Connections to tailor it matching your wishes, and also a session on research on the flora of tools for enterprise collaboration.
Find presentations from sessions here.
On our Youtube channel we showcase both new and previous sessions for you to rewatch.
For example:
HCL Keynote: The State of Collaboration in 2021 and Beyond
The Connections Roadmap: A First Glimpse at v8.0
We hope we will see you next time!
Should you want to contact us, you can always reach us at team@letsconnect.world
We’ll go straight to the point: The agenda for our 2 half day September event is published!
We have for example several interesting sessions from HCL Offering Management scheduled. For example “Connections v8” and “Business Value of Connections”. And more!
We hope this intrigues you as much as it does to us, so head on over to our website to take a look and register! (Scroll down for some highlights.)
Join us on 28 – 29 September 2021 at 3 pm CET to hear news from HCL and the Let’sConnect team.
HCL Keynote: The State of Collaboration in 2021 and Beyond
As the past year has proven, enabling employees to keep the organization running and meet their professional and personal objectives while working remotely has become a mission-critical requirement.
HCL Connections has always been in the forefront in providing an open platform that fosters engagement, communication, and collaboration. In this session, Senior Vice President Richard Jefts and Vice President Andrew Manby will share their perspective on the state of collaboration today and the role that Connections is playing in driving it forward into the future.
Enterprise Collaboration: A Zoo of Tools – Current Strategies behind Enterprise Collaboration Platforms
Join this session and hear about the different approaches used by user organisations to develop their software portfolio for Enterprise Collaboration.
We are going to discuss the complex collaborative technology landscape in order to understand the evolving portfolios of collaboration software currently in use in organizations. This will include the examination of different areas of collaboration activity that these tools support and the areas of overlapping and redundant functionality. We will present findings from a study of 23 user organisations in which we identified three dominant strategies. In this session, you will learn how the companies in our sample are addressing the zoo of software tools to shape their Enterprise Collaboration Platform.
The Connections Roadmap: A First Glimpse at v8.0
We have shared our plans for HCL Connections 8 in the past so you have probably heard about or even seen the new designs by now. But let us give you a refresher on what the development teams are working on.
We have news for you! Our September conference which was planned to take part in Madrid, will instead be a virtual one.
As much as we had hoped to gather the community this fall, we have taken the decision to postpone a face to face event to later. Even though the world is gradually openening up, there are still hurdles we feel will be too big at this stage.
In the meantime we want to make sure that the waiting is worthwhile! We are inviting you to a 2 half day online event taking place on the 28-29 September 2021.
We already have several interesting sessions from HCL Offerings Management scheduled, on the future of Connections. And more!.
We now invite you to participate with a session if you feel you have a topic you think might interest the Connections community. If you would like to submit an abstract, please email us at team@letsconnect.world
We have already opened up the registration for the event here.
Agenda and more information will be published in the next coming days.
Let’sConnect soon!
Summer holidays are getting closer for many of us, and for some winter is coming. Regardless times are changing and we look forward to a hopefully more open world where we can finally gather the community live!
In the meantime we welcome you to our bi-monthly webinar!
Join us on June 29, 2021 at 3 pm CEST to hear news from HCL and the Let’sConnect team.
Agenda snippets below:
At our last online event we collected the latest and greatest news all about HCL Connections and presented it to our attendees. We got good feedback on this, so we will of course repeat this news section!
Join this session to learn how to kickstart HCL Connections Engagement Center. Roger will take you through the steps of creating a base intranet page brining content in from HCL Connections and other sources. In 45 minutes you can have a simple intranet. Roger will also show you how to create a separate intranet page for visitors so you don’t expose internal data to them.
Roger Zirn: As a Senior Software Engineer at Belsoft Collaboration AG, Roger gathered his HCL Connections experiences during installations, troubleshooting, administering and customizing tasks for several on-prem as well as for ThreeThirds cloud customers. He started to work in the collaboration area as an HCL Notes and Domino developer 30 years ago (actually, at this time it was called Lotus Notes developer). You can still find him coding @Formulas and LotusScript… sometimes.
Please register for the event in order to receive the webinar link. The event is free!
We are looking forward to see you soon.
Maria, Wannes, Matteo, Martin and Jan
Hello!
We are so happy to have held yet another virtual conference in this year of 2021. As much as we wish we could see you all in person we are over the moon of the response we have from the Connections Community. We were a full house again!
This time we had two very interesting topics alongside our popular “Connections News” collected and given by the Let’sConnect team:
Upcoming Webinar on Driving Digital Transformation
HCL Connections & Microsoft 365 webinar recording
DS Academy – Upgrading from Connections 6.5 to 7
With the most recent release of HCL Connections out the door, we are working hard on the next release. In this session we will share a preview of how the next Connections release creates a new experience that will let users enjoy fluid collaboration within Connections and beyond.
Link to Adam’s presentation here
Link to Adam’s session here (Youtube)
Once you finish installation of HCL Connections, there are dozens of features you can enable or disable in so called post-installation steps. In this session we will walk through most of the features and advice how to make Connections users engaged and happy.
Link to Jan’s presentation here
Link to Jan’s session here (Youtube)
After the sessions we had a really interesting Q&A session with lots of good questions and answers on the coming versions of Connections and HCL’s plan ahead.
Now we immediately start planning our next conference which will take place on June 29, 2021!
If you are interested to participate in any way (for example speaking in a session), please email us at team@letsconnect.world. Any topic is interesting, and particularly of course upgrading experiences.
Until we meet again,
So long!
The Let’sConnect Team
Hi,
our next webinar is about to happen NEXT week on May 11 3pm CET! Let us connect together again to learn how to get most of your Connections deployment. We have prepared two sessions for you:
At our last online event we collected the latest and greatest news all about HCL Connections and presented it to our attendees. We got good feedback on this, so we will of course repeat this news section!
Once you finish installation of HCL Connections, there are dozens of features you can enable or disable in so called post-installation steps. Unfortunately many of the useful features are not enabled by default and therefore missed by many admins to the detriment of users. In this session we will walk through most of the features and advice how to make Connections users engaged and happy.
Jan Valdman works as a business development manager and consultant in Whitesoft, a Czech-Belgian IT company. Jan is a Connections-addict IT evangelist who has log time experience with IBM/HCL technology. He is also an assistant professor on Enterprise IT management and Knowledge management at University of West Bohemia. Jan has been recognized as IBM champion for collaboration solutions 2014-2019 and HCL Ambassador since 2019.
With the most recent release of HCL Connections out the door, we are working hard on the next release. In this session we will share a preview of how the next Connections release creates a new experience that will let users enjoy fluid collaboration within Connections and beyond.
Adam Gartenberg is Director of Product Management at HCL
Please register for the event in order to receive the webinar link. The event is free!
We are looking forward to see you soon.
Maria, Wannes, Matteo, Martin and Jan
March 2021! Think, a year ago we could not believe we would be living our work lives online and that several office desks are now collecting dust instead of coffee cups. It is already a cliché saying all this, but as strange the world is, it is worth repeating.
Luckily, we have the tools to get the job done. HCL Connections is the meeting point and the central hub where colleagues meet, work, document, collects, learn. A tool which breaks down silos, creates visibility and lets people do their job.
That’s why we in the Let’sConnect team keep on doing our job. Gather people that wants to share knowledge, network and help others. At either physical conferences or as now, virtual.
Registrations were flowing in and the team was really happy by the numbers!
The reason was of course the topics for the conference:
HCL Connections News by Wannes Rams from the Let’sConnect team
(why upgrade to Connections 7, Install Automations, Connections Sizing Guide)
HCL Connections Client Advocacy by John Immerman, HCL
(join the Client Advocacy and take part in the vibrant Connections Communtity.)
Link to John’s presentation here
Take your Communities to the next level by Fabio Gervasoni, Design Lead HCL
(create engaging and attractive Communities by customizing the homepage layout
of your community, and new capabilities made possible by new Connections templates.)
Link to Fabio’s presentation here
Link to Fabio’s session here (Youtube)
After the sessions we had a really interesting Q&A session where we had a fantastic group of people from HCL helping out answering questions and talking to people from the community:
Adam Gartenberg, Director, Product Management HCL
Miki Banatwala, Senior Software Engineer at HCL
Bill Wimer, Director Of Engineering HCL
And last but not least we got introduced to Jack O’Donnell, the new Director of Development for HCL Connections. We are really excited that he joined us, and we look forward to hearing from him again!
Now we immediately start planning our next conference which will take place on May 11, 2021!
If you are interested to participate in any way (for example speaking in a session), please email us at team@letsconnect.world. Any topic is interesting, and particularly of course upgrading experiences.
Until we meet again,
So long!
The Let’sConnect Team
Dear community , HCL has scheduled a new exiting webinar for Wed, Apr 7, 2021 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CEST about the new Connections 7.0 integrations between Connections 7.0 and Microsoft 365 software like Teams , SharePoint , Outlook and Office.
If you are interested to learn all about this new integration features to break the silos and speed up your work and raise up your productivity , reserve your seat using the following registration page : https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7366333594501517838
Hi,
today we are happy to bring you some details regarding our first online event in this year – which will take place on March 16 3pm CET! Let us connect together to hear some news regarding WHAT from HCL. We are thrilled to learn more about the next release of Connections later in this year and how it will meet your expectations.
Our main speaker will be Fabio Gervasoni from HCL design team, who will show us how to create attracting and engaging communities.
Connections 7 offers new ways of tweaking and customizing the homepage layout of your community and new capabilities made possible by new Connections templates. In this session, Fabio Gervasoni, head of the HCL Connections Design team, will share design tips and best practices on developing Communities that are suited to your needs, attractive and engaging for your specific audiences.
Fabio Gervasoni joined the HCL Digital Solutions team in January 2020. An experienced graphic designer, Fabio covered different roles ranging from traditional print design and art direction to UX and UI for web and mobile, both agency and in-house. In his current role at HCL he is leading the Connections and Sametime design teams, refining the user experience and look and feel of these key tools in the HCL’s product portfolio.
The second speaker will be John Immerman who will tell us all about the Connections Advocacy Program
Last but not least, the event is open for all members of the community so if you have something to tell, give us a shout – we can arrange a short timeslot for you. We would also like to discuss our plans for the September conference in Madrid – do you still remember that we have got an amazing venue, huh? We need your feedback regarding your expectations and possibility of international travel.
Please register for the event HERE in order to receive the webinar link. The event is free!
We are looking forward to see you soon.
Maria, Wannes, Matteo, Martin and Jan
HCL has released the new HCL Connections 7 at the end of December 2020, now the developers are collecting info to improve the future releases.
You could try the user feedback survey here https://hclsw.co/connections-survey
it’s a 5-10 minutes survey to help HCL to build a better Connections, please keep your time and send your response !
There are lots of initiatives to connect people who work with HCL Connections. But none targeted directly to super users of HCL Connections within organisations. Heitkamp & Thumann is using HCL Connections as their collaboration platform, and they have for a while been running a ‘guide’ (super user) program with good results.
From their experience with running this initiative we would like to explore what options there are to bring together their guides with guides, champions, super users from other programs. Maybe to just have someone sit in on one of their (virtual) meetings to have some exchange of thoughts or to talk about the challenges they run into when trying to get their colleagues to expand their usage of the platform and maybe just to exchange some tips & tricks. All ideas are open and welcome.
While most other initiatives might connect those at the top, the admins, organizers, community managers, architects, this initiative focuses directly on the people who uses HCL Connections most. There are so many more who use the product and never go to conferences, virtual events etc. Not because they can’t, but because they think it’s not for them or too technical or just not in their job role. But many of them, and especially those that act as champions, super users, ambassadors or guides would really benefit from hearing how others are doing things.
So if you are a guide, internal HCL Connections champion, super user, ambassador for HCL Connections within your company (named as such or just because you do it) or run an adoption program and have them, or would simply like to start one; join us for the session where we try to come up with ways to set this up. The session is in English and open to all.
Date: 21st of January at 4pm CET
Meeting id is: https://ht-group.zoom.us/j/96572564480
Hi all and a happy New Year from the Let’sConnect team,
We sincerely wish you all the best for 2021 and we hope that this can be the year the world goes back to normal ( if it ever was).
We have some exciting announcements to make so let’s get started:
The goal is to have a mix of content. Adoption, Use cases, technical sessions, HCL sessions, ….. We are looking for content and speakers. So please contact us if you have an interesting topic to discuss. Reach out to your favorite Let’sConnect team member, mail us ( team@letsconnect.world), tweet @_lets_connect, ….
Let’s make it a great year together!!!!
Let’sConnect Virtual 2020 is over! The event was a real success and we are very happy for all the good feedback we have received from the attendees and speakers. It feels great that the community showed up, took part, asked questions and participated in polls from the speakers.
A real good feeling to see so many familiar names in the attendee list, and also so many new ones!
We are also pleased with the content that our speakers provided, we know it can be tough. Especially now in these times!
We have been working fast to get all presentations and replay videos published. Please also see our other blog posts where we share poll results, and the Q&A from the sessions.
Regarding the videos, please see the link to our Youtube channel below! And we are more than happy if you would share them amongst your colleagues and friends.
Keep the community vibrant, welcoming and alive! We look forward until we all can meet again.
The Let’sConnect Team
As we promise during the event we have published the slides on our Speaker Deck page and we have also embedded it inside the Virtual Event agenda.
Enjoy !
A Let’sConnect event without our dear friends and sponsors in the community would not be a Let’sConnect! We always think they bring that extra thing to our events. So much knowledge, know-how, experience and smart solutions. And a nice vibe to our showcase floor!
And we miss to see them all so dearly. So we have offered the sponsors from our latest event in Munich to join us this time, all for free!
Check them all out and what they can offer you in order to have a good, stable, uptodate environment with all bells and whistles!
We hope to see you in real life soon!
Click below to have a look!
HCL has just opened the pre-registration for a preview of HCL Connections 7.0 !
This preview will be hosted and managed by HCL with the following targets:
You’ll be able to try out the new tailored experience Community features, integration with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, and more. You will also have a chance to provide feedback to the development team and get your questions answered.
This is the registration form : https://hclsw.co/cxn-7-pre
We encourage all Connections and Let’s Connect community members to register for this preview , enjoy it and give feedback to HCL to help everybody to have the best HCL Connections version ever !
Dear friends,
We hope that you all are safe and healthy.
As you all know, planning can at the moment be a bit tricky. So today we have some news for you. Good news! You will not only get one, but two Let’sConnect events!
First news is that we are downsizing our September event to focus on the latest updates from HCL. The new Product Manager Andrew Manby and his team will talk about the current Connections version and give you a sneak peak into the Connections 7 preview. We also have some customers lined up sharing their stories on how they use Connections.
Join us for our 2 day event on September 29 and 30 from 3 pm CEST until 5 pm CEST ( 9 am EST until 11 AM EST). This timing should alow for viewers to join from around the world.
It is a great pleasure to announce an additional virtual Let’sConnect event that will take place in February 2021. Having this just after the Connections 7 release allows all of our speakers to cook up new content on usage, installation, business value and configuration of the new version. Stay tuned for updates on the exact date for this event.
We hope you have all received the survey from the HCL product team on Connections. If not or if you have not yet had the time to take the survey, it will only take 5 minutes of your time. HCL is inquiring how your organization is using HCL Connections, this feedback will help them understand your use cases and will help guide future roadmap decisions.
Don’t miss your opportunity to co-create the future of HCL Connections with us!
And of course a reminder of our previous announcement that we have moved our physical event to 2021 in Madrid on September 27 and 28. We are super excited to see all of you in person again.
We hope to see you all soon!
If you want to reach us, contact us at team@letsconnect.world Or sign up to our newsletter
Bye for now!
The Let’sConnect team (Maria, Wannes, Matteo, Jan and Martin)
As you know we and everybody else needs to adapt to the current situation in the world. I can be easy or it can be tough. But no challenge is too tricky to solve for an agile bunch of people like us! We and you work in a collaboration community driven by change, and most of us are used to evolving work situations and new ways of working. So when the world is constantly changing, we find ways.
All of us testifies that we now see an increase in the use of collaboration software within companies. Digital workplaces, chat tools, meeting rooms. All of it. So we feel it is more important than ever to arrange meeting places were we can discuss these needs.
We have updates for you!
Our original plan was to have the conference 28-29 September, so we are sticking to those days, but extending them to the whole week. 28 September – 2 October 2020.
The reason is that we will spread out the sessions during the days to make it easier for you to follow along. You do not now have to book a whole day in front of your computer. You can now pin point the sessions that intrigues you and attend those.
The event will be held to match several time zones. We welcome attendees from all over the world.
One session we are sure will intrigue you is the keynote with Danielle Baptiste, Associate Vice President, Product Management at HCL Technologies. She will update us on the latest on HCL Connections.
We will also fill the week with deep dive technical sessions, customer stories on using HCL Connections sessions, best practices sessions and more.
You will also have the possibilities to network with the community and ask experts in our virtual interest rooms.
Do you want to do a session on the virtual event? Submit your abstract here: https://letsconnect.world/submit-abstract/
More information will follow.
Questions? Contact us at team@letsconnect.world
We of course look to the future. LetsConnect 2021 will take place in Madrid. One year later than planned, but hey. Let’s look forward to see the vibrant community and eat that tapas plate a little longer.
Book your calendar for 27-28 September 2021!
More information about this conference will follow. But most important, put it in your calendar.
For early sponsoring opportunities, speaker opportunities or questions in general, contact us at team@letsconnect.world
Or sign up to our newsletter
Dear Let’sConnect speakers, sponsors, visitors,
First of all we would like to wish you good health for you and your loved ones.
As the world is currently changing in a way and at a pace none of us could have imagined until a couple of weeks ago, we as a user group organizer need to adapt, adapt to the unknown. Not an easy task as we don’t know what is ahead and when.
Therefore we have decided that given the fact that we have already published a date and have a venue, that for now the conference is ON. We yet have to decide whether it will be a physical event as planned initially, a virtual event or a combination of the 2 as we might end up in a situation were a part of the world is able to travel and part is not.
We would like to open our call for abstracts as everyone has time on their hands sitting at home unable to go out, there is no better time to write a couple of good abstracts and submit them to us. Please note that we now welcome sessions on HCL DX as well as that product will be an integral part of our conference.
For now we will not open call for sponsors and registration, we will do so once we know what type of event we will have.
Keep in mind that if we do a virtual event, you will not be travelling to Madrid, so please do not book any travel at this moment. Don’t be afraid to submit even if you are not sure you will be able to make it to Madrid, we will find a way to make it work all together as a community.
Please submit your abstracts here
The Let’sConnect team (Maria, Wannes, Matteo, Jan and Martin) wish you all the best for the next couple of weeks. Follow your governments guidelines, use commons sense when you go out, wash your hands and DO NOT BUY MORE TOILETPAPER THAN YOU NEED!!!
The Let’sConnect Team
Connections has found a new home at HCL. Alongside the transition, the Product Management team has worked hard to release a new version of Connections (Connections 6.5) with new features and has announced a bigger release, version 7.
Digital Experience has followed the same pattern with the 9.5 release in 2019 and a big new release in 2020 with version 10.
The LetsConnect team (formerly Social Connections) has followed the journey with interest and we are very happy we now can reveal the city and venue for our next conference, all about Connections and Digital Experience!
We know many Connections customers have been waiting patiently to hear from HCL on how Connections will evolve and continue to be the go-to place to find the company’s collective knowledge and skills.
The team has been working hard to find a place where we can gather all of you, customers, business partners, product management, researchers and the developers for our next LetsConnect conference. HCL will have a natural place in the spotlight as they will share news, plans and facts about Connections and Digital Experience.
So without further ado we would like to say:
Welcome to Madrid and Truss Madrid in WiZink Center!
HCL has announced a huge event for 4th of December 2019 live from Tokio: Domino, Notes and Sametime V11 will be launched together with Connections V 6.5 !
The event will be live streamed and recorded, and you can save your place here to not miss this unforgettable event.
This will be the agenda (time table translated to London time ) :
2–2:15 p.m.: Live from Tokyo Keynote: A Major HCL Milestone.
Presenter: Richard Jefts, General Manger, HCL Digital Solutions
2:15–2:30 p.m.: Domino V11: Why Modernizing Beats Migrating.
Presenter: Andrew Manby, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Domino
2:30–2:45 p.m.: Domino V11 Demo: One Vendor, One Solution, One Stack. The Only Stack You Need.
Presenter: Andrew Manby, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Domino
2:45–3 p.m.: We Hear You: HCL Connections 6.5 = More Value from Your Investment.
Presenter: Danielle Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Connections
3–3:15 p.m.: Boost Engagement with HCL Connections 6.5: We’ll Show You How.
Presenter: Danielle Baptiste, Vice President of Product Management, HCL Connections
3:15–3:30 p.m.: Get Started with Domino V11 and Connections 6.5 Today.
Presenter: François Nasser, Global Sales Leader, HCL Digital Solutions
It seems like we only just turned the lights out and closed the shutters when winter arrives and it’s all systems go for planning the next Let’sConnect!
Inspired by the successful event in Munich in September we are very happy to announce the dates for our next event.
Save the dates 28-29 September 2020 for the conference in your calendar. Workshops will be held on 30 September.
Location is not yet set, but it will be in Europe and we aim to reveal the city within the next few weeks.
Keep an eye out on this blog or sign up to our newsletter here
Yes, you are on the right website – The worldwide Social Connections user group “for IBM Connections and social business” decided to change its name. We are now LET’S CONNECT – we have a new logo, new twitter handle @_lets_connect and a new hashtag #LetsConnect but we are still the same group of people and a great community all around the world.
The announcement was made during the OGS of Social Connections 15 and we will gradually rebrand this site. Later we will also rebrand all social media accordingly.
Thank you for your never-ending support and we are looking forward for the next 15 conferences 😉
We will try to live stream tomorrow’s keynotes. Let’s hope the technology gods are with us. periscope.tv/soccnx#Letsconnect#soccnx
Grüss Gott in München!
Welcome to Munich and Bavaria.
For the people of Munich and visitors alike, the beergardens of the city are a kind of paradise on earth. This is where people sit with friends at long wooden tables under the shade of mighty chestnut trees enjoying a “Mass Bier” (a liter mug of beer!) .
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Therefore it is not a surprise that we invite all our attendees of Social Connections to an evening at the largest beergarden in Bavaria; Königlicher Hirschgarten. Chronicle says it used to be a hunting lodge for the electors, until it changed 1791 to the restaurant.
So welcome to Social Connections Social Dinner!
You must have a valid ticket to the Social Connections conference to get in.
Monday 16 September 2019 19:30
Königlicher Hirschgarten
Hirschgarten 1
Munich
Many thanks to everybody who registered to speak, sponsor or attend our 15th event! We are happy (and also proud) to announce that we reached the planned capacity for the event yesterday. It is great to be part of the “new” HCL Digital Solutions community and to see such huge interest in Connections. We hope you will enjoy the event and hear great news from HCL as well as from all other valued sponsors.
At the moment, we have a few more available tickets only and then we have to put all new registrations on a waiting list. If you are seriously interested to join us in Munich, then you have the last chance to register… hurry up!
