LotusBerry

Wow. I just posted my first idea on IdeaJam. 

This idea occurred to me the other day while researching enterprise solutions for social networking.  The most valuable aspects of things like Facebook and Twitter, to me at least, seem to be the ability to see what everyone I follow is doing or working on.  So why can't we have that functionality in Sametime?

Sametime is already locked down for internal use only in most cases so there's not really the fear of people wasting time like there is with Facebook or MySpace.  This would allow users to feel more connected to what the Lotus Notes Developers are working on, for example.  It would also allow managers to immediately see what their team is working on without having a meeting or multiple emails on project status.  In a more strictly social networking sense, this would allow employees to get a feel for each other's personalities.  I also sometimes get the feeling that we in IT are viewed as either know-it-all gods or out-of-touch elitists by the people we support.  Those who wish to utilize it might find themselves more accessible to their user community in a less formal manner than say, opening a trouble ticket.

Please promote my idea if you think it has merit or better yet, tell the technology already exists!  Of course all constructive critism is welcome too.  I may be dreaming of something that the application just can't accomplish.

In my ongoing effort to bring my company out of the dark ages of stovepipe thinking and into the sunny fields of collaboration, I've started playing around with the DominoBlog template (we're a 7.0.3 shop).  I'm kind of flailing my arms over here though because I'm not a developer or even a coder.  I know some HTML and I have a basic understanding of CSS but that's about it.  I'd really like to customize the look and feel of the template.

• What (code) languange does the template use?
• Any suggestions on a book or manual for dummies on that language?
  
• Does anyone know of any white papers or manuals that explain how to customize the DominoBlog.ntf specifically?

Thank you in advance.

I've had a  blog in another location for personal use for many years as well as my own website and domain. However, I'm going to take advantage of this space in order to blog about more professional subjects.  I've been a Lotus Notes Admin for a large government consulting firm for the last four years.  Prior to that I worked on the Helpdesk for two years. Prior to that I had never touched Lotus Notes.  So needless to say, I still consider myself a novice admin.  I've played around with the Developer client a little but I don't know anything about lotuscript or Eclipse.

The reason I've started this blog, in this place, is because I have sort of been tasked with exploring the possibilities of incorporating social networking into our company.  We've just finished upgrading all our clients to 7.0.3.  While we do run Sametime, some of our offices don't use it because of worries that people will "waste time".  So you can see, I've got my work cut out for me.  Actually nothing definite has been assigned to me but I've been asked by my boss to "look into social networking" while I'm at Lotusphere this year.  I know I could just contact our IBM representatives and have them come in with a presentation, and I may still do that, but I'd like to take this opportunity to make my own presentation and shine by presenting it to the "suits" myself.

So if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.