panagenda's Blog

Today’s world is filled with an ever growing about of information to be processed. How do you determine what to focus on and what to tune out? How do you best organize this information to persuade your management team to make purchases or agree to de-commissioning of certain hardware or software? These were two of several questions that Florian Vogler and I discussed with attendees at a "Birds of a Feather" (BOF) session during Lotusphere 2012. Our discussion included agreement that the data is, well, just data, without two other important pieces of information:
- The PURPOSE of collecting or analyzing the data.
- The AUDIENCE for the data analysis.
If the information you are collecting does not help achieve your purposes - ignore it. If the data you are collecting will not be meaningful to your audience, do not include it.

Given my job as a UI designer for collaboration and social media, I try to think of ways to help business end users see relationships (for example, with email messages, with each other) and with Composition - (for example, the content of emails, blog posts). Florian, on the other hand, as a provider of client and server analysis tools, tries to think of ways to help administrators see comparisons ( for example, space before and after compression) and distributions (for example,network topology visualizations). Thus, we focused on 4 different things to show when providing information/data analysis:
Relationship
Composition
Comparison
Distribution
What you want to show should determine whether you use charts at all, and what type of chart to use. Here are some common chart types based on what you want to show:

Relationship: Histogram, scatter chart (For social network analysis, there are new types of relationship maps being designed as well)
Composition: Pie charts are probably most common, but new visualizations like Tag clouds and Wordle are emerging
Comparison: Side by side bara charts and column charts are the norm
Distribution: Histograms and scatter charts have been common, and panagenda has provided an interactive topology map in their Green Light product.



Amit Agarwal has provided a nice visualization of what type of chart to use and when (although it does not include tag clouds, Wordle or a topology map). Go here to check out the larger format.

We didn't solve all of our information overload problems during the BOF, but we shared some really good ideas, and left thinking about how to create new and different ways to filter, analyze, and display all this information.

How do you deal with the every day bombardement of information, both in your professional and personal lives? Do you turn your mobile device off at a certain time? Are you on a mission to "unfollow" digital input?

- Mary Beth Raven

Just a quick post to express our gratitude.... thank each and every one of you that stopped by our booth last week at Lotusphere 2012. Thank you to everyone who came to any of our sessions. Thank you to each and every one of you who stopped us in the hall, sent us emails, responded on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or anything else. Thank you to everyone that reached out and shared your opinion, provided us with feedback, came by to grab bucky balls or the metal puzzles.

As a company with team members in the US and Europe, doing virtual work with customers and partners all over the Globe, it means a lot to us to see you, talk to you, hear from you. In fact, we couldn't do anything without you and we draw an immense amount of energy and pleasure from meeting you, answering your questions, reading your evals, listening to your feedback!

And in the spirit of sharing.... below the slides for Session BP110: A Performance Boost for your IBM Lotus Notes Client as well as BP117: Shrinking Your Environment - Server Consolidations Done Right. Thanks again to everyone who attended.

For those of you who didn't make it to Lotusphere this year... here a couple of resources on catching up with this "Lotusphere in 60 seconds" video and the Flickr picture stream, which is always fun to play "caption contest" with :)

And lastly, for those of you that went, what was your favorite Lotusphere 2012 moment/session/event/interaction?

If your response to this blog post title is "Things I love to eat for $500, Alex", then you're exactly the kind of Lotusphere 2012 attendee we want to talk to!

Come by our booths 507/508/509 tonight between 6pm and 8pm to see the lovely panagenda crew including Mary Beth Raven and Julian Robichaux. We'll be happy to talk to you about our FREE MarvelClient Analyze or GreenLight Database Analyzer licenses, bacon, chocolate, java coding, yellow capes, bucky balls and tropical islands.

And don't forget to tell us the "panagenda rocks" password to unlock the bucky ball stash :)

Psst, over here....

Do you remember the super duper give-aways we had last year at our Lotusphere 2011 booth? I'm not going to say the words out loud but they were a huge hit and got snagged up before the conference ended. Pic courtesy of Vowe

This year at Lotusphere 2012, we have another give-away, not the above, but still very cool. Come by and check it out, but for those of you with the intel, we have a very small number of limited panagenda mini bucky b....., well, you know what I mean! All you gotta do is come by booth 507 ot 508 or 509 and tell one of team members "panagenda rocks" for access to the secret stash. You can yell it, whisper it, or write it down on a piece of paper and show it to someone, but it's gotta be those two words. Got it?

Mary Beth writes:

"Hello! I am excited to join panagenda at Lotusphere 2012 handing out Austrian chocolates and other fun stuff at booth 507/508/509. I am also presenting a BoF with the panagenda CEO Florian Vogler. Please come by and see me and say hello. I will be easy to spot with my hard-to-miss yellow cape!

Finding the Balance Between Too Much and Not Enough Information Today's world is filled with an ever growing amount of information to be processed. In this "noisy" environment, how do you sort through this vast amount of information and make sense out of it? How do you determine what to hone in on and what to tune out? ? And when dealing with your IT infrastructure Client crash info, server logs, SLA reports and more, how do you organize and present such information to inform your IT team to take specific actions? How do you best organize this information to persuade your management team to make purchases or agree to de-commissioning of certain hardware or software? Join Mary Beth Raven and Florian Vogler in discussion and learn how to practice meaningful information management, to make your life simpler at a BOF during Lotusphere 2012.

Here's where to go: BOF103 Information Management: Finding the Balance Between Too Much and Not Enough Information, Tuesday, 5:45 pm (17.45 hr), Swan Parrot 1, Mary Beth Raven, Consultant, Florian Vogler, CEO Panagenda"

It's that time of the year again where techies from all over the World are about to flock to Orlando for Lotusphere 2012!

panagenda is proud to once again sponsor the event and present several sessions! Please join us at:

Session BP110: A Performance Boost for your IBM Lotus Notes Client Speakers: Florian Vogler, panagenda, CEO and CTO and Francie Tanner, panagenda Inc, Technical Director | Tech level: ** | Date: Tuesday, January 17 | Time: 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM | Location: S. Hem III Would your users like their Lotus Notes client to perform faster? Do some applications and clients seem to load slowly? Come join Florian Vogler and Francie Tanner and learn where to look to find out what’s wrong and resolve it. Find out how to debug your client, deal with outdated ODS’, network latency and application performance issues and more importantly understand why you should care. Gather best practices on how to streamline location and connection documents and why the catalog.nsf is so important. Improve your IBM Lotus Notes client installations to provide a better experience for a happier you and happier end users!

Session BP117: Shrinking Your Environment - Server Consolidations Done Right Speaker: Francie Tanner, panagenda Inc, Technical Director | Date: Thursday, January 19 | Time: 08:30 AM - 09:30 AM | Location: N. Hem D Having trouble keeping your distributed server infrastructure alive and well with your new budget? Are you ready to reduce your server count now that you finally got that new SAN? Regardless of your reasons for shrinking your environment – you can’t miss this session if you’re consolidating. Find out how to plan and survey your server landscape, how and when to move data and what you need to watch out for on the client side to redirect those apps. Learn which policies you need and how to avoid support calls to make your server consolidation project a success.

Session GURU101: GURUpalooza! Tech level: * | Date: Thursday, January 19 | Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM | Location: SW 5 – 10 You’ve been basking in the knowledge that has shone down upon you from our tracks of experts all week. You’ve listened to their sessions, “borrowed” their ideas and have cornered them in the hallways at every opportunity to get that little bit of extra help. But, as always, there are more questions than opportunities for answers. We’re giving you one last chance to pick their brains — and that opportunity is known as GURUpalooza. Bring those final questions, comments and even a little bit of praise to GURUpalooza, and let’s all have one more collaborative “geek fest” before we draw Lotusphere 2012 to a close!

Session NERD101: Spark Ideas, featured by the Nerd Girls Speaker: Kristen Lauria, Mitch Cohen, Francie Tanner, Tim Davis, Warren Elsmore, Marie Scott, Meg Petersen | Tech level: * | Date: Tuesday, January 17 | Time: 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM Spark Ideas is a chance to bring together a group of our colleagues to discuss what inspires us. Lead by Kristen Lauria, Vice President Marketing for IBM Social Business, during this compilation of 5 minute talks, speakers share their experiences, understanding and thoughts around common challenges faced by both men and women. Topics will range from how to engage children in the technology field at a young age, to how to handle working from home and what inspires us to be creative.

You can also find us on the show floor, booths 507, 508 and 509 where we have a special little surprise for you IF you come by and tell us the secret keyword! What is that, you ask? Stay tuned to this site for that so you too can get your hands on the best.giveaway.ever v2.0.... :)

Last but not least, there are no secret passwords required to join us at the Great Geek Challenge 2012 on Tuesday night, January 17th, 8pm at the Fountain Restaurant. The fun, food and drinks are free and all you have to do is show up and (try to) answer some geeky questions and win geeky prizes!

Hope to see you in Orlando!

"T'was the month before Lotusphere, when all through the office everyone was scurrying, even dear Santa Claus. The sessions were handed out by track managers with care, in hopes that geeks a plenty would soon be there.

The nerds were nestled all snug behind their PC's, While visions of audiences danced in their heads. And Sandra Marcus with her clipboard, and I with my slides, Had just a little way to go before the OGS, Kimonos and SeaWorld rides."

Are you ready for the greatest geek-fest of them all? Pack your walking shoes and meet us down in Orlando January 15th to 19th, for Lotusphere 2012

Greetings fellow Geeks!

The season is upon us and it's time to get jolly... or nerdy, as Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando, Florida is getting close!

This year panagenda will be represented at our three booths and we once again have the honour to be presenting with two and a half Best Practice Sessions. Stay tuned for an explanation of that number right here ;)

In addition to being there and having the best give-aways (and I'm not talking about the Mozart Kuglen here) we also have a special guest and are supporting the Nerd Girls with their Great Geek Challenge 2012 event again this year! And word on the street is that there will be another duct tape trophy up for grabs at this fun event taking place on Tuesday night January 17th at the Fountain Restaurant.

We hope you will join us and say hello at our booths 507 - 509, our sessions or the Geek Challenge. And if all that fails then there's always Kimonos! ;)

For those of you that missed it, we had another Demonar with the folks from NotesCode.net last week, this time on MarvelClient Analyze "The Value of Transparency". Attendees from all over the World learned why it's so important that you "see" your Notes environment, and they even got a FREE MarvelClient Analyze license for taking part.

Take a look at the enclosed slides which explain exactly how complex and how varied your client infrastructure may look like and why it's so difficult to "Manage in the Dark" with policies that can't adapt or are not aware of certain client configurations. You can also check out the the 40 minute clipto watch the recorded presentation and to sign up for future Demonars, visit here!

For your own FREE MarvelClient Analyze license, tell me in the comments what IBM Lotus Notes client item/variable/feature you wish you could see natively!

The folks at NotesCode.net are running a trial set of Demonars on various products and vendors and panagenda MarvelClient was features earlier this week. Check out the roughly 45 minute clip here and to sign up for future Demonars, just sign up here!