Megan A. Irvine

I have been interested in social, mobile, and cloud for several years, but only in the last year or two have I noticed that these areas have become closely intertwined. It's as if they were destined to work together in a new paradigm. I almost can't think of one without the other two. Mobile lets me be more social. Social led me to cloud. Cloud just is. The Intersection of Cloud, Mobile and Social — Increasingly organizations are looking to tap the collective power of social, mobile and cloud technologies. We asked Ric Telford, IBM VP of Cloud Services, to share his perspective on the trend in light of IBM's new social business software including SmartCloud Docs, a cloud-based office productivity suite. University of Texas at El Paso is using the software to collaborate in the cloud using mobile devices. Cloud Computing Journal: What’s the connection between Social, Mobile and Cloud. Are they just three tech buzzwords? Ric Telford: Social, mobile and cloud are inextric...

I just got back from attending the most amazing  IBM Redbooks social media residency on Mobile Enterprise, where I spent a week face-to-face with colleagues from across IBM to discuss mobile computing, and an interesting thing happened on my way home today. I got to the airport well before my boarding time, so I had some time to kill. I found a comfortable place to sit near my gate, and pulled out my smartphone to check emails, read news - catch up with the rest of my life, basically. I looked at Facebook to see what my friends were doing, and noticed that an old acquaintance, Margaret, who I hadn't seen in a while, posted an update to her wall saying that she would be in Pittsburgh (where I was heading) and asked if any of her friends there would like to meet up and hang out while she was in town.  As I read it, I admitted to myself with a pinch of regret that I had lost touch with this person. I didn't even know that she moved away from Pittsburgh.  Several y...

That's where I was only a few months ago - starting from scratch. Now that I've been through the "crucible" so to speak, I have some wisdom to share about my experience, and a few tips to pass on. Here is my guide to getting up to speed quickly. HTML5 HTML5 is a blanket term used to describe the latest web technologies from W3C, including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The web revolves around this now, but it still has yet to prove itself on the mobile front. It might not be as fast or efficient as using native code. However, it's the logical choice when developing for multiple platforms, and better to brush up on these skills before diving into any enterprise web project. Here's a "crash" course: Learn HTML in 15 minutes - http://youtu.be/Ggh_y-33Eso   HTML5 - http://youtu.be/pJz5RRrloBE CSS part 1 - http://youtu.be/I-rTKuEhrCM Learn JavaScript in 30 minutes - http://youtu.be/_cLvpJY2deo There's also a new IBM self-paced course offering: ...

Developing Reference 'Things' - Reference Architec... : I have spent a lot of time in recent years developing various reference 'things' for clients and as part of our own research. Whether it has...

Big announcement today about IBM and the OpenStack Foundation. OpenStack enhances the IBM SmartCloud Foundation offerings by expanding support for different hypervisors at the IaaS Cloud layer. It uses standards such as TOSCA and Linked Data to integrate workload optimization and deployment simplification higher in the cloud management stack. You can learn more about the OpenStack Foundation at http://www.openstack.org . Today's #cloudchat (April 12) will discuss the newly announced OpenStack Foundation. Join from 4 to 5 p.m. ET on Twitter. Panelists will be: Rackspace’s VP Business & Corporate Development Mark Collier  IBM’s VP Standards Angel Diaz  Here is how the #cloudchat works: What: A tweetchat is an online conversation held at a pre-arranged time following a specific hashtag, in this case #cloudchat. You will need a Twitter ID to take part.  When: Thursday, April 12, at 4 p.m. ET, repeating the 2nd Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. ET.  Wh...

IBM Technical World for Smarter Computing  featuring Cloud, Power Systems and System z  April 16-19, 2012 San Francisco, CA http://ibm.co/HsVCha Very excited about speaking at this show next week! I will be giving these talks on cloud computing: cBU09 – Birds of a Feather: Cloud and Social Media – Tuesday 10:30 - Franciscan C cBU06 – Planning Your Cloud Education – Wednesday 1:00 - Union Square 1/2 cBU07 – An IBM Cloud Offering Decoder – Wednesday 2:30; repeat Thursday 9:00 - Union Square 1/2  I also plan on doing some live social media reporting. Look for my tweets @mirv_pgh .

I ran across this article on John Stepper's blog , and it does a great job of explaining how to make the case for social media to an audience that is particularly resistent. His conclusion: Social business platforms are good for the individual. They make their job easier while giving them a way to shape their reputation and access opportunities. And they’re good for the firm. Good for finding waste and eliminating it . Good for finding commercial opportunities and exploiting them . Good for finding great people and giving them the best jobs . The audience had warmed up. Heads were nodding. Eyes were shining. “Now, let’s set up our next meeting. Let’s start changing the way you work.” Well said, and nicely done.