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Posts tagged CA World
CA World 2010
May 25th
After submitting an idea I had for community expansion, CA made me customer committee member for CA World 2010. I mildly participated in event planning, attended pre-conference calls, and had insider information on most CA World happenings. My primary goal for this event was to network with fellow community officers and members and expand user community participation. Secondary, I wanted to learn the CA Clarity roadmap, explore cloud computing, and get an understanding for CA’s role, if any, in social media and collaboration.
The Big News: CA is now ‘CA Technologies’ and is investing heavily in SaaS.
The CA Regional Exchange (CARE) was fantastic. In fact, the networking aspect of my visit went very well. I was able to attend invite-only meetings with CA community management, business analysts, and web developers on CA’s new online portal. Because I am an advocate on social media and enterprise collaboration in general, CA also asked me to participate in an open forum discussion. It was the most rewarding aspect of the conference for me. I knew I had made some good points throughout the hour-long discussion when multiple attendees, from different countries, either messaged me or chatted with me, lending positive remarks about my points. In one reply I had made, I received applause. The topics I brought up included social media strategy and personal branding. The venue was on a stage with about 130 in attendance. I’m the guy in the chair to the far right below.
Social Media Discussion
From my perspective, it does seem as if CA Technologies is focusing as an organization on customer satisfaction and fulfillment. From a community perspective and even product perspective, CA is listening to their customers, as they are clearly enhancing the Clarity application based on user feedback. CA marketing is greatly pushing two mantras or themes. One being ‘partner’ not a vendor, the other being, ‘we can’. CA is also leaping into cloud computing as that topic was the hottest of the conference. They are growing their SaaS offerings and the majority of their new customers are choosing SaaS solutions. For those not familiar, CA has branded their SaaS offerings as On-Demand. ie. CA Clarity PPM On-Demand vs. CA Clarity PPM
Clarity and the word Kilimanjaro never came up. I could tell based on attending CA World 2008 that MUCH had changed in the user interface and CA was greatly expanding usability, simplicity, and integration. In Clarity 12.1, the next major release set for the end of August, is including a new graphical interface that sits on top of Xog and allows drag and drop like table matching from an SAP database to the Clarity database. The goal would be to build xml feeds using SAP or Oracle templates as needed. For Clarity v13 and On Demand, the user interface has changed and includes a larger footprint as the left side navigation menu auto hides when you’re not using it, the binocular browse is gone as you click in a cell, begin typing and it autosenses the value you’re looking for. Overall, there are multiple user interface enhancements and I’ll need to obtain CA documentation on in order to specify them in greater detail. One breakthrough I had at CA World was in regard to dashboards that call web services, connect to external and internal data, and then display the information needed. I spoke to a local vendor out of New Jersey that specializes in the dashboard creation and web service connections. Although using web service calls to another database is more of a tactical decision, rather then importing the data into the Clarity database directly, from a visibility perspective, it may be best to explore the use of web services as they can help in automation, productivity, and even increase data visibility.
Clarity’s release model has changed. CA understands the complexity in putting out quarterly releases for on-premise customers. As a result, customers who do NOT subscribe to the SaaS solution will only receive major product updates and releases annually. I’m assuming hot fixes would be thrown into that mix as needed but in most if not all cases, CA would not want or ask their on-premise customers to install their own updates throughout the year. For Clarity On Demand, CA manages and publishes all changes. With On Demand, CA will auto release 3-4 updates per year and also align major releases at the exact time an on-premise customer would receive their release, keeping major releases in synch. The advantage for the On Demand customer would be, they get the latest and greatest enhancements first, they have a 24/7 web or cloud environment, and no disaster recovery worries. CA with a SaaS solution does all technical management of the application environments. This allows the customer to focus on ‘doing’, not managing. With that in mind, I’m not sure if Clarity On Demand is something that aligns to my organization’s needs but we will investigate it. As such, I’m going to get a 30-day Clarity On Demand trial setup that includes the new user interface for us to test out. Note, Clarity 12.1 will NOT have the new interface, only the On Demand product will. CA will release the new interface to on-premise customers with Clarity v13 set for spring (June) 2011.
Summary:
CA World 2010 was good, the keynotes given by James Cameron and CA management were awesome, and the Maroon 5 concert topped it all off. I found myself running to session after session, meeting after meeting, and there was actually too much to do. That’s a bad thing for me because I missed many things I wanted to participate in and research. The CA Regional Exchange (CARE) was by far the biggest reward I got from the event and if the opportunity is there next time, I would like to only attend CARE and not CA World. Because I have been fortunate to go two years in a row, I’d rather send a co-worker in my place for the next one. As long as I am a leader in the user communities, I will continue to attend CARE which runs over a weekend. I did tweet a lot from CA World, and users of Twitter can follow the hashtags #CAWorld and #CA_RE to read countless ‘live’ posts made by many event attendees including myself. People tweeted in the middle of sessions as they learned product information, they tweeted quotes from the keynote speakers, pics from the concert, you name it. It was awesome and even made the Twitter people into a tight knit group. Using Twitter at an event was a great way to meet people as well as take notes on the event. I’ve written this entire summary without even reading through my Twitter timeline. I’m going to see if I can extract or report on my Twitter timeline and attach it to this summary, maybe as an additional post. It’s an innovative look at event participation and a very fast way to record notes and share them with the world in an instant. Why do I love that opportunity? It allows the people who can’t attend CA World to follow what’s happening based on tweets. I could stay home, follow hashtags on Twitter for the next CA World and learn an awful lot about CA’s product news and information, speakers, and celebrations. Lastly, I’m going to try and get PowerPoint copies of all event sessions. I’m guessing for legal reasons I shouldn’t share those though. CA World 2010 was great. It was the best IT or technology event I have ever attended and contributed to.
MIA and for Good Reason
Apr 28th
Wow, I knew at some point my blog would get neglected I just didn’t think it would be this soon. Due to spring activities, family responsibilities, band development, and normal workload, it’s been difficult to make the time to blog but I really enjoy doing this and am trying to make it a professional objective or habit. Excuses aside, I’ll primarily cover personal items in this post surrounding my latest adventure, my band, as well as my recent pursuit in social media, community involvement, and collaboration.
The band I sing in and write lyrics for, Against Apocalypse, was mentioned in The Valley Advocate this week. The article covers our drummer interviewing with the writer, Gary Carra, about the band and how we came up with our name. Our previous band, Nitro Nine, from 2003-2004 was mildly known in the Western Mass local scene as we were given opportunities to open for such rock acts as Seether, Shinedown, and Ra. It’s been over three years since I did the band thing and I forgot how rewarding it was. Knowing you have a show booked, seeing your name in the paper, getting some demo material ready, starting a website, …. it’s too much fun. This coming Saturday night (5/1/10) we’ll be on stage at Finnegan’s Tavern in Springfield MA. It’ll be exciting for us…. all I need to do now is find an outfit so I can pretend to be a rock-star!
CA World is just around the corner and I’m going to network as much as possible during the event. I’ve been invited to multiple discussion panels on web portal usage, external social media, and product specific user forums. CA as a company has always made me feel welcome. They listen to comments and ideas whether good or bad and always seem to appreciate me, the little guy, out there supporting their Clarity product and helping other customers and organizations to be successful. Based on my experience with CA, they are top on my list as a company I could see myself working for. By the way, CA used CrowdVine to setup a community site for the CA World 2010 event and I love it.
It’s official that I have spoken to my manager about my interest in social media, communications, and collaboration. I did some research on Twitter usage in the enterprise and submitted my ideas and analysis as a PowerPoint to her. The result? A meeting with an AVP in collaboration services as well as the hiring director. After meeting with both of them, it was clear that the only way I can find a job opportunity in this space is to make one for myself. Why? There’s no current positions open and it’s been difficult for us to sell the community and collaboration concept to senior levels. My goal over the next couple of months is to research social media usage in the enterprise and the benefits of it. I’m not simply talking micro-blogging. I’m talking user profiles, resource skill listings, blogs, groups, document storage, version control, retention, … you name it. If you have any adice or pointers, please feel free to send them my way. It would be greatly appreciated. It seems like the biggest roadblock I continue to run into as far as technlogy and process improvement go is culture. Driving and changing coprorate culture must be one of the most challenging things to accomplish and that’s what I feel we’re up against where I am. Prove the value exists, the return on investment is high, and the level of risk is low, and it’s hard to knock the recommendation.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll be back …
The Benefit of Hashtags
Mar 17th
It dawned on me last week, in serving as the customer committee member for CA World 2010, that much of my role involves communication and feedback. It has already been encouraged that I tweet and blog from CA World this year but it got me thinking about what the true potential might be for messaging during an event or conference. My idea for CA was to use the benefit of hashtags in order to provide further visibility into event results, satisfaction, and product line specifics. At most conferences, attendees receive some type of packet upon registration. Why not include a hashtag table in that packet? Allow the individual to see and use the hashtags your organization supports and recommends, especially if there are multiple tracks or product lines involved. I know I’m not the first person to use or recommend hashtags for real-time event communication but I felt it was important to review some of the possibilities.
#Hashtags
Hashtag usage in tweets allows attendees to instantly monitor the latest posts for that specific track or tag. Marketing professionals have a free ability to open their doors to instant product reviews and information. Dangerous? Maybe in some cases. But for specific event control and participation, I’m thinking there’s more perks than setbacks. Think of how much information you could collect on each category you had a hashtag set for. As long as the customer or attendee was actively using the tag, you can now review and record all of those related posts during the event. What about costs? How much does it cost your group or team to come up with a reference table of hashtags relevant to your organization? It took me about 10 minutes and it wasn’t even for my organization. How many attendees have registered for your event? Print out as many cheat-sheets as needed and supply them to the attendees or broadcast them visually during event sessions.
Think about how this expands the messages from your company event. For example, a major product release is set to display in detail for all attendees. Those attendees then use the hashtags to tweet their thoughts, opinions, and impressions about that new product. Get enough people talking about one specific topic using a hashtag and it now becomes a ‘Top Trend’ on Twitter. Your organization could potentially reach out to millions of people within a very small amount of time. Need to track those tweets? No problem. Try desktop apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic. There are online tools as well. Check out search.twitter.com, hashtags.org, tweetreach.com, and twemes.com.
It’s exhilarating being part of a world I’m not normally able to provide input to. I’ve only been tweeting for a short time and have attempted multiple blogs over the past few years but finally feel like I’ve hit something I may be good at or at least enjoy doing. If I could dedicate more time in communications, I believe I have the potential and background to become a serious contributor. If CA employs and promotes hashtag use at CA World, it will be very rewarding.
Updated: Mashable (Get the Most Out of Twitter Hashtags) http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/
CA World 2010 Planning
Feb 3rd
This year marks a special time in my career. The momentum started last summer when I was elected communications officer for the CA Clarity Global User Community. Since that time I have molded into my enterprise Clarity Application Owner role well and decided to submit an idea for CA World 2010. To my surprise, I was fortunate enough to have my idea selected for CA World participation. Not only was my idea selected but CA made me the customer committee member to assist in CA World 2010 planning. What was my idea? The CA User Forums are extremely valuable to Clarity technical and functional specialists. Clarity specific forum participation is higher than any other CA application. My thought was to setup a booth or table completely dedicated to expanding the user forums and community. To reach out to as many CA customers as possible, regardless of which product they used, and do everything possible to communicate the benefits of using the user forums and how it has benefited Clarity customers.
The content found in the user forum is quite in depth. The more users who participate, the more companies get involved, and the more problems become solved with little to no CA support interaction. The forum is primarily customers solving problems for other customers. This not only benefits CA as the application is becoming more successful for their customers but it also tells them common areas customers have issues or may want to customize, or areas that need further enhancements, etc. It also benefits each forum user by means of social networking. Update your forum profile with valid contact information and you now have the opportunity to network with other Clarity resources in many organizations.
Contributing to the company and application you support can be very rewarding. One really cool thing I got to directly impact for the CA World ROI kit is CA’s validation memo. When visiting the CA World 2010 website we want the interested candidates to have any and all content available to help them attend CA World and obtain approval from their manager to attend. The validation memo didn’t exist until I suggested providing reasons why an individual would want to attend and how can they sell their manager on it in a pre-filled document or template. Not every attendee knows how to properly justify the expense and attendance to such a conference so why not help him or her in the process? To follow up that I also feel it’s beneficial to provide the attendee with a conference summary template because many managers also want some form of write-up covering what you’ve learned from the conference. I plan on writing up my own summary template and sharing it once we’re closer to the event. Check out the validation memo here, I am a proud contributor. It’s inspiring to see your ideas come to life and CA has been so good to me in considering my feedback that my opinion of their company and products has skyrocketed. Nowhere, have I ever been given this level of opportunity.
I plan on blogging and tweeting from CA World 2010 this year and am hoping to expand the CA user community. Be on the lookout for a few related blog posts as we get closer to the event. Thank you for this opportunity CA.
