Notes from Rational Support

I know I am, and I'm sure you are too! Our good friend, Darrel Rader, published a great blog post back on May 10th surrounding our Birds of a Feather Session at Innovate 2012.

  

Ok, ok , ok.... *maybe* you aren't, but I have a feeling that you probably are even if you don't think so. Hang in here with me for a bit as I explain why I'm nearly certain you actually *are* a community manager.

It isn't JUST you, of course; we are all  community managers if we're playing in social spaces. What I am specifically referring to is the idea that we each own responsibility for the content we post in social spaces, and in turn we own responsibility for the comments generated by and added to those posts. As active members in social networks, we create our own ad hoc communities every time we post content, be it a status updated about what we had for lunch or a longer missive on a facet of today's society. In each case, we own the responsibility of managing these ad hoc communities just like a 'formal' community manager would. Likewise, when we comment on other's posts, we are engaging as a member of their  community and have the responsibility to act accordingly.

With today's accelerated shift to social platforms, the role of community manager is increasingly important but the definition needs to be expanded to include not only the formalized and structured communities, but also the unstructured, ad hoc, fluid communities. We are all community managers to some extent now, and need to manage not only our own posts, but the threads of conversation which they generate.

If you've been following me for any length of time on any of my social channels you've likely heard me espouse the brilliance of IBM's Social Computing Guidelines. While I may be biased, I do believe that even if I weren't an IBMer, I'd still be highlighting the SCG as a work of genius when it comes to corporate policy to guide employees in social business. But it goes even beyond that... these are wonderful guidelines beyond the immediate intended audience of IBMers... (I've cherry picked the ones which are really universal):

• Be who you are. 
• Be thoughtful about how you present yourself in online social networks. 
• Respect copyright and fair use laws.
• Respect your audience and your coworkers. 
• Add value.
• Don't pick fights. 
• Be the first to respond to your own mistakes. 
• Adopt a warm, open and approachable tone. 
• Use your best judgment. 

Aren't those genius in their simplicity?

As we look with new eyes on our own social communities, we can all benefit from the simple guidance put forth above, as these bits are relevant as universal truths to social interaction. Now that we can recognize our own responsibilities for the communities we've built around us, we need now (more than ever) the tools to help guide us through some of those inevitable missteps we will make (or have made) along the way.

This is the new universal truth. Gone are the early days of the internet where we were just participants in one huge community. Now we are all individually responsible for managing our spaces and ensuring our formal and ad hoc communities are adding value to the spaces. As we join in these new and upcoming spaces, we all need to recognize the responsibilities we have and gauge whether or not we are ready to take on that extra burden that comes with participating in social discussions.

If you are posting content to any social channel, you are already managing your communities, whether you realize it or not. It is upon us as individual contributors to ensure we are bringing value to and taking ownership of the spaces in which we play. Our successes depend upon it.

image adapted from: (cc)  Some rights reserved by Khaled Hijab

Ok,  you're right... I can't post here without providing SOME  sort of deeper value.  So, as a bit of a small retrospective we thought it would be neat to go through and highlight some of our past posts. As we discussed which to highlight, we thought about giving visibility to the "Most Viewed" posts on this blog, but figured if they are the most viewed already, they probably don't need the help So we figured we'd go back through the archives of 715+ posts and pull out some of those 'sleepers'; the ones with some solid content but which may have gone far under the radar based on our analysis of activity metrics. That in mind, let's get to highlighting!

How to work with Rational Client Support: Part 2- In this second article, dW Contributing Author Kelly Smith outlines the technical support that you get when you license Rational software includes and doesn't, plus what to do before you call tech support.  And don't forget to check our Part One, How to work with Rational Client Support: Behind the curtain!

New White Paper released: Deploy IBM Rational License Server 8.1.1 effectively in your enterprise- Here's a GREAT resource for nearly anyone running Rational software! Download the free whitepaper (no registration needed!), read it, and then share it with your colleagues and coworkers to help them be as successful with their own license server implementations as you will surely be!

Improve your Rational Support experience with our automated ISALite tool!- For select products, we've enabled an automated data gathering tool called IBM Support Assistant Lite (ISALite for short).  This tool will gather appropriate troubleshooting information for a particular product. 　

Did you hear the news?- The dW Rational community is open to the public! http://ibm.co/rationalcommunity Like any community, both IBMers and clients get out of it what they put in. In the Rational community, we provide the added benefit of pulling all Rational technical content in real time and presenting it in consumable chunks through the community landing page.

Downloading Products from Passport Advantage- This most excellent video from our friends over at IBM Electronic Support demonstrates how to download software products from Passport Advantage Online, which you can get to from the IBM Support Portal.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Rational Licensing- A good message always bears repeating ... Visit the IBM Rational License Key Center for lots of useful material on understanding and using your Rational license keys...

IBM Rational product support for Mozilla Firefox- This news flash is for all customers who use the Mozilla Firefox browser with our Rational products. Please take note of the direction particulars as they relate to your usage of the browser and level of product support IBM Rational is able to provide...

Introducing our newest blog author: Matt Quimby- You may have seen his name on a few recent posts around these parts: Matt Quimby has joined our team and dug into some of our social business efforts as you'll see below.

Trust and Personal Responsibility in All Relationships- That's a powerful statement. It's also one of IBM's Core Values, one that resonates particularly with me in regards to our social business initiatives… like this blog. Let me explain....

Five Imperatives for ALM, and Business agility: a technical perspective- Here's two videos and two articles for your benefit today; two videos on the Imperatives for ALM covering real-time planning and in-context collaboration, as well as two articles to help you along with business agility from a technical perspective and a tutorial on how to use the Practice Library application. Enjoy!                         

Lastly, in honor of this milestone, we'd like to thank the folks who made it possible for us to continue:

• YOU!: For following, commenting, reading and sharing. We love being able to collaborate with you here, and elsewhere .... and hope that we will continue to provide you with the information you need, before you need it.
• The fine folks at developerWorks: Thanks for providing a platform for our community of passionate practitioners. Special thanks to Bob Leah and John Holtman, who have patiently provided us with the tools, support, and knowledge we need to be successful.
• IBM and IBM Rational Client Support: Thanks for being forward-thinking and encouraging our exploration of new avenues of client interaction and knowledge-sharing, and for providing the opportunity and support for us to lead the way in social business.   

Now let's keep going! Our goal is to continue growing and continue providing you deep value in fun, exciting, and innovative ways. As the quote says: "We have only just begun"!  
(Does this mean we've finally leveled up and unlocked the achievement to actually call ourselves bloggers?)

image credit: (cc) Some rights reserved by soapylovedeb