Profiles are a great way to find skills within your organization. By people keeping their profiles up to date, you can find subject matter experts fairly easily.

Next up are Communities. Communities are groups of like-minded users that congregate around specific topics. The topics could be anything your business wants to collaborate around. In the Greenhouse you can find communities centered around all of the Lotus Products as well as themes such as gaming, blogging, and using the Mac for Lotus products.

Belonging to a community shows that you have an interest in that specific topic and allows you access to post and view RSS Feeds and bookmarks specific to the topic in question.

A list of Communities in the Lotus Greenhouse

That brings me to the bookmarking capability in Connections, called Dogear. Dogear is simply a mechanism for you to save your bookmarks and share them with other users. You can also add your bookmarks to any communities you are a part of.

We've discussed Blogs at length here in this column before, so I won't go into too many details other than to say that you can create your own here for the world to see.

The last piece of social software is a new way of grouping and categorizing your work called Activities. Activities allow you to group what you do, based on an activity. For example, I could create an activity for writing this column. In the activity I could save bookmarks to the sites, save screenshots or other files, save emails I sent and received from people regarding the activity and even save chat transcripts.

In addition I can give access to other users so they too can add to the activity or read what I've saved. This new way of thinking allows you to easily capture and share information around specific topics.

Team Rooms and Document Sharing

Lotus is also showing off its implementation of Quickr. Quickr is the teamroom and document sharing software that I've spoken about before. Quickr allows you to have a team area with task management, discussion threads, a team calendar, document sharing and more.

The document sharing functionality is where Quickr really shines. Quickr supports document locking and versioning as well as the ability to connect to your favorite software with Quickr connectors. Not to be confused with connections, the connectors are pieces of software that you can install that allow you to integrate the Quickr document storage with Notes, Sametime, Windows, Lotus Symphony and Microsoft Office.

Web Conferencing

The Greenhouse also has an implementation of Sametime web conferencing. This allows you to to schedule an online meeting and collaborate in real-time with other colleagues. Sametime allows you to share slides, group chat, and even share your screen for demonstration purposes.

For more information on Sametime you can check out my article here.

Not Green? How about Yellow?

In telling you about the Lotus Greenhouse, I would be remiss if I didn't mention another similar site, BleedYellow.com (www.bleedyellow.com) from Premiere IBM Lotus Business Partner, Lotus911 (www.lotus911.com). BleedYellow.com is Lotus911's implementation of Connections and Sametime instant messaging.

BleedYellow.com from Lotus911

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