Mitch Cohen presented on the rollout and adoption of Connections at Colgate. I arrived 5-7 minutes late, so missed the first piece.

My notes on Mitch’s session:
– Are getting ready for Connections 4.0. Plan to get new servers, then move the data over when it’s ready.
– best practices:
– … meet with small teams. It’s not intuitive about how you could use Connections.
– … agree on the business need.
– … give many examples
– … circle back for progress.
– … start small – too many features causes confusion (start with Files and Forums – they are easy to understand), make it fun (no questions in email, no attachments in email), move on to activities (to manage large meetings, or to manage your team).
– … communicate – communicate to end users, dispel the myth about Facebook, self service communities, and getting senior management buy-in.
– … hold Collaboration Days – to describe what’s coming up. You can’t make people read. Hold onsite and virtual. Set up stations on Mail, Protector, Mobile, and Connections. Provides a way of telling things informally. Users liked this.
– What’s next? Various things, including Connections 4.0 later in 2012.

– Bring Your Own Device – large demand to use personal devices for mail.
– … started a program for offering mobile to all employees. Want to help employees be productive and effective while being out-and-about.
– … needed to be easy, self-service (no help desk), legal agreement for opt-in, and employees are responsible for costs.
– … did things with Traveler (iOS), Android came in 2H2010, and have BES Express.
– … getting ready for go live – password enable all devices, develop a self-service web site (sign the legal agreement, FAQ). Had 3 months to complete.
– … CIO sent out one email. Had 582 users in the first 24 hours, and over 1300 users in the first one week. 22 months later – have 3600 users (over 2000 are iOS). It’s growing now by word-of-mouth.
– … next steps – creating a Colgate App Store.