MindTouch has made it to the final round of voting in the SourceForge CCA!

Thank you to those who helped MindTouch make it into the final round of the SourceForge Community Choice Awards. We need your help once more as MindTouch powers through to the finish line with three more simple steps.

1. PLEASE click here to vote NOW for MindTouch in the the SourceForge Community Choice Awards
   
2. Scroll to bottom and submit your email address
3. Confirm your vote by clicking the link sent to your email(s)
   That’s all!
4. If you would like another step, feel free to share this blog post with your friends so they can vote too.

Thank you for your support!

In the event you have not seen it, Steve and Aaron opine in the video below about what the CCA means to them and why you should vote for MindTouch.

If the world didn’t change business would be easy. Nothing ever stays the same and certainly not in today’s business environment. The need for speed and adaptation has never been more pressing but still most medium and large companies are very slow to adapt to changing business conditions. Most Executives get this and are exploring solutions that bring agility and flexibility into their organizations.

Meanwhile, today’s corporations are built to have a single view of their customers. Segmented data resides in individual departments and is not easily federated across the organization. There are too many unconnected systems, silo databases and laborious processes with countless parochial interests and needs. This predicament slows decision making and project execution while rarely providing management with lessons learned to course correct in the future.

In general, when Executives want performance figures on each of the lines of business it’s typically done haphazardly or by asking for specific reports which take weeks to create. This is analogous to the 18th century naval voyages where discovery was taking place but expedition reports didn’t come back for months. In today’s economic environment where acquiring, servicing and retaining customers is paramount, you are at a competitive disadvantage if you don’t have a real-time federated view of the enterprise.

What are the Benefits to Data Integration?

According to a Forrester Consulting study, improved data availability across applications and projects provided project teams with better access to distributed data. The resulting lower costs can range from an estimated 20 percent savings in Year 1, increasing to 35 percent in Year 5. If you’re in the Executive ranks of a medium to large company, you understand the frustrations of meeting your goals only to find another department has fallen behind on their initiatives. This data awareness latency can severely impact major product launches, meeting sales objectives and compliance/risk management issues.

Why Collaborative Networks for Intranets?

The MindTouch Collaborative Intranet is an enterprise tool that connects people to data, projects and documents. Employees use the Intranet to quickly access information relevant to their job functions. They use the site to create projects in which to collaborate with teams to get things done. They store shared documents in which to collaborate and can access data from enterprise systems to monitor their department’s performance.

Collaborative Intranets present the organization with a 360 view of the enterprise. MindTouch creates a “single point of truth” about each line of business by connecting isolated data into one centralized view. Since a broader enterprise picture is now available, companies can be much more agile and quickly adapt to changing business conditions. In the past, companies would pay ISV’s millions for this real time view while having to pay hundreds of thousands more for minor updates. Starting today, you can realize the benefits for a fraction of the cost.

We have put a ton of work into creating a usable Collaborative Intranet and we couldn’t be more excited. MindTouch is growing rapidly and it’s developing solutions that companies need in this difficult economic environment to increase revenue and cut costs. Please join us at our weekly webinar to see why Collaborative Intranets are not just social networks designed to create social connections, but are built specifically for the enterprise to solve mission critical business problems.

MindTouch has been honored with a nomination in the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards (CCA). Sarah wrote previously on this topic, but Steve and I have since produced a video for Sourceforge.

Please VOTE NOW for MindTouch. Voting is fast and very easy.

1. Visit the SourceForge CCA Page
2. MindTouch has been pre-selected in Best Commercial Open Source Project
3. Provide your email address at the bottom of page
4. Click the red button labeled: “Send My Vote Now!”
5. Finally, you must confirm your vote by clicking the link sent to your email

Should MindTouch win a CCA I have promised to tattoo a robot on my leg at OSCON to commemorate the victory. Thank you for all of your support and I hope to see you at OSCON and at the MindTouch – Kaltura party (it will have an open bar .

If you subscribe to the MindTouch e-newsletter you received this information via email this week. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up today by providing your email in the e-newsletter field at the bottom of the MindTouch.com home page.

In This Issue

• MindTouch Launches Attack on Stagnant Corporate Intranets
• Latest MindTouch Community News
• Introducing Zenoss + MindTouch Integration
• Letter from the CEO: The Future of Collaborative Networks

Introducing Enterprise Collaborative Networking

This week we announced the immediate availability of the first of three turnkey collaborative network solutions we intend to launch over the next six months. The MindTouch Collaborative Intranet, built on our popular MindTouch 2009 open source collaboration platform, addresses the failure of current corporate portals and enterprise social networks to deliver value to business users, while simultaneously transforming a company’s IT staff into an army of application developers.

Contact us to Deploy a MindTouch Collaborative Intranet Today

Watch the Video

This video highlights the functionality of MindTouch as a corporate intranet

We are now launching an attack on stagnant corporate Intranets!

By deploying MindTouch Collaborative Intranet, you can now federate content from across the data and application silos your employees use each day — ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, social networks — to create a vibrant real time information fabric. MindTouch Collaborative Intranet connects the legacy business systems your company uses every day and pulls data from each individual silo into a single, common and unified Web interface. Unlike more traditional approaches to data federation — such as static portals or plug-in-dependent wikis — MindTouch Collaborative Intranet presents the data in a format that is interactive, collaborative and scalable. And with operational excellence near the top of every manager’s performance objectives this year, MindTouch Collaborative Intranet becomes a highly-valuable tool to drive greater visibility and transparency across an organization’s business.

Read the Press Release

MindTouch Community News

June has been a great month. Community members like yourself have been very active in the forums and the wiki, fleshing out existing documentation, adding new one, and even contributing new extensions and code. In case you missed it, read all about it in our biweekly community news posts here and here. On behalf of the entire community I want to thank bizzz, blakeh, btnelson, crb, flash39, ivan.zderadicka, justinvp, kenfortune, langke, methius, neilw, nickd, pasukaru, polo, rberinger, sean, tcplomp, and everyone else for your time and effort in helping others get the most out of MindTouch!

If you haven’t gotten involved yet, it’s easy super easy! See a mistake on a page, edit it! Have a cool script to share, post it! See a question you know the answer to, answer it! Speak another language, help us translate to it! Found a bug, report it!

Read the Latest MindTouch Community News Now

Introducing Zenoss + MindTouch Integration!

Zenoss is an open source monitoring application used to monitor the health and performance of your IT

infrastructure. Monitoring infrastructure is only half the battle. Having a collaborative network to store

troubleshooting procedures and passwords is also necessary for many of these users. One solution is to mash-up the monitoring capabilities of Zenoss Core with Mindtouch’s collaborative network of knowledge-sharing and collaboration capabilities. As a MindTouch user we thought you might benefit from the synergy between both of these platforms. You can read about the MindTouch/Zenoss mash-up on the Zenoss blog or find out more about Zenoss solutions here.

Learn More about the Zenoss + MindTouch Integration Now

Letter from the CEO: The Future of Collaborative Networks

I recently wrote at Ostatic about The Future of Collaborative Networks. It is an important post that I’ll be building on in the coming months. This first post introduces Collaborative Networks and explains the differences between these and social software and social networks. I encourage you to read the full post. It provides insight into how we think about enterprise collaboration here at MindTouch and it also makes it clear where we will continue to steer the product.

“Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network.

[...]

This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse. Collaborative Networks will increasingly be critically important to business and organizations by helping to establish a culture of innovation and by delivering operational excellence.” Continue to the Entire Article.

Contact us to Deploy a Collaborative Network for your Company

The time has come. To show the world who we are and what we stand for. It is time to count, to win, to get Aaron Fulkerson tattooed. Seriously!

VOTE NOW for MindTouch (do not delay!) in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards for Best Commercial Open Source Project. This is for YOU - our passionate, unwaivering community. Your contributions and continued championship made to MindTouch are the reasons MindTouch is in the final rounds of voting this year at SourceForge - and I’m confident you will take us through to VICTORY!

But wait there’s more! If MindTouch wins a CCA our CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, will get a robot tattooed on his leg at OSCON this year! So get the word out and vote, vote, vote!

Voting is simple.

- Visit the SourceForge CCA Page
- MindTouch is Pre-Selected in Best Commercial Open Source Project
- Provide an Email at Bottom of Page
- Click on the “Send My Vote Now!” Red Button
- Confirm your Vote Sent to your Email

Thank you all for your continued energy and loyalty - we are here truly because of you.

RightScale, the leader in cloud computing management, recently launched their new MindTouch powered Collaborative Network for self service-support and product documentation. This innovative property provides users structure, search and discoverability to what was an inherently unstructured and disconnected knowledge base. Content consists of tutorials, videos, references, and frequently asked questions.

The MindTouch platform made the development of a customized Collaborative Network rapid and painless. Innovations in the property include dynamically updated navigation tools that expose potentially overlooked portions of documentation. Collaborative editing. Rapid application development to serve the community’s evolving needs. And an advanced search interface to the MindTouch integrated enterprise search engine that enables custom queries based on tagging, page and file contents.

The web property takes advantage of the latest capabilities from the MindTouch Lyons release. For instance, page properties are used to define descriptions, icons and navigation options for pages that display in their homepage and tier two navigation. Additionally, the unified look and feel takes advantage of PHP plugins making deployment and future upgrades fast and painless. The overarching user experience of the site delivers an easy and fluid way for visitors to navigate and find desired information, contact support and refine searches.

The key stakeholders at RightScale had the following to say about their engagement with MindTouch:

“MindTouch was helpful during each phase of our project. What impressed me the most however was during the actual launch phase. When it became obvious that our launch would run past the MindTouch Deployment Engineer’s scheduled work hours, he volunteered additional contact information so I could reach him if any issues surfaced.” Greg DeRenne Information Architect - RightScale Inc.

“MindTouch continues to deliver world-class support to match their world-class technology. Our customers might not notice, but we’re using MindTouch as the backbone of RightScale’s new Support site. Thanks to the Professional Services team of MindTouch, we now have a completely customized site with an advanced search, custom navigation, and dynamic content. MindTouch not only helped us meet our tight deadline, they also coached and trained us along the way so that by the end of the project, we were completely self-sufficient. Our only regret is that we didn’t call MindTouch sooner!” Dean Onishi, Communications Manager - RightScale Inc.

Check out http://support.rightscale.com to see how RightScale is using MindTouch to drive their community empowerment efforts.

Damien @DamienH

Last week I wrote at Ostatic about The Future of Collaborative Networks. It is an important post that I’ll be building on in the coming months. This first post introduces Collaborative Networks and explains the differences between these and social software and social networks.

Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network.

This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse. Collaborative Networks will increasingly be critically important to business and organizations by helping to establish a culture of innovation and by delivering operational excellence.

via The Future of Collaborative Networks.

I encourage you to read the full post. It provides insight into how we think about enterprise collaboration here at MindTouch and it also makes it clear where we will continue to steer the product.

As you all know, we sent out a customer survey a few weeks back and have been floored by the amount of responses we received! It has been a true eye opener to us here at MindTouch to read your experiences, hang ups, compliments, and criticisms on everything from the mindtouch.com website, customer service, sales process, pricing and more. Thank you all for sending us your feedback - we will wholeheartedly take everything you suggested into consideration and use the information to truly make MindTouch a better experience and company for all! Thank you!

To that note, I want to announce our WINNERS of the G1 Phone Giveaway! From the random selection I’m proud to announce that Alexandra Runswick, Jim Lilkendey, and Patrick Burrell are the winners and proud owners of a NEW G1 phone! Congratulations guys!

Here’s what our G1 Phone winners had to say:

Patrick Burrell
Access Business Group

“I just discovered MindTouch about 2 months ago. One of my first thoughts was, ‘Why haven’t I been using this for the past 2 years?’ The wiki functionality is great, but it’s the WOA & services architecture under the hood I’m most excited about. I’m eager to see what we’re able to create with this platform.

“And the G1 phone? I’ve been following the Android platform since it was announced but haven’t actually tried it. Problem solved! Many thanks to the folks at MindTouch for another geek toy to play with!”

Jim Lilkendey
Apogee Coaching

“I have used MindTouch, both stand-alone and hosted, and I think it is a great wiki portal solution for businesses — I am definitely a fan.  Winning a G1 phone in their latest giveaway wasn’t too bad either.”

Alexandra Runswick
Unlock Democracy

“I’m really excited to have won the phone - I’ve never won anything before and can’t wait to explore it.  Having said that, it wasn’t the phone that made me take part in the survey.  I’ve only just started using MindTouch and wanted to help develop what is already a really useful product.”

Thanks for the kind words, guys and again CONGRATS to all of our winners and thank you to all who participated in the MindTouch survey! We appreciate all of the honest, thoughtful feedback and look forward to meeting more of your wiki portal solution needs in the future.

Last night MindTouch was recognized by the San Diego Business Journal in the 10th Annual Best Places to Work in San Diego Awards! Congrats team! This award is due to the amazing advisors, executive team and community who have diligently supported MindTouch and our efforts to being a forward thinking, devoted company in San Diego AND across the world. We’re very honored to receive the award and are hanging it proudly in the office!

Thank you to the San Diego Business Journal for the recognition and we look forward to continuing our legacy as a best places to work company in San Diego for many years to come.

Earlier this week MindTouch took part in the first ever GlueCon in Denver, CO. MindTouch was a participant in the exhibit hall and panel session. It was great seeing MindTouch users, partners and customers like Intuit, Gigya, Avaya, and NASA. It was exciting and an honor for us to be a part of such a forward thinking, talented group. And props to the Norlin team for being the glue that holds us all together!

Below are photos taken at the MindTouch booth & Aaron Fulkerson’s WOA session. View More GlueCon Photos.

The MindTouch booth.

Aaron Fulkerson presenting.

Aaron Fulkerson, MindTouch CEO, lead a Post-It Note Keynote session on Tuesday: “What is Web Oriented Architecture?” From the chatter coming from Twitter I knew it had been a great (and most likely controversial) presentation.

One attendee @kevinmatheny Tweeted:

What is this Jamaican reference anyway, Aaron? After the presentation was done, Aaron announced that the presentation would be available on SlideShare so I immediately took a look to see what I missed. Even though I’m not a technical person I still got a kick out of his presentation and enjoyed reading it through its entirety. I can only imagine what the live version was like!

To learn more about WOA and see what you missed from Aaron’s presentation at GlueCon check out the presentation below.