New Software Tool From Elguji Software Designed to Cultivate, Nurture Ideas

Vancouver, WA (Oct 16, 2007) – Vancouver (WA) based Elguji Software (pronounced "el-GOO-jee") has announced the pending availability of their new “Elguji Ideas” software. The software that will be used to support a new social networking site for the IBM Lotus Software Community called “Idea Jam”.

This site will be unique in that it will allow worldwide users of IBM Lotus Software to exchange ideas on how to improve Lotus software products. User on the site can help promote and/or demote ideas, as well as providing feedback through participatory comments. This will allow for popular ideas to rise to the top, while bad or poorly conceived ideas will be vetted out. Unlike blogs and discussion forums, Idea Jam will provide a single place for the Lotus Software community to share
and promote ideas and suggestions on how to improve IBM Lotus Software.

"The model of blogs and online discussion forums does not support the generation and ranking of ideas," says Bruce Elgort of Elguji Software (left). "There are too many different ones scattered around the Internet, with no one place to come to consensus."

There is also a personal mission for Elgort in this project. His daughter Danielle died at age 7 of a brain tumour. Part of the revenue from all sales of the software, and from revenue generated by ads on the Idea Jam site, will be donated to a yet to be named charity that supports the care of children with Cancer.

Sean Burgess (right), along with Matt White of Fynn Consulting in the United Kingdom were key players in the development of this new software tool and social networking site. Burgess got involved after talking to Elgort about the project. "After hearing Bruce's ideas, I thought it was something that the Lotus user community was in need of," says Burgess. "People often put their ideas on their blogs or in the forums, but there was no central place to see if someone already had the idea or what other people thought of it."

IBM Lotus Software is embracing this concept. On her blog, IBM employee Mary Beth Raven writes that Idea Jam will make her life easier. As the person responsible for designing the "user experience" got the recently released Lotus Notes and Domino 8, she shocked the Lotus Software community by asking for feedback on ideas that she and her team wanted to include in that new release, and then by actually using the feedback given to her.

She is joined by fellow IBM-er Alan Lepofsky (left) in endorsing the new site built on this tool. Lepofsky, who has been involved in IBM research with SecondLife, is clear in stating his belief that it is well worth a look by the Lotus Software user community. "This is NOT and IBM site, but rather in the true spirit of collaboration and social software, this is an effort created by members of the Lotus community," writes Lepofsky on his blog.

Nathan Freeman (right), who worked as part of the Notes and Domino 8 design partner team with IBM, likes the idea, but is unsure of what impact it will have. Freeman, who co-founded OpenNTF as an open source solutions community for Lotus software with Elgort, says " I'd like to think it'll be great, but it's difficult to say when there's no cost to promote or demote an idea.  Basically, you can vouch or trash something, and there's no cost to that action. So you could literally go through and just say "Yes" to everything. I think that's dependent on whether people evaluate carefully [before making comments or voting]."

The model presented by the "Idea Jam" social networking site could be just the tip of the iceburg. Freeman went on to say,  "forget whether it'll matter for Lotus products, though. It'll matter for lots of other stuff. There's not really any reason why its use is limited even just to software ideas. We could just as well put up ideas for who the Falcons should put in the line-up."

Ideas will grouped into “idea spaces” – which currently include IBM’s Lotus Connections, Lotus Notes and Domino, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony and Websphere Portal. Additional idea spaces for OpenNTF and Idea Jam itself will also be available.

Using the Web 2.0 metaphor, Idea Jam includes many features that make the site easy use:

• Tags – All ideas can be “tagged” with one or more tags. Users can then use tag clouds to see which tags are
  popular.
• RSS – Idea Jam provides RSS feeds for idea spaces, a specific idea, a user or for any given tag.
• User Profiles – Users can view their ideas, their comments, and the ideas they voted on.
• Views – Ideas can be viewed by popularity, recent ideas, most comments, recent comments or others. Each
  view also has an associated RSS feed.
• Unvoted – Users can easily review ideas that they have not voted on.
• Random – Users can be presented with a random idea to promote or demote.

The decision to buld the initial version on Lotus Domino was an easy one for Elgort and his team. "Companies that use this tool will be able to open the box and deploy it immediately out of the box," Elgort says. "They will be able to leverage the industrial strength security model that Domino offers not available elsewhere." Future plans include making the tool available for LAMP and .Net platforms.

Photograph of Nathan Freeman courtesy of Bruce Elgort/Elguji Software, Used with permission.