Connect through a social app
July 1, 2008
HP's enterprise users group, Connect, showed a peek at its new online social networking site during the recent HP Technology Forum. Designed by social networking software company Leverage Software, connect-community.org will help users — mostly Connect members — connect and find each other based on common interests and experience.
On the expo floor, Connect staff was helping attendees see what the site will offer when it goes live in the coming weeks. The member's profile icon stands at the center of a circle, with icons of other members around it at differing distances. The closer the member's icon is to yours, the more they have in common. (Click on the screen shot at left to see more detail on the interface.)
Filling in a profile on the site gives the proximity and similarity data to the application. There are even opportunities to tell the site that your interest is in MPE/iX.
Yes, the operating system/technology platform, professional interest, even HP Technologies, all have tick-boxes for MPE/iX. The professional interest section also includes the all-important Legagy Migration and Modernization professional interest. That's a category, when you think of it, that much of the HP 3000 community will fall into — regardless of migration or homesteading intentions.
Connect will launch the Social Networking Web site sometime in these weeks following the Technology Forum & Expo. The full benefit of using the site will be reserved for group members, however.
Non-user group members will be able to visit and read postings, discussions and archived information from the old Encompass and Vivit Web sites. But in order to discuss or ask a question or participate in a chat, a Web site user will have to become an Encompass member. Connect's press handlers pointed out that social networking sites sometimes charge a membership fee anyway, so being a member to share on the Connect site isn't all that unusual.