Social Software is commonly referred to as “Facebook for the enterprise.”  This past summer, I spent 14 weeks working for IBM in Westford, MA as a Social Software Product Manager Intern for IBM’s Lotus Quickr, an online team collaboration software that enables group members share content via document libraries, wikis, blogs, team calendars, and task lists.  I spent most of the summer building Quickr templates for two purposes.  First, the templates would provide proof of concept for clients and the sales team would use the templates to demo during sales presentations.  Second, they would be available for download as add-ons from the IBM website and/or shipped in future releases of Quickr.  At the risk of sounding corny, the templates would help customers get Quickr places started quicker.  Microsoft Sharepoint, one of Quickr’s biggest competitors, has similar templates available.

The thing that I liked the most about my job was that I was given creative freedom.  Each of the templates I created portrayed use cases in business and education.  They ranged from places for managing request for proposals to places enabling teachers and students to collaborate on assignments, grades, and other classroom content.  Sometimes interns are unable to impact the business because of their lack of experience, lack of power, or lack of time; however, I know that my efforts had a tremendous impact on IBM’s business.  A few days after I had finished the template for managing classroom content (comparable to Blackboard which Bentley uses), I received several requests from the sales team to begin using it immediately, before it had gone through testing and legal review.  One of the sales leads had a business opportunity for high school science classes in Southeast Asia and could not wait to show the customer.  Prior to the conclusion of the internship, I cleansed the templates removing fake demo content so that customers could download them.  They still need to be tested and receive legal approval so it will probably be several weeks or months before they will be posted on IBM.com.

In addition to the product templates, I had the opportunity to contribute to the product plan for a new social software application that will compete with some of Google and Microsoft’s products, including Google Apps and Microsoft SharePoint.  Due to confidentiality agreements that I signed when I left IBM, I am not at liberty to discuss specifics about the plan, however, I can speak a little about how I was involved in the project.  I performed extensive research on the existing competition including functionality, costs, and IT specifications of other social software tools and I reported my findings to the project team lead who incorporated them into the product concept plan.  The concept plan was presented to the investment review board after my internship had ended.

I believe that my MSIT curriculum was integral to the work I did this summer.  I feel that Bentley more than adequately prepared me for my internship and any lack of preparation was only due to my choice of program study (MBA+MSIT).  The only way I could have been better prepared for the internship would be if I had taken more marketing courses, but product marketing was a job that I had never considered before my internship.  My internship gave me the opportunity to work with many different technical people like developers, programmers, and architects in addition to technical sales and product marketing.

Working remotely is an IBM way of life.  IBM uses Lotus Sametime, an instant messaging application, rather than phone, email, and personal contact.  “Email is archaic,” my boss once said to me.  “Ping me instead.”  My daily interaction with people was pretty limited except for regular conference calls and web conferences since so many of my colleagues work from home, especially during the summertime.