Stuart McIntyre – Change agent, technologist, strategist, consultant.

My work

I am a strategist and implementation consultant, currently working with a global financial services organisation based out of the UK. My work is focused on enabling change within the enterprise, through the values that have always underpinned social business – transparency, collaboration, authenticity, and trust.

I am excited about the application of new behaviours, structures, and technologies to help change and disrupt the traditional beliefs, processes and work practices within organisations.

My current focus is on the pervasive yet responsible introduction of AI-based technologies across the organisation’s communications and marketing function. This includes leveraging emerging GenAI capabilities to enable and enhance our creative campaigns, improving the automatic identification and tagging of resources to make discovery and reuse swifter and less-costly, and using AI to allow colleagues to be identified across the organisation to help networking and to aid collaboration.

Broadcasting

Alongside good-friend and partner-in-crime Darren Duke, I used to co-present a weekly podcast, This Week in Lotus. A regular ’roundtable discussion of all things social, collaboration, technology and community’, we reviewed the week’s news, discussed new product announcements from IBM’s Collaboration Solutions brand, talked to experts from around the community, and generally did our best to raise the profile of our favourite technologies!

After 115 episodes, Darren and I recorded the final episode of This Week in Lotus a couple of years back.  I certainly haven’t lost the podcasting bug and I’m mulling over a number of options for what comes next…

Community Events

I helped to found of Social Connections – the IBM Connections User Group. Started way back in 2007 as a LinkedIn group, this community of individuals with a passion for IBM Connections has grown to be more than 2,000 strong. In 2011 it was felt that this group would benefit from a regular opportunity to meet face-to-face, and so I now help to organise a 6-monthly event run by the group. The first one took place on 4th July, 2011 in London, with subsequent events in Cardiff (December 2011), Dublin (June 2012), Amsterdam (November 2012), Zürich (June 2013), Prague (June 2014), Stockholm (November 2014), Boston (April 2015), and Stuttgart (November 2015).

When I stepped away from the IBM (now HCL Technology) product set in 2015, I passed leadership of the group on to others, and I’m delighted that the renamed Lets Connect group still gathers for in-person and virtual meetings.

In addition to hosting Social Connections, I’ve always been a keen supporter of user groups and community events around the world, having spoken at UKLUG, ILUG, NLLUG, BLUG/Engage, DanNotes and SUTOL.

Of course, IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere) always held a significant place in the calendar, and I’ve been blessed to have been selected to speak on a number of occasions, as well as hosting Birds-of-a-Feather sessions and completing the gruelling challenge of SpeedGeeking! In addition, I used to host the popular (though now defunct) Lotusphere Blog and Lotusphere Podcast sites.OpenNTF

In 2011, I was elected to serve on the board of the OpenNTF open-source community. As a long-time supported of this great not-for-profit venture, I was honoured to have a small part to play in the organisation, as it goes about its aims of supporting Lotus/ICS developers, sharing of knowledge, and enablement of the community.  I stepped down late in 2012.

Blogging

I have been a keen (some might say prolific!) blogger since 2006, running sites such as Collaboration Matters!, the Connections Blog, the Quickr Blog, the Symphony Blog and the LotusLive Blog as well as the aforementioned Lotusphere Blog. Knowledge-sharing is a key objective of these sites, to pool experience gained from the work that I do so that it is available to all that seek it. If nothing else, I regularly find my own posts (and therefore solutions) in searches for information I have forgotten over the years.

I’m often been delighted to receive books and products to review on the site and via the podcast.  If you’d like me to assist with inform others about your products, please let me know.

This site (stuart-mcintyre.com) is an attempt to rationalise many of the sites mentioned above as we move forward with new brands and products, and therefore some of the older sites will disappear over time, but my passion for blogging is undiminished!

Foster Care

My wife and I have been foster carers for more than ten years, so far looking after more than a dozen children over the short- and longer-term. As a family, we love this challenging yet hugely enjoyable role, and it has made a massive impact on our lives and those of our birth children. As a result, we’re strong advocates for foster care and the impact that all families can have, helping and supporting children in need.

Get in touch!

As you can hopefully tell from the above, I firmly believe in the power of both community and social collaboration. I’m delighted that you’ve found this site and look forward to speaking with you in the near future. Please do get in touch via the Contact page on this site, or via one of the many social networks listed on the sidebar – I’d be thrilled to meet you.