Libby Says...
That your friendly neighborhood Notesgirl is back in the biz? The Lotus biz, that is. Some of you I saw at ILUG or you've seen me on Twitter or LinkedIn or elsewhere and you probably heard the news there, but for those of you who hadn't yet heard.... When I finished my master's at Rice, I decided it was time to come back to the fold. So, I've left high school teaching and I'm working for WorkFlow Studios as their VP of Marketing and Communications -- doing marketing, PR, probably some training and consulting thrown in for good measure. I'll be working on events, the website, some whitepapers and case studies, and more. In some ways, it was a tough decision - leaving KIPP was not without its sadness and I had lots of good opportunities on the table when I decided to leave KIPP, both in teaching and elsewhere. In other ways, I've known Lance and the WFS folks for a long time and they're Good FolksTM, so working with them as my way to come back to the IBM Software world made sense. I've been a little quiet here while I worked out my job changing situations, but now the hope is that I'll be back to blogging - and, I hope, saying interesting things, more regularly. I'll also be making the rounds of the events, and offering my writing and speaking services as I find appropriate times, ways, and places to do so. I've already had one or two requests for a new certification something - not sure if a book is in the cards, but we'll see. I need to update my certifications (I have been completely away from the business for 2 years, after all), so it may make a lot of sense for me to do some certification writing. You can also expect to see me doing some gadget reviews and commentary as I continue my unexpectedly passionate love affair with my new Kindle and attempt to fall in love with my new MacBookPro. The blog will, of course, continue to share yoga, dancing, running, and other commentary as well. I feel as though I've been dead or asleep for at least the past two years (that's what grad school and a full time teaching job will do to you), and I'm trying to figure out all the things I need and want to do now that I'm alive again. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
There's a good Network World article today about Mike Rhodin's first 100 days as Lotus' GM and his challenges and focus going forward into 2006. The most compelling content
Not that I had any doubt, but still: good to hear. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
With all our talk this year of analyst firms and what's good and bad, here's some interesting news: from eContentMag.com: Gartner is buying META in a cash transaction for about $10/share. The story didn't have much news on what would happen to the research and analysis the two firms publish, although Gartner's site did have a message from the CEO about the transaction. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
The news sites are all abuzz over TiVo's latest trademark protection efforts. It seems that the TiVo marketing department fears being xeroxed like a box of kleenex, or covered in saran wrap and band-aids at any rate. I say, too bad for them. At a time when they are facing more competition than ever, why wouldn't it be to their advantage to have some brand recognition in the market? PVRs are available dozens of ways now, and while TiVo retains its cool factor, it's facing commoditization. Wouldn't keeping the brand visible in the market give them some legs to run with for a while longer? Slate today has a follow-up story, where they point out: Nonetheless, the TiVo story serves as an object lesson on the Catch-22 of brand identification: You want your brand name to be recognizable enough that everyone associates it with the product, but not so recognizable that no one distinguishes your product from similar ones made by other companies.Maybe IBM's quirky "self-documenting" branding isn't so strange, after all. (As if.) Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
You'd think with all the discussion going on lately of ethical and unethical behaviour, not only by analyst firms, but also by various companies, that the companies in our corner of the industry would have a clue that we're not really going to stand for things with which we disagree. Here's mine for today. I guess some folks would probably say that this isn't completely beyond the pale: hey, compete in any way possible. I disagree. Company A: SoftQuest Company B: The Wolcott Group They're competitors. Great. Fine. Competition is good! Company A has registered a typo of company B's URL (Wolcot with one "T") and redirected it to their Website. If you weren't sure about who you were going to see, it's definitely possible you might think that one company had bought the other, changed names, etc... I don't like it. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Finally. There've been articles all over the place over the years of what Notes/Domino does and doesn't do, and should, especially as compared to Outlook. Now, there's an article that lists a Dozen Things Outlook Doesn't Do -- But Should. Did you notice that a few of those things are things that Notes already does? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Perhaps now you might understand why I've been fairly quiet over the last few weeks. Yes, the e-Pro relaunch announcement has been burning a hole in my blog and I've been wanting to tell you all about it, but I didn't want to steal my own thunder. Plus, it's been taking up a great deal of my time. So. e-Pro Magazine is no more in print. But, as Duffbert and Ed point out, that doesn't mean e-Pro has stopped bringing you valuable news, insight, technology how-to, analysis, and product coverage. e-Pro is dead; Long Live e-Pro! Our relaunch does two main things: first, we have stopped covering all things WebSphere (WAS, WebSphere MQ, WSAD) as an equal partof our coverage. We will continue to cover WebSphere as it might be of interest to a Lotus reader -- after all, it does provide the underpinning for the new Workplace platform in some ways, as well as for WebSphere Portal -- but it will be more "What a Lotus technologist might like to see on WAS/WSAD" rather than what a WebSphere technologist would like to see. This does not mean that we will not cover WebSphere Portal. In fact, we will be increasing our WP coverage with a monthly e-mail newsletter dedicated to all things WP. I have been describing our technology focus, when I talk about the relaunch, as Lotus, Workplace, and WebSphere Portal product portfolios. Second, we have stopped our focus on print. Lots going on with that change, and yes, there's a bit of melancholy on my part - it was my baby; however, I think that spending our time and effort (specifically, a lot of my time and effort) on bringing news, opinion, and analysis directly to you via electronic format will be a higher payoff. At the moment, the "electronic format" consists of a relaunched family of e-newsletters (Sign up here!). We are also in the process of a complete redesign of the Website. The relaunch of the Website will also serve as the exciting launch of our new blog: the Lotus Informer. I'll be front and center on that blog, with interviews, opinions, links, coverage of all your blogs, and other tasty tidbits. I won't be alone, however. If you have something to say and want to say it there; let me know. My contributing technical editors (Chris Miller, Tom Duff, Ben Malekzadeh, and Michael Fromin) will participate. Some of our authors and other tech editors may contribute. It'll be a group effort. In addition to the enls, revamped Website, and blog, you'll see RSS feeds for more than just our news headlines, as well as a continuing focus on electronic learning with Web conferences, Webcasts, and e-learning classes. I'd love to hear what you think about our relaunch ideas as well as what you'd like to see in our future and how you might like to participate. We're only as good as the participation we get from our readers -- it is a community, after all. Feel free to comment here or send me e-mail (you know where to find me!). Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
As we go into the next phase of life with e-Proand our family of publications, we continue to need input from you -- our readers (or, at least, I hope you're readers!). So, please take a few minutes to tell us what it really is you want from our family of publications by completing our short survey, and we'll do our best to provide it. But as my dad used to say, if you don't tell me, I can't fix it! Plus, as an incentive for those of you who don't just want to talk to me out of the goodness of your altruistic little hearts, I've also got some Amazon.com gift certificates ready to go for a random drawing of winners. So, there you have it. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
In my inbox this morning... a press release from the Institute for Policy Innovation that says that it is very possible that "despite all the hype, open source is not necessarily the best way to develop software." According to the report's author, Tom Healy, who is a research software engineer and policy researcher in Sydney, Australia, "the mass consumer market is qualitatively different from other markets. It demands a much higher level of software engineering in order to provide the requisite ease of use, robustness, and flexibility." The press release goes on to provide a list of open source's failings, and a description of why it is "no more a threat to Microsoft than were Netscape, the Macintosh, or Word Perfect." Here's the list:
Continues Healy: "Pushing the open source concept too far into areas where it's not applicable will lead to universities and taxpayers shouldering the cost of software development for business, and doing it less capably than specialist software development firms." Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
An article on CRN on Friday talks about what the new-ish Exchange guy at MS plans for his product: "make the mail server product the very best back end to the gazillions of Outlook clients out there." Well fine -- if you really think you can. Of course, if you think you *have* to, that probably means that Lotus's Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook has them a bit concerned, eh? Unfortunately, the article goes on to speculate on connectors coming out of Microsoft (which we're not too concerned about) and about what might be in the works for MAPI: "Conspiracy theorists think it means that Microsoft may mess with MAPI, the client-to-server protocol. Now that would be a story. But since Microsoft owns MAPI, the company can have its way with it." Well, wouldn't that be annoying? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I've noticed a couple of postings about the e-Pro Magazine Apex awards. Yes, it's time once again for our annual awards. Nominations are closed and the voting (for readers' choice) has begun. Of course, as Volker has pointed out, there's definitely some attempts at ballot stuffing that occurs in the voting for readers' choice awards. On the other hand, we do what we can to prevent that from succeeding. I've talked about my beliefs about awards before. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I just did a Q&A with IBM's GIna Poole, the VP of Developer Marketing and Web Communities for IBM's ISV and Developer Relations group -- the exec in charge of the developerWorks site, among other things. One of the first questions I asked her was whether there was going to be a developerWorks Live conference this year, since although we broke the story a while ago, we haven't been able to find much additional detail other than about the Rational User Conference. Well, here you go: The Rational User Conference will contain some additional sessions and branding this year that will take the place of what had been branded the IBM developerWorks Live conference over the past few years. The Rational group already had the Gaylord Conf. center in Grapevine (yes, in July) set for their user conference, and it made the most sense to them to merge the shows. This year, the merger favors the Rational brand a bit, although Gina promises that there will be a significant number of sessions covering broader developer technologies, such as XML, service oriented architecture, and web services. There will also be content covering Eclipse and WebSphere Studio. So, according to Gina, this merger is to ensure the Rational developers (probably quite as fanatic a group as we Lotus developers) have their user conference experience this year, although other IBM software developers will definitely have a significant place at the show. Next year, she implied that the show might be a bit more general, as it had been for the past few years. I asked whether Lotus developers and WebSphere developers should attend the show. Gina says it's an easy yes for WebSphere developers. For Lotus developers, well, she says this is why we might have noticed a bit more development content at Lotusphere than we might've seen in previous years -- while the show will have content that will have bearing for Lotus developers, especially those who are planning to embrace Workplace development or are working with Eclipse, XML, or Web Service, it won't have the same level of depth on traditional Lotus technologies as dwLive has had, or as DevCon once had. Look for more from my Q&A with Gina in the April issue of e-Pro Magazine. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
When IBM bought Rational, of course we had an internal pow-wow over what it would mean to Lotus and WebSphere users. My prediction at the time (shoulda written it down!) was that all the development tools, such as WSAD would be put under Rational's auspices. Love it when the crystal ball is working: From CRN:
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Something I've been saying in presentations and asking authors to write about is reconfirmed by people who are termed "tech visionaries." In this case, it's about the importance of IM and awareness (of course, IBM has also been saying it quite a bit). OTOH, I would probably never say that e-mail is dead, even though I'm ready to start playing with the reinvented e-mail client, regardless of what some of those people at Slashdot say. (both via Ed) Here's an excerpt from the VAR Business Insider article:
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All kinds of important Lotus-related things happened this week and I've been so heads down with real work and etc that I haven't blogged them. Of course, many of the rest of you took care of all of that for me, but since over half my googles for this week were for Lotusphere 2004, I thought I'd spend just a moment talking about it. LS2004 registration is open. You can register, get hotels, put in an abstract for presenting, and nominate your favorite business partner for a Lotus award (formerly a Beacon award). You can also check out the unoffical Lotusphere page at the Turtle's site -- yes, he's back, and I know we're all grateful for the surely soon-to-ensue hilarity that the Gonzo site always provides. As for registration -- pay attention -- you now have some discount options -- register by December 2 for $1395 and by Jan 23 for $1695. If you're a CLP, if you will wait until October 7th, you can get a $200 discount. Go to the Certification Zone (requires registration -- you must be an IBM Certified Professional for Lotus Software) for details. I think this year's Lotusphere will be an important one -- okay, I probably say that every year -- I've been going since 1998 or 1999 and I love the heck out of it -- but my point is that there are a lot of changes and growth in the Lotus industry this year and we all need to hear from the horse's mouth what their plans are so we know what our plans should be. While you can stay home and get the information from me, you'll get more out of it if you can make the trip yourself. Plus, one of the arguments I've heard in the past against going is that it wasn't technical enough -- from what I've heard and seen in the descriptions of the tracks, you won't be able to say that this year. The Best Practices track looks like it will be expanded and you'll also be seeing some hands-on sessions at the show -- how could you miss it? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I may have brought the good weather to Houston, but I brought the opposite to San Francisco this week -- it was HOT. I've turned into a big heat wimp (especially when I'm expecting something completely different), so it was somewhat uncomfortable in the usually cool and breezy Bay Area. I flew in early Tuesday and high-tailed it to the IBM offices in downtown SF for the SF User Group meeting. David Stephens gave a good presentation on preventing spam in ND6 and I talked replication. I'll be reprising the session at an upcoming SD User Group meeting as well. A different version of the session (longer, more in-depth) will be airing at the View's Technical Exchange conference in Amsterdam in a few weeks (I'll be in Europe October 11-19th). The rest of the SF week was spent visiting vendors with one of our sales team, capped off with a Friday afternoon interview with IBM's Larry Bowden, and some nice visiting with some of my best friends, who now live in SF. We ate dinner out, had some blueberry cosmopolitans, bought the 2nd season of Angel on DVD, and had an Angel-a-thon complete with too much food and intermissions spent playing Soul Caliber II. The friends I have in SF are ones I've been close to since college -- and it's amazing how close-knit we can still be as a group despite marriages, divorces (or the serious relationship comparable version thereof), living at times in multiple cities (Houston, SF, SD, Ivrea, etc), and the 10+ years that have passed since graduation. I'm so lucky to have these folks (well, to be less self-effacing, we're lucky to have each other). I guess it's that shared history thing that makes us all so comfortable and secure with each other. (For anyone curious, Angel's 2nd season is very good -- I didn't see it the first time around and enjoyed the first half of the season immensely -- dark and funny at the same time, which seems to be a Joss Whedon trademark.) You'll hear more about my conversation with Larry in upcoming articles on e-ProMag.com, but here's something of a preview. First, let me say that Larry is always a very engaging person to talk to -- he's smart and well-informed. One of the nicest traits is either that he's got a heck of a memory or does his homework before he walks into a meeting -- he always remembers me, the previous times we've talked, and has something to say about the recent issues of the magazine. The feeling that the exec you're talking to you is familiar with you makes the process easier and more comfortable and isn't the kind of respect awarded to our magazine by all the IBM execs we meet with (although Larry is certainly not the only one who does it). We talked mostly, as you might expect, about the Workplace product line. Larry hit the nail on the head when he said that he expects it to take 7-8 hearings for the Workplace strategy to really start to resonate with customers and business partners (and, although he was too politic to say it, press). For those of use who have made our careers with Notes and Domino, it continues to feel very unfamiliar and we're not sure whether to send our Domino expertise to the scrap-heap and start over or to ignore the oncoming train, confident that there's a second track for it. It seems that the truth of the matter is this: It depends. If you work for or serve (or want to be) large enterprise customers, you need to be changing your skillset. You need to learn WebSphere -- Application Server, Portal, Studio, etc., including all the attendant products, languages, and platforms. In fact, from the way it sounds, you're already well on your way to doing so. If you have more of a small-to-medium business focus (or you are a line-of-business user who also does some development), you may not need to jump into the new learning to far or so deeply. Your first step is probably to upgrade to the soon-to-be-released Notes and Domino 6.5. That doesn't sound so painful. I can't announce all the things I know will be coming with that, but trust me that it's your first step down the path of the future, but in a good way. Suffice it to say that you won't have to throw away all your skillset and knowledge just to use the new workplace products. And of course, as Larry was quick to say, Domino and Notes as they are now will continue to be supported and maintained for the forseeable future. In any case, more on Workplace, products to look for in the near future, and other details on my talk with Larry in an upcoming editorial. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Usually, I try to be really good about using the name for things that a company wants used. Okay, let's be specific -- I have tried very hard to use Lotus's product and/or brand names as they want them to be used, even going so far at one point as to ask Chris Reckling what the preferred capitalization style was for the product he product managed. I have always been one of the people who used "Domino" to mean the server, not just the HTTP/Web server (although that's what it was the original code-name for). And I stopped using Notes to refer to the server right away (well, mostly). But I'm having the hardest time getting used to using the new set of new names... They don't exactly seem to be catching on quickly -- none of the authors for the magazine want to use the new names -- they all use the new name the first time, put the old name in parentheses, and then use the old name through the rest of the article they write. Not that I can blame them... You go from a nice, easy, one-word name to a mouthful of 4 or 5 words. For a full list of Lotus products, including all the names, go to Lotus.com/Products.
I mean, ok, I get (kinda) the stated point of making the name more descriptive of what the product does. I mean, god knows, we've been trying to explain Notes/Domino to the world at large for 10 years now, with limited success. But everyone knows instant messaging is, right? Ok, I get that. But come on, guys, a catchy name is a good thing in the world of branding, isn't it? Or.. is it? By the way, in terms of fairness, I know that successful branding is not necessarily all science -- and it's a bit of a crap shoot -- there's art and luck to it as well. It makes me think of how the Kleenex people want you to use the phrase Kleenex-brand tissues, and the Band-Aid people want you to use Band-Aid-brand bandage strips. But consider -- we all know what a Kleenex is, don't we? How many of those are there -- brand names you use to refer to the generic item? Some examples I can think of:
I'm sure there are more, but I'm sleepy and can't think of them right now... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Wild Bill had a recent post on LDD that I happened across this morning. You go, Bill. It does bring up a conversation I've been wanting to have about Forums, however. Do you go to forums? Only LDD or others (and there are, of course, more than I'm linking to)? Do you participate in forums? Do you like having forums other than LDD out there, or should we just have the one? Do you feel that there's still a sense of community in the forums or have we begun replacing that community with our blogging? I don't have a neat little voting mechanism, but I'd love to hear your comment on the following:
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Ed did a Webcast for e-Pro Magazine today on Exchange vs. Notes/Domino -- great as always. Lots of good questions and a good number of attendees. If you're interested -- it'll be on our archives soon, available for replay. Have any of you been coming to our Webcasts? What do you think? I'd love to get feedback, although if any of you have feedback of the "Why aren't you using Sametime?" variety -- I've already told you my thoughts on that. Read Doc Searls' Weblog today -- he talks about the idea of "Good enough for Top 40" and compares it to blogging: Anyway, the "close enough for Top 40" line comes to mind when I think about blogging. Doing what I'm doing now feels like doing Top 40 radio to me. It's not "professional" in the older sense of the word, although it involves a degree of invention and skill. Most important, mistakes are okay. Being real (in the unprofessional sense of the word) is okay. And moving on to the next thing often matters more than Getting It Right. This discussion took me back to our earlier discussions about the differences between professional journalism and blogging, and how "professional" we need to be in our blogging, regardless of what our professional job is or how closely we intend our blog to mirror or personal persona or our professional persona... He seems to have one additional vote on the "it doesn't have to be perfect to be worth something" side (which, in case you're wondering, is also where I come down on the voting -- I may be a perfectionist, but if you're too much of a perfectionist, especially when you're busy, you'll never get anything done. Especially blogging.) Big apologies -- yesterday's blog link was via Joi Ito's blog and I forgot to credit it b/c I couldn't remember where I'd seen it by the time I finally blogged it. So, there you have it. Not much else of interest... My personal trainer kicked my ass today -- I ran a little late getting to the gym this morning, but that's no reason not to get all the usual exercises in, just in half the time -- whew! I'm going to be in Houston for the weekend (my best friend since fourth grade, Julieana, is getting married in November, and the engagement party for her and her fiance is Saturday night -- I wouldn't miss it!) and then over the next two weeks, I'll be in Denver from Thursday through Wednesday. Since one of my laptops has had it's screen die a fiery hot death recently, it may be that my blogging is slightly interrupted during this time -- we'll see what I can do. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
WARNING: I may say some things in this blog that you won't like. In fact, you may want to throw things at me. Let me state at the beginning that I am as much of a Lotus supporter/yellow-bleeder as I have always been. Now, on to the blog. Ironic, isn't it? I was just about to blog about Lotus Developer Domain and their interesting use of WebSphere Portal as part of their product pages when lo and behold, I get hit with about 4 different e-mails (some more fiesty/bitter than others) over the past week from various sources (including some at Lotus/IBM) about e-Pro Magazine's use of technology in our Webcasts and Web sites. So. Let me say a few words about the use of technology... e-Pro Magazine (which is part of Penton Media, a much larger company -- and one for which I am not an official spokesperson -- everything here is mine and not theirs, most especially the opinions, and etc.) uses Notes and Domino as our internal mail and intranet systems. We use Sametime for IM and meetings within the company. There is a portion of our company still migrating from Exchange and Outlook to Domino. Our public Web sites don't use Domino, for the most part (although the LotusPro section of e-ProMag.com still does, including for our forums). ColdFusion is the standard our team uses on the Websites -- a corporate decision; not mine. Our public Webcasts don't use Sametime; they currently use WebEx. While we've tested Sametime, and have at least one hosting option in our friends at Connectria, the technology doesn't yet support easily what we need to do with it. For Webcasts, we need the ability to host meetings not only with people within our corporate firewall, but outside it, and more importantly, within their own. These meetings need to use not only whiteboarding, but VoIP. (The cost of conference calls is prohibitive to making money on Webcasts.) The technology doesn't easily support these needs. If you think I'm wrong or you don't believe me, check with any Sametime expert who's tried it (there are definitely some, and you probably know some of them). While you can make the technology work, it takes fiddling with the firewalls. And for a public Webcast, where we want customers to sign up and be able to attend, that's not a reasonable requirement. Don't you agree? So. Does e-Pro Magazine'suse of WebEx mean something specific? Did our one-time use of Exchange? Does it change anything when you take into account that Penton also publishes Windows & .NET Magazine? How does forcing them to use Domino reflect on them? Now, the two most common arguments are that we should be specialists in the technology we publish and that we should practice what we preach don't necessarily hold water. In the first case, while I happen to be a good Notes/Domino technologist, most of authors and technical editors aren't employed by Penton -- they're experts in the technology who work for business partners, customers, consultants, ISVs, etc. In the second case, one of the things that we will always espouse in our publications is that you have to do what makes sense for your business. There must be a business case and good ROI for your technology investments. Is it good business to invest in a separate technology, including hardware, software, and expertise, for a single business unit, and to use different technologies for each business unit? One additional consideration -- our magazine covers both Domino and WebSphere technology. Which one should we use for the Website? The Domino faithful will say Domino. The Websphere folks will say WebSphere. Now I need to run my site on multiple technologies just to make everyone happy? Not gonna happen. Now. All that said. Let's go back to the original topic I was going to write about -- Lotus Developer Domain's use of WebSphere Portal (WPS). Some folks are all up in arms about it. Fine. But have you considered that WebSphere Portal Server now lives under the Lotus umbrella? That's right -- it's actually part of the Lotus product line, although with a Websphere brand. So, by the same logic that folks are beating me up using, doesn't that mean that Lotus should be using WPS and showcasing their technology expertise and flexibility? Hasn't that been the point of LDD in the past? To show off how the technologies work together, etc? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Let's talk a little bit about awards and polls. Consider this my little FAQ/rant on awards... e-Pro Magazine recently (at the Admin2003 show) announced our Apex award winners for the Lotus Industry, in both Editor's choice and Reader's choice categories (WebSphere category awards are in nominations now...). Congratulations to all the winners and finalists, first of all -- they all have worthy and useful products. In the process of announcing and writing about the awards, I do hear a fair number of complaints from vendors or readers, some of whom are sure the voting is "fixed" in some way and others of whom are just unhappy with the results. Some of these want constructive discussion, to make sure they understand the category and voting criteria completely, but there are always those who just want to rant. Then I read this bit about some issues with a JDJ poll related to products. Here's the actual thread at Alan's (JDJ's editor) blog. It seems that there is always some dissatisfaction with awards of this type, even including the Beacon awards that Lotus and IBM do every year. So, here are some of my random thoughts on the process and results of not only our awards, but awards in general.
(And speaking of judging... my thanks to the Apex award judges, including Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Chris Miller, Dan Rasmus, Jason Collier, Scott (The Turtle) Wenzel, Jim O'Donnell, and e-Pro's own Rita-Lyn Sanders and James Hoopes.) I believe that awards are a good thing. They let users know what products are out there that some people have found to be useful and good. They increase the visibility of some of the products in the market (and not only the winners, but the nominees and the finalists as well). They increase the visibility and prestige of the company presenting the awards. I'm seeing "win" all around here... One funny story about the whole "win" idea, however. One of the nominees for Lotus Apex awards this year was Jamie Magee of Martin Scott Consulting for his products WirelessMail and NoteMan (different categories). Jamie was a four-time finalist (Editors' and Readers' choice for both categories). Since he was at the Admin show, he got to stand up to be recognized each of those four times, but didn't end up winning any of the categories. We're now calling him the "Susan Lucci" of the Lotus industry. (For those that need the joke explained... Susan Lucci is a daytime-t.v. star who was nominated for a best actress daytime emmy for years and years and years and years and never won... until she finally did in 1999. But she's much better known for not winning that for winning.) (If I were more creative, I'd take one of the pictures of Jamie and merge it with a picture of Susan for some real fun, but I just don't have quite that much time on my hands...) Ok. I'm sure there's more to be said about the whole concept of awards -- what do you think? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Yes, stipulated, I've been a lazy blogger. But. I'm back now. And you can resume listening to me blog rather than my oh-so-kind guest blogger. Thanks, Chris, for keeping my spot warm for me. New Orleans was good. You've heard from Ed (on his Lotus.com blog) already on the basic news from the show, so all that's left for me is to talk about my impressions. There was an interesting mix of people. At first I thought that there weren't very many attendees interested in Lotus. But after talking to some, and having lunch with folks, I decided that while there may have not been that many Lotus attendees, the ones that were there might've been attending WebSphere sessions in addition (or instead of) the Lotus sessions, making it harder to see which users had which brands installed. I'll write about Doug Wilson's (Lotus's CTO) "keynote" in more depth in a column, but one of the things he mentioned include the Lotus Domino Toolkit for WebSphere Studio (now in beta), which promises tools for using Domino objects in J2EE apps. In addition, we saw a demo of the RAD tools for WebSphere Studio Application Developer -- those look really awesome. Bringing so many of the innovations from Domino Designer into the WSAD toolset. I met some great vendors at the show. If you haven't looked at Bowstreet and you use WebSphere Portal Server, you might want to take a look. Of course, as Chris guessed, I drank my fair share of hurricanes, but we didn't get too out of control on Bourbon Street. The beignets were another matter, of course... More to say, but not tonight! Now it's off to dinner... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link |
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