I didn’t get my slides to Warren quickly
enough for them to be placed on the memory sticks.  So I have posted
my quick ND8 presentation here
and the Administration -v- Developer
ND8 presentation here.

The first UKLUG has ended.  After
a rush of sessions lasting the whole day, a demonstration lab available
for people to test ND8, Quickr, Sametime and Composite applications, a
drinks reception, prize draws and very productive conversations, everyone
(most notably Warren) is wrecked.  I bowed out early from the bar
last night simply because I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.  
I’m now sitting in Luton airport, for the first flight to Dublin at 6am
reflecting on the day.

The User Groups have started to come
into their own in the UK and Ireland.  SNUG, UKLUG and ILUG are all
growing, and growing fast.  Also, Spain and Italy are now very promising.
  There were interesting discussions on how to grow the UG in the
UK.  While I don’t think some of the suggestions will work, I do think
that some of them were great.  When it comes to a forum or discussion,
these days I am not really in favour of dedicated sites anymore.  My
reasoning is simple:  If there is a UserGroup forum available on-line
that people have to go to, or even log in to, people will eventually lose
interest as their real lives get in the way. However, a forum on Facebook
is easy to run, and the majority of the people in the room already log
into Facebook.  Therefore, that’s the most sensible solution to me.
 Lets use the tools that people already use every day.

Warren and Kitty put in a massive amount
of work into this event, and deserve the thanks of everyone that was there.
 Lets not forget Matt, Julian, Bill, Frank and all the speakers and
sponsors.  Next steps are already being discussed, and I am constantly
looking out for UG’s nowadays from other countries that are looking for
speakers or assistance.  But for now, sleep.

A PACKED event here at UKLUG. Many people unable to get in for Kevin Cavanaugh’s keynote here in Hatfield. The labs are working, the pace is fast and with all last week’s announcements, this is lining up to be a great day.

20 Laptops for UKLAB – without the logon password.
Captions welcome!
**IBM Thinkpad paperweights**

En route to London for the
first UKLUG conference and it
really looks like it is lining up to be special.  If you want to attend….yeah
well forget it because it has been waitlisted for a long time now.  Warren
and Kitty
have put together an outstanding
event, which will only grow in the future.  I have put together the
lab environment (there are machines there for you to play running ND8,
Sametime and Quickr.   Take a look at the agenda
to see what is being covered in
just one day!  I will be presenting twice.  Once solo on the
features of the Notes 8 client and then again with my presenting partner,
Bill
boy on the latest features of
the Designer and Admin clients in ND8.  So if you see me there, be
sure to say hello and fire away with any questions.  The best part
of the UG events is there is no real formailty, so don’t be afraid to ask
whatever you want!

For the record.

Network based installations of Lotus
Notes 8 (like every other version) are NOT supported by IBM.  Although
they do work in every other version of Lotus Notes (and the 8.0 basic client)
they dont work using the full 8 client.  At least not reliably at
all.  If anyone has had any joy with a stable configuration of this
type of client installation, I would love to talk to them.

By  "network based installation"
I mean:

Notes program files and expiditor installed
on the local drive of  a client.

Data files installed on a home drive
(i.e. network user drive)

Shortcut modified on client to read
the user drive as the working directory.

Roaming based installations of Lotus
Notes 8 are also NOT supported by IBM.  I do guess that this will
be supported by 8.01.  That being said, it does work for me in testing
at the moment.  Certain files do not roam (RSS feed database for example)
but the basics do work.  If you manually replicate the RSS database
up onto the roaming directory, it will sync aswell, but that is a pain
and is not put down on new client setups.

I’m not knocking the product – just
passing on the knowledge as I have been asked quite a few times.

Eileen sporting a very fashionable (yet geeky) hat in Peru on her sponsored hike. She is home safe and sound, with many photos and surprisingly full of energy. There are rumors of a bigger, more difficult hike for charity next year on a different continent. Of course, we may need help raising money for her. Hmm…. I wonder what event we could arrange that may persuade people to donate money again next year!
Well done Eileen.

I know this has been blogged already,
but its just too sweet for the admins to not blog it!  One
of the secret tools of IBM support has always been the Lotus Notes Diagnostic
tool.  It helps you a great deal in debugging the NSD files that a
server will chuck at you when it has given up the ghost.  Well, now
IBM have released a version of the LND on the sandbox site for free download.
 This is a great help to admins – Download
it and give it a go.    If
I get time, I will put up a quick tutorial on using this tool

How good is this
news!  Coming with 8.01 there
will be built in mobile mail technology for Lotus Notes users.  Check
the Lotus
Traveller site! At first this
will be limited to Windows Mobile devices only.  Still, this is GREAT
news.  A big piece missing from the Lotus portfolio is now filled.
 This may be followed by Nokia integration (huge for Europe).  Already
people are asking for iPhone support…

I’m a huge blackberry fan nowadays,
but this is great news for Lotus in the marketplace and I cannot wait to
test it.  On a side note, I need to apologise to
Alan Lepofsky (sorry Alan).  I
used this as a rod to beat IBM with in private emails to Alan.  I’m
sure he knew this was all on the way, but could not say anything… Sorry
Alan, but you are making a believer out of me again.

For the weekend due to some hardware
swaps etc I had to do….  Im sure both readers will get by ;)