The Lotus Domino Designer documentation
team is looking for comments,

experiences, and observations about
the Domino Designer Help system

functionality and content. Key team
members will be available to read the

feedback, respond, and provide insight.

Lotus Domino Designer documentation
moderator team includes:

- Bob Harwood, the Information Development
(ID) Lead for Domino Designer

- Cara Viktorov, ID Customer Feedback
Lead

- Steve Shewchuk – Designer ID manager

- Deanna Drschiwiski – Designer Information
Architect

- Michael Stewart – Writer

- Bob Perron – Writer

For one week only – click here.

Did you just read "Book review"
as a title on this site?  Seriously?  Has Duffbert
taken over this site as nobody
now believes one man can read all the books he reviews?  Is the sky
falling?  Nope… I actually read a book that had nothing to do with
IT and thought that some people that read this site may like it.  It
also links to a Lotus blogger in a weird way.  

A few days ago I ordered "Just
a Geek" by Wil
Wheaton.  For those that
don’t know, Wil played the part of Wesley Crusher in Star Trek TNG years
and years ago (he was 14 at the time) and also appeard in films like "stand
by me" and other bits and
pieces.  The part we didn’t see was that he was A class a geek.  The
part he didn’t see was he was a class A writer.

Having recently published a number of
books, and maintaining his own blog site that would put our hit counts
to shame, he has compiled a "blogobiography", reviewing his life
as an unhappy actor (having left Star Trek as he had enough of the scripts,
but not the people)  with worries and issues, and using his early
website posts as references to what he was going through.  From money
problems to acting issues, to online hatred, this guy had it rough (as
many actors/artists) and wrote about it online.  Then his rise as
an online presence, blogger, author and acceptance of his history in a
TV show that I can only imagine was typecast hell.

I read it in 4 hours.  Its an easy
read, well put together, honest and engaging.  Hell there are enough
geek references to keep anyone in the IT community happy.   At the
end of the book, Kathleen
McGivney gets special mention
as one of his friends that has always helped hm along.  Weird to see
your friend’s name in print in a book like this.  Hmm… maybe I can
skip queues now saying "I have a friend who is a friend of a famous
person."  

Maybe not.

Read it, its well worth the time.  

You get long, in-depth sessions, covering
a wide range of topics, opinions, debates, discussions, beer and food.
 Rudi has excelled himself again – the content here and the enthusiasm
would leave most other conferences in the shade.  And we are only
half way through it.

I am sitting on my EI136 waiting to taxi
to get from Boston to Dublin.  Door is not closed yet, so laptop is
on, and I can still hit WiFi.  I fly quite a lot.  Nowhere near
the "Brill" level, but Aer Lingus is the one airline that has
a seriously stupid rule.

When going through safety stuff during
boarding, you are told to turn off your phones.  If you have a smart
phone, you are to switch to flight mode, THEN TURN IT OFF.  i.e. you
cannot use a flight mode device during flight if it has phone capacity.
 Flying to New York earlier this year, I was playing poker on my Berry,
and I was politely told that it must be off.  I said "its on
flight mode" – they said "it doesnt matter – thems the rules".
 

Not for one second am I blaming the
staff on the plane – but for Christs sake Aer Lingus, catch up with everyone
else and your rules.  Do you know any other airline with this rule?

Made me laugh

After what has been an unusual but quite
interesting week in Boston, I am homeword bound.  About to board EI136
to Dublin from Logan (the early flight!!!!!) and so far my luggage is apparently
not lost.  Then drive to Belfast.  Next week, it is admincamp
in Germany and onto London for
work with another customer.  This time of year traditionally gets
busier, and this year seems busier then most.  One sign of encouragement
in Boston is the amount of people that mention how the economy is getting
better there, and that people are spending money again.  Good news
to hear.

I have my own opinion on this, but I will
resist from telling until I here what others think (in case I am wrong).

Imagine your business has a requirement.
 Imagine that a solution to that requirement is a tool that installs
an extension or DLL on the domino servers.  Does this cause you a
concern?  Do you resist additional installs on the domino servers?
 Have you been burned from this before?  

The obvious answer is "it depends
on the requirement", but would the fact that an additional install
is required on the server affect your decision?

Next year, Gab and I are lucky enough to
assist in the management of the SNT track at Lotusphere.  Now in its
second year, it should be easier for people to understand what the sessions
are about.  That being said, I have been asked "what if I want
to present on this track?".  We put together the following excerpt
as a description of the session.

"The Show ‘n Tell track brings
you the best in live technical education.    SNT Presentations
go into comprehensive  detail on a specific technology with step by
step slides, picture screenshots and live demonstrations that show how
it can be used and applied for your environment.  All sessions adopt
a teaching approach and the documentation is critical to this, successful
candidates for the SNT track must be both presenter and trainer in creating
a session that will stand alone as an instruction guide for attendees to
keep.

If you’d like to submit an abstract
then think like an attendee, what class would YOU love to attend and what
would you expect to take away with you.  It is no exaggeration to
say this is the toughest track to write for and the easiest to present.
 The session is timed at 2 hours, averaging well over 100 slides per
session last year.  The format of the session is identical in every
presentation.  Establish a start point, establish a goal, then STEP
BY STEP, get to the goal explaining every click, every checkbox needed,
and ensuring that the person could complete this same task themselves when
they leave your room.  So be prepared and take this opportunity to
share your expertise directly!"

I left LoLA yesterday to head to a customer
in Boston, and although there is an NDA lid on the event, I thought I could
share my impressions on what the conference is/was to me.

• LoLA is not Lotusphere.  In fact,
  it is not like any Lotus conference I have been to.  There are many
  geeks here, but also a far higher percentage of senior executives in attendance
  compared to Lotusphere.  This conference is aimed at them.  There
  is no "Lets drink until 5am then start again at 7am at LoLA".
   People socialise, but bedtimes are relatively early.  It is
  an event for planning futures and closing deals.

• No punches are pulled at LoLA.  People
  speak their mind and Lotus take it on the chin, even admitting where they
  went wrong.  Imagine a session where customers are on stage telling
  Lotus what they are doing wrong, then reminding them that they will be
  back next year to review their issues, on stage.

• There was an impression of vigour and
  youth in the Lotus executive team.  I have not seen that before.  I
  hope and think that is making a strong difference to the way the product
  is developed/marketed.  Bob Picciano is impressive and personable
  on stage or in person.

• It’s very cloudy here ;)
• The Lotus team, including the senior
  executives make themselves very available to anyone that wants to speak
  with them.

• Some of the conceptual stuff you see
  here is mind-blowing.

• As ever the conference team from Lotus
  run an excellent event.  Tying LoLA in with organising Lotusphere
  is a ordeal for them.

• It is always great to meet old friends
  and make new ones.

• I would stand on stage at Lotusphere
  long before standing in front of a video camera again.

  So LoLA was different, but in a refreshing
  way.  IBM have put their marketing head on the block now, and are
  promising to come out with guns blazing.  I like the Smarter planet
  stuff, but it has little relevance to solutions.  I also like the
  lotusknows campaign, as it mentions a product (shock, horror) and hope
  it proves to be a useful venture that they can repeat.

Well, the veil of NDA is over pretty much
all of Lola, so nobody is really allowed talk about anything.  One
exception to this was the press conference, lead by Bob Picciano and Suzanne
O Minassain.  The presentation included the release information and
demonstration of Connections 2.5m which is now maturing as a product and
showing excellent promise for large industries.  By Suzanne demonstrating
her own connections page, you could easily see how many users are working
with Connections and what they use it for.  Funnilly enough, you can
also see that one of the new features, Status update (read: twitter like
feature for connections) is in heavy use.  Bob P seems to be addicted
in a way that would give Kathy Brown (our resident twitter junkie) a run
for her money.  Since implementation, there has been 250000 status
updates by users in IBM, all indicating what they are working on, and allowing
other people to comment or assist immediately.  There is excellent
value in that instant chat, in the same way we all get some value from
Twitter.  Extendable plugins and API support, improved blogs/forums/wikis,
reductions in email volume and increase in response times in business were
key points discussed, along with case studies and press releases (you can
read one of them here).

The atlas feature for connections is
able to get metrics and statistics from usage of the system, and gives
information on key personal, topics, volume and identifies which people
are heavily involved in specific areas.  As a knowledge mining resource
for large companies, this would be invaluable in identifying key staff
or reposotories.

What was also very obvious was that
anyone could "follow" anyone in connections in IBM, so lower
tier staff can see what upper tier staff are working on, and vice versa.
 A lot of discussion on LousLive and future technologies followed,
and the common question that will affect any company looking at the clouds
was discussed – What stays inside the company and what is public.  Most
business need both.  There are some definite plans to address this
issue in the future.

More later