From my mailbox.

Thank you Gregg.  For those that don’t know, it’s related to a comment on a recent Lotus Community spat.  And in no way am I slating Ben Langhinrichs innocent post.

Kicking off a few months of heavy travel with my first ever Symantec Vision Conference where Bluewave have been asked to speak twice regarding their experiences with Symantec Enterprise Vault for Domino.  If you are an IBM/Lotus/Domino person and will be at the event, drop me a line and we can meet up.

Bluewave Technology and Teamstudio have teamed up to give a full one-day workshop on Lotus Traveler and beyond.

A few years ago, it was so easy.

Supplying mobile access to your business was a matter of asking one simple question of your colleagues: “What color do you want for your BlackBerry?”

But in recent years, questions like, “Why can’t I use my own device?” started invading your inbox. At first, you could deflect these questions with a handful of ambiguous statements about security and support, forcing the questioners back into their cubes with an expensive mobile device that had all the business functionality of a paperweight. And you could breathe a sigh of relief.

Despite your efforts, though, the onslaught of questions kept coming, increasing slowly and steadily. Then they started throwing Apples at you. Hard, heavy Apples. Others threw Windows. Some even threw Nokias…

And IBM fuelled the fire by saying, “Well, why shouldn’t your employees be able to use these devices?” IBM’s blessing (free Traveler software) is now causing serious strain on your resources, workload—and your nerves.

So, what do you do?

Come meet some IT consultants who have fought in the trenches, and come out on the other side. With years of experience and doses of dark humour, we’ll bring you through Lotus Traveler deployments from the ground up.

Join Teamstudio and mobile industry expert Paul Mooney for a valuable day-long workshop, where you’ll learn about numerous mobile topologies, architecture in businesses (from small to enterprise), the installation, deployment and management of Lotus Traveler, including scaling and security scenarios. By the end of the day, you’ll have the technical knowledge you need to handle even the most demanding mobile users in your organization.

Bring your laptop and watch two presenters take you through everything they can teach you about the product in a day.  Where it works, it’s limits, best practices, mobile management and more.  Teamstudio will supply devices for you to use as part of a hands on setup (no you cannot keep them) during the event.  A *lot* of work is going into this.  It will be a worthwhile day and is one of the main reasons I will be on the road for most of May and June (and looking like August too).

May 18, 2011 • New York, NY

May 25, 2011 • Manchester, UK (Day after UKLUG)

June 16 2011 • London, UK

August 3 2011 • St. Louis MO

Click here for details.

The UKLUG agenda went online this morning.  A lot of sessions have been crammed into a two day geekfest.  Take a look and register.

Just breadcrumbs/quick tip/query to see if I am alone.

I have setup Traveler for a customer site.  In this instance I am using DA to the primary directory of users in the company.  As with any good Traveler installation, the access Traveler field has been set to a group name (otherwise everyone can use it).  I created this group in the secondary directory as it will be easier to manage.

That doesn’t work.  Traveler seems to require the access group to be existing in it’s primary directory.  If not, no joy.

I have noticed that most of the posts on the front page here are BLUG/Bike related, so I will keep this quick to avoid boredom by readers.
BLUG was a most impressive event. I think it was the best overall event when it comes to “care for speakers, sponsors and delegates”. Considering the competition these days, that is a strong statement. Theo did an outstanding job, giving quality sessions in a quality venue with quality beer for free. I will have very fond memories of BLUG for a long time.

For those asking, the journey home was tough, but I made it on time. Accidentally resetting my trip clock during the ordeal, but I can say I completed just shy of 700 miles in 12 hours. Very tough going with bad traffic and very windy weather. My objective was to have a 1-hour break. That was whittled down to “eat bounty bar while filling petrol tank” as I was losing time. However, I made the ferry in Stranraer for 10.20pm and got home for 3.30am in Belfast. Overall, 1350miles (2172km) covered by the bike getting to BLUG and back. That is bike miles, and doesn’t include ferries or tunnels. Many thanks to Tim Clark again, for being great company and a brilliant rider. He put up with my silly novice mistakes. I abandonned my CBF600 in my garage, filthy and tired (both of us). It will get a bath this weekend.

Would I do it again? Well, the trip from the bottom of England to Scotland in a day was not something I would like to repeat soon. Smarter people just bypass the south of the UK using ferries. So yes of course I will, but possibly not using the same path.