My mum always told me to keep my mouth
shut at any and most opportunities.  Usually, I listen, but right
now I want to make a few points that I think need to be made.  These
are my opinions, so I am not representing anyone or anything blah blah
blah

(Paul dons flameproof clothing and asbestos
underpants)

• People can write whatever they want
  on their Blogs.  They can.  Its not press. Its independent.  its
  a blog, therefore opinionated by default.

• I owe a lot to some people.  Ed,
  Alan, Rocky, Kristin, Eileen, Warren, Bill, Ben, Matt, Duffbert, McDonagh,
   and many more.  Blogging has lead to many good friends for me.

• People overreact to blog posts.  If
  you disagree, FINE – disagree and write your opinion.  If it gets
  to insults, I turn off.  Wasting time fighting each other when we
  all want to improve things is … em… a waste of time.

• Volker and Nathan are quite alike.  Both
  very very smart guys, with great ways of looking at things.  How they
  deal with their opinions is totally different though.  I respect both
  of them.  I dont always agree with them.  

• Volker has less hair.  Nathan’s,
  however was a strange colour for a while (joke)

• IBM agreed to sponsor ILUG2008.  This
  was not public because they were jumping through hoops on my behalf trying
  to get past the formalities that DNUG and Lotusphere (i.e. events that
  have staff that get paid) have to go through.  I owe Ed/Kristin a
  lot of thanks for this.  They are putting a substantial amount of
  money my way.  Considering our event is not formal, and they supply
  speakers aswell, this is great for us.

• The bigger an event gets, the more political
  it gets.  This is not a good thing.  This is the fourth ILUG.
   The last one was really busy and great fun.  So far, this one
  has just been really busy.  Im hoping fun is on the way.

• Volker helped ILUG get most of the sponsors
  they have, just by making people aware of the event in his own way.  I
  owe Volker a lot of thanks for this.

• I don’t like  being told what to
  do.  Ever.  It usually makes me do the complete opposite even
  if I am cutting off my nose to spite my face.

• There are a lot of fevered Ego’s in
  this community.  I hate to point this out, but even though we are
  valued, we are not as important as some of us think we are.

• Promoting (or cheerleading) a product
  is a good thing

• Criticising a product to force it to
  improve is a good thing

• Sometimes constantly criticising a product
  is not good

• Volker wrote (IMO) the most positive
  OGS report after Lotusphere.  Far
  more positive than any I know

• I don’t agree with titles written just
  to attract attention.  I tend to read as many blog posts as I can
  anyway.  That being said, there are a lot of guilty people on PlanetLotus
  for this (myself included)

• We are all ASW’s.  
• There are more sub plots / agendas going
  around the Lotus community than in LOST

• Being customer focused is great.  
  Not caring what the community thinks is great when you want to say something.
    This is used by both so called "positive" and "negative"
  sites.  This is a good thing

• The ND8 product stream, and the way
  it is being sold and marketed is the best I have ever seen it.  By
  far.  

One of the undisputed "boy scouts"
of the community has now got his finger out and started to blog.
 Jamie, a great guy is up and running so add him to your RSS feed.

A few changes today.  I upgraded
to the first beta of Blogsphere.
 This gives me some extended features and fixes a few minor issues.
 From alpha to beta, this has been a fairly painless ride.  Also,
if you hover over a link, you will see that I am using SNAP.
 Also, I wanted to put Google
Adsense on the site.  I do
not see it on many blog sites, and since I do not have a direct product
to sell, was wondering if this would be frowned upon?  

Dave
Hay has setup a blog.  If
you do anything with Websphere, Portal Server or Portlet factory, add his
site to your RSS list.  An excellent techie and a very helpful guy.

With a mischievous
side…