Lotus Merchandise

OK, right ! who has the best story here, so far I have gathered the following from various events and scrounging !

Lotus yo-yo
Lotus Pens
Lotus Mugs/cups
Lotus Tshirt
Lotus Polo Shirt
Lotus Digital Clock

errrrr, not much else, who can better that then, who has the best piece of Lotus branded "stuff"????

Understanding client frustration

Seeing as there was a little MS bashing going on recently I thought I'd add my thoughts on reasons for Lotus bad PR, apart from the obvious and usual reasons we see time and time again, this is my take on it.........

Training....training.....training.....

The average John Doe at the desktop knows nothing about streaming replication or UNID's, and I suspect doesn't want to either ! Ever since I started with Notes some 10 years ago there has always been the constant MS v Lotus battle, at every level.

From a "users" perspective things have improved massively, but we still need to hit this at the right angles, I see this as being three fold; Business, Technical, User. Although I think IBM does the right things in many areas, we as a community need to understand the end user more, take it right back to basics, now we have something that we can show them and say "hey, looks pretty good right?". Impress on them what functions equal what benefits and also the cool stuff too.

End user training has always been an issue, normally getting buy in from them themselves and also good old cash....But, if the resources are in-house then why not use them, internal Notes people should be taking the bull by the horns and pushing the product themselves, providing the training internally and at no cost to the business apart from a few hours lost time for end users in training sessions.

This all adds to the perception in the user community, positive things will happen but it needs to come from the right place, we can't keep pushing from only one side and wonder why things aren't still going our way.

Don't get me wrong, I really think things are great right now, but we could all make a little more effort to impress on the users themselves, and in-turn start the "good" mouthing within the end user community, I've heard far too many users say they hate Notes, drives me nuts but I can see where they are coming from (on the rare occasion), they simply don't know what they have and what they can do with it.

Now really is the time to focus on this, with ND8 (and 8.5 coming soon), users will be impressed, I just hope not all of them have scars that they have pretty much created themselves that will never heal. Stupid really, but I don't want to be the Beta Max, or do I?

Open Source recognition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7358483.stm

Thought for the day

"The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge, and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only thru self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process."

Anyone for tea?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7340101.stm

How I got started with Lotus Notes

Everyone else is doing this so why not! ;-)

My adventures with Lotus started in May 1998, The company was only made up of about 30 people, and I started work there as a Technical Support Administrator running the helpdesk and customer support. Within a few months I was heavily involved with the internal IT Support inculding a couple of Domino servers :-> running 4.6

Anyways, after that I was hooked, and every job I have had since then has involved Notes/Domino. I'm now a consultant for an IBM Business Partner, my 10 year anniversary with Notes is coming up soon ;) how to celebrate, hmmm, suggestions please !!!!

Lotus Connections - Profiles

Lotusphere Comes to You - Wembley

Originally Posted by Guy Wakely Wed, April 02, 2008 14:28:20

The event went quite well I thought, although standing up for most of the day has taken it's toll on my legs and feet, fortunately there was enough coffee to keep me going througout the day !

This was the first LCTY event I had attended, and using Wembley as the venue, wow, i will ensure I return !

(I did manage to sneak a couple of pictures on my BlackBerry from a corporate box )

Bruce Morse seems to have an overwhelming knowledge of the Lotus portfolio and I was impressed by this, not all "VP types" have this kind of dedication to the technology. I guess that's what ultimately sets IBM out from the rest of the crowd, that and the emerging products that are clearly leading the way in the collaboration field.

The opening from Bruce was pretty good, clear and concise, covering the entire Lotus portfolio. I made some frantic notes to ensure that anything I felt i didn't know enough about I would then make sure I did over the next few days...Sametime seems to be taking a interesting route, but I guess we all knew that this would be the case, IM seems to be the hot topic these days, that thrown in with Connections and Quickr, following a mobile and unified/community route. Total Forms is an interesting one, I really must try and read more on this, with dashboards and portals being the way forward this is a really hot topic for the next few months I think !

We were all aware of the new capabilities of ND8 (or we should be), but there was also mention of ND8.5, some interesting points there, such as;

• ID Vault

• Freedom of Directory use

• Email mangement changes, duplicate attachments not stored etc

• Designer Client (for Web 2.0 apps)

• SAP Integration - "Atlantic"

• Lotus Protector was also mentioned for email security, I need to look into that a little more before commenting online...

After chatting with customers and other business partners during the lunch break, the afternoon sessions soon began, business or technical, business or technical…hmmmmm, I had to make a decision at some point so decided to fleet between the two, picking up the bits of information I saw relevant.

Sessions from the likes of Darren Adams and a mixture of business partners gave a clear outline of not only Notes and Domino but also other collaboration tools and offerings from the myriad business partners that exist in the Lotus world.

There is clearly a certain hype and buzz around the Lotus world at the moment, I think it shows that the hard work and dedication we have all put in over the years has been rewarded with the latest offerings. In summary, as a collaboration industry, Lotus sits on the best side of the fence, in fact it owns the fence and can make anything out of the fence, but I guess we all knew that aready ;-)

Notes and Domino 8

Good reasoning for an upgrade me thinks !!!