A
few weeks back I made a bold (some say stupid!) prediction that IBM
might be considering announcing a Home Edition of Lotus Notes at a
certain conference held in January. No inside information, just a
hunch. It seems like IBM now have a huge 5 day extravaganza planned
for mid-January so I can only assume they have lots of great stuff to
share with the yellow faithful. So what else could IBM have planned
for us?
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Almost certainly
we are going to see some live demos of Notes 8.5.2. News is slow in
leaking out of big blue on this release. Perhaps some additional
Xpage controls, DXL round-tripping, and some refinements of the Notes
client UX by Mary Beth Raven's amazing team. But the big news will
most likely be the first insights for the next major release. So
lets take a stab in the dark here and call it Notes 9.0!
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To most of the
people now leaving university and entering the work-force e-mail is
considered to be old-hat. E-mail programs have become a commodity
item much like Web browsers. In a Web 2.0 world people are now
regularly tapping into information from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Linked-In, Texting, and RSS feeds. Thanks to smart phones, Wifi etc
people increasingly live their lives on-line 24/7. In response to
this I am expecting to see Notes 9.0 redefine the Notes client to be
more than Office E-Mail. The in-box metaphor will still be there.
But instead of just processing messages, Notes 9 will most likely
move to the concept of a universal in-box. A PIM capable of
aggregating and managing information from many of the Web 2.0 sources
and using federation to consolidate business and personal
information. Also look for the first signs of a move to integrate
the concepts of activities and to-dos into a more sophisticated task
management system built into the PIM.
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I may be
completely wrong, but I am expecting that the Notes 9.0 “Mail”
template will start to look completely different to your
grand-father's e-mail
This
weekend Summit Entertainment's “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”
broke the all-time box-office record for an opening d ay in the US
and also many countries around the world. In the entertainment
industry communication and contacts are key. And while many of the
larger studios try to rely on Microsoft Exchange, Summit
Entertainment stands out as one of the few entertainment companies
that have placed its trust in Lotus Notes. And with good reason too.
While only a small company with less than 200 employees, it has to
find a way to manage 10 million e-mail messages. That's an average
of 50,000 messages per person that grows at an average rate of 2.25GB
per day. In the marketing department multimedia content has seen
some individual mail files grow to 72 GB. Busy executives rarely
find time to file their mail so in-boxes can contain as many as
75,000 messages. Summit's Directory system is upside down to most
companies. They have a small internal directory with around 200
entries linked to a separate Notes application (the Summit Rolodex)
with around 17,000 external contacts.
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All the above is
handled using a single (Linux) mail server running Domino 8.5.1.
Yes, the server is clustered with a 2nd mail server to
ensure the mail system remain operational at all times and a 3rd DR
server is housed in an off-site location just in case. A BES server
is used to keep executives informed away from the office via their
Blackberries and a SameTime server provides IM.
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IT Director
Charles Nicholls has been an ardent fan of Lotus Notes and has no
doubts about his decision to resist the constant push to migrate to
either Exchange or Gmail. He is proud that the company has never
lost any time due to e-mail viruses. And there is no doubt that
Exchange and Gmail would struggle to handle mail files of this size.
After moving to Domino 8.5 and installing DAOS we managed to reduce
the size of our largest mail file from 72GB down to 9GB! And the
cost to keep all this running? Well Charles has a very small team
that keeps the mail system running. I am the sole Domino
Administrator for which I only need to maintain an average of 8 hours
per week to keep the entire Domino infrastructure running in a
clean/stable state.
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I would like to
congratulate Summit Entertainment on their box office success this
weekend. You can be rest assured your mail systems is quietly
delivering all those updates to box office numbers from around the
world.
While doing some research on my Lotus Legends project I was reading a blog post by Gary Devendorf commenting about the appearance of the Lotus Knows bus at the SharePoint conference in Las Vegas. (What a great idea IBM!) One suggestion by Gary for a Microsoft response at LS2010 was to have a Microsoft bus to drive people between the airport and the venue. Personally I think that's a great idea. And if I do get to attend my first Lotsuphere I will certainly look to use the bus. It would be quite symbolic of the changes that are now occuring in the collaboration market. ie. Microsoft being reduced to a spoiler role of copying what IBM/Lotus does. Microsoft are clearly no longer the ones showing the way. Microsoft may as well well put "Microsoft Also Knows" down the side of the bus as I haven't seen an awful lot of leading edge stuff in Outlook/Exchange for a while so the best tactic has to be to confuse the market about the two products. I'm sure Ed Brill would be very accommodating and find a spot for the bus out the back at Lotusphere. Probably parked between the Domino.Doc bus and the NSF2DB2 bus. But all is not lost Gary. When packing the bus for the trip down to Orlando I would suggest you pack a few copies of your resume. I have an inkling there may soon be an opening at IBM for an executive role to help manage all the migrations from Exchange/Sharepoint/.Net to Notes/Domino/Quickr/Connections. And bring plenty of cans of point so we can all have fun adding a few extra touches to the bus for the ride home. LOTS and LOTS of YELLOW!
Yes, I will not be a presenter at Lotusphere in 2010 so you can all join me in congratulating those most deserving people who were selected from 1,000+ talented applicants who made the effort to submit abstracts. From what I have been reading today there seems to be high levels of emotion tied to being selected (or not). This is AWESOME as it shows:-
There is a huge number of people all looking to share what they are doing with Lotus products;
Lotusphere is still a huge magnet for yellowbleeders around the globe;
No-one can take it for granted any more that they will be an automatic selection - so the quality must be rising with the increased competition for spots;
We are all still very passionate about Lotus Notes (OK so not always in a positive way!)
In my case I am not surprised that I didn't get selected. Actually.... I didn't submit an abstract. I had a few people asking if I planned to, but I didn't feel at all qualified. I have not been an active speaker at LUGs. In fact I have never even been to a Lotusphere. And if that's not a prerequisite it should be! But I am already starting to think it might not be a bad idea to put myself in a position to at least submit an abstract in 2011, perhaps a joint sessions with a more experienced Lotusphere campaigner. I see people such as Andrew Pollack have offered to coach wannabe presenters like me so its a sure bet I'll be taking Andrew up on his offer. The next step has to be attending Lotusphere in 2010 just to see what it is all about. I have always wanted to go for the longest time. As an independent contractor it represents a prohibitive cost, even after I moved to the US (yes I picked the wrong coast!). Fortunately a few months ago I convinced my family that mid January was a great time to take a family vacation and we hadn't been to Florida yet. And wouldn't you know it, there were rooms at a nice Disney resort hotel called The Swan. So here I am plane and hotel booked and all I need to do is figure out the ticket part. Tomorrow is the deadline for the LotusUserGroup.org discount so I need to make some decisions fast if I want to hear my predictions on Notes Home Edition and others come true!! No that I have committed myself to going I think I am even more excited than some of those who received acceptance letters yesterday. Over the past week I have been doing research on a few of these Lotus Legends for my XPage Project and I think it will be just so awesome to see (and even meet) some of these true legends in person. So if you are like me and didn't get a presenter spot. Do the next best thing and find a way to get to Orlando so that you can learn some more, meet some great Lotus Legends and quite likely pick up a few tips on what it will take to find a way up on stage at the next sphere. You just may be the next Lotus Legend.
Please welcome four new members to Lotus Legends as nominated by their peers... Well Rocky kind of nominated himself! (I forgot it was his book I relied upon to learn LotusScript way back when).
Carl Tyler
Chris Toohey
Gary Devendorf
Rocky Oliver
You can find out about the great many contributions these and the other 18 members have made to our community at www.dominoframework.com (Lotus Legends). Note: The list will be expanding as I find time to do my research. Nominations and bios are most welcome and please anyone please free to correct any errors or omissions.
This great community of ours
relies heavily on super-human efforts from a relatively small number of people
such as the ones listed in my previous blog.It also thrives on a great number of smaller contributions from each and
every one of us.We all have the capacity
to be a Lotus Legend in one way or another….
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Blogging
Planet Lotus now lists 341
blog sites that it monitors.If you feel
that you have something unique to contribute get on board and share this with
the community.Both Planet Lotus and
Bleedyellow.com offer free blog hosting services.My only suggestion is to make sure you have
some original material.Blogging soon
begins to read like SPAM when multiple bloggers start to blog about something
already covered by a previous blogger (a good blogger should never blog around with another blogger's blog)
If you are not inclined to
become a blogger you can still make an important contribution by reading these
blogs on a regular basis and contributing comments.Blogging consumes valuable time and most
bloggers appreciate knowing that there efforts are providing value.Opposing views often help stimulate worthwhile
debate (but keep it civil!)
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Product Ideas
We all have views and ideas
about what changes/additions could be made to improve the Lotus Products.Unless you are a Design Partner, one of the
most constructive ways to express yourself is through ideajam.IBM regularly acknowledges they constantly review
these ideas as they plan for the next greatest releases, so get in there and have
your say.Even if you are not the
creative type you can make a valuable contribution by scanning other people’s
ideas, voting on them, and especially by adding comments.Spending 5-10 minutes every week to visit
this site can make a huge difference.IBM are more likely to respond to great ideas with 100+ votes than those
with 5-10 votes.
Code Contributions
OpenNTF is perhaps the best
known and most used resource for exchanging open-source code within the
yellowverse.If you have written some
great code that you think would be of value to the community (and you own the
code!) consider adding this code to OpenNTF either as a project or in the code
bin.Contributions to OpenNTF can be
made in other ways as well.The site
itself has discussion forums for ideas and each project has a section to contribute
feedback or ideas.And if you have a few
hours of time please considering joining one of the project teams to assist in
building these projects.Even if you are
a novice developer these projects represent a great way to develop your skills
by working with others and contributing to a community resource. This especially includes you aspiring graphic designers that can help assist with adding cool UIs.
LUGs and Spheres
I live in Los Angeles where it is said that everyone is
either an actor, a writer, or a wannabe.And so it seems also to be the case with our own Lotus community.This year there were over 1,000
yellowbleeders who submitted presentations for Lotusphere.This means if you attend you are more than
likely going to be sitting next to someone who is either presenting or wishes
they were presenting.
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It seems like every nook and
cranny of the yellowsphere now has a LUG event for you to attend.These LUGs offer many of the same benefits as
Lotusphere itself (but more free beer). And
if you are an inspiring Lotusphere presenter, LUGs offer a perfect venue for
you to gain exposure and experience as a presenter.
Please visit www.lotususergroup.org for information about a Lotus Community in your corner of the yellowverse and get involved. You can also visit my web site at www.dominoframework.com and look under Yellowverse for links to these and other Notes community Web sites.
This week my XPage teacher
assigned all us first gaders a new assignment – to build an XPage that would
demonstrate new ways to represent data inside Notes applications that has traditionally
not been possible in the past.
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For my project I decided to
create an XPage that displays information about some of the many people in the
yellowverse that have made outstanding contributions to the Notes community.I have called this project Lotus Legends.You can view my progress on-line by visiting my
xDomino Framework site at www.dominoframework.com
and selecting Lotus Legends.
Before I hand in my
assignment I am looking for some assistance in identifying a few more of the
great many deserving members I know I must have missed.
Lotus Notes is 20 years old this year... So what if computer technology had not made any of the advances it has over these past 20 years....
The first copies of Lotus Notes were distributed on 5.25" floppy disks holding 360K each. The Notes 8.5.1 (multi-client) download was 618 MB. So by my calculation I would have been receiving in the mail 1,716 floppy disks with the software plus a few more with all the extra goodies that always came. Imagine getting a read/write error during the install on disk #1,500 and having to start again.
The total amount of memory installed in a Windows PC at the time was 1GB, of which DOS/Windows reserved 360K leaving 640K for programs to run. So I guess running Notes 8.5.1 in standard mode might have been a bit iffy.
The Domino 8.5.1 download was 610 MB. I think back then you would have been lucky to find a server with more than about 1GB of total disk space. So after installing your OS and Domino there would be no room for your databases!
Around 15 years ago when I first started using Notes I was backing up Domino Servers onto tape drives in which it would take 30 minutes to back up 1GB of data. I presently support some users with 40GB mail files so it would take me around 24 hours just to back up a single mail file. Of course I would now have DAOS to reduce that time a little!
Around 13 years ago I first started using a nifty programming language called LotusScript. Hmmm seems like that is one thing that has stayed pretty much the same all this time.
Way back then it was only possible to assign 8 different background colors to Notes forms and there was always someone who would design a database that used all 8! So they doubled it to 16 to make it more challenging. I guess without all those advances in graphics over the years we would be stuck with database icons that could only be designed with the original 16 color pallete!
Way back then most of us were not connected to the Internet so we had to wait for Ed's blogs to arrive by mail and I think Julian/Bruce had their own radio show. And someone told me at the first ever LotusSphere a young Nathan t Freeman used to turn up to the Ask The Developer sessions armed with a megaphone to make sure he was heard. No live blogging from yellow bean bags either. There were yellow cages with carrier pigeons that carried the new around the world.
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