This week in Lotus

Episode 15, recorded Thursday 26th August 2010, discussing 8.5.2, removal of IBM Exchange migration service from website, the Lotus product forums, and more.

This Week in Lotus 015 - All salesmen are coin-operated! (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter) and Darren Duke (blog | twitter)

Guests:

David Hay (blog | twitter | email) - Software Architect working for IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL) in the UK, designing, deploying and implementing software solutions using IBM Lotus software products, including Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr and WebSphere Portal.
Rob Wunderlich (twitter | email) - independent consultant - doing Notes/Domino, Connections, Portal.
Bob Balaban (blog | twitter) - not the actor of the same name, long time Notes/Domino appdev guy

Topics:

Notes/Domino 8.5.2

• Released yesterday
• Have you upgraded yet? If so what do you think?
• What are the big wins?
  • recent contacts improvements (Nathan’s blog post)
  • speed (Keith’s blog post)
  • Seems much snappier than the DP Code Drops
  • XPages changes may affect your applications - so test!
  • Would you upgrade your production environments?
• Download issues - is this just normal PA/PW pains, or was the issue a new one? (see discussion thread on Ed’s blog)

Removal of Domino-Exchange service from IBM site

• What can IBM do about these conflicts?
• Was this really a win for the bloggers?

Lotus Product Forums

• Are they as useful as they used to be?
• What can the community to make them more useful for new folks coming to Lotus?
• Should IBM have people paid to support them?
• Have product wikis made the forums irrelevant?

Quickr/Domino 8.5 on Greenhouse

• Now complete

Tips:

Darren: Ubuntu Netbook Edition - try it on your Netbook without erasing your existing OS. Much, much faster than Windows and very nice to boot. Lisa has been running it (and Lotus Notes) on her Lenovo S10e for over a year!
Rob: Parroting one of Stuart’s pet peeves - ‘move the themes to the server’ in Connections. Just got through with a heartburn-inducing project, and couldn’t customize the footer in Connections no matter what I tried. Followed Stuart’s oft-shared advice to move ‘em to the server - worked like a charm ...
David: Use Multitail to monitor logs etc. in parallel in the same window; avoids windows, windows, everywhere - very useful when trying to watch a product installation e.g. WebSphere Portal, which has lots of logs. On Ubuntu, it’s in the normal repositories.
Bob: Use Fiddler to track HTTP traffic between your app and the server
Stuart: Replicate the forums!  Point your Notes client to notes1/notesweb (or notes1.notes.net), open regnotes.nsf and complete the application process for LDD registration. It asks you for a SafeID, and then you will be able to replicate any of the forums you have rights to access onto your client.  Wonderful for remote/travelling consultants.

Episode 14, recorded Friday 20th August 2010, discussing 8.5.2, 'What is Lotus Notes', Collaboration University and more.

This Week in Lotus 014 - I gave the best 39.5348% of my life to Lotus Notes, and look where it got me! (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter) and Darren Duke (blog | twitter)

Guests:

Marie Scott (blog | twitter) is Director of Email Services at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.  She has been working with Lotus Notes since 1996.  Her primary interest is Domino administration in large, complex environments.  She has worked on large migration projects and recently completed a project to transition university students to cloud computing.  Marie has spoken at Lotusphere and IAMLUG on topics including Domino administration and Tivoli Directory Integrator.  She is currently co-authoring a Sametime user’s guide with Tom aka "duffbert" Duff.

Gabriella Davis (blog | twitter | email | company) is Technical Director of The Turtle Partnership, an IBM Lotus Advanced Busines Partner. Originally a ccMail Administrator, Gabriella has been working with Lotus Collaboration software since 1993 and today works extensively with the WAS-based Lotus products including Connections. Sametime and Quickr. In addition, she and her company act as primary Domino Administrator for customers worldwide covering more than 400 servers, 30,000 users, and 60 domains.  When she can, she lives in London in a house stocked with 5000+ books, 14 ip addresses and 1 neglected television.

Rob Novak (blog | twitter | email | company) is President of SNAPPS, an Advanced IBM Partner for 14 years providing products, services, hosting, and business process consulting in the collaboration, enterprise content management, mobilization and business intelligence markets. We’re known for doing Quickr work like customization, support, and templates, although that’s really about 1/4 of what we do - lately we’ve been doing Notes client sidebar apps, working with iPhones and iPads, XPages, the works. Everyone on staff is a 15-20 year Lotus nut. We just did announce our first paid product in seven years (since we tend to give everything else away), some modules for Quickr that really enhance the user experience. Rob has 3.99 business degrees, has spoken at most of the industry conferences and user groups on both technical and business topics, and last but not least we - meaning SNAPPS with the amazing co-producers the Turtles in London - produce Collaboration University.

Neil Burston - ( twitter | email | company)a long term Collaborationist who has worked with Lotus products since being involved in deploying Lotus Notes 3.0 in 1993.  He has subsequently been through the full gamut of Lotus products (remember HotMedia Connect anyone?) from 1.0 versions of QuickPlace and Sametime through Portal and Workplace, to the latest Cloud Offerings.   A long time advocate of supporting the Community and User groups, Neil was heavily involved in organizing the many excellent Connectr events, bringing people together to share their experiences of utilizing Social Software, in particular Lotus Connections, to help deliver value to their organizations.  Now working outside the “Yellowverse” at Helveta, an award winning Supply Chain solution provider, most famous for helping indigenous people barcode hardwood trees in tropical rainforests and then use handheld computers to map and track tree movements.  During his time at Helveta Neil has worked on a number of projects in countries as disparate as Honduras, Peru and the Democratic Republic of Congo where his ability to speak several languages has been a major asset.

This podcast is 80MB and runs for 83 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

8.5.2 and LotusLive wrap-up from last week

• What are the key new features?
• Will you or your customers be upgrading soon?

What is Lotus Notes?

• Asked by Mary-Beth Raven
• Is it possible to define?
• What did we think of the definitions folks came up with?
• Why did MBR ask the question?

Using Tivoli Directory Integrator to provide ‘directory independence’ between Domino and AD

• What’s involved?
• What is TDI?
• How much does it cost?
• Is this really a substitute for the Directory Independence planned for Domino?
• What other TDI resources are there? there are some useful starter videos

Notes & Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 4 now available

• Taking a long time to install.  Dojo?  Was this properly communicated? Does it matter?
• Solving possible performance issue with FP3

Events

• Been a busy week for event news
• MWLUG taking place
• NLLUG agenda announced
• Collaboration University agenda details public - Rob and Gab fill us in on the details - check out CollaborationUniversity.com for details and for EarlyBird offer and follow @CollabU on Twitter.

Submitting abstracts for Lotusphere - what’s the secret?

• Gab and Paul’s posts
• What are the tracks that our audience should consider submitting for?
• Advice from the team - what works/doesn’t etc.
• Also worth listening to Chris Miller's IDoNotes podcast with Paul and Gab on this topic.

Tips :

Darren: Something I’d stumbled upon, using “Windows + Tab” in Windows 7. I’d seen this in screen shots before, but had never seen it in real life. I’d assumed MS had pulled it out.

Marie: For admins -- don't forget that you can use the Copy/Paste feature to manage ACLs that need to be exactly the same.  On the files tab in the Admin client, right click on the source db, select Access Control, Copy to select the source ACL, then right click on the recipient db, select Access Control and select Paste. You can actually change the ACLs on multiple databases at one time this way.  Second tip is for those admins who may need to follow up on a network problem and need a tool to backcheck what the network nerds in your shop are telling you.  Check out Wireshark.  It's free and will sniff all sorts of protocols.  There is also online training available.

Gab: Windows 2008 R2 ISN’T SUPPORTED for Sametime 8.5.1 according to technote released this week  Make sure if you are installing ST8.5 you have plenty of free disk on hand.  The zipped installers are over 10GB and unzipped and then installed you need at least 20GB free and that’s not a 20GB partition that’s 20GB AFTER the OS has installed.. Windows 2008 can eat up over 15GB by itself.  

Rob: Quickr server upgrades are intense operations from a disk I/O standpoint - even fixpacks. Large Quickr servers may have hundreds of places with thousands of rooms, each its own nsf and each place with a multi-database full text index. Indexing is mad on a Quickr server in general. SO, you can save hours and even days during an upgrade by using the simple notes.ini setting UPDATE_NO_FULLTEXT=1. It can be sent with the console using set config, takes effect immediately, and prevents all full text indexing from occurring on the server during the other intense operations that happen during the upgrade. Just set it back to 0 when you’re done and you can literally save 50% of the upgrade time, even on fixpacks. Oh, and I suppose it works on mail servers too...but they don’t tend to have so many multi-db FTIs going crazy all the time.

Neil: Not so much tips, more some homespun advice!
1. Value the Lotus Community - it is a great community even if there is an element of “circling the wagons” at times.  There is a huge array of talent and very extensive portfolio that you can get help to explore from your fellow Community members, especially your friendly Business Partners.
2. Lotus is not just Notes Domino platforms - you need to explore the WebSphere based product - it can look daunting at first but there is a great deal of useful information to help get you started - witness the Lotus Information Development Center material
3. When these worlds come together there are some interesting things that happen - such as the LotusLive family.  BPM BluePrint on the LotusLive platform is of particular interest and worth exploring more..

Stuart: JustNudge Delicious import widget for Lotus Connections (free, free, free!) Joint project between Collaboration Matters and JustNudge, working on a series of Connections widgets, including this one, profile progress (as per LinkedIn), multiple reporting lines and more.

A special show, episode 13, recorded in late July 2010, with a focus on the latest news from the Lotus Information Development Center.

This Week in Lotus 013 - The special one where we learn about the Lotus Wikis and LearnLotus (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter) and Darren Duke (blog | twitter)

Guests:

Joyce Davis (twitter) - is Information Development Center Program Manager, IBM Lotus Software.

Amanda Bauman (twitter) - is Everyone Writes and IDC Wikis Program Manager, IBM Lotus Software.

This podcast is 20MB and runs for 21 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

Lotus Wikis
16 collaborative information resources for Lotus products

• Available via the Lotus Development Domain
• Also via lotuswikis.com
• Update from WikiMadness competition

LearnLotus

• New site for end users
• "Find media resources including demonstrations, videos, tutorials, reference cards, and web seminars to help you get started with Lotus and WebSphere Portal products."
• Available at www.lotus.com/ldd/learnlotus

The Lotus Technical Information and Education (LTIE) Community

• Run by Joyce and Amanda, hosted on the Lotus Greenhouse
• Available at www.lotus.com/ldd/lotustechinfo
• Also on Twitter via twitter.com/lotustechinfo
• Regular webcast meetings on 4th Tuesday of every month

Hope you enjoy this special episode of This Week in Lotus - we'll resume our normal weekly round-table discussion on Friday!

Episode 12, recorded Friday 13th August 2010, with a focus on this weeks announcements of LotusLive Notes and Notes/Domino 8.5.2.

This Week in Lotus 012 - LotusLive Notes and 8.5.2, we ask Ed the tough questions! (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter) and Darren Duke (blog | twitter)

Guests:

Ed Brill (blog | twitter) - is Director, Product Management, IBM Lotus software.  Ed’s focus is on growing and continuing IBM's success in messaging and collaboration software, through working with customers, business partners, and IBM sales, marketing, and product development organizations.  Ed's responsibilities in this role have included the market launches of Lotus Notes/Domino 8.5 and 8.5.1, the introduction of Alloy, the release of Lotus Symphony 1.3, and plans/development for LotusLive Notes, an IBM cloud offering for messaging and collaboration. A frequent speaker at IBM and industry events worldwide, Ed is well known for direct contributions to the many Lotus software-focused social media and virtual communities.

Tom Duff (blog | twitter) - is a software developer focusing on Lotus collaboration technologies in Portland Oregon. He started working with Lotus Notes in 1996 in version R3 and has written and maintained hundreds of applications in large enterprises through the years. He also holds Lotus principal development certifications starting at version 4 and going up to version 8, as well as Microsoft and Java certifications. Tom is a prolific writer, both in various industry publications and at his website, Duffbert’s Random Musings, at http://www.duffbert.com. He also is a frequent speaker at conferences and events focusing on Lotus technologies.

This podcast is 67MB and runs for 69 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

LotusLive Notes

• Announced on Tuesday, available from August 24th
• What’s the announcement all about?
• Why did IBM feel that putting Domino/Notes into the cloud was important?
• Notes is now part of the overall LotusLive suite. Is that just branding, or is there real integration there?
• Ed said in his post “Today's announcement marks the clear establishment of LotusLive as the leader in cloud collaboration.” That’s a pretty bold statement to make, suggesting you feel very sure that the announcement takes Lotus beyond the capabilities that Microsoft and Google offer - is that the case?
• There has been a lot of talk of ‘hybrid’ SaaS and on-premise platforms for collaboration (‘click to cloud’ etc.). Obviously a lot of target customers for LotusLive Notes will already have Domino infrastructure, how will go about shifting from on-premise to cloud, or even maintain a hybrid solution?
• What about apps?  
• Is customisation allowed?
• What will Lotus be doing to make both owning and managing hybrid infrastructures easier?
• Instant Messaging - dedicated or shared?
• What are the costs? How does a customer buy it?
• Opening out:
  • Apart from Ed, we are Lotus business partners that have customers with on-premise environments, or work in customer on-premise environments
  • What does this offering add to the options that customers already have? Can we see it being a popular offering?
  • Will it help in fending off Microsoft and Google?
  • What does this mean for partners?

Lotus 8.5.2 announced

• Announced on Tuesday, eGA scheduled for August 24th
• What’s new? What will be the most popular new features?
• What’s missing? Directory Independence etc.
• Traveler enhancements?
• Any licensing changes or additions?

That Gartner report!

Tom’s book on Sametime

• Written with Marie Scott, currently in review phase.

Google Wave killed

• http://blog.darrenduke.net/Darren/DDBZ.nsf/dx/google-wave-is-dead-long-live-lotus-notes.htm

Tips :

Darren: TNT Screen Capture for Windows - Produce very nice screenshots and call-outs. It is what I use for the blog.
Tom: I’ve started to play with a new text replacement utility (for Windows) called PhraseExpress.  Enables me to create text replacement macros as well as nice chunks of pre-defined text templates to use.  Liking it a lot...  and it’s free for personal use.
Ed: Flipboard for iPad, great new paradigm tool for ipad.
Stuart: Reeder - the best RSS feed reader for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad $4.99 download, syncs with Google Reader, and hence with NetNewsWire etc. Awesome.

Episode 11, recorded Friday 6th August 2010, with a focus on Sametime 8.5.1, IamLUG and Google Wave.

This Week in Lotus 011 - No offense to techie people, but you are not good at social interaction (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Darren Duke (blog | twitter) and Lisa Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests:
Lisa Duke - guest host.  Lisa Duke is the Business Development Manager for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc., where she leads the sales and marketing teams.  She is a frequent contributor to Tips in Two, a website that hosts free training videos for users of Lotus products.  She also is a great supporter of user groups in Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Greenville, South Carolina.

Carl Tyler - is the director and founder of IBM Advanced Business Partner Epilio, which delivers applications and turn-key solutions to users of collaboration software such as IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server. Carl has over 20 years of experience with collaboration software, including over 9 years at Lotus Development and 2-plus years at IBM Development UK. At Lotus, Carl was the worldwide knowledge management manager and Lotus Notes R5 international launch manager and various other positions.

Chris Miller - is the Director of Messaging and Collaboration at Connectria, one of Lotus’ largest hosting and management providers for over ten years now.  Chris covers administration across the Lotus portfolio, whatever....  Chris is better known as IdoNotes across every site, even ones not in existence yet.

This podcast is 67.5MB and runs for 74 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:
Topics :
Sametime 8.5.1 released - pros, what is better. Is it worth the upgrade? Carl

Post IamLUG “rumor” coverage and news
Mitch’s tweet stream http://www.curiousmitch.com/CuriousMitch/mitch2.nsf/d6plinks/MCON-87YP9J#Comments
Express clustering coming to Domino?
Vulcan not a product but it was demo’d AND it won’t be released until 2012, beta in 2011?
Is N/D Next not named Notes 9?
Imminent release of N/D 8.5.2 - IamLUG rumors point to 8/24
The Turtle’s rambling approval of the conference http://www.weightlessdog.com/shell.nsf/d6plinks/TTUE-882A9F

Google Wave killed http://blog.darrenduke.net/Darren/DDBZ.nsf/dx/google-wave-is-dead-long-live-lotus-notes.htm

ILUG is a go http://www.pmooney.net/2010/08/thank-you-ibm/

Directory Independence in Domino
useful or useless? Are plans for it dropped? http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nflsblog.nsf/dx/Directory-Independence-future?opendocument&comments#08052010112638AMWEBL57.htm
Marie Scott and Gab Davis have a great solution but, why can’t I have a simple checkbox
It is is all the “other” Lotus products (the WebSphere ones)

The technote mentioned as "Chinese" right at the end of the podcast by Carl : http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21442262

Tips :
Chris : The Consultant in your pocket screen cast series, new ones coming soon.....
Carl : If you smash your screen on your iPhone, a screen protector will make if useful again until the screen is replaced
Lisa : Attend your local Lotus User Group (LUG). Find them at LotusUserGroup.org and the Planet Lotus events page.
Darren : If you are looking for a job, get on Twitter and follow LotusWatch from Duffbert : since August 1 there have been over 10 jobs listed.

Episode 10, recorded yesterday Friday 30th July 2010. A round-table discussion of the latest news and topics of debate surrounding the Lotus brand, with a particular focus on IBM WebSphere Portal and Project Northstar  this week.

This Week in Lotus 010 - I'm sure Yahoo and AltaVista were in a Gartner Magic Quadrant at some point (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Darren Duke (blog | twitter) and Lisa Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests:
Brian Chaput - Offering Manager, IBM WebSphere Portal - Brian is an Offering Manager for IBM WebSphere Portal with over 20 years of technical product marketing and management experience.  Prior to joining IBM, Brian was employed at Bowstreet - which was acquired by IBM in 2005 (for its Portlet Factory software).  While at Bowstreet, Brian held positions in product marketing, sales operations and lastly as the IBM Alliance Director.   Brian has previous experience marketing workforce management and call center management solutions (WebSphere Portal Blog).

This podcast is 58MB and runs for 63 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

• WebSphere Portal V7, release date announced on podcast
• Project Northstar
• Replay of the LTIE Community monthly call about the future of Domino application development with Ed Brill and Art Fontaine

Competitive stuff coming in August

• Security vulnerabilities in Notes attachment viewer

Fixed in 8.0.2 FP6
Fixed in 8.5.1 FP4
Other versions available on Fix Central
This is what it must be like to  be a MS customer

Our Tips:

• Brian : Google "wps/portal" and get a feeling for who is using portal for public facing websites. Here are the Google search results. Interesting! ALSO Webinar Replay: Managing for Growth - Sell More, Save Money, and Improve the Customer Experience:  webcast replay with Slumberland Furniture -- a privately held furniture retailer with $350M in annual sales and 120 retail locations -- to learn how they built a solution that increased sales and improved interactions with their customers. Webcast replay available athttps://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/signup.do?source=swg-Manage_for_Growth_Webcast  
• Lisa : STS webinar - What’s New in 8.5.1 and Coming in 8.5.2 with Ernie Sutter, 8/5 at 4:00 EST email ernie.sutter@simplified-tech.com to register
• Darren : If you are thinking of producing a podcast, seriously consider NOT doing it on a PC.

Episode 9 recorded Friday 23rd July 2010. A roundtable discussion of the latest news and topics of debate surrounding the Lotus brand.

This Week in Lotus 009 - Protector, MWLUG and 8.5.2 when is it getting to you (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts:  Darren Duke and Lisa Duke.

Guests:
Sean Brown - Product Manager IBM Lotus Protector security products (brown.sean@us.ibm.com |LinkedIn | Protector Mail Security | Protector Mail Encryption)
Richard Moy - Taishan Works and MWLUG organizer (Twitter | Blog | Company | LinkedIn)

This podcast is 57MB and runs for 63 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

Lotus Protector

• Lotus Protector for Mail Security
• Lotus Protector for Mail Encryption

MWLUG

• August 19th and 20th 2010 in Cleveland, Ohio
• Web site and registration
• Free to attend (although all attendees are asked to donate $35)
• A few spaces left

IamLUG Reminder

• August 2nd and 3rd
• Web site
• A few spaces maybe left
• Free to attend

XPages goodness

• XPages Mobile Controls - IBM are working on BlackBerry issues with their browser on OpenNTF
• The Taking Notes podcast has in-depth coverage of XMC in their new episode
• Declan extending the Blogosphere template to XPages

8.5.2 “impending” release

• Paul Mooney’s 8.5.2 supported page on his blog
• Paul Hannan new in 8.5.2 XPages on the XPages blog
• Listen to the podcast to get a possible date "range" on the 8.5.2 release

Tips

• Sean : When flying out of ATL, the South Security checkpoint has fewer scanners, but is harder to find and so the lines are much shorter
• Richard : be careful when merging on route 35
• Lisa : Great resource - leveraging the Tips in Two videos on the IBM Domino Wiki site
• Darren : free reference cards for Lotus Notes clients and iNotes on the IBM Domino Wiki site

Our eighth episode, recorded yesterday (Friday 16 July 2010). A round-table discussion of the latest news and topics of debate surrounding the Lotus brand, with a particular focus on Lotus Connections and social software this week.

This Week in Lotus 008 - Market-leading Connections (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*)

Hosts: Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke.

Guests:
Mac Guidera (Twitter | Blog)
Chris Lamb (LinkedIn)
Sharon Bellamy (Twitter | Blog) Update: Lovely photo of Sharon preparing to record the podcast!
Adam Brown (Twitter | Blog | Company)

This podcast is 63MB and runs for 68 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy!

* Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s).

Show Notes:

IBM Named Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Platforms Software

• IDC report link
• Congratulations to all those that work on Connections and Quickr
• Why should organisations be interested in who is the market leader?
• What is Connections' value proposition (and is this changing with time)?
• Who do Chris/Mac see as the main competitors?
• Sharepoint 2010 is with us... Making any inroads?

How will IBM address external collaboration with the Lotus portfolio?

• IBM doesn't rank on Gartner's "Externally facing Social Software" quadrant (led by Jive, Lithium, MS and Telligent).
• What is IBM doing in this area?
• Will Connections allow internal and external social collaboration in the future?
• Extranet license - has this been successful? Are many organisations using it?

IBM Social Software and the business partner

• The partner perspective
• 3 of us on the call are BPs and work with Connections and Quickr
• Why have we chosen to do this? What benefits do these technologies have or us, over say, Sharepoint?
• Connections is seen as being very complex, is this really the case?
• What are the opportunities for partners when working with Connections and Quickr?
• Adam's posts on Portal integration

The customer perspective

• What do organisations gain from using Social computing such as Quickr and Connections?
• Get comments that Connections (and to some extent Quickr) can create 'messy' collaboration - how can organisations (and Connections admins) control this?
• Comments from Adam on type of customer's/organisations showing interest and taking up Connections in Australia.

Connections 'Next '

• What is coming in the next release?

Brief roundup of other stories

• Anyone wearing Old Spice today?
• Best Lotusphere ratings
• Bruce leaving Sharp
• OpenNTF IdeaJam
• IBM makes Firefox default browser (what does this mean for Notes/IE)
• Taking Notes is back

Our Tips:

• Sharon:The healthy lifestyle app I use - ShapeUp iPhone or web, coming soon to Nokia and Andriod .. it's brilliant :)
• Adam: We have just released today WildFire 1.4 on OpenNTF. Now supports Mac & Linux as well as a few new features.
• Chris: Don't try to makeup new metrics to measure ROI on social software, use your existing business measures.
• Darren: BES 5.0 SP 2 is available, as is QuickrD 8.2 FP 13
• Stuart: Public skype chats for Connections and Quickr - contact me to be added!

Our seventh episode, recorded today (Friday 9 July 2010). A roundtable discussion of the latest news and topics of debate surrounding the Lotus brand. This Week in Lotus 007 - Rick Astley makes my day! (*DOWNLOAD OR STREAM THIS ONE*) Hosts: Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke. Guests: Kathy Brown (Twitter | Blog) Chris Miller (Twitter | Blog | Company) Ben Poole (Twitter | Blog | Company) This podcast is 62MB and runs for 67 minutes at 128kps. Enjoy! * Please note that all views expressed are the participants' own and do not necessarily represent those of their employer(s). Show Notes: IBM Named Worldwide Marketshare Leader in Social Platforms Software Congratulations to Jeff Schick and all the team at Lotus - clearly Connections and Quickr are doing well Does it matter? To IBM/BPs/Customer? Should the PL community be more interested? IDC report link The PlanetLotus effect Rickrolls, ASWs, paid-for blogging and much more Does it show the best side of the Lotus community Do you tell your customers/users about PlanetLotus? OpenNTF in the news Great case study featuring DominoWiki IBM execs praise OpenNTF What do we think of the 'new' OpenNTF? Is IBM's input making a difference? Lotus Protector - Chris' post re: hardware requirements Why do we think Lotus has chosen to specify xSeries only? Have you used Protector? What did you think? Is it a player in the market? On-premise vs. cloud based anti-spam/anti-virus - which do you use/recommend? Follow up to AppStore discussions Bruce says "stop talking and start selling/innovating" Do we agree? New App Catalog at catalog.lotus.com.  Any better? IAMLug Our Tips: Ben: big fan of the application Evernote (Mac, Win, web, iPhone, Android, BB, Palm OS, WinMo) for organising notes, clippings, to-do lists, the whole nine yards. Kathy:  follow @NotesDevTips on Twitter Chris: TackItOn seminars coming along.. Darren: Licensing webinar on 7/15 @ 1PM EST Stuart: iWidgets in Lotus Connections, some examples...

On This Week in Lotus episode 5 last week, we were thrilled to host the widely respected author, analyst and consultant Michael Sampson on the show.  

During the conversations about Lotus app stores, encouraging user (and developer) adoption and more, Michael spoke about his new book, User Adoption Strategies (Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology).

Given how relevant this topic is to this community, we have worked with Michael to put together a promotional deal that will be useful to those that listen to the show.

So, for a limited time only, get both:

User Adoption Strategies

What's the number one complaint about the introduction of new collaboration tools into a group or organization?

Answer: no one uses them.

It's time to do something about this complaint. It's been happening for too long, with too many generations of collaboration tools. What can we do? Become a lot better at user adoption.

Usual price US$39

and:

 Lotus Roadmap: Enhancing Business Collaboration with Lotus Software

This report analyzes the go-forward strategic role of Lotus Notes and other Lotus software within client organizations, and argues for a much broader definition of the term "roadmap".

Lotus Notes has been around for a long time. Since its release in 1989 it has always been viewed as a “different” piece of technology, loved by some people and reviled by others. It takes a different approach to information management and collaboration tasks, it looks different from the standard Microsoft offering which many people view as being “authoritatively correct”, and it offers capability for being used so broadly across an organization that it can be put to use on many tasks, including tasks that it is not well-suited for.

So what do we do with Lotus Notes, and by implication, the other products from Lotus Software? Is there still life left in Lotus? Is it time to move to “greener pastures”? Are the new offerings from other vendors better suited to the information management and collaboration tasks that organizations are using Lotus Notes for? These are the questions addressed in this report.

Usual price US$49

for a special all-in-price.

You can purchase a copy of Lotus Roadmap (individual license) and a copy of User Adoption Strategies (a book) for the special combined price of US$59 ... a saving of US$30 off the regular price.

Simply head over to Michael's site and place your order there.  Once again, thanks for listening to the show, and to Michael for this generous offer.