24: Reaching the Cognos-centi

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:21 — 63.5MB)

[ also titled “So you wanna be a Lotus rock star….just not THE LotusRockstar” 😉 ]

Episode 24, recorded Friday 29th October 2010, discussing the launch of Cognos 10.1 (with Connections integration), VideoFest, LTAP2010, XPages.Info and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Per Henrik Lausten (blog | twitter | company) is a freelance consultant with his own one-man company in Denmark. He is working with Lotus Notes and Domino development and administration based on experience with Lotus Notes/Domino since 1997 (release 3.3). He recently started his own company after having been with IBM for 16 years. He is married and father of two.

Joyce Davis (personal twitter | company twitter | company blog) leads the Lotus Technical Information and Education community. Her goal is to bring together experts from inside and outside of IBM to share knowledge and improve the information that helps people use Lotus products.

Topics

Cognos 10 released – now with Connections integration (trying to get IBMers on to discuss this…) 

VideoFest 

  • What is it?
  • When does it run from/to?
  • What kinds of videos are you after?
  • Do videos have to be new, or can existing videos be uploaded? (Per, you can ask this one!)
  • Where do they get uploaded to?
  • What tools can folks use?
  • Is there a logo/hashtag/tag that we should use?
  • What’s in it for those that take part?
  • For more info, listen to Taking Notes podcast

Pretty icons available for Lotus Notes 8.5.x 

LTAP2010 wrapup 

  • What did we think?
  • Worth repeating?

Yahoo to Discontinue Support for the Sametime Gateway 

  • Mitch Cohen blog post
  • A blow for Sametime Gateway?
  • Does anyone actually use Yahoo Messenger or AIM any more?
  • Are Skype and Facetime more important for integration purposes now?
  • Is internet IM still important? (versus Skype, FB, Twitter)

ILUG 2010 

The Danish Lotus User Group (DanNotes) conference is next week

LTIE community 

  • What is it?
  • When does it meet? What gets discussed?
  • How do people join?

This Week in Lotus “expansion”

Sametime book winners

Tips

DarrenMP3 Skype Recorder for Windows allows you to record, well, skype calls. This is what I use on the odd occasion I produce TWiL – http://voipcallrecording.com/
PerStart using social media to broaden your network and interact with peers (social media meaning blogs, podcasts and maybe even Twitter)
JoyceLotus Learning widget – can access them from www.lotus.com/ldd/learnlotus; bonus tip….mobile wikis beta…www.lotus.com/ldd/mowiki.nsf
StuartSony have just released a slimline external USB Blu-Ray recorder – the Sony BDX-S500U.  Very very fast (pushing boundaries of USB2.0 actually), lightweight, powered off USB, reads and writes to single- and dual-layer CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray disks, even does 3D Blu-Rays (assuming you have right screen technology).  Pretty good value at 151GBP on Amazon UK, $218 on Amazon US).  Great for watching Blu-Ray movies on the road, or for backing up your systems – 50GB disks a

23: Free, as in beer, Lotus conferences and Blackberry servers

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:03 — 65.1MB)

Episode 23, recorded Friday 22nd October 2010, discussing the forthcoming LTAP 2010 virtual conference, Notes/Domino fixpacks, SmartUpgrade on Windows 7, BES Express and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Andrew Pollack (blog | twitter | company) is the President of Northern Collaborative Technologies.  He’s been working with the Lotus Notes product line since version 2, and is both an administrator and a developer. Andrew’s focus has been on secure reseller portals with content generated and managed in Lotus Notes and Domino.  This has led to an emphasis on performance, scaleability, security, and  legal discovery.  Andrew is also a structural firefighter, the Lieutenant of Engine 1 in Cumberland, Maine and has a service provider offering to the public safety sector called Second Signal.

Alan Forbes (blog | company) is the Director of Product Development for RPR Wyatt, Inc., makers of the “Essential”line of software for Lotus Domino administrators, including Essential Agent Master, Essential Tools, Essential Audit, and of course VitalSigns for monitoring Domino, BlackBerry, and Sametime servers.  For the LTAP Conference, Alan is serving as the Director of Content, responsible for the speakers and tracks.

Scott Sullivan (NotesCode |  LTAP ) is the owner of Notes Code and involved with Lotus Notes solution selling since 1993.  While looking for new ways to promote Notes/Domino, I setup a virtual conference so we can reach more people especially now that travel budgets are nearly extinct. 

Francie Tanner (blog | work twitter | company) is …Technical Director, North America for Panagenda, an Austrian based software company specializing in IT Management solutions. When not representing Panagenda at various conferences in the US and Europe, she lives on an island with a herd of kids and goats.

Topics

LTAP 2010

  • What is it? When? Who is it aimed at?
  • How do users access it? Do they need to register?
  • Does it cost?
  • How will presentations be scheduled? Will replays be available?
  • Who are the speakers?
  • Is this the future of Lotus conferences?

Notes/Domino 8.5.1 FP5 now available

  • Released October 19
  • Here’s the Fix List, available for client and server
  • “Starting in Notes/Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 5, Firefox 3.6 and Safari 5 will be supported with iNotes. Support has also been added for Windows 2008 R2 in Notes/Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 5.”
  • Approximately 100 fixes

8.5.2 FP1 is scheduled for December

  • Is this too long to wait?

Smart Upgrade Run As and Windows 7 issues

  • SURunAs no workie on Windows 7
  • Windows 7 was released on July 22nd, 2009 – or 16 months
  • (this is precisely what MarvelClient, one of our products was created for to deal with stuff like this)
  • Maybe in Notes 9 (!)
  • http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/installblog.nsf/dx/you-can-blame-me.-
  • What is it with IBM and the latest MS software versions?
  • Do they need to step up?

BES Express to be available for Domino

  • Too little too late?
  • How long can RIM charge what they do in a world full of Traveler and ActiveSync?

PlanetLotus.org

  • Is it being gamed?
  • Should the HotBlogs be removed?

Ray Ozzie leaves Microsoft

  • Did he make a difference there?

Tips

DarrenEnter to win the Sametime 8 Essentials book by Marie Scott and Tom Duff from Packt by sending an email to ideas@thisweekinlotus.com
Andrew  CULT Shirts – sponsorships still open, good theme this year
FrancieFoster your communities, talk to your peers to get the scoop on fixpacks, known issues and resolve problems. To find out more about flawless upgrades with MarvelClient, visit panagenda.com or find us at ILUG2010.org, admineurope2010.com and of course lotusphere.com
ScottKudos to the LTAP sponsors – http://www.ltapconference.com/exhibitors.php
a few neat products discovered in last two weeks:  http://rainbowsync.com  (cloud file storage with a Domino backend),  http://www.opusneo.com (a dashboard for Quickr) and www.crossware.co.nz (control everyone’s signature in 5 minutes or less)
StuartWoopra – free web analytics, with beautiful local client UI, including live perspective

22: Symphony 3 – Free, Free, Free!!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:45 — 64.0MB)

Episode 22, recorded Friday 15th October 2010, discussing the forthcoming Lotus Symphony 3 release, David Leedy’s Notesin9 screencast, Lotusphere 2011 abstracts and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

David Pearson (twitter | email) is a senior architect in the IBM Software Services for Lotus Centre of Excellence, and is also IBM’s worldwide services leader for Symphony. He has been at Lotus / IBM for 14 years.

Eric Otchet (email) is currently the Product Manager for Lotus Symphony.  He has been with IBM for over 22 years and has held both technical and sales positions during that time.

Corey Davis (twitter | company) is the owner of Conxsys, author of two IBM Redbooks, and is on the OpenNTF steering committee.

David Leedy (screencast) is a corporate Notes developer and producer of the NotesIn9 ScreenCast.

Topics

Symphony 3 launch

  • What is IBM Lotus Symphony ?
  • How did Symphony come about?
  • What is IBM’s strategy ?
  • Can you describe the Symphony roadmap ?
  • What is the relationship with the OpenOffice community ? What does IBM do with OpenOffice Code ?
  • Will split in OO movement help or hinder (LibreOffice)? Does IBM feed back into OO code?
  • What are the key differences between OpenOffice and Symphony ? Is there round-trip compatibility?
  • How Does Symphony link into the rest of the Lotus portfolio ?
  • When will Symphony v3 be available ?
  • What are the key new things in Symphony v3 to get excited about ?
  • Once Symphony 3 ships, can we integrate it into (and over) the current Lotus Notes Symphony install?
  • What is Project Concord and how does that integrate with Symphony ?
  • Any plans to extend Symphony to include Draw and give us a real Visio replacement?  Or a database?
  • When will be able to save as docx, xlsx and pptx?
  • Quickr connectors? Coming? Dates?
  • Get more information from symphony.lotus.com

Notes In 9 – Extended Edition 

  • Where did the idea for this come from for the extended format?
  • What exactly will a “classic”Notes developer learn?
  • What’s next for Ni9?
  • Announcing new Website

Lotusphere 2011 

  • Abstracts due in last Friday!
  • Daily OGS Monday-Wednesday
  • New tracks:
    • NEW! Track Four: Business Solutions
    • NEW! Track Five: Customer Case Studies

LotusphereBlog rides again! 

LTAP 2010 

  • The conference will take place October 27th and 28th.  There will be an opening session followed by breakout sessions organized by track–Developer, Administrator, and Management.   Each presentation will last approximately 30 minutes followed by up to 15 minutes of Q&A.  Sessions will start at the top of each hour, 10 AM, 11 AM, 1 PM, etc.
  • Free registration
  • Virtual format
  • What do we think of the idea? Something that could take on?

Windows Phone 7 launch 

  • Seems to be being marketed as the phone that lets you get on with your life – get in, get out, get on… Is this a cohesive idea for a smartphone? Do we spend too much time on our BBs, iPhones, Androids?
  • Is it too late for M$ to recover their mobile market share?

Tips

Darren:Give Symphony 3 a try. I use it as my primary office suite on my new Lenovo T510 running Windows 7. Stay away from Symphony 1 though. Remember if you are a current Lotus Notes support licensee you have full support too. Do you have that with MS Office? And it is FREE, FREE, FREE
Eric:Make sure to check out Lotus Symphony Website late next week for some important news
Corey:Domino Designer 8.5.1 Crash Course for Admins
DavidP:Take a look at the content we have in the Symphony wiki – and also try out the mobile interface. If anyone requires help to evaluate or deploy Symphony see IP.com.
DavidL:If you want to start learning XPages, there’s one site that you need to know about – XPagesWiki.com
Stuart:Don’t be frightened of partitioned servers – in fact use them liberally (assuming your licence supports them).  Simply install multiple partitions on install, use as many of them as you need. Add IP aliases to your network cards, and then configure IP address per partition in notes.ini.  Oh and never use hostname = service name!

21: LotusLive 1.3 goes live

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:48 — 59.4MB)

Episode 21, recorded Friday 8th October 2010, discussing the IBM’s reputation for social software, contacting IBM employees via Sametime and more..

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company)  & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Martha Hoyt is a Senior Product Manager for LotusLive. She has recently turned her role slightly to focus on developing the LotusLive partner platform, working with the early and strategic partners. She started her IBM career in Lotus working for a number of years in the Lotus Notes an Domino world both from a product management and development perspective.

Richard Bye (LotusLive Profile, LinkedIn Profile, LotusLive Home Page, IBM Homepage) is the Business Unit Executive for the LotusLive portfolio in Northern Europe.  Richard has worked in the hosted messaging and collaboration space for nearly 13 years, having been part of the launch team of TTYL for Telenor in Norway, started the Hosted Messaging business for Critical Path in EMEA, and was part of the senior management team leading Outblaze Limited of Hong Kong to acquisition by IBM in April 2009.

Erik Vos (company | twitter | LotusLiveProfile | LinkedinProfile) is (founder of RealConnections in 2008, before I worked for Lotus BP in the Netherlands and before that I was working within IBM Software Group in the Netherlands – Director Software Sales. RealConnections is a Cloud Aggregator, we combine Cloud Services for customers – we are not technical ;-))

Topics

LotusLive 1.3 announced

  • What’s new?
  • What are the features of LotusLive Engage/Connections Communities – are they equivalent to Connections Communities?
  • What use cases are expected for the communities feature?
  • What about Wikis and Blogs?
  • IBM seems to be working hard to bring other vendors/services into LotusLive – have there been any additions to the list?
  • Lotuslive Meetings is a key part of the suite – what changes have taken place there?
  • What do you expect customers to make of these changes?

LotusLive Notes updated

  • This was only released a couple of months ago, so what’s changed?

LotusLive Labs Concord

  • Collaborative editing in the cloud – What’s the latest status?

Lotusphere abstracts opened, deadline extended to 15th October

  • New tracks
  • ‘Interesting’ announcement of abstracts process – could IBM have done this better?
  • Any sessions submitted so far?

Why giving Designer Client away doesn’t matter to college students (have tried to cover in previous episodes, but not had time)

  • Blog post by David Hablewitz
  • ‘While it is good that Lotus Notes Designer is free, what is the point if the people most likely to use it can’t?   That’s right, they can’t use it.  Why?  Because they have Macs.  Yes, at Bellevue College, right here in Microsoft land, at least 1/3 of the students working on a degree in web development own Macs.  These people like public domain software.  They use OpenOffice, iTunes, any browser except IE.  These are the same people who jump for any software that DOESN’T come from Microsoft.  Yes, so close, yet so far.’
  • Designer client on Mac? Essential or nice to have?
  • How about connectors?

LoLA just finished

  • Whole conference under NDA, but plenty of discussion on the Interwebs (blogs, tweets etc)

Number of useful 8.5.2 posts on the Notes Design Blog

Tips

Darren: I love my headset – Logitech ClearChat Pro USB – here’s the newer Logitech H530 USB Headset on Amazon UK and Amazon US (affiliate links).

Martha: Had to leave early ;-(

Erik: Add admin account in LotusLive (for free) to your customers LotusLive account to help your customer. for example helpdesk_for_collaborationmatters@realconnections.nl.   Also, update your company profile in LotusLive: searching within LotusLive will find you on the topic you want to be found for

Richard: LotusLive has changed the way that I work, and as a team, we are far more efficient and better organised using the tools that LotusLive.com provides

Stuart: TripIt Pro (I know, I’ve previously recommended TripIt standard…) Pro version has recently been updated, to now include ability to track flight refunds if delayed etc, and most importantly, includes free membership to Hertz Gold and Regus Gold. VIP car rental and access to 1,100 business lounges worldwide. ($660 value) Costs $49/year.   Also includes aggregated tracking of airmiles, loyalty programs etc.

20: IBM’s reputation, connecting via Sametime and following Tiger’s women

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:34 — 65.7MB)

Episode 20, recorded Friday 1st October 2010, discussing the IBM’s reputation for social software, contacting IBM employees via Sametime and more…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company)  & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Luis Benitez (blog | twitter) is one of the Social Software Product Managers for IBM effective today.  Prior to this new role Luis was the Lotus Social Software evangelist for the Americas and leads the internal Lotus Social Software community with over 2000 members.
Matt Simpson (blog/podcast | twitter | company | profile) is an Initiative Leader in the IBM CIO Organization, responsible for Sametime deployments in IBM.  His background is socio-technical, especially focusing on collaboration and knowledge management.

Topics

IBM could be bigger than Facebook – Luis Benitez post 

  • Fast Company article ‘Fathoming a new product from IBM via a launch event is like trying to understand the ocean by watching a wave. Nonetheless that was my task, swimming through the presentations and ultimately landing an interview with Jeffrey Schick, IBM’s VP of Social Software. Drenched in the vision Schick shared for the IBM Customer Experience Suite, it occurred to me that IBM could end up being more important to the business use and monetization of social media than Facebook.’
  • ‘Long before Mark Zuckerberg aggregated his Harvard friends online, IBM’ers could find their colleagues in a similar manner. According to Schick, “at IBM 15 years ago, we had a way to look up people to create a globally connected enterprise.” “Today we have approximately 500,000 people within IBM and we do about 6 million look ups a day on pages that look strikingly similar to other social network profile pages with features like blogging and photo posting,” added Schick.’
  • What does the article mean? Is IBM cool now? 😉

Jon Mell is back at IBM 

  • From Headshift to be North IOT Sales lead for Portal, Connections etc.
  • First notable name to rejoin IBM/Lotus after lots of folks have left (Alan Lepofsky, Gia Lyons, Rocky Oliver, Bob Balaban etc)
  • Does IBM need to hire more big industry names?

Luis also has a new role – moving into product management 

  • What prompted the change?
  • What did you learn from doing it in the real world that will now help in product management?
  • There’s a few IBM social software product managers, where will you fit?

Sametime ExtST service 

  • What is it?  http://ibm.com/collaboration is a site on ibm.com through which people can access many ways to collaborate with IBMers.  Within that service, there is a pilot of a way to Sametime with IBMers.  Today, it is an as-is service with minimal support.  Soon, it will be upgraded with refreshed hardware and software as well as full-production support.
  • Some history…
  • So what’s IBM doing about it?  In Q3, we recognized the priority for this service and included it into our Fall Plan for 2010 funding.  This year, we have launched a project to upgrade the service.  We have developed an environment with the latest Sametime 8.5.1 software, and plan to deploy it in Q4.
  • What’s been done so far?  For several years, a pilot / as-is best-effort service has been in place.  Priority to deploy a production service was established in late 2009.  A project has kicked off in 2010 to deploy the new service by end of year.
  • What’s planned?  When will it be launched?  A new service will be online in Q4 2010 which will include a help desk and the ability to use the latest Sametime clients.
  • What does this mean for customers and BPs?  Once deployed, this means that BPs will be able to use the latest code to Sametime with IBMers.
  • Lotus Notes Traveler the “fastest-growing business mobile email platform”- Ed Brill

Lotus Symphony 3 beta 4 pimped on BNET – Ed Brill 

  • Where’s Oracle?
  • How will the forking affect this?
  • What’s next Symphony IdeaJam launched
  • Looking forward to a TWiL episode focused on Symphony 3 launch

Lotusphere Registration has opened 

ILoveLotusNotes.net launch

Tips

Darren: TriStateLUG (October 11, New York City, Keven Cavanaugh doing keynote)

Luis:  Lotus Connections Plug-ins for Symphony: (Org Chart generator, wiki editor, LotusLive Files connector.. and readily available for Symphony 3)

Matthew: Lotus Connections Status Alerts Plug-In for Lotus Notes, available from the Lotus Catalog.

Stuart: Self-registration database for Lotus Quickr and Connections. Enables the request, provision, authorisation and management of accounts for external users of on-premise deployments of IBM Social tools.