Episode 66, recorded live from MWLUG 25th August 2011, with Gregg Eldred, Ray Bilyk, Mike McGarel, Lisa Duke, Darren Duke and the MWLUG lunch audience.

Hosts

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

Guests

Lisa DukeLisa Duke (twitter | company | podcast) is Business Development Manager for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc. (also known as STS), an IBM Lotus business partner specializing in collaboration, mobility, and virtualization.  STS also resells IBM System X hardware and related storage.
 Gregg EldredGregg Eldred (blog | twitter) Messaging Administrator that dabbles in application development. Enjoys reading and reviewing books
Ray BilykRay Bilyk (blog | twitter) IBM Lotus Notes/Domino Administrator (and closet Developer) from the Detroit, MI area Hakuna Matata! No worries… Just relax and have a homebrew… Cheers!
Mike McGarelMike McGarel (blog | twitter | company) is a Collaboration Solutions Developer for Czarnowski, a North American exhibit services company. He is responsible on both intranet and extranet applications. Mike is the developer for the Blogger Open and SkiLUG sites. He is Vice President of GRANITE, the Chicago-based Lotus user group.

Topics

This is a live podcast so the topics started with MWLUG and headed off from there!

Episode 42, recorded Thursday 10th March 2011, discussing upcoming Lotus User Groups in Belgium and the UK, why the Lotus community should ‘put up or shut up’ in Australia, IBM’s stance on Nokia devices and more…

Hosts

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

Guests

 

Warren Elsmore

Warren Elsmore (blog | twitter | company) has worked in the Lotus arena for 15 years and is a Senior Architecture Consultant with the Bluewave Group.  Bluewave provide technical architecture consultancy and advice to a range of large and small customers across the globe. Warren has spoken at many Lotus events including Lotusphere, Collaboration University, the View Admin conference, ILUG and UKLUG. He also writes for Clippings and in any spare time he has left he runs the UK Lotus User Group!

Theo Hesslemans

Theo Heselmans (blog | twitter | company) has been doing Notes/domino development for almost 20 years. He became an independent consultant about 10 years ago and founded Xceed. He’s been to almost every Lotusphere, and got involved into the Lotus community when he started blogging about 4 years ago. He’s been running the BLUG now for 2.5 years.

Topics

User groups

  • What are Lotus User Groups?
  • Why did you chose to organise them?
  • What’s involved in organizing such an event: find Venue, Date, Speakers, Sponsors, Attendees, Staff, Merchandising
  • Who attends user groups?
  • What is the format of your events, days/numbers?
  • What are the benefits of attending?
    • to attendees?
    • to sponsors/exhibitors?
    • to speakers
  • Shouldn’t IBM be responsible for running these events?

BLUG

  • When is it? (March 31th – April 1st)
  • Where? (Crowne Plaza In Antwerp, we needed a bigger venue, as we grew: more than 200 people per day)
  • Why Antwerp this time? (Great city, we wanted to a change from Brussels)
  • Now a two-day event – why the change? (so many topics to cover, and we had to turn down too many excellent speakers last time)
  • Who is speaking? (70% international Lotusphere speakers)

UKLUG

  • When is it? (23rd-24th May)
  • Where? (Manchester Museum of Science and Industry)
  • What is planned? (2 days of conference sessions with a fantastic line-up of speakers)
  • What are you looking for in session abstracts?

The future of LUGs

  • Are more user groups required around the world?
  • If someone wants to organise a new one, where do they start?
  • How do you get the word out?
  • Does the move to Social Business change anything?

Other news:

Tips

Darren

1) Book your flights (if flying!!!) soon, fuel surcharges are being added to prices at an alarming rate.
2) IBM stop changing your technote URLs!!!

Warren

1) Register for UKLUG – as an attendee, speaker or sponsor (Abstracts and sponsors close 5th April Final session by the 18th April.
2) If you can’t make it to UKLUG, find your local LUG through LotusUserGroups.org
3) If you don’t have a local LUG – start one!

Theo

1) Register for BLUG: about 50 seats available
2) Go to UKLUG: you won’t regret it
3) Ytria updated their tools to version 10. Especially ScanEZ is a lifesaver. Bought it in 2004 and practically use it daily.

Stuart

1) Google Chrome 10 just released, features new preferences UI, and sync of apps/bookmarks/extensions/password/preferences/themes etc between machines, even between operating systems.  Faster than ever too.  IBM support still an issue, but otherwise, why aren’t you using it??!
2) Also, look out for TWiL goodies at UKLUG…