... and here is the promised video, posted on You Tube. (Editing it was MUCH more work that I expected, mainly because it was done on a slow laptop.)
Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts
Monday, February 5, 2007
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Some feedback on Lotusphere 2007
I am sitting on a plane returning from Lotusphere 2007. Thought about live blogging, but decided that it's better to pay attention during the presentations. Besides a laptop gets very heavy by the end of the day. For the first time in years, I can say that IBM finally "gets" Notes. What I mean is that Notes now finally has a decent roadmap for the future.
Because of my work, I was looking to see the plans for the future of Notes. I well remember the collective groan that went up at the opening session of Lotusphere a few years ago when Lotus introduced the "dual lane" approach. So I was very interested in where Notes is going. My real interest is "How effectively can I use this tool to solve business problems that other tools haven't been able to solve.
With that in mind, I attended a designer session. It was mildly interesting until last 15 minutes when Maureen Leyland arrived and demoded where the Designer client is going; based on Eclipse, the Designer now has an open architecture. Same for the Notes client, also based on Eclipse. Finally, I saw IBM with a decent, logical, plausible future for Notes.
With these new directions, I think Microsoft finally has a reason to look over their shoulder. When IBM and Microsoft battle it out, I score as a customer. Remember how long IE6 was Microsoft's browser? Years. Only when Firefox appeared and started taking market share did Microsoft start improving IE. I see the same thing happening with the Apple / Windows race. These races are ones that we, as customers, do not want any vendor to win! As long as these companies are competing we score.
Much to my surprise, I bumped in Gary Devendorf at the Dolphin on Wednesday. Gary used to be "Mr LotusScript" until IBM laid him off. A few months later he was working at Microsoft, helping them integrate their products with Notes. It was very interesting to hear his comments on the culture, and on how people relate at Microsoft, compared to IBM. Personally, I think IBM rather shot themselves in the foot letting someone like Gary go.
This year my favorite presentation was "Worst Practices" by Bill Bucan & Paul Mooney. When you put an Irishman and a Scot of doubtful sobriety on the stage together you will have an interesting banter. I hope to post a video on this soon...
Because of my work, I was looking to see the plans for the future of Notes. I well remember the collective groan that went up at the opening session of Lotusphere a few years ago when Lotus introduced the "dual lane" approach. So I was very interested in where Notes is going. My real interest is "How effectively can I use this tool to solve business problems that other tools haven't been able to solve.
With that in mind, I attended a designer session. It was mildly interesting until last 15 minutes when Maureen Leyland arrived and demoded where the Designer client is going; based on Eclipse, the Designer now has an open architecture. Same for the Notes client, also based on Eclipse. Finally, I saw IBM with a decent, logical, plausible future for Notes.
With these new directions, I think Microsoft finally has a reason to look over their shoulder. When IBM and Microsoft battle it out, I score as a customer. Remember how long IE6 was Microsoft's browser? Years. Only when Firefox appeared and started taking market share did Microsoft start improving IE. I see the same thing happening with the Apple / Windows race. These races are ones that we, as customers, do not want any vendor to win! As long as these companies are competing we score.
Much to my surprise, I bumped in Gary Devendorf at the Dolphin on Wednesday. Gary used to be "Mr LotusScript" until IBM laid him off. A few months later he was working at Microsoft, helping them integrate their products with Notes. It was very interesting to hear his comments on the culture, and on how people relate at Microsoft, compared to IBM. Personally, I think IBM rather shot themselves in the foot letting someone like Gary go.
This year my favorite presentation was "Worst Practices" by Bill Bucan & Paul Mooney. When you put an Irishman and a Scot of doubtful sobriety on the stage together you will have an interesting banter. I hope to post a video on this soon...
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Reusability with Standards
In February this year I did a presentation for Teamstudio on Notes Best Practices. Part of that presentation covered standards, and I want to extend an idea on standards by making the following claim: "In the corporate IT world a standard amounts to an agreed upon solution to a recurring problem."
In the software world there is a lot of talk about reusing code. Well, this same thought can be extended (reused?) to go beyond just code. When you create a standard (rule, procedure etc.), you effectively create a solution to a recurring problem. Each time you implement or use that standard, you are taking all the thought & effort that went into creating the standard the first time and reusing it. Let me supply some examples...
* You develop a standard configuration for a Notes client install (or any other software package). Now you company's help desk has just one client install to work with. Every time new help desk people come on board they only have to learn how to support that one client install. Compare this to the situation where there are multiple client installs, each one slightly different.
* You create a standard for your Notes development: all projects must go into under the "Dev\Projects\ProjectName folder, where "ProjectName" is the name of the project. Thus all project files will be grouped in one place. Now, every time a new project is started there is no need to decide where to put the project: just follow the standard. If an old project suddenly needs work, you know exactly where to find it. Compare this to the situation where developers can put projects anywhere they want on a development server, and chaotic mess that results from this approach.
Now, I have often had people say to me "But with all these rules, standards, procedures etc. you are taking away our freedom to be creative". But reality is quite different: standards actually provide greater freedom to be creative. Why? Because standards solve the mundane, recurring problems and leave you free to be creative on the more interesting problems. Do you really want to solve the same problems again and again, or would you rather focus on new problems?
To sum up, creating standards to solve recurring problems and you have reused the effort of solving those problems the first time. While there is a cost to manage standards, the reusability component can lead to significant cost savings. Another benefit is that a standards driven environment is much simpler to manage (i.e. complexity is reduced), and tends to be significantly more reliable. Finally, standards free people from mundane problems, allowing them to focus on more interesting problems. And you though reusability applied only to code...?
In the software world there is a lot of talk about reusing code. Well, this same thought can be extended (reused?) to go beyond just code. When you create a standard (rule, procedure etc.), you effectively create a solution to a recurring problem. Each time you implement or use that standard, you are taking all the thought & effort that went into creating the standard the first time and reusing it. Let me supply some examples...
* You develop a standard configuration for a Notes client install (or any other software package). Now you company's help desk has just one client install to work with. Every time new help desk people come on board they only have to learn how to support that one client install. Compare this to the situation where there are multiple client installs, each one slightly different.
* You create a standard for your Notes development: all projects must go into under the "Dev\Projects\ProjectName folder, where "ProjectName" is the name of the project. Thus all project files will be grouped in one place. Now, every time a new project is started there is no need to decide where to put the project: just follow the standard. If an old project suddenly needs work, you know exactly where to find it. Compare this to the situation where developers can put projects anywhere they want on a development server, and chaotic mess that results from this approach.
Now, I have often had people say to me "But with all these rules, standards, procedures etc. you are taking away our freedom to be creative". But reality is quite different: standards actually provide greater freedom to be creative. Why? Because standards solve the mundane, recurring problems and leave you free to be creative on the more interesting problems. Do you really want to solve the same problems again and again, or would you rather focus on new problems?
To sum up, creating standards to solve recurring problems and you have reused the effort of solving those problems the first time. While there is a cost to manage standards, the reusability component can lead to significant cost savings. Another benefit is that a standards driven environment is much simpler to manage (i.e. complexity is reduced), and tends to be significantly more reliable. Finally, standards free people from mundane problems, allowing them to focus on more interesting problems. And you though reusability applied only to code...?
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Last week I presented "Notes Management Best Practices" at the Teamstudio seminar in New York. Decided to take the red-eye on Tuesday night, flying Jet Blue. Well, Jet Blue was great; but flying the red eye was not such a good idea! After a 4 hour flight from San Diego I arrived at the Dylan hotel, only to crash and sleep until after lunch. Then went for a short walk - toured Grand Central station (I love trains, so this was great fun) and walked down Park Avenue until the cold got a bit much. Wednesday evening I had dinner with the Teamstudio team at the Chemist Club restaurant- it was great to finally meet the folk behind the emails & phone calls. I must say that the bread in New York tastes much better than most of the bread you find on the west coast.
Thursday morning saw us assemble at 8:00am in the Dylan conference room. First off with the Keynote address was Ed Brill from IBM with a look at where Notes is going for the next few years. As somebody who didn't make it to Lostusphere this year, the presentation was very interesting. After a short talk by Nigel Cheshire on "Building a Strategic Plan for Best Practices" it was my turn to present "Best Management Practices for Lotus Notes". Using the analogy of a ship, this presentation focused on how to steer the ship rather than how to make the engine run efficiently. Based on the audience feedback at the end of the day, it seemed that most people found the presentation useful. Jesse Segovia from Elanza Group had the tough after lunch session, and was later followed by Rob Axelrod from Technotics. Rob is an excellent speaker, and made a very enjoyable presentation on the development process and build automation. We finished the day at about 4:00pm, just in time to catch heavy traffic back to the airport. The flight back to San Diego to over 6 hours, and culminated with an aborted landing due to fog. I finally crawled into be at 1:00am after a very long day.
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