Back in my last job I had the pleasure
of interviewing a number of people for both admin and development positions
and one of the questions I’d always ask is what websites they knew about
in relation to Lotus Notes. The answer, in nearly all cases, was notes.net
( or LDD or Developerworks or whatever it will be called next week ) and,
in most cases, this was the only answer that they had. If I prompted them
by asking if they read any of the Notes related blogs they would, nearly
always, say no.
And this isn’t restricted to job interviews.
When my wife is out doing consultancy gigs at different clients around
the country, nine times out of ten the client she is with will have never
read any of the blogs and wouldn’t know about all the developments that
are happening within the Lotus Notes community. Of course she always clues
them in ( hopefully by pointing to my blog first ) but there are a
lot more notes admins and developers out there then she would ever be able
to visit.
So it would seem that news of the Notes
community still isn’t getting out to everybody and the people who don’t
know about it are the ones who really should, the admins and developers
who work daily in both big and small corporations around the world. If
I had to answer the question as to why I think this is then I’d probably
say it’s because these people just think of what they do as a nine to five
job and no more.
With the inclusion of a blogging template
in the upcoming 7.0.2 release of Domino I feel that this is going to start
changing. Admins and developers who didn’t know much about blogging will
see the template, maybe create a new database with it to see what it does
and after that will check the web to see what else is out there. But this
shouldn’t be the only way that we should be hoping to expand the Lotus
Notes community. We should all update our blogrolls, link to the DominoBlogs
site to point people in the direction of more blogs and even IBM could
help by putting prominent links to some blogs on the notes.net site
Now if only IBM would add an RSS reader
template preloaded with a few choice domino related blogs to the next ‘Innovations
Pack’. Didn’t Steve Castledine have a DX Reader application that he was
working on at one stage, that would probably be the easiest choice…
Dec's Dom Blog 
I know that Steve had started an RSS reader early last year http://www.stevecastledine.com/sc.nsf/dx/19012005202717SCAS3C.htm , but I don’t know the status of it. Maybe he can pull it out of his bag of tricks and get it into the 7.0.2 release.Sean—
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Hi! I need to ask you something about this blog entry http://blog.dnaware.net/blogs/qtzar.nsf/d6plinks/DLYH-62DQVU Is there any chance you could send me the JumpStart Aptrix package? (if you still have it) I can
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Sorry, i forgot to add my email (just in case) Regards.
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Sebastian,I no longer have the Aptrix Jumpstart package but maybe if you contact your local IBM business partner and ask them to contact their IBM contact then you should be able to get it.The Jumpstart was a handy package to get up and running quickly but once you have learnt all the tricks of LWWCM I found it ws best to start with a fresh blank copy.You should also look into the training courses fo LWWCM that are available from lotus Education thru your local Business Partner.
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@1 – 7.0.2 is already in code freeze.
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If they are familiar with notes.net (LDD, if you will), why wouldn’t they use the blogosphere in the same way? Especially with Show-n-Tell Thursdays? And not stopping to read Ed? They are really missing out on a lot. Maybe in addition to e-mail addresses on the ‘Sphere slides, the presenters should be hawking their blogs, as well. There’s a nice audience for the promotion of blogging.
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@6 I think most Lotusphere presenters do mention their blogs. But not everyone gets to Lotusphere.
In some ways, I wonder if this is a form of social darwinism? Not to click into elitist mode, but maybe the people who do their jobs best find the best sources of information?
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@1 When talking about a Lotus Notes based RSS reader IBM should give Manfred Dillmann’s RSS Reader a chance ( http://www.madicon.de/content/view/33/52/ )
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I guess it would make more sense for an IBM endorsed blogging template to point to dominoblogs.com than any other specific blogs. None mentioned, none forgotten…
/lekkim
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