LotusStaffNotes.com

Meet the developers First question ?

Brent Peters — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:04:04 -0400

So Bob Balaban has had a tradition of asking the first question from the far left (from the speaker at the podium) microphone. I complied with this at LS08, but at LS09, I broke ranks and went to far right, and took a planted question on DXL. So the question is, what should be the first question? LSX Toolkit is done, so curious if it will be an LSX question. We are working and making progress on DXL, not sure if that is the question, and I won't plant that one again. So curious what will be the first question.

One view of 10 Top Adcancements in 2009 for future of Notes and Domino.

Brent Peters — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:56:32 -0400

0. (doesn't count in the 10, but important). We preserve the legacy of the Notes and Domino application set over the past year, and that legacy support will move forward in the future.

1. Expeditor - ok, I know this came before 2009 even, but this is an investment that keeps on giving. It is an investment in our Notes platform strategy that will keep on giving in future years to come. We can do more rich or web client integration into this platform than any other competitor in the industry. In terms of the future, I see our leverage of the embedded browser being more important over time, you will see examples of this later in this top 10 list also, think xPages. We have seen SAP (Alloy) integration, Sametime Unified Telephony, Quickr, Symphony, other third parties (linked In, trip it, ...). All possible from Expeditor, and all paying off handsomely in the 2009 timeframe.

2. xPages - support for xPages, I will call out separately, for different reasons. The importance of xPages for the future is HUGE. I can see opportunities for Dojo controls, multiple data source support, mashups, integration across the entire Lotus, and even non-Lotus portfolio, a HUGE improvement in user experience of Domino web applications. Now, because of Expeditor, support for xPages for the Notes Standard Client. So this will be huge for User Experience, for Flexibility of Mashing up information from other data source and other systems. Extending Domino and bridging it with other open systems. So in terms of future integration with products, customers or BPs/ISVs that leverage xPages will have a wonderful opportunity for seemless integration with the Collaboration suite of products from Lotus.

3. Domino Total Cost of Ownership - DAOS, ID Vault, SSO. This is a huge opportunity to sell and upgrade accounts to the latest versions of the Notes and Domino product. It is also a critical piece of our efforts in the future of Notes and Domino in ANY cloud based environment.

4. Traveler / Mobile - the deployment of traveler has been very well received. iPhone support was a huge buzz all year long, and the feedback in terms of quality of the support was very nicely received by the Lotus dev team. Going forward I see that future importance of our Mobile strategy really picking up steam. Stay tuned, but we have made significant traction this year. Think also the applications that are build by RIM, and IBM(sametime, connections, ...).

5. Marketing - One of my biggest complaints, and complaints from some of my colleagues outside the company, e.g. (BB), or (B2) as I call him, helped a lot of discussion internally. While there is a lot more work we need to be doing, the "Lotus Knows" campaign is certainly off to a good start. I think that this was a huge and important step forward in 2009, and I see this seeding as a going forward in a big way in 2010 and beyond.

6. Notes 8.5.1 - the upgrades in the field for Notes and Domino, but especially Notes has been SIGNIFICANT to say the least. The deployment rate and adoption of Notes 8.0.2 and 8.5, were huge. We have had customers all over the world, including some of those GEOs that would traditionally be slow to upgrade, upgrading at a break neck pace. What took people 6-8 years to deploy over the 6.5 and 7.X releases, these people have been upgrading to 8.X within about a 1-2 year period. With feedback, issues, ... we have a superb release with Notes 8.5.1. The feedback has been very positive in terms of quality, and selective features for User Experience.

7. Widgets - just like xPages, is a pivotal investment into our client app dev strategy going forward. Widgets, more importantly the Widget catalog, is an important technology going forward in the future. While the Widget catalog, was there from 8.0.1 and 8.0.2, the deployment of the Widget catalog at customers sites, and the value that the customers see, and the investment in that deployment, presents a huge opportunity for us in the future. There will be more information to come around this at upcoming events, I hope to share. Think of this. If I can deploy Widgets. If I can deploy application components like (Alloy). Can I also push out applications that are integrated into Notes? Could this be used in the future as a way or option that customers could introspectively manage applications and components within Notes Standard?

8. Cloud - As IBM Lotus, is looking at the significant investments and rewards that we have been receiving in Cloud (Lotus Live ...), it is important for us to see the value of Total Cost of Ownership that stems from this and gets instantiated back into the On-Premise set of Lotus Notes and Domino set of products. The investment, successes, and value of Lotus Live, will pay off in our competitive nature of Cloud Computing, but also in terms of On-Premise TCO.

9. Symphony - Release of quality of Symphony 1.3, was important, but more important was Symphony 2.0 now moving towards an Open Office org 3.x codebase, is a huge leap forward for the quality, compatibility, and community. This will allow for the sharing of efforts, and strengthen the whole community moving forward.

10. Innovation - The innovation that we have been doing moving forward, will preserve the legacy, and will allow for a play of all of these pieces above together in a much more integrated way. This is unseen, heard, ... but I am very much impressed but the opportunities for our future ahead.

11. Your choice __________ - I left the 11th, slot, a free one, for people that have their own opinions on what was important moving forward. ??????? fill in here ______________________

Frankly, there was just so much done, that I found it hard to squeeze things in. There is a lot more left unsaid, but tried a good shot from my perspective.

The Art of Selling without Selling - Brentus Esotericus

Brent Peters — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:19:19 -0400

Today's philosophical dedication is one of my other favorites. Sun Tzu, based on the "The Art of War":
▪ Chapter 3: For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
▪ Variant translations
▪ Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
▪ The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting.

What? I know bare with me.
There comes a phrase similar to this in martial arts, called "The Art of Fighting without Fighting.". Something that I learned, with slight differences in approach, in studying Wing Chun Kung Fu, a style created by a Woman in Southern China.

So when I have been called to visit many customers, In US, Europe, and in Asia. I am told that the economy is bad, and no customers will pay the price to upgrade software. Well, I have made several visits to customers, and here to say that after leaving, I am told there is a very high upgrade/deployment success rate in migrating the customers up. How is this?

My statement to many IBM Sales people and Business Partners, I am not always with IBM Sales, is that customers are interested in saving money. In perfect timing, Notes and Domino 8.5.1, and previously releases before 8.5.1, all introduced cost savings. So the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), has been on a reduction from 6.5.X (compression), to 7.X, 8.x (Template compression (design and data)), 8.5 (Disk savings DAOS, CPU (server consolidation), Admin (id management, domino configuration tuning, ...).

So when I walk in and start talking, customers are resistant to BUYING anything. Their CFO's, finance people, are all telling them to stop spending, and to cut cost. Question is, can you talk with customers about getting on a path to reducing their IT cost? So I usually get on a path of saying I am here, or the sales person saying we are bringing in someone to talk about "Best Practices".

In this case, "The art of selling without selling".

Some of the customers that I met with in china and europe. I was told there was "no way to sell those customers on upgrading.".

I had good success on my visits to customers in even at end of 2008 and in 2009. I think had good success with customers that I met with because I say, I would like to understand your infrastructure, configuration, topology, ... basically best practices of how you are using our software.

IBM Sales / Development "Brent"
"Dear Mr. Customer (), we want to come and visit you on our "Development Best Practices", we know that you don't want to upgrade. .... we have a development guy, or Tech Sales Person with us."

Customer
"Sure, I would love to figure out a way to consider saving on my IT budgets.".

IBM "Brent"
"So Mr Customer, I noticed that you are hurting financial, the newpapers said you have asked your employees to take one paid day per week off in order to save money...."

Customer ()
"Yes, that's true".

IBM "Brent"
"So, I take it that if we could help you with some "Best Practices" on deployments, ... that could put you on course to saving money, ... then you would be willing to listen, ..."

Customer ()
"Absolutely.".

IBM "Brent" / "Presentation begins"
"You know you are on 6.5.5, we have template compression that can be done. Performance improvements. NSF reliability, DAOS, ID Vault, Modernize your apps for web, .... and all of this can
"Save money on deployments, HW (server consolidation, disk), people resources, admin, quality improvements, less down time, less network bandwidth, .... "
"On top of all of those savings, we have "PROTECTOR", which will do x,y,z for your spam/virus, ..."

Customer ()
"Firstly, you mean your Notes client, runs on the Mac?"

IBM "Brent"
"Yes, and the best part, I bet you have 75% of your company probably doesn't even use MS Office products, but you are paying for them anyway, this is Symphony on Mac.".

Customer ()
"Yes, this all sounds good, so how do we implement this?

IBM "Brent"
"Well, we do need to do an upgrade, but by upgrading look at what you save, ....."

Customer () EXACT QUOTE turning to the sales team.
"Why did you guys not come out here before, ...? Of course we would like to do this.".

Now, granted there is a cost in license upgrade, and in deployment, but the faster you do this, the faster you can save money. The faster you can save the customer money, the faster that they could use a PORTION of that savings to potentially by new products.

My example here is this. When we have done all of the FVT automation in Notes and Domino, the savings that we have achieved allowed us to by new hardware, new license of other test software (vmware, ...), but we can now test more, and test more quickly. These customers could do the same, and go to finance and say, if we can save X amount of dollars (euros, rmb, yen, ...) then we would like to take a portion of that savings and purchase licenses, ... is that a good deal? The customer may save $1M, and say to finance, we would like to take $500K of that and purchase x,y,z.

Now with Project Liberate, this is HUGE savings for customers. Do you know about project liberate? Saving money on MS Office licenses that paying the maintenance is very very costly?

So "The Art of selling without selling". This could be the way that you could help customers migrate to the features of the new platform that you need, xpages, ... AND, help the customers free some budget, especially from Project Liberate, so that the customer can afford to by your BP/ISV software solutions, or services that they also need. Help the customer find a way to purchase your Lotus based solution.

Be creative, find ways like this to help your customers purchase.
"The secret to creativity is, knowing how to hide your sources." Albert Einstein
B.E.

Brentus Esotericus and the return of Esoterics.

Brent Peters — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:47:18 -0400

I had the pleasure of doing the keynote at PowerSphere, in Paderborn, Germany, once again this year. While I was there, Ingo Erdmann asked me "Why did you stop blogging on your website?", I said "well, busy traveling, ... plus many people (Nathan) said my blogs tended to be esoteric." Now in fairness, Nathan also said "But that was a good comment, reading you is like reading 'James Joyce' ...". So I promised my good friend Ingo, that I would write something when I returned.

I, in not knowing exactly what to write, as I was leaving one of my favorite lands in the world, Germany, something dawned on me. I had one dream from my childhood period, that had completely laid unfulfilled, and I had just fulfilled this dream.

Those that don't know, I am a pianist. I started in 1968, at the age of 6. I was a good pianist. When I was 11, I was playing Chopin Etudes (Revolutionary op.10 nr 12), and op.10 nr 3. The very first piece that my father taught me was by Bach. I strictly played classical music. I love classical music. I live classical music. It has form, character, structure, complexity, and depth. Anyone that plays extensive classical music for the piano, cannot avoid the German composers. So in my studies, I spent a great deal of time playing Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert (ok, some were from German-speaking lands :) ) ... just to name a small few. Point is, growing up in Texas, I had a fascination very early on with German classical music. As a result, I developed a passion in understanding German culture and German history. My family ancestry (Peters) tracks back to an area in Germany called Pfalz (Rheinland). My grandmothers side (Holtz, later named Holt in US), tracked back to near this early as well as in Switzerland.
When I was a child, I always wanted to visit Germany. Visit the homes of these composers. Look at what these composers looked at when they would write their works. When you think of some of the magnificent religious (sacred) pieces that Bach wrote, when you stand and look at the cathedrals you can understand why he would write the dedication pages that he would for those works, .... (anyone care to guess what Bach's dedication would be?).

So for some years now, I have had the glorious pleasure of visiting some of these places in Germany. Including Bach and Beethoven's birthplaces. These were all childhood dreams. There are not very many children that are under the age of 10, that dream of art, culture, history, music, and visiting these places. However, I was one of those children.

The dream that laid unfulfilled, I always dreamed of playing the Piano in Germany. After College, where I attended on Scholarship for Piano Performance at TCU, I had considered studying Piano in Germany, but never did. So since I had been a child, I always dreamed of just playing in Germany. My good friends from Pavone at PowerSphere, did me an honor of hosting their dinner event at a location and had a Yamaha Grand Piano there. They "put me on the spot", ok, I am a ham and enjoyed it, and so I did play several pieces of music there. No music with me, so all from memory, which is a little old and rusty. I missed a few notes here and there, but it didn't matter, I enjoyed it. So when traveling through the airport, leaving Germany, I realized later that this was always a dream, I had forgotten it, and it actually was fulfilled.

My mom, who passed away last December, always knew this was a dream of mine. Just to say "I had experienced it.", and she was surely looking down and listening. So many times later in life, did I want to quit music, but she REFUSED to allow me to quit, some may remember my facebook note to my mother. My Dad, passed away when I was 9, but my mom was always the strength in the family. So I dedicate that fulfilled dream to her, a single working mother, dedicated to her kids, teaching them never to stop dreaming, and never to stop chasing your dreams, no matter how old we get. I thank Juergen Zirke, Ludwig and Pei Nastansky, for allowing me to do the keynote, and the chance to perform.

I use Music more in my working professional life than anyone could possibly imagine. It is inseparable. I view software, math, abstract thinking with a complete understanding of Music. For interest, a simple Binary form, component-ized, modular, echo'd, .... I found interest in a composer's simple form, his name is Scarlatti. As a result, I have viewed the way that we build products, in a much more simplified manner towards the future.

Lotusphere meet the developers session questions and answers updated.

Brent Peters — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:06:12 -0400

Still Open

Question: Can you commit to the Session Slides to be converted to wiki format as well as the red book format?
Response: Brent. It is a good idea and we will look into it. Brent-> working with Paula C and Barb to close on this one.
updated 4/24: We have a resource to do this. Need to prioritze, since such a large number. Will review start the LCTY users group call slides, a subset of that list.

Question: Would Lotus consider opening up the source code to BPs (under NDA) to allow them to fix and debug issues?
Response: Brent. We have been working with Legal to see what options are available. We are trying to pursue.
Updated 4/24: We are trying to do this with a BP now, we are looking at one case now, if past legal, then we could consider further. Case by case only, and business need.

Question: There is a lot you can do with the JVM properties file. Can Lotus make it adjust dynamically based on memory of the system environment?
Response: Doug Conmy. We have tuned in 8.0.2 & 8.5. 8.5 is the best performance. We will take it back and reviewBrent -> tracking with Paula C.

Question: Cognos and notes integration: BPs need to pay 10K for one piece of software. This is too expensive.
Response: Kevin C. We will take that back to the Cognos folks.Brent -> tracking with Kevin Cavanaugh..waiting for response from product management.

Question: Please consider a non profit pricing model. Who came up with Standard and Basic for naming? Ever think of asking your community?
Response: Kevin: I asked product managers to get better names.... Brent -> tracking with Paula, kevin, waiting for response from product management.

Question: DB2NSF is quietly moving to MR and if that happens what are we doing for large storage?
Response: Russ. We found that we did not get the performance that we needed and still support it. So for now we are focusing on improving NSF.
On the large storage scale issue we are making changes to help address that. (DAOS, Compression )Brent -> No plans in the near term. ... I am still looking into this.

Question: As a Websphere admin I can quickly make a change and make it easy to generate a plugin. This is difficult in Domino. We need a domino tool that can generate a plugin.
Response: Mike K. We do not have anything like that right now.Brent -> tracking with Paula C

Question: We are from Norway but need to use American English client. When we setup client we need to setup regions and dictionaries. Is there a way to set that from OS? Notes requires too many changes.
Response: We will take it back.Brent -> tracking with Paula C

Question: Can we invest in a free tool to migrate from Exchange to Domino. We don't want to pay for it.
Response: We will take back.Brent -> tracking with Paula C, looking at BP's further the list, and increasing capability of free tools.

Question: Is it possible to move full text indexes to another location?
Response: We are taking it back. Russ: Are you trying to move to a cheaper storage? We would like to follow up.Brent -> Was this from Paul Mooney? Russ asked this. Russ, was asking for more information and thought it was from Paul .

Question: Internationalization question: What official character set are supported for passwords?
Response: Dave Kern will bring back and researchBrent -> looking for customer to follow up in email and Dave to respond, tracking with Paula C

Question: Will we support SVG in the notes client.
Response: Maureen: We want to. We will take back.Brent -> still tracking, ... and looking at priority. Also, did the question really mean PNG, e.g. greater than 16 color, ...? tracking with Paula C

Question: When will the client support more languages?
Response: We made framework changes in 8.5 to leverage what Symphony and Sametime are doing. More to come on this in near term.Brent -> still working lang requests, and extending for partners. Update still coming. tracking with Paula C

Targeted for a Future release.

Question: Users love federation of calendars. How do we put quickr calendars in Notes?
Response: We are looking at it now.Brent -> tracking with Paula C Per the quickr team, Miki, this is being targetted for the 8.5 quickr release.

Question: Are we going to see proper dynamic html rendering in the Notes Client like a browser would?
Response: As we expand on xpages in the client this will become better.Brent -> being improved in the 8.5.1. release.
Targeting for a Future Release.

Question: Can we query relational databases in xpages?
Response: It is something we want to enable and looking at adding new resources and components.Brent -> This won't be in 8.5.1, we we hope to get it in right after. By the meantime, I spoke with a customer who'll show about to do it by simply using Java,

Question: Nathan Freeman. We need DXL fidelity. How many developers do you have assigned to it and when will we get it?
Response: We are shifting people to DXL now. We have much feedback on this. Focus has been Designer and xpages. We will be rolling features out incrementally rather than a 2 year wait time.
Brent->Post Lotusphere 09 answer - This work is currently staffed. Designs being vetted, would like to push the DETAILS of effort in a DP call. Looking at what can be done for first incarnation in 8.5.1. One items is to ensure no crashes. e We have assigned people to this now, we presented in the SDR. We will have more detailed plans in a near design partner call. This is a large effort and will be post 8.5.1, but is being worked on aggressively. We hope to have some aspects of this fixed (bugs) in 8.5.1.

Question: Can you share key end user features after the 8.5 release?
Response: Jeff Eisen. We are working on task manager and moving from TODOs in mail to a model where we help you manage your day. Calendar federation was a first step on a path to bring multiple things together.
We are focused on bringing work and technologies together. Brent->This is plan discussions for a post 8.5 bigger release, (more like a 9.0) release. Paula C tracking for future release.

Question: Currently in xpages when they want to ...... is there a way to implement java classes without leaving the designer ?
Response: Maureen gave some possible solutions and asked for feedback of the best way to do. Brent -> prototyping this for a future release. Not 8.5.1, but considering for a future release.

Question: I saw a slide that said Quickr 8.2 with Linux and Mac support. What does that mean?
Response: Linux support for the server and Mac support for client. Brent -> Quickr client, for Linux, not in 2009. Looking at release in 2010. Per JOhn S.

Question: Bob Ballaban. Where is the LSX tool kit and where does it stand? It was just about done when I left .
Response: Brent. I did the code review and its not done ; Scott Morris. There was some work to do and we are days away to release it. Brent->this should be there on the website in about 2 weeks (2/15). BTW, I was kidding on the code review comment. Bob Balaban is a good man, Bob Balaban is a friend of mine, Senator, you are no Bob Balaban .
This is now completed and posted on the website, please download, provide feedback.

Question: Can you seriously think about the Citrix community when you release further products?
Response: Brent. We wanted to release the product to get feedback with the understanding that we had to later focus on Performance and Citrix. So hopefully you are now seeing the results.
Jeff Eisen. We did do analysis but we discovered that the way you configure and tune your citrix environment can impact performance. We have published a white paper on Developer Works site. Brent-> I gave a longer explanation on this, but while it caused some discomfort to the Citrix community, by practice of the typical product adoption cycle, it was well thought and calculated. We could have maybe communicated our intentions better. Short answer was, we want to know that we had a great user experience, on the largest segment which was on stand alone desktops. Achieve broadest reach as soon as possible.

Question: Is there a way to set up private contacts within the delegation perspective? We don't want people to see contacts, just the calendar within delegation.
Response: Frank P. Will take that backBrent -> We are now considering this for a post 8.5.1 release. 8.5.2 or 9

_______________________________

Closed

Question: Is there a way to limit web access to a database?
Response: There is a DB property to limit access. Answer was provided from customer in the session. If more needed, let me know.

Question: Best Lotusphere of all time. Can we get Admin and designer for the Mac?
Response: Will you run a Designer on it? Based on user feedback, is the answer. We do not feel that this is a high priority from a business requirement. While we recognize that there are a small/med number of people that would truly love this effort, the cost of doing this is extremely expensive. DXL, is also expensive, not as much as Admin/Design on Mac. The cost of updates, fixes, testing, translation, ... on this new platform is a constant cost annuity that we are not yet willing to take, otherwise trading off some of the higher priority items even in this list. We are continuing to track this in the IdeaJam/Crowded Wisdom tools.

Question: Can we get Admin & Designer on Linux?.
Response: Continue to work and look into it. This is a significant effort. Brent->same as Mac

Question: What have the developers picked up from Lotusphere this week?
Response: Energy and change.

Question: What role do you see with thin clients playing?
Response: We see a hybrid model: browser, rich client, applications will still run.

Question: Traveler question: We have problem with Nokia device applications. Are there plans to take over more of the Nokia device applications?
Response: Strategy is to work with the device managers and not take this over.

Question: Migration: There was a setting in Rel 8 that allowed you to sync but its not there any more. Can you set a policy?
Response: We will take back and review.Brent -> Need more info on this one. Which attributes, data, objects, ... contacts, sync unread marks, ... please clarify, whoever asked.

Question: Multilingual: How do you programmatically change "view column text"?
Response: We will take it backBrent -> It turns out that the ViewColumn.Title property is already read/write. However, the Client must be bounced for that to be shown by the Editor. If he meant for us to translate it on the fly, that is not possible. It is data in the document that is input from the user. Only resourced strings are translated by us. Mr Scott Morris.

Question: You are working with OPENNTF.ORG but what are the thoughts around releasing code and projects?
Response: We are going to establish a voting system (or idea jam) to understand what we can help with. We need a governance model and not all from IBM.Brent -> working this process with Niklas, also announcements coming at DNUG, and now about to start our Board of Directors.

_____________________________________

Closed Not Targetted for a future release.
Question: Calendar: When I go to meeting, I need to reserve a room and want a way to allow pre & post booking time slots.
Response: Frank P. This is what we call meeting padding. It is on the list but there is no current time frame. Please use idea jam.Brent -> Based on low customer demand, not high priority not targeting for a release.

Question: Xpages: Is Lotus looking at session replication?
Response: We have thought about it but it is not yet there. We will take back.Brent -> watching customer demand to see if high priority post continued strong xpage adoption.

Question: Is there a way we can copy document from DB properties and stop the ability to create a replica?
Response: Not there yet.Brent -> Wno practical way to prevent creating a replica that I know of. all you need is read access. or, for that matter, creating a db copy entirely
our transactions are very primitive. there are patterns of use but nothing that says "I'm creating a replica" to the source side if you are pulling

Question: Mac customers need java applet support .
Response: We will bring back.Brent -> We will consider for future release, but no real demand, and certainly not higher than all other mac requirements we have.

Question: Can we allow "accept or reject" return receipts on a per message basis?
Response: Being looked atBrent -> no plans right now, due to not strong enough customer and BP demand.

Question: Can we change the default font size with a new mail?
Response: This is partially in 8.5. We detect the system font size.Brent -> No, not strong requirement.

Question: Scenario: You send a meeting invite and no one responds. How can we get a notification x minutes before that no one responded?
Response: Russ gave other scenarios and that we are looking into a variety of things in this area.Brent -> not enough demand, not targeting

Passion of the Loti

Brent Peters — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:13:50 -0400

I would like to say how I appreciate the passion of the lotus community. I really appreciated the Lotusphere, "Lotusphere Comes to You" events and the SDR a couple of weeks back. I had some travels, ... and so took a while to update. There was a lot of STUFF covered in these events. I appreciated eveyone's passion. Feedback, mostly quite positive, some on things to improve. I would like to say something, as I sad in the beginning of LCTY calls and other events. It is overall about the passion of the community and our focus.

For one event, after I opened up for this group of about 100 people singing Hank Williams, I stated my wishes. My wishes were to get CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. This means treating our discussions as a scientific discipline, and focus the discussion in a constructive way. Now for the singing, In the first place, I can't believe that my employees put me on the spot to do that. In the second place, I can't believe that I actually took the dare and did it. However, Hank Williams is good stuff, and I am sure most of the people from around the globe had not heard true, albeit slight, yodeling/sing before.
I opened these sessions and said how "we really want your feedback. This isn't a popularity contest. I like bad news.". I truly do. When this team here executed on near impossible schedules to deliver Notes/Domino 8.0, like I said, we knew there were issues with some slow performance, but we wanted people to tell us anything else missing. What else do we need to constructively focus on. That list was slight. What I love about that state of a product's lifecycle, is the fact that "we know what to fix... we know where to focus... We know where we are lucky.". There is nothing worse than knowing that you need to change/adapt, ... but not knowing what to change. So I truly believe in Design Partnerships, beta feedbacks in general, forums, communities, .... as things to help me and my teams know where to focus our attention.

3 reasons why I am saying this:
1. I was awfully surprised, that some of the questions around DXL were as 'peaceful', IMO. I was thinking, hoping actually, that people would really try and "shoot holes", in everything, but especially DXL, due to it's popularity at Lotusphere. In fact in the "Meet the developer" session that I led, there was about (2000-3000 people(??)), huge group, and DXL all through Lotusphere was a hot topic. I actually tried to stir things up and start the "food fight" for those "Animal House" fans. Also, on the Business Partner section. I actually had to start a fight between one of my peer executive Vice Presidents, ... the guy that owns this program which isn't me, and the BP teams. So we shouldn't be bashful to have constructive feedback. So I know there is difference between "food fight", and "constructive feedback", but I really appreciate when people speak up, and that we are focusing on DXL in the right way. The user-stories, scenarios, requirements from BP's to customers, is varied, and thus it is important that we get the right fundamental business requirements covered ASAP.
2. A lot of times people in the community say that "some of the people in the community are noisier than others.". Some people are concerned that me, my teams, product management, ... are listening to too small of a demographic to be accurate. I truly know the "Innovator's Delimma", which is a good analogy for following your current (easiest) customer set "over the edge of the cliff", so WE in development are always testing everything. We want to know that what we focus on is needed and in what method (BP's, Customers, both, .... ). Obvious the goal of any business venture is the maximum amount of Return on the minimal of Investment (ROI). So when items appear to be the opposite, high cost/low return, then we tend to shy away. So rest assured, we are listening but also vetting and testing what we receive. Now, what I like about the "noisier" people is they help get the stuff on the table for us to consider. Things like CrowdedWisdom (IdeaJam), are great inputs, but I like talking about this things as well. So point here, don't be bashful. If you have thoughts here, or input, please speak up in the forums and events that we have. Regardless what Bill Buchan says about me "aside from being a huge and scary guy with a nasty glint in his eye...", I am one of the nicest people that I know, oh and sometimes funny. Once I talk, answer, I do tend to "ramble", as I am often told.
3. Bob Balaban - What can I say about Bob? Well, first word that comes to mind is "Passion". The kind of Passion that I am talking about. He brings good points to the table. He focuses problems, issues (now, and in future), marketplace, competition, ... in an extremely contructive way. Do I agree with every point, and execute on every point, no back to the "vetting" process I talked about earlier. Bob, has been a great member of this community. I wish for more people that shared his passion to be like him, jump in, share their thoughts, let's discuss and test it. So at Lotusphere "Meet the Developers", again about 2000-3000 people in the room(?), I even made a joke at Bob's expense, but it was a joke. Now while everyone laughed, again what can I say I got my grandmother's wry sense of humor, I want to make sure it is understood by that group that I was just kidding. Sometimes my developers will say to me "sometimes your jokes are funny, but semi-true, and so we don't know when you are kidding or serious", my standard answer is "only important for me to know when I am kidding.". Let me say, that I would NEVER over extend and be serious like that in an event. Bob is high on my list. As a matter of fact, the next morning, his limo gave me a ride to the airport, and we had a great talk; of course the driver stopped half way there to the airport and Bob said "ok, get out you creep...!!!!", sorry, just kidding again. Also, Bob is a darn sharp guy. So anyway, I wish to thank Bob for his passion, input, feedback, and his long term commitment to the "Passion of the Loti" community.

Now, for those that say "reading my James Joyce prose is difficult", read no further past this point ..... :)
Brent

LSX Toolkit is ready

Brent Peters — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:27:34 -0400

OK
Well, it did take a little longer than we said. HOWEVER, I heard that this was outstanding for quite sometime.
So the fact that it took us an extra 4 weeks, longer, than what we (I) said, ... we will fall on our sword a little bit.
Now, also waiting to get feedback from people.
I know a few people have already picked it up.
Enjoy!

This is dedicated to Bob Balaban. You should be HAPPY now!!!! See.... I can tell that you are smiling as you just read this :)

Identifying Customers on the Peters $21, 000 Pyramid.

Brent Peters — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:29:11 -0400

Know your customer! Know your customers IT! Identify them on the pyramid. Have them identify themselves on the pyramid. Personally, I think making people internalize, assess, and think is critical towards any behavior change.

Given the 2 pictures here above, one from the representation of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and the other one, my own modified version.
I actually am meaning to show that over the years that when I have talked with customers, I often have seen this Pattern of this IT Hierarchy of Needs within their organizations. Now, again this is purely my own personal view and perception, but I have been testing it for a while, and often find it to be pretty darned accurate. Recently, when I met with a customer, I found a sales person trying to talk to the customer as if that customer were near the top of the pyramid, in the "Full Collaboration" area, when in fact this customers was at the bottom with simple email, no calendar, simple documents sent as attachments, and Telephone. Yes, there are a lot of those that exist. Now interestingly enough, when I pointed this out, and they start asking me about the "AppDev...", which is in the next pyramid up, then I turned the question back at them and tried to turn this pyramid into a left to right horizontal timeline, and asked the simple question of "What is your IT strategy, and especially what is your IT Strategy around Collaboration???, ... and then I will answer your question about AppDev!!!, ...". You could see the look on this guys (customers) face change to one of reflecting, contemplating, and considering this question. AS a result, this customer asked for help, and more discussions on how to build an IT strategy. It lead to finishing the conversation around what others are doing here. This was a perfect scenario. Our ability to help make customers realize that with our products, they also need to start thinking about their business and end user needs in a whole new approach.

Next I had another customer that was actually at the LOB/Silo'd level. Well, 1 person/customer was at that level, but his boss, was actually one level down at the mail/calendar area, ... So I tried an experiment. I actually showed them this slide, and gave them the example about the previous customer. How this customer had no realization about these tiers above simple email, ... I then said, but I know that you guys are really up here at the "Actualization" stage at the top, ... This customer wasn't even at the social computing stage, yet. They didn't want to hear about social computing, ... but it opened the door for them to want to know more, not be left out. I don't think anyone (pride) wants to feel like they are lower than they really are, ... So this customer took the challenge, and we played through some scenarios in their industry using Mail/Cal/ST(no user of ST before)/Connections/Quickr/... This customer took the challenge to try and reach above where they normally think about their business and their problem domain, and took these new challenges to heart. The customer was jazzed about their own business now, and what the potentials were for their business in their industry, ...

Punchline, the customer actually said, " I think this stuff is really great, ... thank you for showing this to us, ... but how could we pay for it? ", I said "You couldn't have done a better assist for me to slam-dunk this basket ... Do you know that typewriter that you are paying potentially hundreds of dollars per year for your users to use?", He said "what typewriter??, ...", I said "Yes, the typewriter I am talking about are these editors for word, presentation, and excel. I would recommend that you query your people, and any that really don't use or rarely use them, which is probably a good 50%, then give them Symphony which comes with Notes for free. Renegotiate your contract with whichever typewriter vendor you use, I would love to see how that conversation goes between you and that vendor, ...". Now, between you and me, I am not sure what vendor that this typewriter is being purchased from, but "free is free". "Then, Mr customer, you will have some funds to pursue your next Business goals with Collaboration IT.".

Lastly, I consider one of my greatest strengths to be that of observation. I watch people. I observe their conditions. Try and understand why they do what they do, ....
I also love to travel. I love people. I love talking with people, more importantly letting people let me talk endlessly :) I love new people, I love cultures.
I have made many trips to great places. I would like to comment on one of my favorite places. China. I love China. I love visiting there. I love the people there. I love the customers. I have visited there over the last 4 years. Now, just my opinion, but from my first visit there, one of the first images that popped into my head was the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Not in a bad way. The reason is, just looking at how their society has changed over the last couple of decades, I tried to map China on the Maslow's pyramid based from the 1980's, but then also do a mapping of China in 2005. I found it difficult, but an interesting thought. I told myself. That as I saw the infrastructure improve in the future (past 2005). As I saw the Olympics, as I saw better conditions around air quality, as I saw better more modern automobiles, as I saw MORE foreign automobiles, as I especially saw more progressive modern forms of their culture develop, both unique in timeframe and culture, to China, then I would realize that they were truly more identifiable (on a per capita basis) at the top of this pyramid. Again, I love China. I think the people I work with there are some of the brightest, hardest working, and clearly they, especially the youth, have arrived at the top of that pyramid. Also, over the last year, I see a lot more German and even Italian high dollar cars on the road now :) there in China. The air was clean. The improvements in their wonderful historical relics, heritage, and art, ... The Forbidden City, was clearly polished to it's great past, from when I was there 4 years ago. I have a true admiration for the Place, People, and Culture.

My personal opinion again, and I will make this claim. There are GREAT opportunities in the Business and IT in China. I have found that many of the companies focus heavily towards the lower end of the IT pyramid. Mail, Telephone,no Sametime (IM), no Calendar in many cases. ... There is great opportunity in working with these companies for the Lotus products, to increase the value, efficiency, productivity, of their companies, but we need to help many of these companies establish a strategy for their Business, and we can easily start that by helping them see a common strategy in their Industry, (cite - Geoffrey Moore "Bowling Alley"). This is of no surprise, ... as a lot of this hasn't been viewed as highly consumptive in China. At first, I thought it was largely about being cost conscious. However, after talking with many customers, more and more I am realizing that SOME (not all) companies just don't have the proper frame of reference to look above higher in the IT pyramid, and need help to understand this. I have theories on why that is, and will follow up on that in a later update, but I will just say that there is a clear and distinct correlation.

Last bit to this. Do you think that there could be a correlation between these 2 pyramids? In other words, on a personal life based "Self Actualization", can that person only be focused on the lower part of the "IT Pyramid"? Conversely, can a non-Self Actualized person want to reach up and pursue BP/IT Actualization? Personally, I think that the corollary's are very tightly linked. In other words, I don't think that a person that is lower on the Maslow chart, will have the Actualization personally to pursue at great endeavor very far up on the IT ladder. My own personal opinion only. BTW, I am making no claim to a corollary between each level between pyramids, it is more a comparison of self realization, vs. business/technology usage realization overall.

Brentus Esotericus

I, Brentus Esotericus : Communication, Information, and Open Standards

Brent Peters — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:46:46 -0400

Through the cold war, and I have read many books, the US military had long placed "electronics/communications", at the highest levels of their list. Others would place it on weaponry, ...
I found this interesting, when I was younger, but at closer look through history, I often found that this was one of the most critical and fundamentals in any endeavor. The ability to communicate accurately, or the ability to take advantage of opportunities IN communication. This is loosely done, as this is a paper on it's own.

I will break down the communication in 2 parts:
1. The ability to share information between people, in a specific way or method. (producer/consumer) (peer2peer)
2. The ability to perceive information, react, and change history. (opportunist).

I will start with the Opportunist first (item 2). History can be altered with peoples ability to communicate, and capitalize on it. When a political feud began between the North African territories (Boniface) and Rome, some assistance was sent to a Geiseric (a vandal). His perception, cunning, and observance, allowed him to chase an opportunity. This was one of the pivotal moments in history in which the fall of the roman empire was sparked. His ability to perceive what was really taking place, and react. OK, a somewhat loose connection. One man!

Fast forward to 20th century. When the Bolsheviks took over, with the October Revolution, or even attempted, one of the first things they would go after the newspapers and telegraphs. In the early attempts, this failed, as the Czar recognizing the vitality of this, usually had these well guarded by the Czar's guards. In the success of the October revolution, however, they succeeded control and was mandated as to what information could be communicated through these mediums.

Look elsewhere, I won't mention more recently as not to offend any peoples of more current times. In any modern invasion, however, communications is vital, thus disrupting it is also, ... US Military. US investment in intelligence, satellites, ...

Standards come up on how to communicate, (Item 1), the Producer/Consume:
1. Well after the work against Rome was done, there was a rather dark period on communication. One man was pivotal in history in constructively pulling together a standard of the written word (communicating), as a key pillar in building the Holy Roman Empire. That person was Charlemagne. His standard was, named after himself, called "Carolingian Miniscule".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolingian_minuscule
Carolingian or Caroline minuscule is a script developed as a writing standard in Europe so that the Roman alphabet could be easily recognized by the small literate class from one region to another

This standard or unity for the written word, helped to make sure that manuscripts could be more easily read and interpreted from one area of the empire to the other, which before was found to be extremely difficult.

Printing later came, even standards on terminology of printed letters, like "uppercase" or "lowercase", these came from the capital letters being stored in the "uppercase" or drawer of a typeset desk, or the "lower" letters, being stored in the "lowercase" drawer of the typeset desk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppercase Manual typesetters kept them in the upper drawers of a desk or in the upper type case,

2. There have been standards around secure communication, encryption. Enigma (Germans), KH (US), ... the ability to communicate and prevent the Opportunist from taking advantage. One interesting point, not many people realize it but one of the best cryptographers of all time was who?
He even had a few "crypto's" that withstood being deciphered, in one case, for over 150 years. One of those done in May year 2000. http://www.bokler.com/eapoe_challengesolution.html
BTW, that person was highly revered in the 20th century world of cryptography, even in US intelligence. His name was Edgar Allan Poe.

3. Standards for computers, ascii, file formats of various types, ...

Summary on file formats....

It is this last one that I am particularly on. We are at a point in history of having great change. Just like with the Carolingian Miniscule, we should have a modern standard for communication. A standard that is there for the good of all of humanity. Charlemagne's, while there are different views, I believe was in fact doing both for the good of humanity, as well as a somewhat selfish need of making the empire efficient. Now efficiency can be achieved through ODF standards, just as well as any others. The main difference is that as history has proven, having one company purely pushing on a file format computing standard is TOO much power for any 1 person or any company to control. So ODF, IMO, is extremely critical. Now, I know people will claim that a company of which I am speaking will actually adopt the ODF file format, but I feel that there will be a meager attempt at it, and thus there will be "fidelity" issues between file formats, ... and so people will more and more move away from ODF. Don't believe me? "History repeats itself...", please take a look at the lack of commitment and poor support for Posix 1003.1 and Windows NT, remember Java api's on Windows*, ... If I am wrong, then we are all winners. If I am write, then I have it well documented and can claim that I am a prophet.

So my point is, we should all be pushing and saving documents as much as possible in the ODF file format. When you send a file out, you could send it in ODF, if the other person doesn't have it yet, then write yours in ODF, and then save later to another format, but send both pushing that person to ODF also (viral acceptance). Make ODF the default. Always import and work again in ODF. Changing technology, ... is the easy part, introducing new behaviors, changing people, ... is very difficult. We must make a conscious effort to force ourselves and our colleagues to adopt this new file format. It is time to embrace this new inflection point in history, and start an open means of communication. The alternative would be one in which file formats change, and we become controlled by a single vendor to get access to our information. These editors are nothing more than a modern typewriter. We should keep the data that we type in as free and open for our ownership and not let it be owned by someone else.

Brentus Esotericus

PC Mag review on mac 8.5

Brent Peters — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:03:19 -0400

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/03/notes_85_big_change_for_mac_us_1.php

I never get tired of seeing good reviews of our products, Notes and Domino 8.X. In this case this was, IMO, a positive review of Notes 8.5 on the Mac. Wherever I travel, I am constantly commented on my usage of my iMac, and when I show them Notes 8.5, Sametime, Widgets, Sideshelf apps, people are really impressed by the Notes client.

"Survival of the Fittest", who coined that phrase??

Brent Peters — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:13:48 -0400

This phrase was actually coined by a man named Herbert Spencer. He was writing about a Darwinian approach, after reading the "Origin of the Species", towards socio-economics. What is really key about natural selection, isn't that is what most people think about the "Fittest" (many think it is the strongest, biggest, most powerful), but the "fittest" really means that ability to adapt to the changing environment.

in this way, we must understand that with Notes 8.x, one of the most fundamental elements of if was founded on these exact principals. In Notes 8.x, we have an innate ability to react to change. Whereas before, in Notes 7, everything was statically linked, ... now in Notes 8.X we have a great deal of dynamic, extensible, and flexible ability to adapt to any environmental change. For example, our ability with widgets, composite applications (especially with linking in any type of containers together with wiring, ...), ability for rich applications, or web applications, ... all embedded, wired, ... together, gives us an incredible ability to respond to changing environments. The ability to adapt to change in deployment with the Domino catalogs, also gives the customers this ability to adapt our products in the workplace for deployments, as well as integrating products together on the glass.

Now, the beauty about this adaptive model with Expeditor, now has us exactly where we would like to be. As in the case of Alloy, SAP integration, we can again do as much Rich client artifacts, java/swt/forms/designer, ... or even Web dhtml, javascript, ... So in the future, one could see that our products can take advantage of the web more and more, if we so choose, being able to have a more and more reuse between our web based products, as well as our rich client platform in cases of being able to run offline. So when we look to compare our future of Notes 8.x, we can easily see that we have the ability to already do many of the things that others are trying to do with offline/DBs and more chrome capability, ... we already have that here today in Notes 8.X with the use of Expeditor.

Brentus Esotericus (per nathan)

I, Brentus Esotericus : Communication, Information, and Open Standards

Brent Peters — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:17:16 -0400

3. Standards for computers, ascii, file formats of various types, ...

Brentus Esotericus

Ramblin Brents Notes and Domino Showroom

Brent Peters — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:48:43 -0400

OK!
Ya want some marketin' ? Well, stay tuned, maybe ya guys should try and figure out some creative ways to market this. By ya guys, I mean it in that generic, gender-free, uni-sex kind of way. Well, the message is quite simple. Like Kevin C, has shown before Green and Social. Well, "Green", let me break it down for ya.
"Green" is one of those newfangled words from those fancy people. I look at it like this. I had a home, it had 2 zoned air conditioning. I replaced the upper floor, and within 1 year, the electrical savings on that airconditioner saved me the cost of the unit, and within the second year, continued savings. Well, I did the same thing on the downstairs, when it didn't need it, and "Shazam!' You guessed it, more savings. So my summer electical bills in Raleigh went from being almost $400 per month to under $150 per month. Well, not to mention that my home had better resale.
So you are probably saying. "Hey, Mr Analogy, please tell me the relation to Notes and Domino". Well, you know we have some of this newfangledness in Notes and Domino 8.5.
Now a lot of people aren't even up on 8.x yet, although many have moved. So you can get the obvious 8.X savings, Template compression, ... for storage, I/O improvements, ...
DAOS - well, that can save you storage cost, and save you some admin cost (e.g. backups, ...).
ID Vault - well, this can save help desk, and employee productivity. Admin savings with Domino Configuration Tuner, server consolidation, ...
So when I have been talking with customers, and the litmus test has been in Asia, the receptiveness to upgrading to Domino 8.5, especially from 6.5.X has been overwhelmingly positive. By telling them that the return on investment in doing the upgrades will actually save cost in the long run. Now typically some of these regions (asia), can be some of the slowest to consider upgrading, however, in this case I have found them to be extremely receptive, almost on the order of 80% in the conversations. On top of that the notion of xpages, for some of their applications, resonated very strongly as well.
In the asia markets, I haven't yet found the receptiveness towards social computing, integration, ... as I have in other areas US/Europe, but once we being to shift those infrastructures towards Notes/Domino modernization, I am convinced that the values in these areas will become more self-evident.

So Domino 8.5, can save you money!
Notes can save you money! Oh BTW, if you want to ditch those expensive MS Office licenses and use Symphony, it will really save you money!
In a time of economical difficulty, in terms of sales and marketing, this is what we would call "opportunity".

30 Most important innovations from Knowledge@Wharton.

Brent Peters — Sun, 1 Mar 2009 00:13:42 -0400

I regularly read the Knowledge@Wharton, recently they published their Article:
A World Transformed: What Are the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years?

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2163
he list is as follows, in order of importance:

1. Internet, broadband, WWW (browser and html)
2. PC/laptop computers
3. Mobile phones
4. E-mail
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping
6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
7. Microprocessors
8. Fiber optics
9. Office software (spreadsheets, word processors)
10. Non-invasive laser/robotic surgery (laparoscopy)
11. Open source software and services (e.g., Linux, Wikipedia)
12. Light emitting diodes
13. Liquid crystal display (LCD)
14. GPS systems
15. Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions (e.g., eBay)
16. Media file compression (jpeg, mpeg, mp3)
17. Microfinance
18. Photovoltaic Solar Energy
19. Large scale wind turbines
20. Social networking via the Internet
21. Graphic user interface (GUI)
22. Digital photography/videography
23. RFID and applications (e.g., EZ Pass)
24. Genetically modified plants
25. Bio fuels
26. Bar codes and scanners
27. ATMs
28. Stents
29. SRAM flash memory
30. Anti retroviral treatment for AIDS
Interestly enough for me, is how so many people view the definition of innovation. I have always found the dictionary definitions of Innovation to be rather week. I wrote an internal paper on the subject, that I will post because I have often found, in my early days at IBM, that we were great "inventors" , but we tended to be lousy "innovators". I view the "invention" as the clinical science exercise of creating a technology. I view "innovation" as the application science/exercise. Innovation, as how do you get it to the market/customer base and nurture it's consumption. Xerox Parc invented the GUI, Networking, OO programming, Postscript, but it was Apple/MS that innovated (applied it), to the marketplace, Adobe for PS, 3Com for networking, ...

Whether you agree with the definition or not, I find it interesting for the Social networking side, it is 20, which is good, and I agree with, however I wish I would see the adoption at a faster pace in corporations, but still see many that are watching/kicking tires. If this is a high innovation, then more should be taking more seriously.

Personally, back to my previous posts on the difficulty in changing behavior, the more and more youth that infect the larger corporations and virally infect thought and new innovative ideas, the faster it will accelerate.

Quotes collected about Personal Character attirbutes

Brent Peters — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:54:12 -0400

I read a lot. Whenever I stumble across a particular quote, I write it down. I try and keep the list small. I try to valid myself against the list. Many people here me quoting these off the top of my head. Some people have asked for the list.

I have always found the first one with Aristotle the most important. I put it at the top of the list as a way to remember that to focus on character must be a strong attempt to FOCUS on a constant habit of behavior to apply these character attributes. Habit is hard to change, and goes back to it's original shape (like a rubber band).

My quotes on personal character attributes:

We are, what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. - Confucius

"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault." - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

If I have to choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness. –Theodore Roosevelt.
Brent -> see update on compromise

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) Brent

To be better off, is not to be better.

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
Brent - demonstrate commitment, visibly. See related next quote.

“It is not what you say, but what they hear.”

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value – Albert Einstein.
Brent - make sure your goal is to be of value to some cause greater than yourself, not to make yourself look successful

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character – Albert Einstein.

Brent - focus on character, reinforce through habit. Validate attitude and character.

“Character is what you do when you are behind closed doors.”.

"Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. Author Naguib Mahfouz

"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought." Albert Einstein

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on - Robert Frost

'God Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.' - “Serenity Prayer” - also in book Slaughter House Five

All Life is an Experiment – Ralph Waldo Emerson

UPDATED for clarity: My own POV, without giving credence to the blog terrorism, emotion, lack of ’informed judgement’, or even from absence of malice.

Brent Peters — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:45:34 -0400

So I actually hate to even use the word "terrorism" at all, but there is an analogy here. When I apply my Greco-Roman logic and reduce the very notion of terrorism to it's most simplest and fundamental purpose, it seems to me it is largely to "cause an establishment to overreact". You can agree or disagree, but the subject (POV -Point of view), means that it is certainly mine. That taking the concept of inciting a group or an establishment to "overreact" to statements made, could be IMO, a sort of blog-terrorism. To be absolutely clear, Not "terrorism" for the sake of "terror", but the shear concept of trying to incite an overreaction.
So some write things in a way to cause overreaction. Step 2 in logic would say, what is this persons fundamental purpose in using this method (blog-terrorism (not even sure it is a term)), that persons purpose is mainly to create overreaction. A lot of times they do this to bring more ATTENTION to themselves through the overreaction. Now what is funny, you now must ask your self, what is my very own "fundamental purpose" in writing this now?
could be
A. my own sort of terrorism, trying to stimulate this overreaction in others. Anyone that knows me, knows that I like being in the background. Observing. Playing the puppet master. More importantly, I am a good judge of timing. So why do I write more down now than 4 years ago?
B. Emotion - the older I am getting the far fewer things I find worth dying for, so my gut check says, it isn't this. At least not emotion that is stirred by Terrorism, Ignorance (meant respectfully as 'lack of judgement').
C. Truth - accuracy of it. Integrity. Character. The fundamental that I personally believe in.

Emotion / "lack of informed judgement" / absence of malice / ---- I will group these together with the exception of separating out for a moment "Emotion". Everyone that knows me knows I love to read. I love history. I love philosophy. I LOVE the fact that I can read a greek or a roman, and find that some of the very basic forms of Human Behavior and thought haven't changed at all. IMO, our environment (technology (MEDIA), medicine (biohealth and psychiatric...) mostly changes our own views or perceptions of ourselvesow when doing this. basis and our behavior, e.g. we can self-project/impose at a phenomenal rate of change. Emotion without judgement can lead to incorrect perceptions.
Now when basing non-judgmental/emotional views, this is a form of a class logic called a "fallacy".

I read some blogs and they have improper objectional balance in 3 particular ways.
1. Knows He/She is a blog-terrorist. She/He won't like the label that I have asserted. She/He will write a response to what I have asserted. She/He will look at the "Save and Post" button, and then say "I will wait and see how I feel tomorrow.". Depending on how THEIR next 24 hours goes, (behavior), will largely depend on what She/He does next in reaction to this post. I respect THEM, will have a beer any time, will share thoughts, ideas, innovation, customers, technology, family, and culture. We know each other. They know that I know who I am speaking to.
2. One person - They didn't view things quite in this way before, what I just wrote, but now will gut check their "fundamental purpose". Don't know this person well enough to know the response or the longer term outcome. What I do know, is I love watching.
3. One person - truly had the the right Ethos, Pathos, but a complete absence of Logos. I will go on about this. and will have no problems with what I just wrote.

Now, in it of itself, I nor anyone can separate out Character/Integrity from any/each of the 3. I have my views, BUT, don't have the logos to accurately WANT to pass judgement.

Now, my notion about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos is obviously about (Ethics, Passion, and Logic). So if I discount that some of the views are without proper intent, ethics, ... overreaction, ... then caution must be observed when BELIEVING and ACCEPTING this view. Emotion and Ethics, blog-terrorism, ... in my view can have a correlation.

Logos - Some of the views read. Was truly out of Ethics, the right Passion to an extent (In some cases over zealous to the clouding of Logic), but had an issue with Logos.
In this way, people will make statements that are what we call "Deductive Fallacies". (Hasty Generalization, Appeal to probability (think Murphy's Law (yes, a fallacy, modify slightly and it becomes a 'truth')). Now what I love even more is when people believe data from this unobjective/balanced view, and toss out logic/reasoning ("this person is my friend, it MUST be true!!!"). Now you have replication of bad data.
Now some people quote other "anonymously", but sometimes I can test these statements, a series of questions, in order to triangulate the original sources.

Now comes some of the truth. There are some things that are just flat out against the LAW. Human Resources, Insider trading, ... when some people write some of the things that they do, I seriously have to question their judgement. They are good people, but what planet do they live on? Why would I betray a trust that I wish to uphold on behalf of employess, customers, partners, ... Would you really trust a person like this? Would you trust a boss like this? Would you want to work for him? Would you trust a Partner that betrayed the law and the confidence of people? If you would, you are are better person than me.

There are also fallacies made about some situations. An example about 12 years ago, I worked on a project. This person had all of the visibility. He talked good. But me and my friends would laugh and say "this person couldn't code his way out of a while loop". Everyone thought he was the golden child, because his main Ethos/Pathos was all about how good he was, but there was no substance to back it up. Conversely. If a product is a GREAT product, e.g. I like my iPod (love it), the Logos of a winner can be there, but without the ability to have Ethos/Pathos to push it to the market WELL, most any other company, besides Apple, would have failed with it. Same positive example for people. Someone can be great and brilliant, produce better than anyone, but if this person doesn't have a good manager, one that "watches out" for the stars and accuracy of how to measure things, then people can be overlooked. I consider myself a good manager, I try to watch out for people, (just My POV). As a mentor, I tell people "deliver good, then as Mozart told Salieri in Amadeus 'you need to let people know you finished.' ".

Now, I love people. I love being a manager. I love motivating, sometimes through encouragement, sometimes through regimented discipline, sometimes through out right tough love. I get my kicks off of people improving and feeling better about their accomplishments. All people are different, they respond to different rewards, and respond to different induced motivation. I never like giving up on people. Have we ever lost some good people? yes. Do I feel like defying the legal system, corporate policy, personal ethics, trust integrity, an INDIVIDUALS personal privacy, because blog-terrorists, or ill-informed people think that they have the right to know this privileged information? NO!!

A lot of people here today, and that have left over the past years. We have all worked our butts off. The economy is in the crapper, no fault of IBM, Lotus, or anyone that has left the company or still here. The economy WILL heal. With the right focus, leadership, FOCUS, and FOCUS, we can actually get things back on track IN THE ECONOMY as a whole. For Lotus/IBM, I like our future. I think we have a great opportunity in front of us. We are standing at the doorway with great products. GREAT! We can offer the ability to save customers money, with many of the new products, THIS SELLS! We have a great team. My number one job as a manager, is to know my tools, (People, Processes, Info), and I think myself and all of the people in IBM have this down.
So again, I think our outlook is actually very good. I love Lotus, IBM, and the teams. I love the community. Focus, please criticize me (us), through focusing on what is needed constructively in the products, and not operationally. You don't know the extent of driving out cost savings in the processes to help on Notes 8, Domino 8.5, ... I am a fanatic for details. We ring out ever cent that we can. We have great products. We have a good roadmap ahead. I am actually VERY enthusiastic, on things you know about, and those things not yet told. Over time, you will be as well. Do you really not think WE (me), have been churning and preparing for this night and day, and don't have a good solution? Sorry to surprise the b-terrorist, but I do.

Notes 7, 3 years 115 features.
Notes 8, 2(small crew started 6 months earlier) years, really 1.5 years for the whole team. 1452 Features. We built the bottom floors of the house (Expeditor), and the top floors (Notes), in parallel. I (we) asked for advice on what to focus on, you didn't give me or the rest of us the FREE advice on which resources to use to pull of this amazing feat. Where were you then? Me and some of my staff took a few black eyes internally on some approaches that you never see, so we know best how to manuever in this wonderful corporation. Alot of terrorist were writing then, a lot of Logos absent posts, ... I must say, with the results that I read now (ZDNET todays post), and customer feedback, ... I will take this feeling any day, and not be too upset with the scorn on approach or tactics. Results matters.

When someone says that "X,Y,Z team is hurting.", "Things are bad because this person is gone, ...", Logos is completely absent. Fallacy sets in. FOCUS! These people are looking through the prism, often from other peoples ill-perceived views. Not offering any concrete data, and passing it off as FACT. My POV, you can believe if you like, but I know differently. They don't have the FIRST clue on what the staffing is, and remember some of those quoted started with a fallacy view anyway. What I want to know from you the community is the products. The products that we currently offered now, the ones that we give you in DP programs, the feedback. What you want to see, what you need, ...? More importantly wrt Lotus and you (the community) that I love is the comradery. I LOVE IT! But, Again, this is a business. We will continue the comradery. We will continue the close relations. We will NEVER be asking you advice on how to do resource planning, operational management, budgets, build efficiencies, ... . Don't get your feelings hurt, but I am honestly surprised that you would even consider that. When I joined Lotus exactly 4 years ago this month. I was handed Notes 7, and Workplace WMC. Step one was building a new client strategy, step 2 was building it. I would prefer that you judge us (ME) on the results of our products, GOOD(mostly what I get today) or BAD(almost purely what I got 4 years ago), and not judge us (me), on the way that achieve that. I have worked too hard in my career, I know what I am doing, and I work hard at running things MY way, good or bad. I haven't reach the point where I want to run things OPERATIONALLY by an external body. More importantly, I have trust, confidence, in the people, management, developers, ... running this group.

I hope that I truly offend no one. Resource Actions are painful. At time when my mom died (sorry to throw that in), but true, a rough holiday period for me personally. I will respect all parties concerned. I wanted to get your help in focusing on the products again, the problems at hand, ... I know what I can legally speak on, and know what I cannot. Dirty Harry (Magnum Force) "A man has to know his limitations.". I merely wanted to give a truthful thought here. Concern for people, and most importantly, "focus and move on". I want to be a part of this community to, and contribute.

Your ally,
Brent

Alloy customer feedback

Brent Peters — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:45:50 -0400

I am constantly amazed, proud, of how well the Alloy product (formerly codenamed Atlantic), is being perceived. Now, I won't say that it has ALL of the function that is going to be necessary to win in the market place, but what we will guarantee is that it is incredible flexible. While this effort, 2 huge companies coming together over a 1 year period. Merging development processes from 2 very large enterprise SW development companies. The complexities of building new infrastructure that would allow the wonderful world of open standards computing to connect these product families together. Oh, yes, and having to listen to me be "pushy" at times. These teams, IMO, worked together in such a harmonious way, that it was truly a pleasure to watch. On top of that again, it is the design of the product. The flexibility to be able to add new scenarios, customizations, ... that will make this a true winner in the marketplace. According to Darwin, it isn't necessarily the biggest/strongest that will/can survive, but it is those that can "adapt to change". So the flexibility of this environment is incredibly valuable here. The ability to make changes in the environment, and not have to constantly worry about touching the client (Notes) desktop is critically important. See also ability to deploy artifacts on the client desktop in one of my previous blogs.

We have had great feedback from our Design Partners, Beta testers that came in house, and even Analyst feedback. Please see feedback from a beta testers blog.
http://blog.msc-mobile.com/2009/01/27/1233047340000.html

While I know that we still have more work ahead of us, and I look forward to seeing these teams work, I am incredibly optimistic by the capabilities that are being shipped in this product, as well as the demand that is there for our joint SAP and IBM Lotus customers. The value in terms of business need, immediately, as well as the flexibility for continued adaption of user scenarios in the customers environment.

When I said the teams worked in "a harmonious way", you might say that if the 2 companies had instruments, then "Alloy can DUET better". PS: microphone " ... is this thing on?"

Ludwig Nastansky University programs honored.

Brent Peters — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:27:00 -0400

I wanted to write a note of appreciation on behalf of an award that I presented to Ludwig some time ago.

At the end of last year, I had the extreme pleasure of recognizing Professor Dr. Ludwig Nastansky with an IBM Faculty award at the end of last year, during my visit to PowerSphere 2008. It has been a real honor, over the past 3-4 years, to call Ludwig my colleague and friend. What I am truly amazed at, with Ludwig, is the number of people that he has impacted with Lotus and IBM products especially in Germany and in China, but also includes other geographies across the globe.

The man's brain doesn't stop. He is constantly innovating, thinking of new ideas, more and more creative ways to use the products that we have built, and even extend the products that we have built with products of his own. I love hearing both his ideas, as well as the passion and conviction for which he presents them.

Whenever I meet people, especially in Germany, often times their schooling, or mention of Ludwig will come up and they will often times tell me that they had studied with Ludwig at the University of Paderborn. Some of them work in my group today. So I am incredibly impressed with the legacy of skills, business opportunities, ecosystem resources, and most of all passion that Ludwig has instilled in the community on behalf the IBM Lotus business. On top of all of that, is the great work that he has done with GCC. He is highly recognized around the globe. He has talked with customers, who with their respect for him, took a lot of consideration in moving to the IBM Lotus business.

Now, as for Ludwig, while I have never asked him his age, he is probably around my age of 46, give or take a year or 2. So I am not writing this as in I think that he is going anywhere, however, as I a sincere note of appreciation on all that he has accomplished so far in his career. As his journey continues down this path, it will be a continued pleasure to watch him travel it.

Now, while, I am probably trying to make Ludwig blush, it should not go unsaid as to the activities of many others that are doing great work in this University area in Germany as well as in China. Two more names that come to mind are:

Dr Pei Wang-Nastansky, who has also done incredible work both in Germany, and especially in China in Shang-Hai. As you guessed by her last name, if you don't know her, her husband is Ludwig. She is a very lovely lady who has a great deal of passion and enthusiasm for the technology industry, and especially as it pertains to IBM products. She has helped to reach and and evangelize that value of Lotus Notes, Domino, Symphony and many other products in to this wonderful emerging market. There is a wonderful program that she is involved with; Tongji University Shanghai. It has had a great influence on the students, and I look forward to seeing the talent that gets harvested from her efforts.

Ms Prof. Dr. Edda Pulst, Groupware Competence Center, University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen - Edda is also extremely passionate about her work with IBM Lotus products. She has a great deal of experience and has done wonders with the Domino Notes product family, and especially has spent a great deal of time and attention on the exciting world of Social Computing with the IBM Lotus Connections products. She has also opened up to a new world in Abu Dhabi and Oman with her teaching in these areas. She is a very dear and lovely friend, who coincidentally shares my love for the German culture, music, history, art, and literature. As with *Nastansky's I am very pleased to call her a colleague in our industry, especially in our Lotus products, as well as a friend.

This is a small token of my gratitude towards my colleagues in this space. There are more wonderful University program there, and I look forward to getting to know more faculty and the program that they are engaged in.
However, I just wanted to say, that I hope that they are all as passionate, creative, and innovative as the people and programs that I mentioned above.

Friends, Romans, and Customer/Business Partners, lend me your eyes. Sales Technical Enable materials on external site for customers and Business partners

Brent Peters — Wed, 4 Feb 2009 16:40:37 -0400

I have had several calls from Business Partners and even some customers for some external enablement materials to help sell and communicate to their customers or their bosses, the value offered with Notes and Domino 8.5.
http://www.netvibes.com/tcoustenoble#Welcome

Thomas shared this link with me, I haven't sifted through it yet, but feel free to poke there as well.

Word !

PS: sorry for my unusual writing style, as I think Nathan worded it :), I just love living with the scorn.

Madam Brent, and the crystal ball series; Linux Desktops will times change?

Brent Peters — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:26:13 -0400

We have been saying for years now that the Linux Desktop would have a major impact in the Client OS world. Remember the IT budgets years ago? Prior to Y2K, do what you want. After Y2K, things got tougher on IT expense. You thought it was tough then, ask your customers, your IT departments, ... how they are doing now? A budget back in 2005 was a spending spree vs. most people that I talk with today. So what will happen next? When I talk with customers, more and more these days, I will ask the customer in the room "Which one of you is the CFO, or from Finance?", almost 100% of the time, they are now there with the IT/Dev execs, ... customers. Why? In some cases, IT departments even report right up through the CFO. IT has often been viewed as a Business Liability (expense), with not much in terms of true offensive plays. Sure, some companies do take great advantage; leverage IT for the sake of their business in stead of the other way around. So with tightening IT budgets, the IT orgs will (and are now) at the point where the have to make some very important decisions. "How much is that desktop platform really worth to me? ". In the flavor of Marcus Aurelius, we can break down the requirement into it's simplest form:
Windows XP:
1. Need an OS as a platform for running some stuff. These days, for most modern companies, not everyone needs to run Win32 apps. Let's say most use Win XP.
2. Need a Browser (could be IE in this case).
3. A good ICE (Integrated Collaboration Environment), for messaging and Collaboration. (No comment, let's say it is Notes/iNotes, ...Sametime, ...), ok, let's say they even had Outlook.
4. Productivity Suite (software typewriter, in the vane of SmithCorona or IBM using PowerPoint, Word, Excel, especially).
5. For some percentage of a customer population, let's say 30% of an Enterprise's user segment, let's say that they need to run some Win32 apps.

Let's use sed (for my LInux/Unix friends) sed "s/Windows XP/Linux/g" and replace the above environment for Linux.
1. Linux (Ubuntu), free.
2. Firefox, as a great browser
3. a Good ICE environment (Still Notes/iNotes, instead of that other one from competitor W).
4. Productivity Suite (Symphony), or if you like, there is another alternative, in the form of Open Office that ships with the OS platform as well.
5. If you need some of your population, let's say 30% on Windows XP still, fine, but could also have them using emulators, or run on vmware. Let's say you at least save 70% of your enterprise on Ubuntu, and only have 30% or wayyy less on Windows XP, this is still a great opportunity for tremendous savings.

Now, I use to make this argument all of the time. Many customers would take a small percentage to go to Linux, edge-case/boundary workers, ... maybe someone in manufacturing, services, ... locked down desktops, ... these are great places to start such a platform adoption, but in the past has been a very small percentage. However, 2 key elements have occurred to have a major impact on this.
1. Those boundary workers have been now seen as not just a way to save on a little IT budget, but now these are being seen as pilots. They are looking at the problems ahead with their IT budgets and rethinking "how has this linux desktop been doing for us?".
2. The economy has certainly been adding fuel to the fire for item 1. While the economy can be a real nuisance right now, it is a forcing function for IT orgs to take the long awaited look at "how are we spending our money? Since the budgets are decreasing, time for me to reprioritize how I am spending my $s. Do I spend it on really IT to help with driving the needs, cost, and efficiency of my business? Or do I spend it on an extremely pricey Client Desktop environment? ". A CIO, at one of our largest companies in Germany communicated back to me, that after our discussion and seeing the stress on IT budgets, he actually installed Ubuntu/Symphony on his wife's desktop at home. She never had any questions, and loves it. He wanted to use her as a litmus for his users.

The opportunity in the emerging markets is enormous!!!

So, customer will start looking at this more seriously. Even more interestingly, is customer that I talked with about this less than 4 months ago, several of them are now coming back and are SERIOUS about how to move forward on this.

I cannot compare prices here, but, the wise person that has budget constraints certainly should consider comparing the prices.

While I don't expect the adoption to shoot through the roof in the next few months. I will say this. I would not want to be a vendor that has very simple (couple) of product sets on the client desktop, and if almost the entirity of revenue come from only this product stream area, this would be dangerous. The law's of economics is catching it. Fundamental issues with their business model will/could emerge. Coase's Law will definitely drive down during this period, because of economic issues.

There will be an almost anti-pattern, temporarily, based on coase's law as Linux has a great oppt'y for this resurged market insertion point. Then the Law will rebalance. BTW, I only got off of Unix/Linux back in 2001. For more than 1.5 years, I have been solely on Linux and Mac.