The media machine is in full production, pushing negativity regarding the future of economies on a global scale.  I was pondering this on my drive to the office today.  I stopped and filled up the tank to the tune of 97 cents a litre. A few months ago that was $ 1.35.  The US dollar has rebounded, which is good news because we export our software worldwide and often get paid in US dollars.  Our existing US bank account all of a sudden is fatter.  The competitor that was more expensive now has a lot of talking to do to justify his price over ours.  There are deals out there that only a few months ago would have been unheard of.  My mortgage is coming up for renewal and the chances are I could get it for under 4%. Yeah the banks are less likely to provide credit for running the business, but when did they ever provide credit for running the business.   It is not all bad.  If the media could talk about some of the good rather than all of the bad, then perhaps it would not be so bad.

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Gary Walsh October 24th, 2008 12:23:48 PM

One of the problems with custom development is that no matter how good the requirements are up front, it is hard to anticipate every situation when the app goes into production.  The benefit of a commercial application, should be, that over time the broader user community puts it through its paces and exposes what is really required.  Every collaboration process, no matter how simple, has many ramifications even if the process itself is defined as simple.  We recently delivered an application for reviewing training matrixes.  These are spreadsheets that define processes within a manufacturing company.  They needed to be reviewed every 90 days.  Sounds simple.  10 days before the review is due, an email needs to be sent.  This is a requirement for the ISO QMS certification.
Our Docova web based document mgt system has workflow capability and a review policy feature whereby you can flag documents that need review on a regular basis.  It looked like it would work out of the box.  We had put a lot of thought into the design of the review policies and we had features such as escalations that would flag people if the review did not happen as it should.  In this situation, the customer had the requirement that revisions are tracked.  Not a problem, we have full version control too.  A couple of issues that came out when we looked at this more carefully was that the review policy needed to act on only the current version of the training matrix, not the past revisions.  That looks like a small change but when you take into account the workflow that has to happen before the new revision is approved, the ability to retract releases, promote past releases, change document ownership as resources change, and take into account the security model through all of this  it turns out to be pretty complex.  Docova benefits from this experience, and just keeps getting better and better.   I am amazed that some document management products claim that they do things like version control, but they are so limited in capability that they could never work in a production environment.  Making a copy of a document with VER added to the document name is not version control.    I am starting to believe that there are no simple processes out there.  If someone says the process is simple, chances are they have not thought it out carefully.

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Gary Walsh October 24th, 2008 11:51:50 AM

At the UK User Group meeting I demonstrated our Docova product to many people.  On the last day the visitors to the booth had tailed off, and it was mostly just business partners standing around waiting for the rush during the next scheduled break in the sessions.  I recognized many of them.  Bill had been around for years, and was famous for his dancing at Jelly Rolls (think it is his birthday about then) during the Lotusphere week.  Paul was a well known blogger.  I tagged some of them and asked if they would take a look at something. The something was Docova, our web application framework.  I showed them a UI that looked like a Windows app, even though it was in a browser.  Right click and you get the context sensitive menu. I created a view on the fly, adding my custom fields to columns, changing the colors, adding totalling of my custom fields, all as a common user.  I then clicked a button and pushed it out to Excel.  I created a custom form, and had it on the web, complete with custom fields, workflow, version control and much more, in about 5 minutes.  I could drag and drop content from email, even if the browser interface was not open.  When I attached an Excel spreadsheet cell data was automatically extracted to META tags.  I got several Oos and Ahs, but the question that kept coming up over and over again, was "Is this Notes".   The booth started to fill again, this time with associates of the business partners who sat through the first demo.  Nice to get Kudos from your peers.

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Gary Walsh September 30th, 2008 12:22:37 PM

This is becoming a broken record..... "We really like your solution, but, we are planning on moving away from Lotus Notes/Domino and as a result a Lotus based solution is not something we want to pursue."  Granted, over the last 15 years many companies have talked about moving away from Notes, but it was mostly just talk. They could not get the business case to work.  It is the frequency of hearing this that seems to have accelerated, and the number of customers who are actually doing it. Several Lotus Partners we know are  specializing in this type of work.  There is good money to be made.  Notes apps do not translate very well to other platforms, so if you are recoding it in something like .Net, then it is a long term project with a very good revenue stream.   At first I thought this was a North American trend, but I was recently in the UK visiting some prospects and I heard it again.   Ironically, or web framework comes into play in this scenario.  Moving the mail is relatively easy. There are many good tools and even the exceptions are well documented and there are work arounds in many cases. The Notes apps are another animal entirely.  The obvious solution is to web enable them, and any tool that assists with this process is a benefit. If the tool, Docova in this case, provides the majority of the UI then you are quite far down the path.  It is not a silver bullet, but it is much better than trying to web enable from scratch.   Mention this trend to some of the die hard business partners or the old school Lotus folks and they simply reiterate that this comment has always been around.  When the internet came around, everyone said Notes was dead, but it never happened.  Lotus has an installed base of xxx million seats...yadda yadda yadda.  I know all of that, but that broken record is still playing, and it seems to be gaining volume.

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Gary Walsh September 30th, 2008 11:25:21 AM

I heard last Wednesday that Jamie Houston had passed away.   Jamie worked as part of the Lotus team...forever it seemed.  A feisty, outspoken ball of fire.   Jamie was diagnosed with breast cancer some time ago. She was relieved to hit the 5 year cancer free mark, only to learn a year later that the disease had reappeared.   Still she was always positive.   I am really going to miss her. She was a true friend.  I wish I had a better picture of her. Here she is with her adopted cat Sid.

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Gary Walsh February 25th, 2008 12:33:51 PM

My name is Gary Walsh, and I am a crackberry addict.  (Group echos...hello Gary).

It didn't happen the traditional way.  I was not a typical propeller head experimenting with technology.  I was almost 50 at the time I started using, moving into that stage of life where the last thing I needed was another keyboard, especially one I had to operate with my thumbs.  I won the damn thing at a RIM event at Lotusphere two years ago. I didn't even want to go, but Scott dragged me out of bed for the early morning breakfast event thinking there could be an opportunity.  I told him we had enough initiatives on the go, we did not need another, but I was too sleep deprived to argue.  

It sat in my desk drawer for months, the box not even opened.  Then one day it happened.  My old and battered Nokia cell phone died.  I needed a new phone in a hurray so I activated the Blackberry. Voice plan only I told the gal on the phone, but she gave me some sort of deal on a data plan, free email for a month.  What the hell I said to myself.  I don't have to use it.  Little did I know.

As a phone it worked fine, and it had some games that kept the kids entertained on long trips in the car.  I told them it was a gameboy and they bought it.  I did not bother with the email because I thought people would respond to the blackberry account. The last thing I needed was two email accounts to check.  There was no way I was going to take the time to install a BES server to integrate mail and calendar for only one user.  Beside, nobody would let me near the server anyway.

I was sitting in Union station one afternoon waiting for a train and got tired of reading the free rags regurgitating the same old news. I pulled out the Blackberry and clicked on a help icon on the desktop, and started to read.  It said I could change the outgoing email address so anyone replying would be doing so to any email account I entered...like my Notes mail account.  I knew from past experience that I could put a forwarding record in my person record to direct email to the Blackberry.  I tried it and it worked.  I had an air card on my PC, so wireless email was not new, but this thing took no time to boot up, and it would fit in my pocket.  Hmm.

I then discovered the web browser. This device used something called the Rogers Edge network.  I had tried a 7500 series Blackberry and browsing the web sucked...it was so slow.  But this thing was fast. Granted pages looked different because of the screen size, but I found I could Google, do Canada411 address look-ups, go on client web sites to get contact info when I was on the road, that kind of thing. The screen resolution was amazing, and it was readable even in direct sunlight. Goodbye air card.

Then someone emailed me the URL for the Exeter  Aviation weather.  I was going to look on it when I got to my PC but thought what the hell, it can't hurt to click on it.  In seconds I was looking at a radar image of Southwestern Ontario showing thunderheads and rain showers in vivid detail.  I sat there for a few minutes, stunned.  I fly a little homebuilt airplane, and what I was looking at was onboard weather radar, good to the last 15 minutes, in the cockpit.   That type of thing is available, but cost thousands of dollars, and now I had it for almost nothing, on my phone.  It was insane.

I kept forgetting to forward my mail in my person record before I left the office, so I was always calling the guys to add the forwarding record.  Dave eventually had enough of the interruptions and wrote me an agent in a Notes database that I could hit from the wap browser on the Blackberry to do the redirect.   It was my first custom web app for the Blackberry. The voices in my head became so loud I could not concentrate on normal tasks. I would be eating dinner and blurt out..."maybe I could update sales call status info on the road..or enter timesheets..or..or". I would come around to find my wife and kids looking at me like I had two heads.

I found I had trouble sleeping. I would be up all night surfing the internet to see what else I could find.  It was like a floodgate had opened. Someone had a Blackberry interface to our CRM so I could I enter my sales calls and look up sales activity, I didn't have to write a custom app.  Sametime became available so I could keep in touch with the team in realtime via instant messaging. I tracked down DV, and he said the BES and Sametime install would only take an hour or so...and he was right.   Now customers from all over the world were pinging me using the chat link off our web sites...regardless of where I was.  I could respond to their sales inquiries and support issues almost immediately and direct them to the right person.  

Then I found the bluetooth GPS software that I was hoping for.  Most of the GPS systems available on the Blackberry were directed toward earth bound drivers.  I wanted one that measured distances in a straight line, not via the roads. Something that made sense for an airplane.   I wanted one that was not wired to my car.  One that traveled with me wherever I went.  Sure it was impressive for the car. If I needed to find a customer all I had to do was enter the address and a voice told me where to go, when to turn, when I was there.  TomTom provided that, for about $ 500, and you had to carry another device.  More important to me I now had airspeed, line of sight distance and heading. It even had a moving map to show your track.  That was something I could use in the airplane.  I had put off buying one of the aviation specific ones because they were so feature bloated, I didn't want another device to carry around, and they cost $ 500+ when a good old map was only $ 29.  This was just too cheap to pass up. It cost $ 80 for the bluetooth receiver and $ 50 for the software. Most important, it was on the same device as my phone and email. Oh my God!

And then the unthinkable.  I was getting out of the car. It was a hot day, and I grabbed the Blackberry from the console of the car as I got out. It slipped out of my sweaty fingers.  Everything slowed down, and I could hear the sound track from that fight scene in the Matrix as it tumbled towards the pavement.  I thought I had it, but my panic reach only managed to launch it higher and further away.  It landed with a sickening crash.  I immediately picked it up, but it was too late.  Gone was the glow from the screen.  The red light beat with a regular pulse but there was no screen.  Using all the power I could muster....I screamed.  That was last I remember...and I woke up here.

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Gary Walsh September 4th, 2007 07:55:16 AM

IBM formally released Lotus Connections – their version of MySpace, FaceBook for the Corporate world. Through a suite of integrated components, Lotus Connections is designed to unlock the hidden pockets of knowledge by exposing one's expertise, skills, knowledge, 'what I subscribe to', 'what I'm working on', etc to the rest of the organization. With Lotus Connections, users can easily find subject matter experts in profiles, create and join like-minded communities, and exchange ideas and resources through blogging and shared bookmarks. A  demo from IBM is here (no reg required).

Sounds fantastic - I no doubt believe senior executives see the power of Lotus Connections, especially inside those organizations where it’s difficult to have downward visibility into ‘who really works for us’. As someone who readily shares, I definitely see where Lotus Connections will make my life easier and make me more effective. For organizations where knowledge is instrumental for a competitive advantage, Lotus Connections will definitely help. But is right for you?

Your Culture Could Hold You Back

Unlike most software, Lotus Connections derives its core value from the 'the more people that use it, the better it becomes principle'. The more people sharing knowledge, the more connections that can be made - the more value it can potentially generate. It’s not the same as providing the entire organization with personal productivity software like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice – people can become productive on their own.

For high-trusting (“Open and Honest”) corporate cultures who readily share information already - adding Lotus Connections will only expedite those excellent behaviours. If this is you, then they’re ready for Lotus Connections. However, those cultures where power is derived from your position in the hierarchy (think Manager vs. Leader here ...) and where knowledge workers have a hard time trusting their managers, Lotus Connections will probably fail as an initiative.

The Challenges are ...

The idea of sharing knowledge and expertise is nothing new - think back to the Knowledge Management days of the mid-1990's. The central issue that prevented most Knowledge Management initiatives from flourishing was the whole Content Ownership. Many authors became frustrated by the amount of time involved and the lack of sharing amongst their peers - creating a sense that they were getting very little in return for their hard work.

While Lotus Connections is definitely a quantem leap forward from a technology perspective, it doesn't address the fact that some people (firmly) believe that 'Information is Power' and that ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’. If you're the 'Go-to person' for X, why share it with others so they can become experts in X as well? If I’m the only person that knows X, doesn’t that make my job safe? While we can debate whether this personal strategy is relevant in today’s business world, the fact of the matter is that if you get enough of these people inside your organization, they are a barrier to a successful Lotus Connections deployment, and may ultimately sink it.

Before rushing out and implementing Lotus Connections, look at your business to see if your business processes and systems are ready. Don’t guess or assume, know. Ask questions like: Is our financial reporting affected by the cross-pollination of people across teams (How are P&L owners treated if their people cross-pollinate to work on new projects, new areas ...)? Do we promote, incent and reward sharing? Is there a connection into performance reviews and merit increases for those that share? How are we going to handle people who refuse to share? Are we prepared to remove them from the organization, if necessary? Can we remain viable with them in the organization? If Lotus Connections can ‘find’ all the experts for one particular project, do we allow them to come together to execute? What if they’re involved in other projects? Lastly, are we prepared to expose this information so readily to the entire organization?

Don’t get me wrong – I think Lotus Connections is a game-changer. Executed properly, and people will be exposed to information they didn’t think or know they had access to (ie ..“Has anyone worked in X Industry/environment? Does anyone know anyone in Company A? Has anyone ever had to deal with Z?.. etc). This could enable an organization to gain an upper hand to win more deals or market share, improve their R&D, create new products/solutions faster and/or increase the sense of belonging to the organization (thus reducing turnover).

You just have to ask yourself – “Are We Ready?”

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Scott Tomlinson June 19th, 2007 04:30:00 PM

Talk about taking a stroll down memory lane … Like most business, we’re advocates for controls on documents and files for versioning. With the current regulations (and even future regulations), companies really need to have a solid plan around their backup, archiving, and destroy processes (PIPEA challenges come to mind).

During a recent archive and destroy file process review, we were reacquainted with the first flash produced for the web site back in 2000. Watch for yourself …

We were really excited about the video back then – even though it's a bit dated now. Lotus Notes and Domino has changed since R5 (a short history here), but we’ve stayed consistent to our mission of helping companies and organizations increase their financial performance through improving their ability to collaborate and communicate as efficiently and effectively as possible. Talking about memory lane and R5, here’s the collection of Lotus TV ads featuring Dennis Leary that we all seem to enjoy!!

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Gary Walsh June 11th, 2007 10:35:00 AM

You would think being involved with Lotus Notes and Domino for 10+ years that you couldn’t teach this old dog any new tricks. Boy, was I wrong.

Recently, we were asked to web enable a Notes application, and make it look less ‘Notes-y’ on the web. As a test, I wondered how quickly Docova from DLI.tools (a venture by DLI) could accomplish this. From start to finish, it took me about 60 minutes from end-to-end – I was completely amazed by the ease of web enabling the Notes application within Docova, in a manner that didn't make it look it a traditional Domino web app. The real benefit was that I didn't have to learn any new API or language to make this work - I merely had to use my existing knowledge of Notes programming and the good old trusty NSF!

I'm working on polishing a rough video I made of the experience - I'll post it here when I'm done. If you need to webify your Notes Application(s), you might want to consider Docova - The total solution using Docova was actually less than a custom-built one, plus the customer received the benefit of leveraging and reusing the Docova web framework for Domino for their other Notes-based and web applications in the future without extensive investment.

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Gary Walsh June 4th, 2007 02:44:36 PM