Sanity Check

Salvaging Lotus Notes' reputation is an ongoing battle. A few weeks ago, I was in  the board room of a prospective customer selling Lotus Notes (Foundations actually) and I was challenged to update their IT Director, who had ancient experience with Notes about 12 years ago (R4, R5?),  on how Lotus Notes has not stood still but has evolved, especially in the last few years to to embrace open source technology like Eclipse. I knew this org leveraged Linux  in their Data center so knew that focusing on how Notes leverages Open Source projects as large as Eclipse and Linux would be the right play. The proof of concept was my demonstrations of modern Notes applications. An added bonus was the fact that applications can be built once using XPages to run in the client, browser, and even Blackberry. Since I approached them positively, without being defensive, and showed a true current and future value propositions,  I believe talks with them will be ongoing after their upcoming strategy sessions. Another situation: This last weekend, I had breakfast with a very experienced Java Developer from a US Investment firm who remarked, "Oh Lotus Notes...I recall that clunky interface. You had to click on squares to launch things". I countered, focusing on the evolution of Notes, especially its leveraging of Java Server Face technology (aka XPages) as well as the port into Eclipse for both the Client and Designer. Seeing his iPhone, I added that clicking on squares to launch applications seems to be exactly the interface he appreciates on his iPhone. Even the old tabbed interface, rather than the windowed interface, appears to be in vogue for many successful applications today, especially web browsers. So there! His objections were rightly countered and since I did it respectfully and targeted what was important in his world, I know that he will not so quickly dismiss Lotus Notes as an option if it comes up through a company acquisition or future change of his CIO or IT Director.
 
So, my point is that Lotus Notes reputation can be salvaged if you focus on how Notes has not stood still, but has evolved to meet and exceed modern infrastructure requirements. But it seems that so often we have some hump to get over due to the very fact that Notes is 20 years old (or  young if you're a glass half full type) and people simply assume, without actual knowledge, that Lotus Notes has become legacy software.

In marketing, old recognized brands are both a value and a curse. You can probably think of brands have made a break with the past by consciously rebranding themselves (e.g. Kentucky Fried Chicken>>KFC). The last time someone called me in an attempt to rope me into the Amway MLM scheme, they used every brand name except Amway because they knew that would throw up too many red flags. I am not suggesting Lotus Notes has to rebrand in order to hide past sins, but a fresh incremental brand name might be useful. Perhaps that is what the Workplace branding was all about, though it failed for other reasons. Successful rebranding needs to preserve the best of the past and associate it with a positive direction. In a way, when a product evolves as much as Notes has, especially as we're on the cusp of a major expansion of capabilities with XPages, there comes a point where a product has metamorphosed to the point where you no longer refer to the creature  as a caterpillar, but as a butterfly.

I am thinking that Lotus Expediter Collaborative Development Plafform (the long fully descriptive name), or just Lotus Expediter for short is a catchy rebranding option. I can live without referencing the term "Notes" personally as the XPage multi-client, develop-once-play-anywhere applications is a very appealing paradigm, especially done in the JSF framework. Putting the primary emphasis on Lotus Expediter as a collaborative development platform which also happens to offer an out of the box bleeding edge email experience on the front end with a technically superior back end (think DAOS) would sell and also  be resistant against the smear campaigns by large competitors who succeed, not through innovation, but by pigeon-holing Notes in customer's minds as a legacy email application. So, though I can overcome FUD with targeted current facts today, it would be nice to make an end run around the "Notes" legacy baggage and sell the benefits of this metamorphosed product which has a bright future, solid direction, and rooted on the most successful concepts of Lotus Notes from the past.

I followed the link to Notes Domino Fixpack 1 published by several fellow  bloggers and downloaded the 8.5 Fixpack 1 for the Notes Client on Windows (I believe this works for client only or all client installs). For some odd reason, this FP is not listed on Fixcentral or in Passport Advantage. Also the file names for the download are back to the cryptic old code names of the past. There is a preliminary fix list published on IBM, but as to what is actually contained in this fixpack I have yet to see as there is nothing final on the site or in the actual download. If there is one thing I could magically change about IBM is consistency in how they do product maintenance releases. Anyway, I digress...I installed the client fixpack without any errors and maybe its just me, but the client seems to be starting faster. Perhaps its because I have gotten used to the client crashing on startup about 25% of the time where the progress bar slowly makes its way across the splash screen, then vanishes without any explanation. So maybe there's no actual speed improvement, but there's now less problems in the startup process that makes it appear to start faster...don't know, but I'm happy that I don't have to resort to the task manager and kill Notes processes as well as tell end users to log off/on and try again.

Well, according to Notes/Domino Fix List, the Gold Build of 8.5 Fixpack 1 is complete. I guess what's left now is the bureaucracy of getting authorized signatures (electronic no doubt) and pulling the right  levers and pushing the right buttons to get the incremental fixpack loaded up on Passport or Fix Central. One thing that surprises me though is the fix list presently lists zero fixes. It appear that the developer group has abandoned the Fix List application. No doubt they've moved on to some new internal facing system that does a better job for their purposes, but I miss the ability to review all the bug fixes as they were squashed. By the time a release was ready, I already had a good idea if it was a benefit to us or not. I also keep a list of SPR numbers that affect us and check these against the list of fixes to see if they are addressed. Not this time. Is it possible that the number of bug fixes was too embarrassing to post in public? What is the reason?
 

Yesterday my boss approved the purchase of the brand new course "Developing XPages using Domino Designer 8.5" from The Learning Continuum Company (TLCC) . Its on sale for the next 2 weeks at $699. TLCC courseware uses Notes to teach Notes. The content, exercises, and demos are all contained in NSF's. TLCC leverages Notes functionality like few other courseware vendors I've experienced. For example, they make provision for you to replicate the lessons and course discussion databases with the TLCC servers to obtain course updates/fixes as well as to participate in discussions with other students and the course instructors (requires sending a safe copy of your Notes ID to TLCC). This is probably the 7th or 8th TLCC course that we've downloaded through the years beginning in Notes Domino 5. 

Now I am not really an XPages neophyte as I've created a few simple applications, but there are certainly a number of walls that I need to break through before I can be confident that I can produce an XPage app with the same or better functionality as a Notes application in the same amount of time. With all the blog posts, tutorials, wikis, and sample databases out there on XPages, plus the fact that I was fortunate enough to attend Lotusphere this year (won a ticket) and attend many XPages sessions, you could argue that I have exposure to more than enough information out there that anyone with half a brain should be able to figure out XPages. Well, we all learn differently and personally, I tend to prefer a gradual systematic learning process which TLCC provides. I've found that once I've got a solid foundation with a tool, I can tear through the wikis and other resources as well as anyone.

I'm only about 20% through this 28 hour course and already I am psyched up, energized, and creating a list of mini and medium size XPage projects that I'd like to start tackling in the weeks and months after completing the course. Most of the projects are to add web functionality to existing Notes apps as well as refreshing some tired old web front ends. One of the first ones will be to replace the defunct web interface to a Notes Helpdesk application that never quite passed user acceptance. That was one of my first Domino web projects around 5 years ago and I never really got the interface fully working to my (or user's) satisfaction. Fortunately, along came Notes on a stick (Notes Nomad) and the customer found it very convenient to just continue using the rich Notes interface in the field and so I abandoned that effort. If at first you don't succeed, try try again. This time I'll be armed with XPages.

Adding external RDB access to XPages has been promised for a future release of  Notes Domino (post 8.5.1) making it a much more flexible, powerful, and even potentially mainstream platform for Web Dev. However, these sort of promises, as we have seen with other desirable features, have a way of slipping into the next next release or later if they don't make the list of priorities. If this is a priority for you, I highly recommend voting on John Mackey's Idea Jam submission here.

How many people still have their birthday celebrated after 500 years?

Looks like Microsoft's marketers have not have done the most thorough job in coming up with the branding name for their new search decision engine Bing!
At Lucky Chinese Restaurant, their fortune cookies have the usual fortune on side A and on side B they throw in a Chinese language lesson plus your Lucky Numbers for FREE!!!! :-)  Here is a scan of side 2 of my fortune cookie slip:


I guess that makes Bing a decision "disease" engine.