Mainstreaming Lotus Notes in 2009
Before switching to an IT, I worked for a number of years in the Marketing Department as a Photofinishing Services Category Manager and also as a Business Analyst for a leading Canadian Retailer. With that background, now creeping to the bottom of my resume, once in a while, to the chagrin of many, I put my marketing hat back, issue some quick commentary about what my company or another company should do, then retreat to my safe IT world where the forces are reasonably controllable by coding or configuration settings.
So, here we go again, except this is not directed at a company (IBM Lotus) alone, but also at the Lotus Community.
2008 was an interesting year to read the comment threads on websites that post articles about Lotus' moves in the marketplace (Notes 8, Symphony, IBM's Open Desktop, etc.). I am referring to sites that generically cover IT news whose readers are not primarily "yellow". The old canards still come up in comments, like "Lotus Notes..people still use that?" and other enlightening displays of ignorance. Mind you, when articles about Vista are posted, the comments can be just as acerbic.
The question I'd like to pose to the community is this: How will you participate to make our strongest skeptics into believers? That is, for those who so boldly pontificate behind the keyboard without a current understanding of the product they are bashing, how do you enlighten them to at least to the possibility that Notes Domino has enough business benefit that it could be even considered strategically advantageous?
Answer: You need to get out there, onto the highways and byways where people travel, and and repeat the strengths of Notes again and again and again. The fact is, even mistruths, repeated often enough, are believed (MS are experts here). Even better, when you can show true and tangible benefits, AND repeat them often enough, you're on your way to transforming perceptions. Its simply a matter of volume. If a former Notes user, who had a problem with some old weakness of Notes, like say HTML formatting, doesn't hear anything about Notes for several years, and then suddenly there's some out-of-the-blue article on Notes, he'll of course not be too impressed, and may even dump a negative comment. However, if he sees dozens of articles, in different blogs, ezines, and other media he reads, some of those messages begin to get through and over time he may even think, "Hey, maybe Notes its worth another look."
In former years, we, as a community, and IBM as a company, made few attempts to make plays in media where Notes was not necessarily dominant. And when we made an attempt and got the old "Notes sucks" type of responses, we were outraged and retreated, grumbling about those Nimrod trolls. 2008 was an improvement with the new confidence in Notes 8, and 2009 with the release of Notes Domino 8.5 there is a real opportunity to break out of our insular community where we preach to the choir and have more "missionaries", so to speak. Only long, sustained, repeating, enduring effort to communicate clearly to our skeptics is required for any noticeable change over time. Quick hits without any frequency don't really do much, in fact in a way they can hurt. For example, maybe a young IT decision-maker doesn't know anything about Lotus Notes and they read a dozen negative comments and not much rebuttal. Of course they could become inclined to believe them, especially if there are common slogans repeated. But when one reads mindless, often emotional troll comments, and then intelligent, clear testimonies in a comment thread, the neutral reader knows which ones have legitimacy.
So to summarize:
Strategy A. There needs to be more articles put out in mainstream publications that clearly and succinctly bring out the feature/benefits of Notes Domino. Use of graphics, interviews, case study examples, and convincing arguments need to communicate the essential benefits of Notes. Emphasize that, as the world has evolved, so has Notes, especially of late. The frequency of these releases needs to be high enough so that the average IT professional will run across 4-6 Lotus articles a year minimum, which itself goes a long ways to demonstrate the legitimacy of the product.
Strategy B. The Lotus community needs to get involved in commenting on these articles in a genuine, non-defensive manner. Rebut the argument not the person. Point out the true benefits you and your org, and your customers have experienced with Notes Domino and let those speak for themselves. Engage the trolls only on the concrete points they offer. Ignore the crude, nonspecific comments which any intelligent reader will bypass anyway.
And this should all begin with the 8.5 release. If a sustained effort is made, the needle should begin to move one year from now.
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Mainstreaming Lotus Notes in 2009
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1 Ed Brill Permalink Roland,
I agree -- we need to provide more tools and the community needs to
use them more. There are some good ideas here and I will ensure
that they are shared within my team and others at IBM...
2 Gregg Eldred Permalink Roland: Excellent post.
While I have no problems blogging, tweeting, and commenting on
blogs, like this one, /. scares me. Will there be some sort of
webinar on overcoming your fears of responding to comments on that
site? :-)
3 Roland Reddekop Permalink @Gregg
If your concern is any forum where there is a gang up mentality,
the constant issuing of unsupported claims, and general abuse where
anyone associated with a particular point of you is demonized,
well....you can only reason with the reasonable. The point in
rebutting a claim like "Notes is a memory hog man!" is to be
patient, sane, reasonable and stick to the facts. If anyone reading
is an IT decision-maker for a company and they see Lotus
professionals responding consistently this way, that add
credibility in itself.
4 Charles Robinson Permalink I'm not sure why public perception of Notes is the community's problem or why we should be expected to do IBM's work for them. I get the "we're in this together" thing, but it seems like the community has done all the work for the last 10+ years while IBM has only grudgingly tolerated us. That grudging acceptance is only because of Herculean efforts of the IBM'ers who actually participate in the community, and they got the same treatment from IBM themselves.
Before I'm willing to do more for IBM, IBM needs to treat the
community better. Every other vendor does a lot more for the
community than IBM does. Some people at IBM get it, but most don't.
Perhaps the new GM of Lotus Software will be more clueful.
To the question at hand, when I participate in a discussion about
Notes it is with complete candor and no bias. It has both strengths
and weaknesses and I try to present both fairly. I don't think
anyone can fairly say that every criticism of Notes is without
merit, and there are some inaccurate claims made as well. I do my
best to be as fair as possible to both sides.
5 Ed Brill Permalink "Every other vendor does a lot more for the community than IBM does. "
Charles, you have to give me some examples here. I'm aware of the
MS MVP program, and other parts of IBM software are instituting
something similar (I haven't yet had bandwidth to look at it for
Lotus). But beyond MS, and maybe SFDC, other examples?
6 Roland Reddekop Permalink @4 Charles
Quote: "I don't think anyone can fairly say that every criticism of
Notes is without merit, and there are some inaccurate claims made
as well. I do my best to be as fair as possible to both
sides."
Absolutely. Since software is a human product, perfection will
never be attained. Honest admissions of unaddressed bugs and
particular applications where Notes would not be the best choice
(e.g. high transactional apps like airline seat booking is the
common example given) shows you're not just a rabid Lotus "fanboy".
Integrity and honesty are better than spin and fud.
Regarding your more sweeping statements about IBM's treatment of
their customers, it would be easier to respond with specifics. I'm
not as diverse as many of you all are with wide experience with
different software companies, so I just know that IBM's always been
fair to me. If I have an issue, I open an SPR and I work patiently
to resolve it. I get to go to about 3 free Lotus events a year
(T.O.), paid by IBM including free food! No, they've never flown me
to Lotusphere (and where are my free tickets anyway :-) but I
figure so far the relationship has been a good one from my point of
view anyway. Maybe the swag factor of those other companies
outshines Lotus, but I am ignorant of what I am missing.
7 Charles Robinson Permalink @Ed - My concern isn't about the kickbacks, freebies, or any other quid pro quo. It's about how IBM treats their user/customer community and how they participate in it. Go to UtterAccess.com, SQLServerCentral.com or xtremevbtalk.com and you will see Microsoft
employees participating in the discussions, complete with
signatures spelling out that they work for Microsoft.
Contrast this to IBM or Lotus. Other than you and maybe two other
people, I don't see anyone from IBM participating in any community
discussions. Even on the official IBM forums there is always a
disclaimer about IBM employees not monitoring anything. Off the top
of my head I could easily name half a dozen heavily used community
sites that Microsoft does not sponsor but actively and openly
participates in. Can you name even one for IBM or Lotus?
To me it shows a marked difference in philosophy. IBM defines an
extremely clear-cut line where their responsibility ends and it
does not include any commitment to customers outside of a support
contract. I really think the lack of widespread official IBM
community participation tells customers that IBM isn't interested
in the community. Other vendors (Microsoft, Watchguard, VMware, all
the FOSS products) understand that they need the customers more
than the customers need them, and they act accordingly.
You asked for examples and this is already long so I'll try to keep
this brief. I was on an Access community forum asking some
questions about the Access runtime engine. After a couple of months
of participating regularly I was contacted by a Microsoft product
manager and asked if I would like to join a customer focus group to
discuss the future direction of the Access runtime engine. If that
has ever happened at IBM I haven't heard about it.
None of this is a swipe at you, by the way. You're a small voice of
reason against IBM's draconian and antiquated policy and their
slavish adherence to it.
8 Ed Brill Permalink "Can you name even one for IBM or Lotus?"
Yes, one that my team owns. The Symphony forums are officially
staffed and responses provided, on symphony.lotus.com.
It's a model I'd like to do more of.
No offense taken, and I appreciate the examples. But I'd like to
see more other than Microsoft. I know they have a great engagement
model. Who else does, that provides -end user software-?