| Tim Davis September 2 2010 05:31:32 PMI just went to play StarCraft 2 and Blizzard's authentication servers are down so I can't play. What kind of nonsense is that? This isn't even for multiplayer, I just want to play my single player campaign. Battlenet down = no game. Then I realized that I won't be able to play this game on a plane, or in my garden (where the wifi is a bit iffy), or anywhere with no internet. I hadn't realized that Starcraft suffered from this problem, since so far I've never tried to play it without internet. There is an offline 'guest' account, but that would mean having to start all over again and my heart sinks at the thought. Is this the way that PC/Mac games are going? I only today decided to not buy Assassins Creed 2 because you need to be online every second for the game to work at all. I can't be the only one who wants to play a game while offline? Or am I? Tim Davis August 25 2010 09:32:40 PMThe Saturdays only made it to number 3.  Tim Davis August 20 2010 03:54:06 PM With the first run through only two tracks stuck: The Alchemist and Starblind. By the third listen, Coming Home and The Talisman had become accessible. Now (fifth? sixth?) I am loving The Man Who Would Be King and When the Wild Wind Blows. Just starting a new listen. I now get El Dorado and Mother of Mercy. I always have this trouble with a new Maiden album. The tracks have to gradually open themselves up. Prog metal ain't easy. Gabriella Davis August 19 2010 01:57:42 PMIt's nearly that time again - some of us have started booking travel arrangements for Lotusphere 2011 next January (30th Jan - 3rd Feb) and mentally drafting ideas for speaker abstracts. This year I will again be helping structure the SNT track along with Christian Holsing and Paul Mooney and after the great sessions we had entered last year I'm really looking forward to seeing what 2011 brings. Since last year I've also had a lot of people ask me how, as a new speaker, they can get a session at Lotusphere and here's the top secret, inside track, answer
Write a good abstract, on a great topic and send it in to the right track Last year in the SNT track alone we had over 140 submissions for 17 sessions. Working separately, Paul, Christian and I went through the 140 submissions and then sent our 'first cut' to each other to compare. In 90% of cases we agreed on choices so I thought it would be useful to highlight for anyone thinking of submitting who hasn't had a session before, the reasons why an abstract might not have made my shortlist - Not a clear description of what the audience will take away from spending 2 hrs watching your presentation. This is a training track so given the choice between 2 similar sounding sessions, I'll choose the one that has clearly stated deliverables for the audience
- A vague abstract saying something like "We use Connections a lot, people need to see how that works". The amount of thought / effort you put into your abstract suggests to me the amount of thought / effort you'll put into your presentation. A hastily written abstract doesn't fill me with confidence that you can commit to the huge volume of work a SNT takes
- Think of your abstract like a CV, you want to stand out and most attendees will only read the first few words of it before deciding whether to attend or not.
- An abstract that promotes your company and its great case study (not in this track) or your product (not in any track) no matter how useful you think those stories are
- Similar to the above, nothing that smacks of marketing (and that includes IBM). This is a paid for conference with a lot of options for people's time. They don't take kindly having 2hrs used up in being sold to
- Clearly written, spelt and grammatically correct English. Sorry and I know this is an international conference but the sessions are conducted in English and this is a teaching track - if we can't understand your abstract then will people be able to understand 2 hours of your session
- Enthusiasm about the subject conveyed in your abstract, but dial back the laboured humour. Some people can get away with it but I'd rather see you spent more time thinking about the content than thinking how to make your abstract funny
- A topic that's too broad. Everyone wants to present on "XPages"and there is only room for one session per topic - if you want your session picked then you need your own unique and interesting slant on it
- A topic that's too niche / geeky. This is 2hrs in a room with lots of people of varying skill levels. You can geek out in a 1hr session and just about expect people to keep up, but at 2hrs it's simply too much information too detailed and too fast. We want to appeal to as many people as possible
- A topic that would be uniquely suited to SNT and not one that has been submitted scattershot to every single track in the hope of hitting a bullseye
So having said that and based on having had a few abstracts myself accepted in the past, I'd like to extend an offer that Paul also has on his blog. Send me your LS abstract via email before you submit it and we will do our best to provide you feedback on it. We can't guarantee you'll get a session or even that our feedback will increase you chances, but if you genuinely want to speak at LS and want some input in putting together an abstract we'd be very happy to help out. Email gabriella@turtlepartnership.com. To clarify, In no way can we influence whether or not you get a session, even if we think your submission is great we won't know what your competition is until all submissions are in so your great session may still not get through. I know i'm busy drafting my own ideas for abstracts already and as always I wont' know until November if I managed to get even a single session so we're all in the same boat - but nothing beats the career high of standing on stage at LS speaking to your peers. Good luck! Gabriella Davis August 4 2010 05:31:01 PMIt was great being here at IAMLUG again this year and thanks to Chris and the entire team for their hard work and for the late night introduction to Ted Drewes frozen custard. I defy anyone to eat more than 3 spoonfulls of their Caramel Apple Sundae. I think the sessions all went well, at least I had good feedback from people and the room was full each time. It was great to meet up with everyone and even fit in a few drinks and a great dinner with Marie, Tom, Eileen and Matt last night. From here Tim and I head to Ohio today - a mere 6.5hr drive and from there to Chicago and home. Here are my presentations - all involved a lot of demo work which obviously is missed on the printouts but I hope they will be of interest anyway.
One Directory to Rule Them All? Yes! Speakers: Gabriella Davis Marie Scott Track: Administration & Infrastructure You’ve heard buzzwords like single-sign on, single userid, or authentication management, but also heard that they were a nightmare to implement. Or perhaps you always wanted to use another directory - like Active Directory for your Sametime, Web, IMAP or Traveler password authentication but thought it required a 3rd party tool or something installed on the Domino server? In this session we'll show you how to configure your Domino server to authenticate with either the HTTP Password or the LDAP directory password without a server reboot! We'll extend that idea to demonstrate how with a little bit of magic and a sprinkling of Tivoli Directory Integrator you can get closer to that simple single userid or directory system you’ve always wanted. Prevent Server Sickness Becoming a Pandemic! Speakers: Gabriella Davis Track: Administration & Infrastructure Domino is full of ways to help you identify potential problems and possible pitfalls. Find out why these early reporting tools like DDM, server analysis tools like DCT, and a healthy dose of pro-active management and calm planning can help you get control of your servers and return them to full health. Is it time for Sametime 8.5? Speakers: Gabriella Davis Track: Administration & Infrastructure In this session we're going to take a close look at Sametime 8.5 - you've heard about it but do you need it and if you do how do you deploy it? We'll start right in and take a look at the new Meeting Center and Proxy Server in detail and then look at each of the server components talking about what each one does and how they link together. Finally I'll show you some infrastructure options and some limitations of the current 8.5 release you really need to know about. . This session is going to move fast and cover a lot of ground but hopefully by the time we're done you'll have a lot better idea of what you need and how you're going to get there. Gabriella Davis July 29 2010 12:17:09 PMLast April I woke up to a SMS message from my sister who was travelling in Australia "Quick in order of preference rank your favourite movies between Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and Breakfast At Tiffanys. Need to know in the next few minutes" sadly the message had come through at 4am and I saw it at 8am so knowing I was already too late I replied anyway "Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Gone with the Wind" ..for those who care Casablanca is one of my all time favourite films. I love the book of Breakfast at Tiffanys too much to really love the film although Audrey Hepburn is wonderful and if anyone produces an edited copy without the toe-curling Mickey Rooney racist Japanese guy then I'll be first in line for it. Gone with the Wind is a film I like (I have the restored 4 DVD copy etc) but I hate Scarlett too much to ever list it amongst my favourites (sorry Rocky) Cue several hours later and I get a phone call from my mother at work "Just very quickly because I know you're busy, can you put these films in order? Casablanca...." "This is about Erica isn't it? She texted me on this exactly a few hours ago?" Turns out Erica had seen "something" in Australia she thought I would love and wanted to buy it for Tim and I as a 20th Anniversary present. Unfortunately by the time she got my message she was on her way to Hong Kong where the "thing" wasn't. Fast forward 4 months and my turns out Erica has tracked down the company in Australia, ordered the "thing" and had it shipped to the UK, paid import duty on it, discovered it was smashed(!), exchanged many emails with the company who sent it, got another one sent, paid import duty again and finally Ta-Da! it was here. In the interim months we debated what the present could be given the following things we knew - It was related to a film (in this case Casablanca)
- It was "very unusual" (as I was told by anyone who knew about it)
- It clearly was a piece of art in some way as it had to be 'made' and when a new one was sent I was told it was "made bigger"
- It was breakable!
Based on that we came up with the following ideas :-) - A jigsaw made up of a poster of the film
- A copy of the film with our names dubbed in place of the character names
- A copy of the script with our names replacing character names
- A film poster with our faces superimposed on it
- A diorama of a scene from the film (think Rick's bar with tiny model Nazis) --- this one was by far my favourite idea :-)
So imagine how delighted I was to receive our beautiful present today - film frames from the original 35mm version of Casablanca. Frames were personally selected by Erica. Hard to describe but it's lovely as you can see from the photos below. Now to find it a good place at home where the light can show it off. Love you sis.    Gabriella Davis July 27 2010 11:51:02 AMThis morning IBM sent out an announcement of Sametime 8.5.1 availability. The files will be available on the download site on Thursday 29th July. They are going to be many, many GBs in size so clear room on your bandwidth. Of course, I'm also now faced with the prospect of updating my Sametime presentation for IAMLUG next week to include all the 8.5.1 details that were previously NDA . A more paranoid person would think the Sametime team were out to get me by shipping 3 days before the conference - or does the whole world not revolve around me? The key things added (cut and paste from IBM announcement with my comments. Original announcement here ) New Clients - Microsoft® Windows® 7.0
- Apple Macintosh 10.6
- Linux® (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), Red Hat Enterprise Desktop (RHED), and Ubuntu)
.... so finally a complete client set. Previously we only had Windows support up to Vista.
New Mobile Support - Blackberry 5.0 devices
- Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 devices
.... iPhone support was already in 8.5
Also - Lotus Domino® 8.5.1 server
... as the underlying server for the Sametime Community Server which is the only component not running on WAS 7.0
- Linux on IBM® System z®
- Enhanced chat logging that includes announcements and chats over the Sametime Gateway
- Simplified Sametime client deployment (with the ability to activate Sametime Unified Telephony features via policy)
... the word "simplified" is fair compared to previous versions. I wouldn't say it was simple to do, just simpl-er with some planning
Not on my announcement but part of my testing in the beta program - Improved performance in meetings .. the big reason (along with the Mac and BB clients) why I'll be upgrading
- Improved server stability
- Clean up of many usability bugs that were there in 8.5
- In general I'd say this is the 8.5 product they should have shipped originally, it's more complete, more thought through in deployment and more stable
And now the SUT bit... Sametime Unified Telephony 8.5.1 was also announced today. SUT is IBM's GINORMOUS client deployment of telephony integration (remember all those demos you've seen on transferring calls from your mobile to your desk to your home phone via ST - that's SUT). For SMB customers or those wanting 'click to call' you are still looking at the established TCSPI solutions. SUT is very cool if that's what your company needs and can justify. It sells as a combined hardware / software / consultancy solution from certified providers (which used to just be IBM consulting but now includes one or two other hardware telephony skilled companies). Full hardware / software specs are here SUT 8.5.1 According to IBM, Sametime 8.5.1 itself offers better "Integration of video in Sametime Unified Telephony for a more compelling multimodal collaborative experience" - make of that what you will The key question for me is can we upgrade 8.5 to 8.5.1 cleanly and that's something I've left until the product shipped so I'll be trying that out this week. Mike Smith July 21 2010 09:41:05 AMThankyou to Carl Tyler who brought back a splendid New Zealand vuvuzela for Sue from his South African World Cup adventure. Apparently it was not easy to find but it looks great and is a fitting tribute to the NZ team who did really well (and never picked the ball up once). Can't get a coherent note out of the thing yet but we keep practicing (our neighbours are thrilled).  Mike Smith June 30 2010 10:02:29 AMThe new campaign is on digital screens throughout Heathrow's Terminal 5. So a good start - Heathrow dominates UK business air travel, T5 is the largest terminal complex, T5 is used by British Airways who have more flights from Heathrow than any other airline and Wimbledon is a major UK (and international) sporting event. The Lotus Knows digital screens are linked to the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament using a live data feed directly from the Wimbledon Information System, which is also run by IBM. Now this is the really clever bit - each screen then matches a BA flight number and destination on adjoining screens with the nationality of a tennis player and displays the live score of their match. So if you are going to say Germany it show a German player's result in real time. I like this idea, think its a smart way of showing the collaborative potential of Lotus, and have to say that it does prove that Lotus Knows more than you think.  Gabriella Davis June 15 2010 11:52:40 AMLike everyone else, I read John's beautifully written post yesterday and I'm sure like many others I felt his pain / sense of loss coming through. I don't really know John but I do have friends who are going through similar situations and I know they are similarly struggling with decisions about where they go next in their career and what technology they choose. I didn't, however, post a comment on John's blog because, much as I don't doubt the veracity of what he's saying or the reality of what a lot of Notes developers are dealing with, it's simply not my reality. So that got me thinking, why am I so positive about my career and the work Turtle is doing and Turtle's prospects? Is it because I'm relentlessly optimistic to the point of being naiive? Well possibly, but then I've talked about it with my fellow Directors at Turtle and they feel similarly. Is it John's argument that when you're in the eye of the storm, all looks peaceful and you simply don't notice what's swirling around you (paraphrasing him badly) - that's possible too, but I'm not stupid and in the 15 years of running Turtle I've often found myself in this position and my instincts have so far (touch wood) led me in the right direction. So why am I posting this? Well the number one reason is the 3 emails I received from customers this morning asking what was going on and if IBM were dropping Notes after reading the comments and the postings from yesterday. That's not John's responsibility and nor is it the responsibility of those who commented, but I wanted to state my view here for them and for anyone else who hasn't emailed me but is thinking the same thing. Now there's a big difference between my viewpoint and that of an independent or employed developer. For a start I'm not a developer I'm an admin. Secondly my focus is not on my personal career but on the business of Turtle as a whole - of which only about 25% is development. About 50% of our business is outside the UK, mostly in the US. So some key points that come from my reality: - Do I see the Notes / Domino / Lotus market going away?
From our perspective that's not happening this year any more than it has in previous years. The business continually evolves - some years we do more development than infrastructure or strategy projects, some years more support contracts, some more integration projects. We're having a good year, certainly not the kind of year that would make us want to go elsewhere.
I feel very uncomfortable typing that knowing that some people aren't but there is another side to the coin, I can't tell you why we are doing well and others aren't and I wish I knew so I could assure myself it will continue. It may be the breadth of services support, admin, strategy, BB dev, iphone dev, Notes dev, Web dev that has protected us.
- How about those MS technologies?
Well, we do Exchange work and have done for years but it focuses on coexistence not migration, we also support Exchange and Exchange BES but only in mixed environments. We've done some Sharepoint integration too but we have no interest in providing that as a primary service for MS only companies.
Why? Well, #1 is that the technology and its potential for customers doesn't engage us and while we monitor what companies are doing with MS technologies , we don't believe in them the way we believe in Lotus technologies. I wanted to like Sharepoint until I saw the underlying infrastructure and realised its limitations in terms of flexibility and security compared to Quickr. Sharepoint 2010 is better but it still leaves me pretty cold. I have the luxury of choosing to work with technologies I love and right now Sharepoint and Exchange aren't them.
For those of you who complain at Sametime 8.5, try an install of OCS sometime and you'll realise how little you have to complain about. Of course the other reason I'm not interested in becoming a MS partner is that the world is neck deep in terrible, barely competent MS business partners (I know because I get to go in and clean up their mess all the time, or try and work with them). In that enormous pool of the patchily skilled, how do I differentiate myself as "expert" and is that even a commodity in that market?
- As for Google:
I believe companies aren't ready for the Cloud and those that are moving are going to find, like the holy grail of outsourcing, that the TCO of managing that environment and handling the data restrictions and limited / loss of service will come back to bite them.
Of course they won't admit it because may companies, once committed, have no choice but to keep pushing on the course they have budgetted for. IBM meanwhile will keep pushing LotusLive (which as a Cloud replacement for on premise Domino servers is also way ahead of its market) because it makes them lots of money.
My opinion is that if Cloud replaces on premise at all (and I'm giving that 25% chance but what do I know) it won't be for several years yet.
- Aren't we frustrated with Lotus products?
Not really no. The work being done on the Domino server is phenomenal. You need only look at things like the managed replica model on 8.5.2 (a point release with a major feature enhancement for goodness sakes) to realise how much Lotus is investing in that. I also think Connections and Sametime and the upcoming Quickr 8.5 all have huge potential if we just accept that they are re-inventions of themselves and that they may be over-reaching in terms of features and we may wish they were a bit better baked before coming out of the oven but rather that than a bunch of stagnating products.
If your company is using Lotus technologies there's a ton of exciting developments right now and coming up you are probably missing out on. I blogged last week on LotusLive meetings and it's a fast, feature rich, slick service which all Lotus BPs should use (you have free access if you're a BP).
We talk to customers every day who understand the benefits upgrading brings them and are keen to move to 8.5.1 / 8.5.2 Sametime 8.5 etc. I've done seven 8.5.1 corporate upgrades, 4 BES upgrades and 3 Sametime installs this year so far - those customers aren't planning to move away tomorrow. Maybe they are thinking about it in a year's time or 3 year's time but that takes me to my next point
- There is no technology you can hitch your wagon to today that will take you into retirement. None.
Lotus has changed a lot since 2000 but so has Exchange and Sharepoint and Novell. That's the nature of IT and the business we're in and you can't defend against it. All you can do it be the best you can be at the technology you choose to work in. Sometimes you might bet on the wrong horse but we're smart people in this community and we can learn new technologies in a flash - let's not let life pass us by worrying about what could happen someday.
- Many of the public complaints regarding IBM or Lotus are about missed opportunities and I understand that, but I'm not sure Lotus would have been better off if I had been given a free rein to run it for the past 10 years so I have little to say on that matter.
So I may be naiive and optimistic and you can all have a good laugh at my expense if Turtle fails in the future but right now, today, as I said to a friend this morning, what Im seeing is blue skies and clouds off into the distance. My focus today and every day is what is best for my customers, company and the people we employ. Right now that's still very much Lotus and though I will continually monitor other technologies and keep expanding my skills, I don't see that changing any time soon. |
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