I know I prompt you a reminder each month, but until they get RSS feeds in play, here is the link.  This month I cover:

IN THIS ISSUE
* From the Editor: Chris' 0.0101527 GBP (ouch)
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Two Questions on Sametime in the Notes 8 Standard Client
* Lotus Notes and the Eclipse Update Site for Provisioning
* Quick Tip: Finding the Hidden Menus in Notes 8
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Where Are the Detailed System Requirements for 8.0.1?

If you cannot figure out where to go for technical information and some excellent training between June and September, then you have been sleeping.  Let's look at what is coming:

ILUG2008 - a free gathering of top presenters, business partners and Loti all in one place for a few days of organized chaos.  Not your standard conference in any fashion, with edgier sessions that can only happen with tons of drinking parties at night.  You have one week to get there.  June 4th-6th 2008.

Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar - Andy Pedisich, Rob Axelrod and myself have already done 6 cities to a string of top ratings on showing you not only what is new in 8, but how to get there in the best structured fashion.  Tons of take home tools and just conversation around the numerous upgrades we have done over the versions.  There are two cities in June.  San Francisco June 16th-18th and then again in Toronto July 16th-18th.  Get all the facts you need to make the right decisions every step of your upgrade planning, deployment and implementation.

Collaboration University - I have happy to be one of the founding partners to bring you the premier conference on Sametime and Quickr.  From basics to super advanced in both administration and development for these products, we hit it.  This year the US city moves to Chicago and then again in London.  Join Rob Novak, Carl Tyler, Gabriella Davis and myself yet once again.  For those coming for a third year, we welcome our "Juniors" and our new incoming "Freshmen".

Now that it is official (as noted by Stuart in CollaborationMatters.com today), IBM officially announced Lotus Foundations Start 1.0 in a press release.  There are a few items we need to clear up (one disclaimer, I am part of a reseller and they are selling units fast)

Let's start here:

Whether you need to set up an office network, connect branch offices, protect your data, or provide remote access, e-mail, and collaboration capabilities to your employees, Lotus Foundations Start can help

You will only be connecting branch offices if they wish to hit a single server at a central location or if you only want to connect the underlying Linux software.  Lotus will not be connecting in this first release as a hub and spoke server topology.  They way they generate the certifiers prohibits it from being done properly.  Since the server run heavily on proper DNS, you cannot cross certify the same O name since version 5 of Domino.  This stops them from working together as expected.  So picture a single server or major cross certification going on.

Provides the reliability and security you deserve with a small footprint Linux-based server, while being extremely easy to use.

If you all remember, I posted pictures of the normal server.  It is equal to a 4U server in a rack if you laid it sideways.  It comes as a tower.  Now, you can buy an applianceware version which can go on whatever server you wish.  The default small server edition is truly small.  I carry it with me in my luggage now to have a full portable server.  But that will only support a handful of users.  Most of you will want the applicanceware.

Facilitates the creation and sharing of information, e-mail, and calendars using IBM Lotus Notes and Domino software.

Beware of which license you get.  While this is true, email and calendaring, what about other applications?  Some of the smaller ones comes with Messaging Express, so those are not licensed to run apps.

Saying all of this, I think Foundations has a large ability to dominate in the SMB market with some tuning for future releases.  They are already selling units, as I mentioned.  So with the help of Lotus in working to adjust these and a few other issues, this solution is the way to go

Exactly what one would expect, a quick article showing how the adoption rate of the actual employees in organizations is slow on the corporate social network software side.  While companies are pushing technologies like Lotus Connections, getting the employees into them is a much tougher task.

But recent research and interviews with analysts suggest that the adoption of these tools has been slow due to a lack of engagement by users and the stiff competition for their time posed by sites such as Facebook

Does your company feel they have to shut off all external social network access just to force users into your own?  Or is there not enough cool features and need to use your own internal ones?  Keep in mind that sites that have high activity like IBM's own internal networks have been in the making for years.  Read that, years.  Not just since last year when Lotus Connections came rolling out the door.  It was taken from the building of what seemed to work in a company with around 300k employees with a need and demand to find someone that knew what they wanted.

So how are you promoting it in your organization?

Easy, it doesn't work and is configured in the wrong place (NOTE: the actual template used rocks, hands down.  The process is broken).  I was prompted to write this after the article on DominoBlog.com came out touting the feature.

EDITOR NOTE (May 21 1pm): Everyone understand, the Eclipse Update Site template is one of the better things Lotus has created and shipped that outshines other site update tools.  I love the template and the guy that write it (hey to TG on amazing work as usual).  I am only talking about the process by which the client uses this template.

Instead of using policies in Notes 8 to force clients to see an update site, they chose server configuration documents.  Let me break down what is bad about that in a moment.  Currently, most every admin will want to make sure the ability for clients to install their own stuff is turned off.  Ok, that works.  However, you must then place an update site link in the server configuration doc that the user never seems to see.  Why the heck didn't you use policies?  The server configuration document has the global setting for both Smart Upgrade and then Provisioning, but the Desktop settings policy only has Smart Upgrade as shown here:



So what is expected is that each user will hit the server and see the server configuration document.  This in turn will somehow get them the provisioning database or site.xml from there.  Well this opens another can of worms.  We teach and implement multiple places to reduce the extreme number of server configuration documents and to simplify.  But if I want users on different home servers to hit alternate update sites only, then I have to go back and create multiple server configuration documents.  Conflicts terribly.  The site update database was built with replication in mind.  I can create it once, push it out all over and have users hit sites local to their area for performance.  With a policy I would be all set.

The real kicker here is that the client never seems to see this new setting and never gets the provision on a consistent basis.  I have had one or two magically work, and others never work.  All at the same server with the same version of client.  Riddle me that Batman, both why it sometimes works and why it isn't in any policy setting to do controlled/distributed provisioning.

This is a cool tool I ran across that pulls your friends, group memberships and builds a diagram of such.  It shows how interconnected and isolated our group is. Take a look, I can click anywhere and it will show that range of names and connectivity.  While I don't use Facebook (here is a book for users just starting out) on a daily basis, I still have it auto updated and connect when asked.  Seems I spend all my time on Twitter and FriendFeed with bookmarks dumping to Diigo.

Last week at the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar in London (recap here), we had an attendee report that some items broke on the upgrade in ODS.  I simply stated that in all our testing, we had not seen any incident yet.  Well he was doing something we never tried.  I didn't post this until I could play around and test

They were converting desktops up to Notes 8.0.1 and running the convert locally after placing the proper notes.ini line in to allow the R8 databases

Create_R8_Databases=1

I know I had done this on many servers, and even a bunch of test and now production clients.  Well here is where he threw the monkey wrench in.  His users still have some of their personal databases on ODS 20.  Yeah, 20.  When doing items like the personal NAB, it seemed some policies broke and on local mailfiles, they had issues with the out of office.

I just ran it here one, after much effort to get back to 20 and I'll be darned.  Boom.

UPDATE: apparently this is affecting Quickr per this blogger, but I have to test this..

One more city down for the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar, with 2 North American cities left to go (San Francisco and Toronto).  Once again I was not disappointed in what the attendees had to say and provide for feedback.

• 100% were on 6.5.x and higher (ok outside of one desolate R5 server)
• 85% used Sametime already and really needed to understand what the new integration offered.  They liked it but had rightful concerns over missing functionality and the locking of the chat as Notes did other things
• The limited number of users you can get on Citrix with the Standard client sucks and they let me know
• Widgets need tons of business value demos to sell them to the executives
• Productivity Tools were the doorstop of the sessions with people stepping right on by
• Lotus Connections made no sense to 90% of them at first.  Later, about 50% I think really got it (while they all then understood it).  But managing all that additional hardware was brought up
• Lotus Foundations is a cool product if you don't already have a Domino domain, which they all did of course
• Integration of Sametime is awesome if it was available while doing something else in Notes 8.  Otherwise they want the standalone version (mentioned again)
• Integration of Activities is confusing to many as to why choose that or Quickr or why at all.  This got answered
• The Sametime Gateway is of interest to them but MS connectivity is still a demand in Europe
• Coffee breaks are not often enough, mainly after huge lunches
• Attendees love free tools that we give away
• Expanded policy control for desktops and security will be implemented right away
• People are tired of Smart Upgrade and want full provisioning,   Oh yeah, and provisioning that actually works, which is broke right now
• I know the list went on by I will update after I sleep and fly....

I broke their hearts when I taught all about site updates to only let them down with it isn't working.  On the good side, I think many are excited about the upgrade.  I was surprised at the length of time a lot will be taking to get upgraded in full.  We are talking well into next year.

Food this week was excellent, and I caught the play Billy Elliot (review here).  Dinner the first night was Kare Kare, an excellent Indian place.  Next up was a chain before the play for speed reasons and finally Amaya.  Outside of that it was all conference food for me :-)

Hi, I sent this posting over via email so it cold be pasted in.  I went to the Lotusphere Comes to You in St Louis last week for my first time.  I knew it was only a day review of what was explained to me a week long event.  I knew it would be consolidated.  I was not ready, however, for the way it was presented.  The speakers showed a lot of videos and hardly anything live.  One person actually showed his inbox, but everyone else had these pre-planned videos and stuff.  It turned out to be like a sales meeting in a way, where they talk about the products but only show slides.  I thought half of this was shipping? Could they not show it?  Are the demos too hard?  How can I make this work for my users then?

Also some of the speakers didn't seem to know fully the material or topic they presented.  Questions went unanswered.  That was a bit disconcerting for those that couldn't got to Lotusphere and needed more information.  I didn't plan on speeding a day there to get more questions that I came in with (meaning others asked some good ones too).  I know we only had a day to get this completed, but it seemed a bunch of product announcements from Lotusphere didn't even make it into the program in any way.  I know I stepped out once for a phone call, but in 20 minutes they could not have done them all as the session I stepped out from was still going strong when I reentered.

So my last thought was the actual other attendees.  From talking to people, there was like 3-4 times as many people last year.  With about 20-25 there this year, what happened?  I am sure it was not the change in venue as I got the email weeks before.  Where the heck was everyone?

IdoNotes note: I found the same thing from LCTY in Minneapolis per this blog posting.  I couldn't comment on that blog posting as it required a Wordpress account.  I suspect we are seeing this at cities that partners do not do a majority or any of the presentations?

Many of my fellow bloggers have posted and express excitement over Connections for Blackberry.

• Lotus Connections Blog
• Mitch Cohen (Curious Mitch)
• Gia Lyons of IBM
• Darren Adams of IBM posted beta screenshots

I, unfortunately, do not share the same enthusiasm. I have already let RIM know those thoughts through some surveys that I already provided.

Since this (see screenshot above) has been under development for such a long time, I expected one simple thing. I , without hesitation, expected all five services to be primed and ready. Only have a native Profiles and Dogears makes it useless for my suers to load. For the other 3 services, you have a link that launches a Blackberry browser session that you must log into once again. Humorously I see how Chris Whisonant of Lotus911 only pointed out connecting to BleedYellow via the new client.

Profiles and Activities are arguably the most important parts. But in my opinion, any hook into social software should expose all of the services, or just don't present them until they are ready. Accessing the Connections information via that tiny browser is a terrible experience and I don't want my users doing it. I have been getting deeper into the social networking over the past year or so and see Lotus attempting to make strides. But having a Facebook application for Blackberry that works better and offers more, makes the Lotus Connections one a hard sell.

So the internal NOC team here uses Neoware thin clients to connect to the Citrix 4.5 server.  Today the Windows guys decide to upgrade to 8.0.1 Standard and find that each user was, as expected, using lots of memory around 400MB each.  With the machine it runs on being a dual processor with 3.5 GB of RAM, they had higher expectations.  So after everyone came on day shift and logged in as usual, the machine started grinding.

Unfortunately, they want all the bells and whistles, but back to basic mode they have to do.

Since everyone gets this one, you missed my rant about ATT and their sucky free wireless mesh they put here in St Louis.

You also missed my recap of Admin2008 plus pictures.

Lastly, the blog server is now 8.0.1 and my logging of RSS feeds finally hit peak level across my blogs and took HTTP down.  All is well once again, thanks to Steve C himself.

Our city allowed AT&T to come in and fire up a free wireless mesh downtown that covers like 8x8 square blocks.  Something like that.  There is 2 mesh networks available.  The first one they offer, called ATTMetroFree is a slower, yet free, wifi network.  It has a banner on your browser, so no big deal.  They attempt to do pop-ups, but anyone in their right mind blocks them nowadays.  But if they think that is working, fine.  So I can do SSL and all the web browsing I want.  However, it will not allow Notes traffic.  I first noticed it when attempting to replicate.  So I fired up NotesPing and watched as they block 1352.  Bastages.  Screenshot here.



I didn't even think about trying their other mesh ATTMetroWifi that charges a daily or weekly rate to browser.  In price it is comparable, like $7 USD a day or $15/week.  Good for the traveler and they guarantee VPN and higher speeds.  But what the heck is going on here?  Throttle my connection is you need, but why are you blocking ports.

So I dutifully switch the networks the local cafe's offer, unrestricted or gosh forbid in an emergency grab a loft wifi that got left open.

First things first, here are the pictures:

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Admin2008 photoset

So recapping the last two days that were totally a blur. Pushes to Domino 8 are incredibly strong with a large focus on people that stuck in any session that did with upgrading. The mix of clients/servers was 6.5.x all the way to current. But the overwhelming feeling from all of them was they will make due with getting the necessary resources and get that awesome Notes 8 Standard client to the users. The talks of waiting for 8.0.2 went away when we showed them the security controls and features. Rob, Andy Pedisich, and I are on the orad again in 2 weeks to keep the Notes Domino 8 Upgrade Seminar going. Join us in London and San Francisco if you missed the show here.

Sametime sessions, including the jumpstart were popular. Once a grasp of how the Sametime client integrates and what features are missing was covered, I did a session on Sametime Advanced. Of those that came, two had a strong need for persistent chat. Others wanted to see what all the hype and difference was about. But everyone agreed that Sametime 8 was the place to be. I was happy to see so many people that had picked up my book on the Sametime Gateway and how it saved much time and energy. Yet the room had a ton of poeple that wanted to get it installed. The need to remove the public chat clients and make some instant messaging policies is getting stronger.

Disaster recovery was packed. I think many came in looking for the silver bullet of what should be done to get DR alive and functioning. What they walked away with was a plan, steps and decision points on how to build the proper topology with all the diagrams to get started. It was sad to talk to those that lost not just data during 9-11, and how they coped. It was an eye opener for me as well. I hope I helped, but Domino makes DR easy.

After a great dinner with Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Susan Bulloch, and John Head, day 3 was beckoning.

The vendor floor was busy since the crowd here was larger once again than years past. As the questions get harder each year, the skillset of the administrators and developers that attend get better. Which makes us work harder to put on a better show. Hope everyone enjoyed, I need a nap.