In a truly perfect world, The Beatles would never have broken up, Jimi Hendrix would still be alive and MACs would rule the Earth. And Tech shows would get attendees when they are int he right place at the right time.
I went to a tech show today, ITEC, hoping to meet and listen to Chris Brogan. Sadly, as he informed me on twitter, he had to skip us in Ft. Lauderdale.
I ended up meeting a possible new SPAM solution provider for my clients and learned a great deal about using Facebook for Business from Chris's replacement, a really nice guy from Boston, Brett Wohl(He's on Facebook, go say hi!). Thanks Brett!
What I was not prepared for was defining Lotus to him. Sure, I do it all the time, but this was the first time I had really sat and explained it to someone more in tune with Facebook than Redbooks.
I appealed to digital rights and the ability to secure them in the app or db and allowing for selective exposure, plus replication capabilities for working on applications when traveling. We discussed it's messaging side, it's open source side, variable Operating System platforms, and even more important to their customers, scalable clustering within a heterogeneous environment. Even hit on document management and serializing data via RSS and other means.
In a way I feel like I failed to get across what I wanted, but he got what made sense to him and I leveraged what I knew would make sense to him so we were both happy in the end.
We discussed Sharepoint being used as a file sharing program, not in true collaborative style. And that Domino did sharing and does still, long before Sharepoint existed, but then I start to sound like I am 50 or 60!
Another really interesting conversation was with a Microsoft BP, who works in the SMB area. When I asked about his dealings with Lotus customers he said he doesn't see many naturally. He informed me that many customers are still running Windows and Exchange 2000. His hope was for the new Small Business Server, which has Exchange inside, would help migrate these people.
Naturally, Lotus Foundations came to mind and why IBM is pushing that as a solution. I wished him well and continued on.
Speaker, Blogger, Author. Posts about HCL Digital Solutions, HCL Software, Lotus, Management, Collaboration, Competitive Intelligence and Strategy, Productivity, CRM and B2B Marketing.
"And exactly what is wrong with sounding 50 or 60?" he said in a highly aggrieved tone of voice. "The trouble with the youth of today is that they don't remember working with the early versions of Notes. When I was young we didn't have any of this Lotusscript stuff to help us - we did it all with @functions"
ReplyDeleteetc.
etc.
Sorry Graham, my original thought line was I sounded like the Mainframe guy in the Dilbert comic.
ReplyDeleteYes and I liked the @functions, way back when and I knew some too.
But the next generation really sees Lotus and others as well, our generations computer program, not as theirs. Maybe Quickr, COnnections and Sametime will change that in time.
Maybe Ed will push that part of it.