Hey You!

Yes, You! 

You reading this post. 

You have a job to do. 

Sadly I know from experience only 5% of you will follow through on this, but here it goes anyway.

If what we have been doing all these years in the Domino space did not change anyone’s opinion, why should it now? The answer my friends, is it can change, only if we change.

When I set out writing this blog, over 1,000 posts ago, I had started and stopped a few times while I found what was missing in our YellowVerse. The Evangelist. IBM did not, and in some ways still does not, provide the information people in companies today need to help them keep their jobs, and thus IBM hardware and software, soon to be HCL software.

The SWAT teams, the Tiger teams, the Men in Black (I was one) did not publish anything public over the years. They were probably not allowed (?!) and so it happened that IBMers told me to keep writing and doing more, because their hands were tied.

The only exception, was when Antony Satyadas ran his "Project Liberate", to compete against MS, which was really about price points. His efforts were the closest anyone came to really pushing back against the world and promoting Notes & Domino. Sadly that was short lived and in 2008 and 2009. As we know, the CXO never chooses a product because of functionality, and rarely on price alone.

So what do I want you do? I want you to earn your IBM Champion (hopefully soon to be HCL Champion) status by being the person that your company needs, wants and relies on, and not in an the usual administrator or developer type of way.

Your mission, and you really have no other choice but to accept it, as you will see, is to make every.single.person in your company know what Notes & Domino, Sametime, Traveler, Connections, etc. do for your company.

If you have Connections or Sharepoint it will be pretty easy to accomplish this task.

Stealthily or upfront, makes no difference, you can do this, and you will, we will get to why you should do this soon enough.

Afraid your boss will go crazy on you? You are making them look better, even though they will say otherwise. Tell them you are helping their cause by asking for more budget to support all the great applications.

Your peers will think you are crazy….until they “get it” and start doing it themselves for their own applications and areas.

You need to start simple, here are some ideas.

1. What applications do you use inside your company that run on Domino? You may not even know what they all do. Look at your Domain catalog and get some clues. Ask people, look at the apps, if you have access, and think about these questions:
2. What does this application really do for our company? Does it onboard people or make the process easier/faster, manage passwords, handle expenses, payroll, sales, marketing, audio/video, PR, manage executives calendars, etc.
3. How much money does this applications make the company? There is a reason Fortune 100 companies still run Domino applications inside their world, because they are critical to their businesses.
4. Alternatively how does this application save us money/time/resources? If not, you may want to raise a new project to your boss to retire some older ones.
5. What applications could benefit from some new coding or UI/UX? Why raise the downside? Because if the app is so meaningful, it should be treated like an Enterprise application, not a back office cast off.
6. Going Cloud or staying on premises can also get the same treatment because there is a reason you have chosen to go that route.
7. Support ticket updates. This can be tricky but important. If you know that you have rarely seen repeat tickets from users, this is a high rate to promote yourselves as permanently fixing issues. You may see how many people you supported in a month, or a year, and realize your reach is much more than you thought.

There are unlimited possibilities for you to provide these “status updates” or blog posts or wiki details inside your company. Talk about the data, the business value, the greatness that you love.

Start with one item, alternate every week or every few days. Explain it in business terms and in your own way.

You will slowly get feedback, and followers. You will also get complaints and enhancement requests, both excellent feedback for you and your team. If you know how to respond to the complaints, do it, if not, ask me or one of the other bloggers or IBM Champions.

You may get known as The Notes Guy or Lord Admin or Domino Guru or Lotus Evangelist. And that is always a good thing for you. You may also want to share and discuss some of this with your IBM/HCL or Business Partner representative when the opportunity arises since they can help you further.

Here’s why, if you read this far…

Your job is at stake.

Period.

Every single day/week/month/quarter, maybe not now but down the road, if you don’t do the above “promotions”, your management, and your users, dream up ways to get some other product brought in to be used because they don't even know what they own or run.

Not fair? No, it isn't, but you need to fight back and find a way to get the word out.

If your company does get that far, guess who is probably out of a job? You might get retrained, but so far, from my view, that is about 25% of the time. Not good odds.

It will be hard, you will get flack, and you will think no one is reading it, and you might be low on the totem pole, but if you have tagged the posts well and sprinkle in some magic terms that relate to your company business, you will start getting noticed. 

Be prepared, don’t just say you were doing this for fun, or because I sent you, provide your mission statement.

“My job is to do the best I can for the company and encourage management in their efforts and by providing this data I believe will make us a better company”.

Or something along these lines.

No double speak, no BS marketing mumbo jumbo, no buzzword bingo, just straight and to the point.

Nothing hurts as much as an ignorant executive make a choice that may not be in the best interest of their company without pointing out to them what their business value is, and why they have it. They don't know, often don't care, and that is why this is so important of a task I assign you.

This is not a technical battle front, it never was aside from the early days because no one did anything like Notes. Yes, we have new goodies inside R10, and down the road R11, but those need to be put in business benefit terms, as I have written about previously.

So, are you going to save your job?

Going to be a part of the next generation of Domino applications in the world? Become an IBM/HCL Champion next year because of what you started this year?

Or going to live in fear forever.

Need help? Reach out to me through any number of ways from my blog or other ways. I am easy to find.

DAMO demo provides a list of reason to go Lotus

Must be careful, clients now read this :-)
So I am doing my DAMO demo and in all honesty, why would someone still say they prefer Outlook?

After seeing a Notes R8 client, in this case 801, and an Office 2003 Outlook client running DAMO (which the R7 DAMO runs on currently as I eagerly await the beta of Damo FOR R8 for Vista/Office 2007) how could one sit there and still think Outlook is superior.

Sure, I am biased, but really, can Outlook:
1) go modular? Notes R8 standard client can if you click on the drop down of a sidebar option and select open in new window. My favorite function. Why is this important to me? Because sometimes I want the item seen while mail is minimized.

2) Stop adding tons of tabs to my screen for every task? Notes has had a tabbed interface sine R5(I believe) and even Microsoft finally gave in that it was a better choice, just look at IE7.

3) Do anything beyond email? Enough said.

4) Can you open a browser from WITHIN Outlook so you don't have to go out to another screen/browser? I can in Notes clients since R4 which is going on 10 years ago!

5) Provide an ROI out of the box? Notes can and has! Now with R8 the client does make life easier, no longer do I need to open extra applications, multiple sites or services, they all can run from within my Notes client, perfectly happy and waiting for my time of need. Need to look up a client's info, invoice someone, forward pricing or look it up, I can do it all from one client license fee.

6) Create a spreadsheet or presentation or contract on the fly? With the built in Symphony suite I can. In fact, if you had configured it years ago, even in the time of Office 2000 you could do this from within a Notes client or application without looking for your icons. OK, some poeple who know how to edit their toolbars could have done this, but few ever did which is why Microsoft created that mini toolbar that floats on top of everything.

From the "about this database" of the Office Library found in Notes clients.
What does this database do?
This database gives Notes users the ability to seamlessly create and save documents using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Paintbrush, without leaving Notes.

Is there more? Sure, but this will keep you going for a little while.

Evangelism is fun, especially within your own organization.

So few people ever think out of the box, and now there is a software communication client that allows one to stay in the box.

LS08: Customers and their problems

I attended a session where customers spoke about their decisions to not just go to Domino or Websphere et al, but how they got interest from the masses at all levels to go along with it.

Sure some laid it out as a direction and business decision, others did it be bringing it to a personal level. The medical health provider had an average age of 56 and was worried about their uptake on Sametime and other solutions. But it went well.

I loved this session. Ok it also included a client from South Florida which we would like to work with but I did not know that before attending.

After each one spoke for 5 minutes there was an open bar and discussion area. My more interesting discussion was about how to convince line/plant workers or even the guys on the delivery trucks to login for email. We also discussed executives that fear Lotus Notes of course.
You can not force people to change their patterns, but you can give them a choice.
If you run a promotion internally, the first 50 or 100, or some number which make sense, people that email you at prize@yourcompany.com will receive a (insert gift item of value or interest). But instead send it to everyone that logs in, make it either company specific or holiday or personal redemption.

Once they are in, you can show options, possibilities and remind them about being green, reducing paper and paperwork, faster payments on expenses, maps provided with full directions with delivery orders, instant answers to your questions via instant messaging, updated benefits, calendar scheduling, legible work orders or instructions.

I can go on but you get the idea.

Late, late, late last night by Jelly Roll's on the Boardwalk I ended up speaking with a guy that just left Boston for Orlando and also recently graduated college. We were discussing sales, competitive analysis and management, in addition to what all the people with badges were from and why IBM would do a conference like this or if IBM liked macs or not.

He is ambitous, not to the larry Ellison level, but wants to move up in management(he is in retail in Downtown Disney) and we discussed some basic tenets that can work. I put it in his terms and when I didn't he did ask what I referred to and I did this without acronyms.

I explained competitive analysis is like the (apologies to my non-US readers for this american football reference)New England Patriots being reviewed by the New York Giants for ways to win. Everyone knows if you hit Tom Brady he is a mess for a quarter or 2. But aside from that what else is the Patriots weakness. You watch films, see which side they run or pass to or if someone sometimes gets flagged for holding or maybe a linebacker that jumps too early.

I also told him if he wants to make more sales to NEVER ask a yes/no question until you are ready to ask for money/signature/contracts.
Just like the bartender that asks "Which beer do you want?" instead of "Do you want a beer?" I suggested he greet people in his shop with "What character do you like?" or "what's your favorite sport/musician/country/state?" depending on the shop in question.

So my question for you is, what do you ask your customers?
"Do you use Domino?"
or
"How do you communicate within your organization?"

The answer, or in this case your question, may help you in Orlando this week.

And now on to the Worst Practices - the Bets of the Worst from Bill and Paul.

Training and the Lotus Evangelist

No, not for me, although going to Lotusphere is my main training of the year.
I am doing an advanced administration(R7) class next week and it amazes me how much I know, and more importantly how much I never use or forgot about.
It's about 50-50 because let's face it, mail rules really are not that practical all the time, but a Directory Catalog(Dircat, condensed directory, laptop/travel nab) is priceless in large organizations.

And so it goes for training. Sometimes you get to stuff it all into a day or 2 or 3 or in Lotusphere cases 5!

It's great training for me and the admins attending (anyone reading that needs it, just email me).
Why for me? Because at Lotusphere there is supposed to be some certificate examss on sale or free to Business Partners and the more I can remember the better off I will be, especially as I am not one for studying much.

Those attending get to work on their NAB directly, monitor their network and implement some changes and functionality which they may or may not be using to its fullest.

I hate teachers that read the manual or tell you to read it. It's much more enjoyable to interact with real data and real user issues and look at how you can work on various problems. Some exercises are included, others are how to set it up and run.

Do I have an outline to cover? Yes and no. The outline exists but I never cover it 100% because preferences change and issues arise and the point of the documentation provided (although rarely used for it) is to provide enhanced documentation and information for very specific circumstances.

I may not be the gratest teacher/trainer, but every time you do this you get better.
So evangelism gets a stretch for the training, it's a Lotus happy shop and I am there to get them excited about Lotus yet disappointed, they are not going to Orlando.

Lotusphere comes to you is going tobe big this year I thihnk.

Circles of Hell indeed

Today's post comes from a company which boasts to move your Domino apps to a Microsoft environment.

Souds great when you read the website(I will NOT tell you where to find it) but if you ask or figure it out....

However, at the bottom of the page is this graphic(sorry if it does not appear very clearly).

Note the following:

1 Domino Server or 1,000's of mail and applications server makes no difference since in theory you would need at least as many Exchange boxes, right?

Now let's say there is 1 Domino Server and it handles 200 people's email and 6 applications.

According to this MS business partner, in order to migrate your apps and email, you need the following based on their graphic:

1 Exchange server (note they use 2007 which requires a 64 bit architecture, thus a VERY NEW and expensive server to buy)

1 Active Directory (of course this comes with Server 2003/7 but you need a new box, again)

1 Visual Studio client, server maybe?

1 Sharepoint server 2007(again a new server)

1 .Net server

1 ASP .NET server(not sure if these can be combined)

1 SQL server (another server)

and Web Services

So now you want to go from 1 server doing everything to 6+ servers or one giant monster server with VM partitions.

And you need to buy all the software and licenses for 200 clients.

Now, what kind of ROI or TCO is this I ask you?

Anyone with pricing that wants to help me nail down the monetary side please advise.

Evangelism requires little work when you look at this graphic and review the steps, pieces.

R8 and Advertising for the Launch

Whoa! Stop the Presses!
Let's step away for a moment from pure Evangelism and look at possible advertising.
Warning, the likelihood of Lotus using these ideas are nominal, but you can't blame a guy from tryng to help.

R8 the next version of Lotus Notes & Domino could have some great tie ins, since it sounds like RATE (or if you want R8 is GR8) for example for print ads of course the name and tags are in Yellow:

FPL for instance could be shown with a FPL renewed energy R8
or Moody's could show the IBM R8 (clear this with legal first)
Any Lawyers professional R8
Top consulting firms guaranteed R8
Mortage companies provide best possible R8

Goofy, maybe. But although I laughed at the habitrail ads in IT magazines for Lotus, they just don't get much across to the average joe on the street, or myself because who wants to read text in an AD? Just stick on the logo and whatever this years IBM name/tag for Lotus is and leave it.

If the graphic doesn't say it all, you are wating your time, like showing a full slide of text in powerpoint presentations, no one reads it all.

Coke is it! But Lotus Notes is GR8!

How Lotus Notes & Domino R8 could be launched

KABOOM!! Yep it's that time of year when everyone imitates Walt Disney World at 10pm. Just kidding, but for all you Lotusphere attendees you know what I mean.

Now I don't know about you, but where I live there are a plethora of firework stores and tent sales. Why? So people can go to the ER without fingers or eyebrows? No, because you would not know where to buy them if you did not see them, or in my case remember July 4th was around the corner.

What does this have to do with Lotus? Or R8 of Lotus Notes & Domino being launched? Because I would love to see a tent pop up on every corner with the big Lotus logo we all know and love on the day R8 comes out. But that will never happen (by the way anybody at Goodyear, can we borrow a blimp ).

However, if you are a BP out there reading this or an IBM Sales rep/SE/IGS consultant, get moving on figuring out how to have a Lotus R8 bash at every client, give out stuff left and right, show clients we support them and Lotus. Bring in doughnuts, coffee, cookies, anything yellow.

Just get out there and show your clients how much they mean to you and Lotus and IBM.

I would love to see responses to this as I plan some ideas myself. Yes I know we don't know yet what day it will be, but that is not important right now.

Lotus marketing, where are you, help us to help you!