Me vs. We and how one Database is the difference

On my flight back home last night, LATE last night, we were discussing the way of the world and how it affects Lotus and IBM.

Sometime after 9/11(my guess, but truly it changed many things in the world)many people began to see the world differently.

Instead of standing by on the sidelines or going with the flow, people instead wanted to be heard or known or be an ASW (attention seeking whore) or on reality TV, thanks Andy Warhol. Many also have chosen to go very high minded ways to change the environment or laws or get into space commercially and as IBM says help become a Smarter Planet. So all is not lost.

BUT, prior to 9/11, there was much more willingness on behalf of everyone to share and be open rather than closed or finding their own way amid the traffic or chaos as some say exists.

Even social networking/media is a community, but a silo at the same time. Take twitter or Facebook as an example. Yes we all have many friends and followers but do we truly take part in 1,000's of conversations? Or do we instead focus on a few or only a select group of those friends? Do you reach out to others you do not know on those sites to share experiences or help them?

The answers to these questions say a lot about you and the choices you will make regarding nearly everything else in your world. Many readers of the Lotus faithful, I would hope, are openly social and encourage others to do so as well. It is in our nature to want to help people or at least share our knowledge, for better or worse, with others. After all it was what we found so exciting about some bits of code called Lotus Notes in the first place. Developers may have fallen in love with the openness of the solution or it's close relationship to 1-2-3 back then or a million other things. Either way, when we all go to Orlando for Lotusphere or a LUG event or whenever our paths cross, we are able to work together and discuss different ideas and accept it as a good thing to do.

When one has the perspective of not wanting to share information because it has a value or it could hurt or help someone but doesn't extend that effort, what choices will they be making?

Many times I have posited that executives that choose Microsoft are not true sharing people, just because the product is called Sharepoint does not mean you will be sharing, more likely you will share anything ...up to a point, thus its name. In a world about me and what I want or what I say or that everyone wants to be on a reality TV show, is it any wonder someone would prefer to go with a line of products that is focused on silos and individuals or making someone a fiefdom inside IT a data center or a business line?

(Small digression, sorry but I do not understand the Reality TV interest or those that watch it. Having said that I enjoy watching the Miami Dolphins, win or lose, so what does that say about me I guess?)

Yes, I hear you say, but what about Google?

Google is a socialist organization masquerading as a capitalist one. Some may argue it in reverse as well. What they promote is not the team collaborative effort, although Buzz and Wave and other pieces seem to point to that direction, they really are providing the individual the ability to be unique, grab attention and have people pursue more ways to promote themselves.

Now how does all this compare to Lotus Connections? Isn't Connections just another IBM me too in the world?

On the surface, it may appear that way. And for good reason, if you have been reading this post until now. IBM is not stupid, they understand where the minds of the people are and they built Connections based on the new paradigm. Yes I realize it was put together by a bunch of pieces from IBM but the integration is what makes it come alive as by themselves they would be meaningless. Like instant messaging in Lotus Sametime without presence awareness.

However, the underlying connectivity of Connections to integrate to your calendar or email or phone or IM and nearly anything else is what proudly and undeniably stamps on it's forehead "Lotus Notes Lives". Sure, Notes and Domino are not even part of it's installation. But when one looks at Connections you can see how that lotus Notes R1 version of a discussion database, which still is alive and well inside Iris, is still at the core of the world today.

The lowly discussion database where anyone, with access, could post, comment, diatribe, link, attach or just say yes or no, is still the heart and soul of Lotus products like Connections or Quickr. Even if Lotus is now a brand inside of IBM, the yellow heartbeat is there just underneath a blue layer of Websphere.

So while the truly religious will argue "But it's not Domino!" We never fell in love with Domino(don't get me wrong, we did and do all the time), we fell in love with Lotus Notes before Domino even existed in beta. Splitting hairs perhaps to some but I think you get my point.

A little discussion database that could, and look where that little database took us all 20+ years later?

So when you hear about Project Vulcan and are trying to grasp it all and what it will mean, I believe the vision IBM has for it's future, is still that same vision as in R1. Namely that sharing of information or data and providing more and more ways to get access to it in a simple and easy fashion, is not a way to do something, but THE way to do it and the world seems to be agreeing.

Lotus Knows My Flight is Delayed, Will Vulcan?

Well, Lotus Notes Traveler does...via email of course.

But this has me wondering as I sit in Logan Airport in Boston fresh off of LoLA looking at all these people wearing boots or wellies, as some would say.

Will Project Vulcan have multiple views built in so my phone for instance only sees my stream of information, compared to say everything on the browser page from my laptop?
If so, then I would see an input from Tripit or the airline letting me know about the delay.

True an email serves the same purpose, but what if one does not use email anymore, like our friend Luis Suarez? Then this would be a perfect way to do it.

Then someone says, yes but Twitter can do it as well. That is fine, likelihood is Twitter or whatever thing we all use by the time Project Vulcan starts to appear in applications, could also be part of that stream.

But right now, a smart phone is not a great experience to work with a lot of information. While I can understand some will argue that is why the iPad exists, but I want something smaller, maybe the new offering from RIM, but bigger than my cell phone.

The mind was racing with ideas after some sessions at LoLA and of course more, many more questions. Thanks to Russ Holden for taking some time to answer some very key questions of mine.

While I admit to not enjoying some of the demonstration sessions, mostly because some chose to demo existing products for some reason when I would have expected more about the future, the open question sessions provided alternative views to think about.

Product Management is truly a balancing act which is why one should really try to work with the PM team, not against them.

What we could see or experience in the UX lab, which to be honest was great, thanks to the UI/Graphical teams of LotusLive and Vulcan, among others, provided good insight to design reasoning and thought process.

Thanks again to everyone at LoLA and the coordinators of it especially for helping me get some last minute meeting in, see you next in Orlando.

Projects Concord and Vulcan at MWLUG

David Via just showed the people in his session project Vulcan and Concord.

Have to say Concord is very impressive watching it work. Smooth and quick, enhanced functionality and no lag between edits of coworkers live, compared to my experience with Google apps online. The key to speed is once connected, everything is running locally for you, that and the underlying code.

Yes it's beta and what we saw may not survive but if I had access to it in my beta of LotusLive I could make great use of it today, internally and externally.

Vulcan on the other hand is not so swift as Concord, but it is doing a million things. It is pulling details from all over, integrating into back end systems, xpages apps and of course sametime, email and connections pieces.

A true home page which if the speed can be improved(we had bad wifi, so it may not all be Vulcan's fault) would truly make Facebook look ancient as far as real time integration.

We are still a ways off from both seeing the light of day but as David said, 'These are "Show Cars" not exactly what the end product will be, more a direction of thinking.

Keep thinking this way and how will anyone not want it?

Review of Day 1 of Lotusphere 2010

You probably saw some of this in Twitter or other sites, but here is my take on day !.

The opening session included a background of past lotus videos, ads, speakers, products etc.the last 20 years, hopefully someone inside IBM will publish that video for all of us. It was nice to see where we were and where we got to do today.

The violinist from last year and orchestra did not return, but we did have some excellent drum beaters reminiscent of the R5 era ads. Plus a pair of excellent violinists and a drummer with a great afro.

In his opening, Bob says "our partners will play a huge part" in the growth of IBM this year and so far, it has been a great 2010, for us, and hopefully for you as well.

Then the guest speaker was the one, the only, not sure who we can have to beat him next year, William Shatner. He was everything we always wanted of him and possibly more. Sadly he was not available for autographs or photos to the bloggers or anyone else(aside from probably those back stage).

Shatner said "remakes are great.. but only remind you of how great the original was". How true,
He spoke on ideas, Tekwar, the search for God/Spock an alien who thinks he's god and how collaboration makes the impossible possible and ultimately provides a better finished product.

Then back to Bob and Alistair and how we are Beating the competition.

We have the right tech, people, strategy but we needed a profile and Lotus Knows puts Lotus in front of everyone.

Announced 18,378 new notes since R8 came out.

One quote also was "Sometimes I almost feel sorry for our competition. We can't all be leaders."

The RIM CTO described their mission as "taking your desk to your hip" and it is true today and will only expand over time.

The Zurich COO mentioned fighting old terms, like software in a box, because after all when was last time it was shipped in a box.

There are 380,000 Panasonic cloud users going to LotusLive and NOT because of messaging but because of a broader view of collaboration and efficiency across regions and business lines.
Panasonic didn't come to IBM for mail but for a business idea how to grow their top line.

There also was a beautiful yellow Corvette brought in for the GM speaker. The Corvette is the model HZH which was a special run of yellow with black stinger designed for Hertz, the car rental company.

Much applause for Quickr calendar integrated with personal calendar when that was discussed and demonstrated.

Alfresco has more than 1,000 enterprise customers and all of which can now be integrated with Quickr, another partnership that IBM can leverage.

Notes 851 is twice as fast in the pickup than any other version in Lotus history and no wonder with DAOS, ID Vaulty, iPhone support, Traveler, Xpages and numerous other benefits. It was also the most expensive product yet.

An excellent line, "Customers have changed their Outlook on collaboration and Exchanged it for something better".

Announced another sidebar application, this one from Gist, it streams news and events in your social networks.

LotusLive will be expanding in Spring with 5gb and 1gb file store, options for BES, traveler and full notes client functionality coming soon too.

LotusLive Labs is available today and include slide library, event maps and more. See my next post on my interview around this topic.

Never mind buying new servers, just expand out to LotusLive, you will probably get more for doing so then you can imagine.

Ed expands on LotusLive on his blog.

"These printer people are pretty feisty." -- Alistair Renne to Xerox Partner on stage.

The big announcement was about Project Vulcan which is a vision of evolution for Lotus products.

The key points about it are it is easy to use and deploy, consistent UI across all platforms including mobile devices.

As you can see a busy session and that was just 2.5 hours.

More posts about my interviews with IBM executives coming soon. On to day 2.