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Category Lotusphere
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6 am: Ouch... I woke up with a headache this morning. Breakfast sucked. Bird's food again. Maybe I'm just getting spoiled....

8:30 am: My first session today "IBM Lotus Domino Database Direction". Sean asked me about DB2 before I left, I'm hoping to get some answers here. NSF lives on. A lot of improvements geared toward optimization of the server. Uptime goal is 99.999%, ability to sustain 6,000+ concurrent users with acceptable response time. Resource use reduction: I/O, space, CPU. Streaming Cluster Replication will result in 50% CPU savings, and 2x replication speed, as well as 25% I/O reduction. New ODS, not mandatory on upgrade, enhanced user activities log (shows "delete", not just read/write). Domino/DB2 unification.

10 am: Next session "Activity Centric Computed". Activities are new thing in Notes 8. This is big. I love it. They are a congregation of e-mail messages, Web links, documents (files), ToDo items, etc. Activities can be linked to another related activities, and can be shared with other users. Out of the box extensions for Web browsers, MS Office and Notes 8.

11:15 am: "Deploying Lotus Notes 8 Clients". SmartUpgrade still there. Some improvements. Tylenol is not working, my head is exploding, my brain is shutting down on me. Time for lunch.

1:30 pm: "What's new in the Domino Web Server?". I missed the introduction. They are talking about better control of the HTML rendering. I can't stay focused. My brain is fried. Pain, lots of it. I have to leave. Screw the Web server. I need to get some slip. I'm dying. Shuttle to the hotel. Headache. Bed. Slept for 2 hours. I set the alarm to 5 pm hoping to go to the RIM reception and Canada Night. Headache still there. Screw Tylenol, time for heavy guns. Screw RIM Reception and Canada Night. I can't drink now. I would be miserable. That's my luck. Oh well, let's just relax at the hotel. I went for a walk, ate dinner at the hotel diner. It worked. Headache is finally gone.

That was not a productive day . Hopefuly tomorrow will be a better day.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 08:01:59 AM Location Lotusphere 2007 Orlando, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere
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Even though I got here yesterday, today is the official day one of the conference - at least for me. Although the official opening session is tomorrow at 8 AM, today there were jump start sessions, hands-on sessions, and of course the welcoming reception in the evening. I attended three jump start sessions out of the four that In was planning on going to. After the third session, my brain got so full of new stuff and ideas that I decided to take some time out and work on my blog instead.

Those who visited my blog before, most likely noticed the new look and feel. This is the outcome of the last jump start session that I attended - "Ready, Steady, Blog!". Besides learning more about the IBM blog template, I have discovered that there is a better blog template out there for Notes/Domino created by Declan Lynch from OpenNTF. I liked it so much that I decided to download it right away and to upgrade my blog using this template. It's called BlogSphere and it is so much easier to use, has ready to use skins for the Web GUI and has many cool features. For instance, you can define certain words to be "hot" so that whenever you use them in your blog, they will be automatically turned into links pointing to the URL of your choice. Check this posting for more information about this cool template.

Just before lunch, I attended "Enterprise Integration: Moving Your Data Around to Where You Need It". They talked about LEI, DECS and LSXLC. I am now ready to take on the project of synchronizing our Domino directories with LDAP and possible other sources of user data. After seeing a demo of LEI 7, I am even more convinced that we need to get a copy and that we will benefit form it greatly. I am definitely going to get evaluation copy and set this up when I get back home.

In the morning, I attended "IBM Lotus Domino Domain Manager Jumpstart". I've discovered DDM few months ago and I am a big fan of it. I was happy to see several improvements to this tool being in works for Notes/Domino 8.

Welcome reception started at 6:30 pm. As always, the party was on the beach between the Swan and Dolphin hotels. This year's theme was "the games that people play". In addition to poker and Black Jack tables, there were oversized chess and checkers, arcade games, pool and air hockey. Free food and booze tasted as good as always. I had a great time even though I could use some company. Imagine going to a great party where you do not know anyone, not even one person. Not the greatest feeling. I guess I'm not that good at meeting new people..., but it was fun anyway.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 04:15:49 PM Location Lotusphere 2007 Orlando FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Waking up at 3 am was not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Managed to shower but no breakfast. I figured I will eat at the airport since I will have 'only' 5 hours to kill... Got to the RobertQ stop too early, had to wait 20 minutes for the shuttle. Skipped the coffee to keep the kidneys and stomach idling. :) Ride to the airport without any problems. Not even at the border. Hmmm.... Is this for real? Checked in my 2 new suitcases (lesson learned at the last Lotusphere: two smaller suitcases are better than one big), and went through security without a hitch (if you don't count having to go back and remove my shoes, but that's normal these days, right?). Again, no problems.... Hmmm... Something's wrong. Time for breakfast. I need my coffee. I resisted dining at MickeyD (still in shock from watching Supersize Me), and opted for Starbucks instead. Lesson learned: they can't toast your bagel and they must be recycling them from the day (week?) before, or something. Mine was hard like a piece of wood. Tasted like wood too. Oh well, I just needed to fill up my growling stomach with something. Wooden bagel did the job. Watched some CNN on a big screen and got a power nap. Felt great. Time to board the plane. No delays, take off on time. Life is good! On the way to the sunshine... Still in shock that everything went so smoothly so far. Am I having a good day? I'll take it. Smooth landing, airport looks familiar. This time I don't even have to claim my luggage since I will be using Magical Express Disney's shuttle and remembered to call to book it too. Not so easy! although I got to the hotel very quick, my suitcases did not. I figured this is it. They lost them. Two hours later, still no sign of them. Asked at the reception. They said 'no worry, takes few hours. Should be here by 5:30 pm'. Oh, OK. 5:30 came but suitcases did not. I had a hard time staying awake in my room. Decided to try reception again. Forget it, huge line up. Fellow geeks are pouring in. Decided to hit Downtown Disney and call the resort from the cell phone. Got through, ended up on hold for 5 minutes. Hanged up, not worth paying roaming charges. "Forget the suitcases, go have fun" I said to myself. So I did. Cirque du Soleil would be my first choice, but they still play La Nouba and I saw it twice already.... :( Went to see Apocalypto instead. Great movie, loved it. Very brutal and graphic, though. I don't understand how people can bring preteen kids with them to see this one. They should be jailed. Back to the hotel. Will the suitcases be awaiting me in my room? Yes! They're there. Along with a voice mail message from the guy I hanged up on. "we're sorry for the delays, we have them, have a magical day". I think I did! I already wrote them off and started thinking how will I survive 6 days and nights in the same set of clothes... This was a good day indeed. Off to bed. God night.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:00:00 AM Location Lotusphere 2007 Orlando, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I was so tired going to bed last night that I set my alarm clock to 8 am thinking I'm going to miss the breakfast on purpose so that I can rest just a bit longer. A weirdest thing happened. I woke up at 6:40 am and could not go back to sleep. Hmmmm... Not only I did not miss breakfast, but I was able to attend the 8:30 am session on AdminP improvements. Just like in all other areas, there are tons of enhancements to AdminP in Domino 8. Very reassuring.

At 9:30 am, I went to see the two Tivoli guys to see the promised demo of TDI. Johan and Eddie. College buddies from Norway who started their own company and were later acquired by Tivoli, which then was acquired by IBM. Very nice guys. Eddie's official title on his business card is "Storryteller". He cold easily talk all day about TDI, very knowledgeable and passionate about the product. TDI looks very exciting and promising. Some of it was too advanced for me but I see this challenge as a perfect excuse to broaden my horizons and to include Java programming skills in my portfolio. Btw, Johan's title is "Chief Simplifier".

Next morning session, Gurupalooza, was fantastic. Packed with great questions and answers, lots of humour. After swallowing my boxed lunch, next stop "Ask the Developers". This was also an excellent session. Just as the previous one, a lot of questions have been answered by IBM developers and management. If you went to a Lotusphere and could attend only one session, this would be the one you should go to. I'm going to try to buy the DVDs from both of these sessions so that I can them to others back home. The atmosphere in there was fantastic. You could feel the enthusiasm, passion and complete devotion. Looks like the IBM-Lotus is back on track and that their loyal followers forgave them the fiasco with trying to promote other products piggybacking on the popularity and charisma of Notes.

In terms of content, this was the best Lotusphere that I went to. I've been to three so far: 2002, 2005 and 2007. I hope there will be many more to come for me. One person said during the last session: "This is my first Lotusphere, and I'm so impressed with it that I don't know how I was able to do my job before I came here".

Closing session was attended by much smaller crowd than the opening session. Many people had their planes booked in the morning and have left already. There was still plenty of people in there and a very special guest astrophysicist () whose presentation was absolutely fascinating.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 01:27:01 PM Location Lotusphere 2007, Orlando, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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7 am: Alarm clock goes off. No headache, thank god. Shuttle, breakfast, coffee.

8:30 am: "Managing Mail files - Best Practices and New Solutions". New option in ODS8 - compression of design elements reduces the size of the design notes 55-60%. Great for mail files with lots of folders. Mail quota: user will be warned while over quota and not allowed to create new mail message of calendar entry. IBM CommonStore can be used to archive Domino mail. This allows to keep stubs of messages in the main mail file so everything appears in one place and to have pointers to messages stored in the archive.

11:15 am: "What's New in Domino Designer 8". Ability to import WSDL file into script library. Composite applications... OK, I'm leaving. I should have gone to the other one about Domino messaging. As I was walking out, presenter said: "Some of you may be wondering what this has to do with Domino Designer...". Daaaa. "...I'm getting to this...". Too late for me. "Demystifying Domino and SMTP Messaging". Yes, this one's much better. At least at the beginning. Later it got really weird. this guy actually managed to squeeze entire book into his presentation. Lots of slides, lots of fine print. He was zooming though them all as if he was paid by slide. Not the greatest session.

Afternoon: after lunch I decided to go to developers lab and ask about the server health monitoring. As I suspected, there is a way to adjust the parameters to compensate for the skewed readings that we are getting. Since tech support already looked at our memory dumps and decided that our two servers do not have memory problem, this seems like a logical thing to do. I also went to ask about directory synchronization with LDAP. This is where it got really good. Turns out there was another announcement made on Monday, that I somehow missed. IBM developers are investigating integrating external LDAP directories into domino. This would be for version 9 and beyond. One of the possibilities would be storing Domino users is free of charge. Yes, free! This tool is available now but it is expensive. This gives us some additional options. I was told to come to the bof at 5 for more info. So I did.

5:45 pm: bof on directory integration. TDI sounds like exactly what we need. It even takes care of passwords. Uses Java, but no advanced programming skills are required and with simple scripting it can take care of synchronizing account into. It can also take care of provisioning users. There weren't too many people at this bof as mostly everyone went back to their hotel rooms to prepare for the party. People form Tivoli division offered to do a demo for us. We are meeting them in the lad at 9:30 am

7:30 pm: Lotusphere party. this year it's at Animal Kingdom. Unfortunately, weather decided not to collaborate, it must be using Microsoft stuff. We still had fun. I even went on a rollocoaster. And I liked that ride.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 08:42:15 AM Location Lotusphere 2007, Orlando, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Had to get up at 6 am again. Does this sound like vacation? This time we had some real food for breakfast (read eggs/bacon), but no sign of toast... Oh well, can't have everything.

8 am: General Opening Session. They had us lined up on the 1st floor. By the time I got there, the line was substantial. That did not matter in the end because the people who were at the beginning of the line ended up in the back rows anyway. Of course there were not too happy about it (read this), lol. I was much luckier than those guys, as I ended up close to the right door and got a seat fairly close to the stage. The light show was as impressive as always, I loved the lasers. I have a small clip which I will upload later. This year they had Neil Armstrong, I think he's done it before the year that Roger Ley went. Mike Rhodin announced new products. Lotus Qickr based on Web 2.0 for sharing of documents and media. Each exisitng Notes/Domino customer gets free personal edidtion license. Lotus Connections is business-grade social computing. 7,000 people attended this year, more than last year. They dropped the "Hannover" code name, it is officially Lotus Notes and Domino 8 now. Final release scheduled for mid-2007.

11 am: My first session today "What's new in Lotus Notes 8 and Beyond". Looks like a good place to start. This is going to be a major release. Lots of good stuff. New look, ton of new features. Many of existing headaches will be solved. Very customer oriented. Open beta will be available Q1 2007. In-line spell checker (YES!), multi level undo, ability to recall messages, windows style document selection, vertical preview of e-mail (Outlook lovers will be happy), many improvements to Out-Of-Office. New GUI, including mail template. "Open" in place of bookmark bar, better contact management, calendar overlays. Llicense-free document, spreadsheet and presentation editors that support the Open Document Format (ODF) built into Notes client.

1 pm: Went to "Domino 8 Administration". Can upgrade to Notes 8 through SmartUpgrade, either from 7 or from 6. Additional provisioning added to SmartUpgrade through Eclipse. 95% of Notes client setting can now be controlled through policies, including replication setting, and Inbox management (trimming). Database redirection can be put in place of deleted database on the server. Users get redirected, bookmark icon gets updated.

3:45 pm: Went to "Enhancements to the mail template in Notes 8 that you don't want to miss". MailExt and MailDWA templates have been merged in Notes 8. There is only one mail template now. Out of office: messages can be sent for each message now, not just once. Instant response, no more lag time. Router now handles this, not agent. Turns itself off after the time off expires. (WOW). Supports failover. Administrator can enable it without switching to user's id. InboxCleanup Agent: only affects read messages, removed messages from Inbox after 90 (default) days. Does not get deleted, but where does it go? Not sure.

6 pm: IBM Canada reception. This year it was combined with Latin America. Jamie was there. Met some fellow Canadians and one American form Chicago who works for Canadian company based in Montreal. Food was delicious. Drinks were free and unlimited...

8 pm: The ladies talked me into going to the Jamfest. Great time but no more free drinks. Cash bar. I split at 9:25 hoping to catch my last Lotusphere shuttle. I missed it, turns out today the last one left at 9. Why is it different on different days? Met 2 guys from France and one from Montreal who were in the same situation, and stayed at the same hotel. We ended up taking Disney shuttle to Downtown Disney, then another one to All Stars. Took about 45 min to get back to the hotel. I uploaded the picks and hit the bed. So tired.

• IBM's press release about newly announced products
• IBM unveils social networking tools for businesses
• Microsoft takes annual dig at IBM/Lotus

Posted by Bodek Frak At 03:48:59 PM Location Lotusphere 2007, Orlando, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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It's just my luck... We did not see any snow for the entire month of December and most of January... Why did it have to snow like crazy the night before my scheduled flight to Orlando??? Yes, tomorrow I'm flying form Detroit to Orlando to attend Lotusphere 2007. This does not look good! I hope that it will stop snowing soon and that my flight will not end up getting cancelled or delayed. Now, I feel better about booking my RobertQ bus for 4 AM, that is 5 hours before my flight's scheduled departure.... At least I will make it to the airport on time... lol. The question is, will it matter? Or... No, I'm not even going to say it! EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK!

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:00:00 AM Location Windsor - Home | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Life is great! I've been just told last Monday by my boss that I'm going to the Lotusphere again. Needless to say, that shocked me (in a positive way) since I attended two of them already -- one in 2002 and one just this past January. My calculations were telling me that I get to go every four years (if I'm lucky...). What do I know... I'm going in the next three months! WOW! Check out Lotusphere's History on IBM's Web site. I plan to post regular updates on this trip in this blog. I also have some pictures form the previous Lotuspheres in my photolabums section.

Posted by Bodek Frak At 12:00:00 AM Location Windsor - U of W | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)