In my new role as National Technical Sales Manager for Lotus, I’m getting a chance to speak with alot of different customers, business partners, and colleagues that I haven’t had a chance to meet before.
One common question that I hear is: "There’s a ton/tonne of new stuff in Notes and Domino but when do I use it?"
Although they are hearing that Notes and Domino technology is very much alive, well, and growing there’s still a problem: There’s confusion on how to take advantage of all the new opportunities that ND8 brings to the table to help businesses build truly effective business applications.
Although we may do an admirable job of telling people about new features, functions, and support for emerging standards we don’t do a very good job of telling them HOW to use them effectively: Composite Applications, Widgets, X-pages! Cool stuff, but it’s only a part of the whole Notes/Domino story.
And that story has been lost and muted as the advocates of Notes and Domino have been stifled due to our lack of reinforcing that great story.
We old-school Notes-folks remember the days when Lotus Education was big. I worked for a business partner in Toronto which was BUILT around Notes and Domino and our Education division was extremely successful…there aren’t many developers or administrators in Toronto that didn’t take at least one class from our instructors. Notes was big…VERY big.
But something very odd happened. Just before the collapse of the .com bubble, all of the major Lotus business partners were bought up by large companies who didn’t have a focus on Lotus technologies. With the lack of focus, the demand for education reduced. People couldn’t get the training that they needed. Many remained loyal to the Lotus technologies but no longer were provided the tools to defend their position. Others became disenfranchised and moved onto new opportunities.
The Lotus advocates are still out there, however, and we NEED to help them get their voice back. I’m seeing some great things happening in the Lotus community that give me confidence that this is truly a COMMUNITY effort, not just an IBM effort.
For my part, over the next few months we will be getting back to basics…There are so many reasons for businesses to install/upgrade/migrate to ND8 and we will be going across the country to carry the message of HOW to take advantage of the new Notes and Domino.
We’ll see you soon!
Filed under: Collaboration, Events, Lotus Notes and Domino, Lotus Software
Dave, looking forward to your contributions in this area getting a more public view! Be sure you are being listed on planetlotus.org, and I’ve also added you to my blogroll.
Thanks, Ed…We’re all very excited about what is happening in the Canadian market around the Lotus brand and there’s alot of energy out there that I haven’t seen for some time.
More updates coming soon…and will be available on Planet Lotus.