With the explosion of Social Media and knowing "where to be", Kimono's was really only fun the last night and the first night. In between it was just too packed. Time to find another hang out for mid week me thinks. And with everyone and their dog having a 5MP camera on their phone, it is no longer "what happens as LS, stays at LS". Party accordingly.
The Blogger Open : my team won. So someone has really bad math skills! A valiant effort my Mike McGarel on "the scoring app". I feel for any family that comes to Fantasia Golf that day.
The CGS was a complete and utter train wreak. Whoever thought *not* to put a warning on screen and verbally before Zimmermann did his stuff needs firing. Atrocious. And I'd have to say that most of the audience (especially non-US based folks) had no idea who he was. Then came out the blow torch......it was down hill the moment he hit the stage. When the pretzel cookie is the best part of the CGS you have missed your mark by many, many miles. Bring back the likes of the conductor. Now he was impressive.
Wifi : I think the same coffee nazis who kept stealing the coffee ran the wifi. IBM can measure how many purchases are made on mobile devices over Christmas, but not guesstimate that each attendee will have 3-4 wifi devices? A complete WTF all conference long. Social my arse. I wonder how many bloggers, tweeters and analysts gave up posting content about LS12 because of the LS12 wifi?
Blogger of the Year : rightly won by Stuart McIntyre.
Parties : invited to a few. Attended more that I wasn't invited to. The Ephox invite to Australia Day was there, but only if you gave them a closing Portal deal. And I thought I was egotistical! Needless to say I didn't go. But they can have all my portal deals for Q1 and Q2 if they like......or as it's more correctly called: none.
Sessions. I didn't attend that many. Most lost me at the length of the session title and if you were not there for Cloud, XPages or Connections you were shit out of luck. And having the keynotes early didn't help either ;) I pity any Domino Admin that turned up this year, and I think that, and the crappy scheduling will affect the numbers next year. There was no balance if you were there for XPages as you either had days of nothing or 5-6 sessions all at the same time you wanted to attend (ironic that I'm complaining about lack of content and at the same time, cluttered content. If you were there I think you get my meaning). This ain't IBM's first rodeo here so I'm not sure how they don't get this right. There were also a lot of IBMers presenting. I'm guessing IBM want *their* people out front as SME's when businesses realize social and cloud are just prefix words for "services". And where was Lotusphere Idol? I owe a hat tip to Scott Souder for his jibe at the Ask the PM's session. A classy comeback from a classy dude.
Rebranding/Renaming : As IBM bolts headlong away from the Lotus name IBM Docs got on the of the biggest cheers in Ask the PM's as the PM pointed out she had the shortest names product. I guess Lotus Knows not to name any product "Lotus". And Notes, Domino and Quickr are not being rebranded. Party accordingly.
Coffee :
Quickr : Again tumble weeds. In the customer evangelist panel (yes, the panels were actually good!!!) 4 of the 6 "customers" on stage mentioned that they used Quickr. IBM is missing a big opportunity here and will continue to miss it until it sees the need for something that IS NOT FileNet nor Sharepoint. And Connections Files ain't it. In my opinion Connections Files is about as useful as Quickr Entry was. And Quickr Entry was crap. These are your customer evangelists (your = IBM). Do you listen to them?
Capacity : I don't know the official number, but my gut was 4,500-ish. Vendors on the showcase floor did say that foot traffic was much the same as last year. My observation is that there were way more IBMers than before. The Blogger Open was packed, so registrations for that were up 40-50% :)
OGS : yes, I was watching it from my hotel room on the Dolphin, sans clothes. OGS product mentions usually go from flagship down to toilet paper in that order. Let's just say Domino and Notes was 1:40 in before it was even mentioned. Of a 2:00 show. But it was better than last year. And no animals were harmed in the making of the OGS (that should really be implied don't you think?).
Social : Before LS12 it was an overdone word if ever there was one. It's the new decades "e-commerce". Irksome and buzzy in all the wrong way. Like cloud.
Overall : I had fun. I always do when 100's of my favorite people are in the same place, but somehow (and I can't quite put my finger on it) LS12 seemed like it was done on the cheap this year. Maybe the recession is starting to bite even the titan-esque IBM or maybe I am wrong. Either way I had fun and look forward to a more balanced and less cluttered schedule next year.
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Windows 2003 - installing hotfixes it makes your life a whole lot better
Mon, May 21st 2012 12:26p Darren Duke If you have any type of data Windows server being backed up, chances are you are going to need Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) at some point. This is basically Microsoft's API to allow consistent backups of files on the system. You have probably also seen lots of VSS errors in either the backup application (Backup Exec, Veeam, etc) and/or the Windows Event Viewer. If you are using Window 2003 Server then make sure you have the roll up hotfixes installed on each and every server you are back [read] Keywords: application
microsoft
server
225
So you have a new IBM Connections Entitlement. Now what?
Mon, Apr 9th 2012 8:11a Darren Duke On April 25th in Chattanooga, TN, STS is hosting a free "Connections Proof of Technology" to show the power of the Files and Profiles entitlement now included with all Lotus Notes licenses. Given the nature of the install process (read "Websphere") it may even be worth your while coming from further afield (Atlanta, Nashville, Huntsville, etc) if IBM Connections is on your to-do list with in the next 12-18 months. Space is limited so it is a first come, first served session. The sess [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
lotus
notes
websphere
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Quickr Domino 8.5.1 Fix Pack 26 is out
Thu, Mar 22nd 2012 2:14p Darren Duke Available on Fix Central and containing the following fixes: 03/15/2012 HMON8K7RW7 LO62684 A document upgraded from 8.2 which displays as an Upload in Connectors changes to a Page icon when checked out via the Connectors. 03/07/2012 GAKI8RZGEK LO67785 With a customer specific place, searching the place resulted in either no results found or garbage was displayed in the search results. 03/07/2012 No SPR When using Tivoli Access Manager (TAM), Pages with attachments are not being saved g [read] Keywords: acl
domino
ibm
lotus
notes
policies
quickr
application
database
email
microsoft
office
server
tivoli
wiki
299
Windows 7, "User Profile Service failed the logon" and Lotus Notes.....
Wed, Mar 21st 2012 3:04p Darren Duke Over the past few weeks we've seen several issues with Windows 7 failing to logon for apparently random users. We've tried several methods (Google the error and there seems to be a whole lot of peeps) and none seemed to be "the" solution. Well today, I had two more PC's fail.They are on a domain, but two users can not get past the error. So I go searching again and I believe I found the smoking gun for my issue......drum roll please......Lotus Notes. Well, I think it is Windows 7 but the [read] Keywords: admin
lotus
notes
roaming
google
profile
security
Quickr Domino 8.5.1 FP 12 is available
Sun, Jan 29th 2012 1:11p Darren Duke Available on IBM Fix Central. Contains the following fixes: FP 8.5.1.12 12/22/2011 LHFX8NLKSA PPOR8PAPF7 LO65452 LO65920 Date Popup and Last Modified Date format is not correct for en-gb, should be DD/MM/YYYY. 12/22/2011 ESEO8PGKMP LO66016 With a customer specific place, not able to move an item to the very bottom of the table of contents. 12/22/2011 TJOR8PGTGR LO66048 When using a Quickr 8.2 themed place on Quickr 8.5.1, an image uploaded into the rich text editor shows as an att [read] Keywords: connections
domino
ibm
lotus
quickr
rich text
aix
server
wiki
544
The (somewhat clothed) LS12 review
Mon, Jan 23rd 2012 9:58a Darren Duke I'll start backwards..... With the explosion of Social Media and knowing "where to be", Kimono's was really only fun the last night and the first night. In between it was just too packed. Time to find another hang out for mid week me thinks. And with everyone and their dog having a 5MP camera on their phone, it is no longer "what happens as LS, stays at LS". Party accordingly. The Blogger Open : my team won. So someone has really bad math skills! A valiant effort my Mike McGarel on [read] Keywords: admin
connections
domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
quickr
xpages blogger
mobile
sharepoint
wifi
Why you really need Windows 7 x64 and 8GB RAM on PC’s
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 7:04a Darren Duke So here is a comparison of Windows 7 with 3GB vs 8GB RAM. The machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad T500. First up 3GB running Windows 7, 32 bit: This machine runs the usual. Notes 8.5.3 + Admin + DDE, Quickr, Skype, TweetDeck Office, vSphere Client, etc. It never drops below 70% used with my normal day to day operation. This same machine with 8GB and Windows 7, 64 bit (you need 64 bit to see more than 4GB RAM)....the penalty? You need to reinstall everything....but with Windows you're r [read] Keywords: admin
notes
quickr
office
skype
