lndcentral.com -- a group blog for the Lotus community and more

April 20 2004

Several months ago, I lamented that there are many people with great ideas in the Lotus customer community, but that the voices are being lost.  With the introduction of two excellent Domino blogging templates, we've seen a proliferation of bloggers.  Some have ended up silent already -- quality blogging is a time investment, no doubt about it.
Today, a  new site is available to help channel the energy and enthusiasm of those who would like to have a public way to share information about Lotus technologies in a visible way.  Inspired by the successful kuro5hin blog, www.lndcentral.com is live and ready.  Thanks very much to Joerg Michael for being inspired enough to build this site and make it happen.
It feels at the moment like a new house just waiting to be decorated.  I'm excited and intrigued to see what happens with this site.  I've added it to my blogroll and RSS reader, and will be watching the evolution.
A couple of housekeeping thoughts.
Who should contribute?  Well, anyone!  There are a lot of successful group blogs on the web.  Even those of us with existing blogs may find that there's a topic worth putting on this site.  Also, those of you who have limited time for blogging may find this a perfect outlet for your occasional thoughts.  
But I can set up/have my own blog already!  Yes, that's true, and some of you have great, popular, successful blogs.  But others, well, haven't had the time to build the content, the voice, the audience.  This is a little tough -- you'll have to decide between satisfying your ego via your own site vs. the potential readership of a group blog setting.
lndcentral.com has a registration mechanism -- will I get spammed?  No, there is a privacy policy on the site, and this is a community thing.  No worries there.
Do I need to have an account on lndcentral?  See this faq page.
What kind of content should be shared at lndcentral?  Well, anything related to the Lotus marketplace.  Several categories have been posted on the topics list, it should be easy to draw inspiration from there.
So there you have it.  My personal goal in promoting this site is that we can show the world what the Lotus community is all about -- and why they should want to be part of it.  Enjoy!

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Blogging  Add/View Comments [8]

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  1. 1  Mike Werner http://blogs.motorbiker.org | 4/20/2004 2:47:42 PM

    nice site, but strangly enough it doesn't use Domino.....

  1. 2  Justin Freeman http://walnut.netmonkey.biz | 4/20/2004 11:09:50 PM

    Notice how you only have to log into the website once and it remembers who you are whenever you return? Cool feature hey?

    Too bad you cannot do that on Domino within a shared hosting environment (without writing a DSAPI in C).

    There's one good reason why it's not on Domino. Community & continuatity of the user experience. Who wants to have to re-login to post an article.

    Post Nuke/PHP Nuke/Geek Log/PHP CMS etc etc. also provide excellent community templates, which you can deploy and be up and running with in a few hours. Maybe this is something also missing from the Domino template toolkit.

  1. 3  Steve  | 4/21/2004 6:31:44 AM

    Thanks for this Ed. I've signed up and will follow with interest.

    I know this is YOUR personal blog but (just a suggestion) - you could do what other people in the blogosphere do from time to time and offer an open thread.

    I'm so used to following the 'rules' and tend not to post off-topic - so rarely end up posting if there's nothing I can connect with. Of course there's a premise here that y'all would WANT to hear what I have to post... :-)

  1. 4    | 4/21/2004 7:23:42 AM

    It is nice to see they've posted a privacy policy :-

    http://www.lndcentral.com/staticpages/index.php/privacy

    Also you can read anonymously but not post. And you can post with a pseudonym and they will protect your email address.

    A few years ago Domino was the best tool for doing this kind of site, do you think its being overtaken in this area by free tools ?

  1. 5  Steve Castledine www.dominoblog.com | 4/21/2004 9:09:41 AM

    Steve - when you say "have an open thread" - can you give me some detail on how you see this working - or a link to where it already works? Theres a new template for this blog database within the next two days - but could add this functionality in the next version. - cheers Steve Castledine

  1. 6  Nathan T. Freeman  | 4/21/2004 11:16:50 AM

    Justin.... yes you can. It just takes a little ingenuity and forethought, and some research on how you can pass login information to the Notes password screen.

  1. 7  Justin Freeman http://walnut.netmonkey.biz | 4/21/2004 3:57:39 PM

    Thanks for the tip Nathan, wheels are now turning.

    (Still, it would be a great feature of Domino to have greater programmatic control over user session handling).

  1. 8  Steve  | 4/21/2004 5:00:37 PM

    Steve,

    By 'open thread' I mean a non-headlined 'story' which people can use the comments section as a sort of 'free for all' discussion.

    Sometimes the pressure to stay 'on topic' in a blog can mean (IMHO!) that people don't comment if they never see a headline or story that allows them to jump in the comments section and post.

    HOWEVER, after saying all of that - I LIKE the collaborative community your site is turning into. Allowing us to post stories is a good way forward to building this Lotus-focussed community.

    If you want an example of how 'open threads' work - or what I'm alluding too - try http://www.dailykos.com/ ... apologies if it's too political - try to look at the style rather than the content if it's not your cup of tea ! I think it's a good implementation of a community using Scoop.

    Looking forward to joining in the fray at the new site when I get time and hopefully communicating something of value... :-)