Ed Brill

This is the review that was never meant to be.  At the beginning of the year, a prediction was made that "Blogging will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool, no longer a credible source of news. "  Here at the end of the year, when I think about things like IBM's corporate blogging policy and the substantial increase in IBM bloggers that resulted, some of the incredible blogging going on from companies all over the industry, and the use of blogging by companies as diverse as GM and Boeing, I don't think blogging has faded from the corporate world.  At all.

In my little corner of the blogosphere, my Technorati ranking has dropped from 5000 to 6000 -- still pretty impressive considering that they are now tracking 23.5 million blogs.  The daily blog hit count has increased 50% since my 2004 review, so thank you and welcome to all the newer readers.  10-20% of all browser hits daily are google searches -- and after the October "google dance", those searches tend to be mostly relevant.  About 30% of page hits daily are new visitors, and I'm glad to see some of you are staying around.  

Yet one interesting thing about there now being 23.5 million blogs is that there are simply too many blogs to read every day.  I know I've discovered 20-30 new "Domino blogs" this year that I should have supported more by adding to my blogroll or linking to or whatever.  I just can't track them all.  I'll even admit that I don't read all the blogs on my blogroll regularly -- some have gone days without me getting time to look at them (other than my evil twin Alan, of course), and I've been too lazy to add some of them to my RSS reader.  I wonder when (or whether already) it's all gotten too big.  In the last few months, for example, there are a half-dozen topics I've covered that I expected to attract a diverse set of comments and voices.  Perhaps the explosion in blogs has made readership a bit more self-selecting -- while attempts to solve the problem through blogdigger, memeorandum, technorati, del.icio.us, etc. haven't really fulfilled that mission IMHO.  

Anyway, without further pontification, here are my top ten events covered on edbrill.com in 2005:
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1.        Release of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 7.  A top-notch release that continues to be the best technology in our industry.  Over 20,000 people attended 200 launch events worldwide, with first-rate advertising and marketing activities.  (Category: Notes/Domino 7)
2.        Celebrating the 15th anniversary of shipping Notes at Lotusphere 2005.  He may have gone on to bigger and better (?) things, but having Ray Ozzie on stage in the opening session was an electric moment -- as we knew it would be when designing it.
3.        The announcement and planning for Lotus Notes "Hannover" has re-captured attention and imagination for Notes.  From what I heard out of the Lotusphere rehearsals this week, the demos are going to knock you out of your seats.
4.        A business school dream fulfilled as I had my first mention in a Forbes magazine cover story.  Not quite how I imagined it...
5.        Throughout the year, I chronicled Microsoft's latest efforts to migrate Lotus Notes customers to the Microsoft platform.  At year's end, Gartner advised that the efforts had met with limited success, despite all the noise.  The market now has a clearer understanding of Microsoft's "Notes Compete" effort and its "trojan horse" characteristics, and a few funny moments.
6.        Microsoft's roadmap for Exchange continued to be littered with potholes and detours.  The focus now is on the entire sixteen products in the Windows/Office System that will at some point possibly provide a collaborative framework.
7.        Customer successes with Notes/Domino were regularly discussed, including coverage of cool applications, templates, even podcasts.  The continued growth (four consecutive quarters) of IBM's Notes/Domino revenue is testimonial to this market success.
8.        I joined the Machead crowd with an iMac G5.  It's still early days, but I've been incredibly impresed with this machine and it's all-around coolness and fun (Thanks to Bruce, vowe, Bob@Apple and others for helping me find my way around it).
9.        Meatspace: While it wasn't my top travel year ever, I did speak at a diverse set of events around the world.  Travel highlights are below, but I would like to acknowledge and thank many of you who hosted the incredible events I spoke at throughout the year -- forgive me for not linking all of these.  The list includes edcom, Workflow Studios, Paul Mooney/Declan/Bill and the Irish Notes UG crowd, Jack Dausman and the DC UG crowd, Brian Benz and the new Vegas UG, the Boston UG, the Pittsburgh UG and partners, the Columbus UG, the Western Michigan UG, The View for Admin2005/Admin Europe 2005, DNUG for the Hannover event, and the Jamaican Computer Society.  Apologies if I left anyone off the list.
10.     The tenth event for '05 is the one I didn't blog, but that those of you I'm fortunate enough to count among my friends know all about.  Thanks to you for everything.

Travel highlights from 2005:
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• Miles flown: Approximately 120,000 nautical miles, including the eight-minute flights to/from Inishmor, Ireland.
• Countries visited: Canada, Jamaica, Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, France, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Australia. (Four new countries)
• Airlines flown: American, United/Ted, Delta, Southwest, Airtran, Air Canada, Aer Arann Islands, Air Jamaica, KLM, VLM, Lufthansa, Privatair, TAROM, Adria, Qantas. (Six new airlines) -- 2006 status: American Platinum, United Premier Executive.
• New airports: DTM, MBJ, BWI, SMF, SOF, OTP, LJU, NNR, IOR
• Long(ish) distance trains: Acela, Deutsche Bahn, Sydney CityRail.
• Selected memories:
• Driving a Porsche 911 at 211 km/h on the Bavarian autobahn, with my dad, vowe & Ute, Wolfgang and Markus.
• Visiting Australia's Blue Mountains
• Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the Valley of Fire
• Seeing the incredible beauty of Western Eire
• London and Amsterdam in December

Wishes for 2006
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As I've said in my two previous year-in-review blog entries, I never expected blogging to turn out like this.  Interacting with all of you on a daily basis gets me up in the morning, makes every day interesting, and inspires and assists me to do my professional best.  Thank you for reading, writing, calling, mailing, chatting, and txting, and best wishes professionally and personally for 2006.  --Ed