Blogging panel, BOF

January 25 2006

Yesterday afternoon, both the "Reach out and blog" panel and the Lotus blogging community birds-of-a-feather were held.  Interestingly, a few people live blogged the panel, but nobody covered the BoF.  I was told it was because there was no wifi in the room...perhaps some of you have heard of replication........

The BoF solidified one thing -- why I love my job.  This is my 8th Lotusphere on staff, and I've never felt more relaxed and comfortable -- with where IBM Lotus is at in the market, with the Notes/Domino products, with the community we've created.  

Now, there were several valid points during the BoF that the community seems a bit insular.  I'd say yes and no.  Gone are the days where we'd conga-line-blog -- ten people writing on exactly the same topic (conferences excepted, of course).  On the other hand, I do see the same names as constants commenting here and elsewhere.  This blog got almost 13,000 pageviews on Monday, but only 100 comments.  I'd like to find out more about what I can do to encourage more voices.  Laurette Rynne made a couple of very good points about time delay (she's down under in Oz) and comment volume -- that by the time that she sees a blog topic to comment on, everything that needs to be said has been said.  Still, I don't want an echo chamber -- I'd like to be challenged more, professionally, and be exposed to a broader array of topics.

It was great to see how comfortable the Lotus bloggers are with each other.  I consider many of you my friends, even though we mainly see each other infrequently at conferences.  The online presence, combined with instant messaging and e-mail, mean that I interact with many of you more often than other groups of friends who live within a few miles of home.  There were several wisecracks and in-jokes -- I hope that wasn't too important of a phone call, Greyhawk -- and in my own call back home last night, trying to explain about not wanting to lick the mic (Grey: "My name's mike") had me laughing for several minutes.

This morning features a customer meeting, "The Boss Loves Microsoft" with co-presenter Sara L Nagelvoort (the L is important) at 10 AM (in Dolphin N Hemi D&E), and "How to 'sell' Notes/Domino inside your organization" with co-presenter Libby Ingrassia at 1:30 in Dolphin S. Hemi III.  Then the family arrives in time for SeaWorld.  It's going to be a knock-out day.

Ed Brill | Lotusphere2006 Category:  Lotusphere ’06  Add/View Comments [34]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 1/25/2006 7:10:14 AM

    Ed,

    Out of interest, how many people turned out to these sessions? I heard many of the sessions this year are overflowing and people are being turned away. This is the first proper report I've seen on this one and I was expecting a mention of turnout.

  1. 2  Liam http://www.social-construction.com | 1/25/2006 7:23:50 AM

    Ed

    I welcome your implied call for more voices to be heard. Your interest in how to include more people in the domino dialogues and discources is indeed refreshing.

    It is very easy to be sidelined by the vociferous bloggering community despite being a long time Notes/Domino developer and IBM Business Partner.

    I choose deliberately to move into Notes/Domino as it was such an unrivalled product for collaboration (still is) - and the community around it seemed welcoming and encouraging of the very collaboration that the product itself enabled. I am pleased that the early proponents of this (Notes.net, NotesTips and Codestore in particular) were mentioned in dispatches { Link }

    More recently openntf has continued this approach and taken the collaboration to another level.

    The community around the product is clearly as important as (if not more than) the product itself and as such needs to be encouraged and supported as you frequently do.

  1. 3  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 7:28:00 AM

    Ed,

    Good Lotusphere blogging - wish I was there! You asked the question, "I'd like to find out more about what I can do to encourage more voices."

    My suggestion, would be to have an occasional 'open thread'. I've seen a few people comment on your postings - then be told that they are 'off-topic'. Sometimes hard to tell if this is meant tongue-in-cheek, or as a rebuke?

    If people aren't following a set topic, then they may volunteer information that isn't being covered in your blog. (Not that I'm criticising the scope of your writings here Ed - you probably seem my IP address from differing countries, providers and companies on a regular basis - but hard to keep track of me that way!!).

    Anyway - have a good 'Sphere and keep the posts coming.

    Cheers,

    Steve in the UK.

  1. 4  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 7:30:13 AM

    "Curse"(!), I meant to say, "you've probably seen". Typographic errors are my own personal hate! (Edit BEFORE posting Steve...).

    Cheers :-)

  1. 5  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 1/25/2006 7:41:26 AM

    @1 - I think I posted how many people they stated were here, over 6000. Rooms are continually getting overflowed on some sessions.

    @Ed - At teh start of the BOF, before you arrived, jokes and comments were made that no one should be at the blog BOF live blogging. Notice there were no laptops out right. I think it was a time for those of us blogging to listen to the thoughts of everyone. I know I would have missed something if I was trying to put my thoughts in my words and live blog. Just my thought at this early hour

  1. 6  Brett van Gelder  | 1/25/2006 7:45:20 AM

    I think one of the problems of commenting and engaging in discussion on blogs such as yours is similar to what you encountered as a blogger at IBM in the early days. Many of us work for large corporates; we have to be careful as to how views we express here and elsewhere are interpreted (or misinterpreted). In my case I choose to remain silent in public forums rather than take on the risk of having a personal view attributed to my employer etc.

  1. 7  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 1/25/2006 7:55:31 AM

    @1 to these sessions? I would say 300 or so to the panel and about 100 to the BoF.

  1. 8  Graham Chastney http://oak-grove.typepad.com | 1/25/2006 8:18:32 AM

    There are a number of problems with trying to gage the blog voice.

    You have no way of knowing what or who most people represent and hence you can't guage the weight of their comments.

    Most people won't repeat a comment, but that just means that you don't know how many people are represented by a particular comment. And again you are stuck not being able to guage the weight of a comment.

    Some commenters aren't seeking to enter into the dicussion they are just trying to score points. These people tend to reduce the value of the comments for others.

    The only way I have found of working through this one is to build the community of trusted individuals from whom you can guage the rest. People who will disagree with you as well as sing along.

    Keep up the good work.

    On a different note - why are you running a session on "How to 'sell' Notes/Domino inside your organization". The norrowness of this topic worries me, I hope the content isn't limited to Notes/Domino. Most organisation are more interested in the whole collaboration story.

  1. 9  nick halliwell www.comware.net | 1/25/2006 8:37:45 AM

    I am replying to Ed comments from a comfortable bar purch in Bangkok. Yes its exacty 12 hours ahead here. so can only folloy things till mid day Orlando time. but what way to follow the greatest Notes event in the world. 'live' whilst sitting in a bar in Bangkok. long live the king long live notes

  1. 10  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 8:38:05 AM

    @6 That's exactly why I'm careful about where I post even though my name - to UK people anyway - is everywhere on the net. Although the comedian's name actually has an extra 'o' in it :-)

    @7 @Ed, perhaps you could ask people to 'vote' on various questions you want answered? People may find the anonymous approach easier to take if they are 'lurking' ?

  1. 11  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 1/25/2006 8:58:42 AM

    I think that getting more voices will be difficult. I look at developerWorks:Lotus and most of the people that give of their knowledge and time answering questions there, are pretty much the same ones that contribute to the blogosphere. I don't think that there is a 'silver bullet' that will get more lurkers to contribute. Even Libby tried that, without much success:

    { Link }

  1. 12  Tim Rynne www.timrynne.com | 1/25/2006 8:59:01 AM

    @10 - the voting option is a good idea. As Laurette suggested in the BOF, a conversation can be long finished by the time we get to see it from across the world, whereas an option to just select a preference from a vote at least allows the opportunity to "me too" without building hundreds of comments.

    Of course, the issue with the voting is that it's anonymous - the discussion in the BOF was centred on how do people get recognised in the blogging world as well as how do you encourage "lurkers"

  1. 13  Graham Tucker  | 1/25/2006 9:02:32 AM

    @3 Totally agree!! As a first time responder to such a well known blog you always feel that maybe you shouldn't speak up and it's better to keep your head down. The idea of an open topic is great but it is difficult to keep it to a reasonable size, either no-one contributes or you lose the yourself in the free-for-all. Having said that now I have stuck my head above the wall, I am sure I will come back with more comments on a later topic

  1. 14  Chadwick  | 1/25/2006 9:02:33 AM

    @10 Ah haaaa! Sorry couldn't resist.

  1. 15  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 9:14:20 AM

    @14 It's no joke (no post-modern irony there...) being me! Once had a workman cancel on me as he heard my name and assumed someone was winding him up!

    More of a Chris Morris man myself :-)

  1. 16  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 9:16:07 AM

    @3 True - but I see the value in long/big free-for-all's too. If the comments get indexed, and they are of value then they could be of historical use at a later date. Google is my friend, especially researching :-)

  1. 17  Steve Cogan  | 1/25/2006 9:17:01 AM

    @13 (re my last post) - I meant @you (@13), not @3 (me!). It's been a long day already...

  1. 18  Laurette Rynne www.lauretterynne.com | 1/25/2006 9:26:49 AM

    Given that I'm currently in the right time zone I thought I had a responsibility to comment! This is particularly the case as my personal blogging has slowed down while I absorb all the information available for here.

    For me the very best thing about Lotusphere, and particularly the BOF yesterday was the ability to put faces to names. I have been reading many of these blogs for a while, but given the difficulties of getting over to Lotusphere, it just isn't always possible to get any face-to-face interactions with fellow bloggers.

    I think the issue of recognition, both of personal blogs, and just getting people to stop lurking and start commenting is a difficult one, and time zones certainly aren't the only issue. I think the conversation in the BOF regarding the perceived insularity of the Domino blogging community is partly due to the fact that it is clear when reading blogs that some people are friends, and there can be an unwillingness to break into what can appear an almost personal conversation. This is certainly alleviated by people who are willing to call out to new bloggers when they are found - Chris Byrne and Richard Schwartz are particularly good at doing this, and it always helps broaden the circle.

  1. 19  Graham Tucker  | 1/25/2006 9:27:45 AM

    @16 No arguements there, however with a big free for all it's difficult to attract new people out of the woodwork.

  1. 20  Sandy Deisz  | 1/25/2006 9:45:16 AM

    Ed

    Been reading your blogs for a while now.Great job and thanks for provnding the insight on latest developents.I cud not attend the Lotusspehere as guess what- what I am trying to make a case with one of my clients to keep the Lotus Domino investments and try to leverage more out of it. I am in consulting and try to be very platform agnostic between MSX and Lotus Domino.

    My concern is I am not finding many tools out there to tell my client that Lotus Notes is not a legacy application. For some reason, I am getting a feeling from my clients that Lotus is an outdated brand and lost its steam. Specially on the LN applications side.. many of the loyal LN application users demand more than replication from these applcations. Some of the applications are planned to migrate to ERPs like SAP etc.. Are there any best practices from Lotus to advise clients to follow to manage these ever growing LN applications in better way and convince them that LN still can be choice of platform for their exisitng application..?

    S

  1. 21  Dave http://www.weblayouts.net | 1/25/2006 9:45:43 AM

    If you want more user communication, why not just add a discussion board instead of a free-for-all thread?

    Maybe even with a feature in the blog to "Create/Join Discussion" for each post, in addition to open topics on the board?

    Just a thought...

  1. 22  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 1/25/2006 9:48:57 AM

    I guess firstly we need definition of a lurker.

    Blogs receive many hits on the web and via RSS links. Many of those are search engine robots trawling for updates. Google, MSN etc use the real pages but Google blog search and others now poll via RSS for more regular updates. These I call background noise.

    Take away the noise and you have several main kinds of readers.

    1) RSS subscribers - These are downloading your pages headers but may not be reading any of it...ever.

    2) Page loaders - These people load your page from a bookmark occasionally to see what's new. They may read some, all or none of your entries.

    3) Readers - These regularly read all or most of your articles.

    4) Contributors - These fall into 2 types. Those that contribute to the discussion or have an opinion. Or those that use the topic as an excuse to hijack a few readers for themselves by posting a link to their own blog. What I call an ASW { Link } (first definition)

    The trick is to turn a reader into a contributor but in honesty many people just aren't the type. Some people just don't have an opinion or don't particularly value expressing it in public. Whatever their reservation is, it's hard to overcome.

    I like to think I have a good contributor:reader ratio on my site. Many of the readers have posted a comment at some time or another. When they don't, I recognise that they just aren't interested or don't have an opinion.

    One top tip (if anyone is still reading) is to use the "continue reading" links on your blog entries. If someone reads 2 paragraphs and then clicks this it shows a complete interest in the story. This certainly splits the readers from the page loaders.

    Well established blogs get a large proportion of traffic from search engines. Whether they actually wanted your site or whether they'll come back is purely random.

    Want to turn a reader into a contributor? Talk about something that interests them... Evolution is always good { Link } as is 'Intelligent design' { Link } but even Scott Adams proves that the reader:contributor ratio varies wildly depending on the topic.

  1. 23  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 1/25/2006 10:18:03 AM

    @Ed, Chris Miller's spot on about the lack of live blogging from the BOF. The lack of wifi doesn't stop me from posting via my Treo. We all just ("groupthink" again) agreed that is was too, well, weird to blog from the blogging BOF.

    re: the issue of encouraging participation and drawing out comments from a wider audience, I have a somewhat contrarian approach to this issue. I believe that the particular tools we use are inhibiting us. Specifically, most of us read blogs via RSS readers, not web browsers (it's too difficult to keep up, otherwise, and RSS is brilliant). When we want to comment, though, we have to launch the browser (hopefully built into your RSS reader, but still) and hit the site, load all that html, and then finally get to type our response. Two comments in the blogging BOF, from Joe Litton and Warren Elsmore, are relevant here. As Joe noted, the ability to post a comment directly from one's RSS reader would make it easier to comment and lower the barrier to participation. I'm not exactly quiet or shy in the blogosphere, but I frequently skip commenting on things because I don't want to take the 4-5 extra steps before I can start typing. Then, as Warren pointed out, the technical limitation we're talking about is inherent in the RSS reader, not the servers or blog templates. As Declan Lynch pointed out, RSS has a comments API. IBM is pushing RSS into every tool, and rightly so. But what about pushing the envelope a bit as well, making Notes the best RSS reader available and explicitly adding features like this that none of the other readers have? I know we've done "Notes Lite" before and it certainly didn't work, but what about a custom version of Notes - or an AlphaWorks project distinct from Notes - that focused purely on enhancing the collaborative capabilities in the blog world. As Warren also pointed out, entirely accurately, we've *done* this before. This is collaboration. Shouldn't the creators of the best collaborative tool in the history of computing be *leading* the charge and making use of the vast amount of experience available?

    My second contrarian point about blog comments is that the flat nature of our comments is inherently bad for collaboration. I know this topic has been debated, and I believe some of our A-list bloggers disagree with me, but the most successful collaborative environments anyone has ever built (UseNet, Notes, even Slashdot) use *threaded* comments. When your commenters have to use numbers to reference which point they want to respond to, you've inserted another barrier. Plenty of people are simply not going to take the trouble, and plenty of others lose interest as the discussion continues and they have to keep scrolling back and forth to figure out which response related to which comment. I doubt Ed wants to host another round of debates about threaded vs flat comments, but I am convinced that this has an impact on participation.

    So, my ultimate point is that while I recognize valid psychological and sociological issues exist in this discussion, and I am aware that the number of lurkers will always be much higher than the number of contributors, I am absolutely certain that there are things we could do to help from a purely technical perspective.

    Dang, that may be my longest comment ever. Sorry, Ed. Dismounting from my soapbox...

  1. 24  Libby http://www.notesgirl.com | 1/25/2006 10:24:44 AM

    @11 -- Greg, you're right, I did give it a shot, but as others have said, it's all about talking about things that people are interested in. So, I got some comments, and even more IRL rather than on the blog, but mostly folks who were reading that week/day were interested in other things than that at the time and I respect that -- although, I did "Meet" a few of the readers that I hadn't known before, so it certainly wasn't wasted.

  1. 25  Jeff Chen http://www.jwchen.net | 1/25/2006 11:21:24 AM

    As a first time contributor, I offer my greetings to Ed and the general Lotus Notes/Domino community.

    I am a 23 year old out on the West Coast just beginning my journey on the notes/domino path and I confess that I’m a blatant “lurker” here on these pages. I love the articles, blog entries, and the comments. However, I’ve come to recognize that the Notes/Domino community is quite exclusive.

    Before anyone pounces on me, hear me out. As a recent graduate from the University of California Davis 1.5 years ago, it’s quite evident (and most students will realize) that as technology continues to develop, collaboration and web development will be an integral part of the future. Truthfully, if someone told me about Lotus Notes/Domino when I graduated, I would not have been able to tell you much about it. But I could tell you about any other major collaboration tool, IBM competitor, and almost everything about Microsoft one could imagine. I recently talked to a couple friends who are recent graduates of UCLA and Stanford, describing what I do, and they have never heard of Notes/Domino.

    This leads me to my two cents:

    1)The community mostly consists of the same people (page views can be a deceiving number), with mostly the same people coming to your webpage. Most of the time, the comments left, I feel, are overarching enough that there seems to be no point in redundancy. Even as I type this, I recognize some of my points are already well mentioned by previous commentators.

    2)As a new Notes/Domino Developer, the community is very hard to break into. It’s not that people are unfriendly, but to give my own example, I have not met another person within my age group / generation that does notes development and collaboration. It’s rather daunting to break into a community without sounding like an idiot, especially one in which most of the people seem to be very well educated and experienced in a realm from which I’m just starting (not to mention much older than me). It leads me to be content at times, to sit back and sift through the material and formulate my own opinions.

    3)Honestly, I think if you desire a broader base of contributors, the best way is to increase the awareness of Lotus Notes/Domino, particularly targeting future developers. Microsoft goes to college campuses all the time; I can list off product after product. I never once heard about IBM and Lotus until after college. The collaboration battle is not just going to be won over the corporate battleground, but across college campuses as well.

  1. 26  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 1/25/2006 11:24:40 AM

    @25 I do track unique visitors and not just pageviews. 30% are new visitors each day (mostly from google). There are thousands of unique visitors on any given day, surely more than that this week.

    On your third point, I completely agree. We need more presence there. There are some programs underway, but more volume would be a very good thing.

  1. 27  Maria Helm  | 1/25/2006 12:33:49 PM

    I can really relate to Graham's comment (@13). I've been a Notes developer/admin since 1997ish, and respond to questions on the DeveloperWorks forums occasionally to somewhat frequently. But I don't consider myself on par with most of the respondents on this blog or many others in the Domino blogging community. I've never worked for IBM, haven't developed anything spectacular/unique, and don't work for a very large company or business partner. (Which is why I haven't started a Domino blog yet...what would I talk about?) So I just read and learn from their wisdom...which is a point noone has made yet. If you're writing fair, concise, informative articles...then there may not be a lot left for someone to comment on or question.

    I also agree to a small extent with Laurette @18, about the "perceived" insularity of the Domino blogging community. I put perceived in quote because I have been around the community long enough to know that another Domino person, no matter their experience level, is always welcomed. There's no need to feel like you aren't part of the "in" crowd. But I can see how some people might see the relationships and feel that way.

    Open Topics, Polls, etc. are a good idea. (Sorry, but I didn't have big enough servers or enough users to reply to the "who's biggest" thread.) I would respond to open topics when they pertain to me. I think the open topics and polls with comments could help involve newbies, especially when their contributions are given a little extra attention.

    On another tack, I also agree with Rob @23 about the threaded comments...sortof. I don't like the sites where once you've clicked on a response-to-response, you can no longer see the main thread. But I do like to have the response-to-response indented. That way, all the responses are on one page, but you can clearly see who is responding to what, and follow a tangent through without hijacking the thread.

    @25 Jeff Chen - I would encourage you to poke your head in at the DeveloperWorks forums regularly.

    { Link }

    { Link }

    I've gotten a lot of support there over the years, and a lot of the bloggers I read now are names I recognize from over there. So ask and answer some questions there regularly and get to know some names and feel involved. I also ran into the "what is Lotus Notes" question a lot when I was first starting out, but I would point out that a lot of that depends on who you are talking to. Less experienced techies and people in non-technical fields or non-corporate environments (i.e. floor sanders, elementary teachers, your pastor, the grocery store clerk) are not as likely to have had experience with Notes. But I discovered that as I met more corporate contacts (lawyers, insurance companies, big business types) I found almost all of those people had used Notes at some point, or at least heard of it. So, when your friends go "Domino what?", don't feel bad...take it as an opportunity to "sell Domino" to yet another person who doesn't know how great 'replication' can be. ;)

    Oh, and I guess I'll try to peek my head over the wall more often.

  1. 28  Chris Bordeleau http://www2.itec.suny.edu:81/chrisbordeleau | 1/25/2006 1:20:33 PM

    I would be one of those people who reads all the blogs and seldom ever posts. I have had a personal blog for family news & photos for sometime but never carried it over to my work.

    I attended last nights session and thought of a recent meeting I had with our COI about sharring want we inside or group knows with others both inside out outside. At the time of the meeting I did not think about a blog as a solution but after hearing people at last night's BOF I went ahead and created a Blog just for work ( mostly Notes related ) subjects ( { Link } ).

    Working in academia it requires little to get these types of things approved and I hope that I and others in my group will be able to take this and run with it...

  1. 29  Sean Burgess http://www.phigsaidwhat.com | 1/25/2006 1:22:14 PM

    @27 I felt very much the way you did when I started my blog a couple of years ago. I didn't think that I was doing anything that was so outstanding that 1000 people hadn't already done it, and they did it better. What I have found over that time is that my blog is not only a way for me to connect with other members of the community but also a way for me to express my development style and document my growth as a developer. There are many times that I will go back into my blog's archive to read what I had written when solving a particular problem. I often explain my code better on my blog than I ever do in the application. Occasionally, I even come up with something that is relatively cool and feel proud about being able to share it.

    The main problem with being a Notes Developer in the corporate world is that you are often the only Notes person in your company. Without a blog or the forums, how would you ever find someone else to help you with the tough problems. And while you might think you are just an average, run of the mill developer, you might have an expertise in one area that someone else could benefit from. Don't underestimate your worth too much!!!

    Sean---

  1. 30  Rob Darwin  | 1/25/2006 1:28:39 PM

    "...perhaps some of you have heard of replication" - HAHAHAHA...best line of the week so far.

    I've been a Notes professional for 12 years this March. I've been certified since R4, but I realized that my skills needed work last year at Lotusphere when I found myself frequently attending sessions presented by people with fewer years of Notes experience than I have. That much-needed wakeup call did not go ignore. Thanks in large part to the blogging community, as well as IBM's abundant developer resources, I've identified the skills I need to master, planned how I will acquire each one, and I'm working that plan now.

    I have good communication skills, so blogging and presenting at Lotusphere are definitely part of my long-range plan. I've always wanted to be sure I have something to contribute first, and I believed that meant getting my skills into the ballpark of some of the hyper-skilled people that maintain the most popular blogs before I would be able to produce useful content. This post and the replies to it are causing me to re-evaluate that thinking. Perhaps there is some value to others in a blog that begins where I am now, then documents the lessons learned on the journey to becoming the first-class community member I would like to be.

    Finally, drawing inspiration from another comment here, consider this potential blog title: "Darwinian Domino- The Evolution of an Intelligent Designer". Catchy, no?

  1. 31  Axel  | 1/25/2006 4:45:56 PM

    I develop on Domino, JBoss Portal Server (professionally) and with Swing (last one open source).

    Its certainly not easy to keep a product alive and thriving for more than 14 years and this is certainly a big acomplishment.

    Don't know or care which of JBoss, Domino or Swing will die first. For men using their brain for thinking the declaring-platform-obsession of the whole industry is getting a funny topic anyway. Without connection to the complex reality out there.

    I wish less bashing against other platforms which they don't really know from parts of the Domino community.

    Instead read more of redbooks and articles and notes.net. Try out more stuff from openNtf or notes sandbox.

  1. 32  Kit Davis www.ynys.com/contrtech.nsf | 1/25/2006 5:40:32 PM

    I suspect the prominence of your site works to deter many lurkers from commenting. One way or the other we are all dependent on this market for our livelihood. Making a misstep here will be seen by every one of your peers. I would guess that the same topics on a less frequented blog , or if your site allowed anonymous comments, (not something I would personally advocate) would elicit a higher response rate.

    The price of success with your blog is the higher number of lurkers.

    Not unlike sessions at Lotusphere ■ many people attend, but very few get up at the end of the presentation to ask questions.

  1. 33  Greyhawk68 http://greyhawk68.dominohosting.biz | 1/26/2006 8:54:17 PM

    No worries Ed. The phone call thing was actually very funny!

    I'll post more on this on my blog soon too, but I do want thesickos.com to be a real honest-to-god comprehensive blogroll of the Domino community, and Dec is working on the ability to submit your blog for addition to the blogroll. All with a dynamic OPML file.

    So hopefully that will lead to more people joining in. I really want to welcome everyone...

    -Grey