Leveraging the Lotus community

July 8 2008

A colleague asked me the other day if I could define what it is about the Lotus community that is so unique.  There are strong communities around many technology products... each with many of the same attributes of passion, dedication, awareness, evangelism.  So what's different around here?

I think there are a few attributes that stand out for me in the Lotus community.  One is longevity.  A customer once told me that he stayed in his job as a Notes admin because a) he enjoyed being part of the community and b) liked the guaranteed ticket to Orlando in January for Lotusphere.  Let's stay focused on the former for the rest of this post...

Another aspect that is unique to the Lotus community is a willingness to act.  Many of the successful Lotus business partners, all over the world, exist and thrive today having grown out of a passion for the products and for the market space.  User groups and online forums (not just those on "notes.net" but also places like atnotes.de or the Japanese Consortium) have shown remarkably resiliency, in some cases running a dozen or more years.  OpenNTF.org is over six years old, and numerous community bloggers have run well past five years online.  Not every effort over the years has been successful, but new community sites like PlanetLotus and bleedyellow.com have become instant successes.  Moreover, many of these have been sustaining beyond their initial visions, or visionaries.  Personalities change, but the efforts go on.

Last week, John Roling wrote a great article in Intranet Journal called "Collaborating in the Lotus Community".  This is a great primer for someone new to all the online avenues for networking, collaborating, and sharing with others:

You may ask yourself, why do I care about any of this? Well the reasons are simple. By becoming part of the Lotus Notes user community you can easily gain access to some of the best minds ever to wield a Notes client. You can make contacts with these people, interact and learn a lot.

For me, if you join in the fun, I get to hear another voice, another perspective and ultimately we all wind up stronger as a community.
Roling's article covers all the key tools in the community today, including podcasts, LotusUserGroup.org, IdeaJam, and the original heart of it all, notes.net (now IBM developerWorks Lotus).  It is a great pass-around article to your friends and colleagues who may not know about the plethora of resources.

John Head took the idea a step further.  He built some presentation slides which highlight these community tools:



So, what is my point in highlighting these other than increasing awareness?  I believe that we at IBM Lotus have an obligation to help with the marketing of these community sites and tools.  While I suspect that IBM can never rise to the level of expectation around what the community would like to see done, for sure there can be more links, mentions, and exposure for these many avenues where the community contributes to the success of Lotus software.  

Clearly, with the financial performance that IBM has publicly reported over the last 3+ years, Lotus is a brand that is growing, and the community efforts have been a huge part of that.  In the Notes/Domino business, tens of thousands of customers have come together, and found that the product they use has a strong future...because the community demanded a strong future.  The community demonstrated that as IBM renewed its investment in Notes/Domino, the market can amplify that and respond favorably.

I'm hopeful that my Lotus colleagues will join the discussion that I am expecting to take place on this posting.  We can definitely do more to partner with the community.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [28]

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  1. 1  Jess Stratton http://www.momelettes.com | 7/8/2008 6:23:25 PM

    One thing I see at conferences that makes our community so unique is the "six degrees of seperation" factor. Colleagues stay in the industry, but move from company to company. So conferences are big reunions on the vendor floors.

    Example: A company that I work with now uses VendorA's product because I had used it at my old company, liked it, and recommended it. Then I move onto another company, and my old company sends my replacement to a conference who then knows the same vendor and can meet and greet, while I'm off meeting and greeting with old colleagues and vendors alike, who have also switched from company to company.

    Rinse and repeat! The lather seems to get delightfully bigger every time.

  1. 2  Richard Schwartz http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com | 7/8/2008 7:39:02 PM

    Also at more than a dozen years is Penumbra Group, which I helped to form as a community of small Lotus BP's in 1995. It isn't an open community on its own, but has certainly been very active in promoting a strong Lotus community. And the Partner Forum, which is where the initial group of Penumbra members all met each other (virtually), has been going since 1992. The LNOTES-L mailing list has been going since 1993, outlasting several hosts.

  1. 3  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 7/8/2008 7:51:14 PM

    Lotusphere 2008 I was walking by and met, for the first time in 15 years, someone I worked with on Notes from Bankers Trust in the early 90's, Peter Haynes(hope I got it spelled correctly). We're still here and going strong.

    As are many other people from various other projects through the years.

    Sharing information is a mindset, not a mandatory executive directive.

  1. 4  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 7/8/2008 9:05:38 PM

    If IBM wants to help these kinds of organizations out, it needs to recognize that most are essentially volunteer efforts and have little or no funding behind them.

    Based on that, IBM can and should make more space available to them at events like Lotusphere. The large area devoted to partner cafe or whatever it was called last year is mostly empty. Why not provide some table space for the groups there?

  1. 5  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 7/8/2008 9:14:48 PM

    I wonder what would happen if IBM sponsored a "Summer of Notes," in the style of Google? I bet with comparatively little money but a lot of commitment, some pretty amazing things could be accomplished.

  1. 6  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 7/8/2008 9:20:16 PM

    @4 in fairness, Andrew, groups like OpenNTF and LotusUserGroup.org have both had free pedestals in the product showcase (in OpenNTF's case, for years), and had BoFs during the conference. This is the kind of effort that we can do more easily than "hard dollar" funding.

  1. 7  Bruce Elgort http://linkjam.elguji.com | 7/8/2008 9:39:31 PM

    @6 - 3 times if my memory serves me correctly.

  1. 8  Bruce Elgort http://linkjam.elguji.com | 7/8/2008 10:15:53 PM

    One other note is that thee was no OpenNTF pedestal at LS 2008 as the OpenNTF team found that booth traffic at LS 2007 was down from the two prior years. This primarily had to do with the fact that most people had become familiar with OpenNTF. Many visitors would simply drop by to say "thanks" which of course was very nice. I am not sure what Vince and the OpenNTF Advisory Board are thinking for LS 2009 but as Ed has stated Lotus was very kind in offering the pedestal. Thank you Lotus.

  1. 9  Neil Gower http://www.ngower.me.uk | 7/9/2008 5:48:18 AM

    Perhaps IBM could help out the ILUG team.. ILUG is a massive success, and vital for those of us who cannot get to Lotusphere.

    If IBM could help out (and I am not going to try to suggest what kind of support as its nothing to do with me), but if IBM could help and keep that conference going in its current format (open, non-corporate, free) then that would be great...

  1. 10  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 7/9/2008 9:13:15 AM

    I have seen some little acknowledgements of the community on IBM sites:

    { Link }

    I think that there was some talk about a "Meet the Lotus Web 2.0 Community" at a future Lotusphere, where the bloggers could reach out the larger LS audience and bring them into the conversations. If nothing else, this would raise the awareness of the general LS population of additional sources of information.

    IBM does a wonderful job supporting the User Groups (IMHO). Since dusting off NEOLUG, a few years ago, our membership is constantly increasing and we always seem to have a nice crowd at the meetings. IBM has provided some excellent speakers on nearly any topic (Quickr, Connections, N/D 8, etc.) of interest.

    It appears to me that IBM is taking an interest in, and supporting, many of the community efforts. It just might not be very prominent.

  1. 11  Bruce Elgort http://elguji.com | 7/9/2008 9:22:02 AM

    @10 - and if you only knew that other IBM brands are currently pursuing IdeaJam purchases :-)

  1. 12  Rob McDonagh http://www.CaptainOblivious.com | 7/9/2008 9:26:39 AM

    @9 In fairness to IBM, they have provided significant help to ILUG. They send people like Alan, Ed, Mary Beth, and others to speak. They are also a major financial sponsor. I'm confident ILUG would be dramatically different if IBM hadn't been supportive in the past.

    I don't disagree with the general sentiment at all, though. I have no idea what, exactly, could be done to help, but there is that post on Paul Mooney's blog asking about the '09 version. So there is a need there, and maybe IBM can do something about it.

    But I don't want Ed to think their previous contributions have gone unnoticed, because they have not.

  1. 13  Andrew Pollack http://www.thenorth.com/apblog | 7/9/2008 11:51:40 AM

    Interesting. I wasn't aware those were cost-covered by IBM. Excellent.

  1. 14  Dan Lynch  | 7/9/2008 1:04:59 PM

    Supporting the communities can be altruistic and also help serve IBM's revenue goals as well, so your comments about IBM support would serve many masters in this case.

    The credibility factor with information gained from developerworks forums, usually gained from psotings by non-IBMers, was very persuasive here as we considered the IBM vs Microsoft solutions recently. For internal, non-technical decision makers who tend to be skeptical about any information provided by any vendors, they can't suggest bias with issues raised by folks in the community. We closely tracked the ND 8 forums for more than a year before it went gold, identified issues of particular import to our requirements, saw what was resolved, and boiled that list down to a very small punch list to deal with. IBM (Bill Hume and Ed at one point) participated in those threads, and we took a conversation off-line and the issues were explained or resolved to our satisfaction. Without the community and forums, that does not happen that way with that level of inherent credibility, and I'd offer may have opened the door wider for a decision to go another direction.

  1. 15  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/9/2008 1:10:39 PM

    I would like to see more people in the community step up. Yes, IBM can always do more. But if you look at the list of sites John and I highlight, the non-IBM ones are driven by a small number of people. Some are done by the same folks. We need more people to get involved and help build the community.

  1. 16  Keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 7/9/2008 2:09:43 PM

    @15 what are you thinking about? We want to do more, the Lotuscube was one idea.

    Money, or connections, is helpful as well.

  1. 17  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/9/2008 2:55:00 PM

    @16 No Keith, the LotusCube is not a community activity. PlanetLotus, which lowers the barrier for reading community blogs is, bleedyellow providing a single IM source is, openntf.org providing a project space for free hosting of software is. I want to see more than the typical 15 or 20 people do something that brings the community together, fostering new methods of collaboration. Yancy with PL and Tim and Chris with YellowCast are two examples of people, who were both mostly observers, getting involved to grow the community. We need more of that.

  1. 18  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 7/9/2008 4:18:25 PM

    @17 - There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth to resurrect the Nifty 50 a while back, and you took a leadership role in that. What ever happened? Why can't we kick that off again?

  1. 19  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/9/2008 6:30:27 PM

    @17 because too many people did not want to get involved unless IBM was contributing cash or distributing them. I don't think either of those will ever happen. Since that was the consencus I got in discussions, I let it drop. I am well aware my roll is mostly of 'i will host that for you for free' but that will change. Nathan and I have something up our sleeves and Reckling thinks its cool :-)

  1. 20  David Bailey  | 7/9/2008 8:51:56 PM

    My introduction to the Lotus Community was the Lotus Business Partner Forum. Lots of credit goes to Carol Anne Ogden. She spent worked tirelessly to shape the community. Scott Brown worked to broaden Lotus participation in the Partner Forum. The product, Lotus Notes, is key. This was the era of 9600 baud modems. Replication, made truly effective and efficient communication easy. And, don't forget Mike Woolsley who did the heavy lifting designing the Partner Forum database.

  1. 21  Axel  | 7/10/2008 2:22:29 AM

    Different people have different needs.

    There are different channels to provide information for the greater good. For more complex integration issues like for example accessing a remote ldap server from Domino or using jCo lib in Domino I am often astounded by the good developerworks articles and forum contribution google discovers.

    And openNTF projects provides terrific "sample code", if one needs to digg into new areas of domino development.

    Its not only blogs, which are great to get the latest information, are fun to read, but are also often highly subjective.

    I've found Lotus and the Community to become more open in the last years.

  1. 22  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 7/10/2008 4:11:45 AM

    Ed - a few years ago, all prominent bloggers were given red acer laptops by MS. I'm not asking for that at all, nor should we ever expect things like that for doing what we do, but I did have an idea.

    Special area at Lotusphere (which we have to ensure is populated with geeks) which is open to all attendees for Q&A woudl be good. How about giving a low level foundations server to bloggers that want one? We can then play, and play and play and blog and play and .. (you get the idea).

    Its just a suggestion - im not on the take take here.

  1. 23  Chris Whisonant http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/lotusnut | 7/10/2008 8:13:59 AM

    @17 - "bleedyellow providing a single IM source is" Ummm, have you not see the website associated with BleedYellow?!? ;)

    I, for one, am very honored to have been able to contribute to the community through my involvement with BleedYellow. IBM has been extremely helpful along the way behind the scenes as well as the excellent publicity by way of the blog posts promoting the site. I've even noticed really random spikes in registrations back in the March timeframe where I knew that IBMers were off doing LCTY events and, apparently, telling people about BleedYellow. I don't know that anyone knows about that, but just the simple word of mouth promoting like that is very beneficial to the community efforts. So, thanks!

  1. 24  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 7/10/2008 8:48:01 AM

    @23 Yes Chris, I know about the Connections site. But let's get real here for a second ... the true value is not the connections site, but the public IM server. It breaks down the communication barrier that has been present for years. So the connections piece is great, but it will never come near the importance of the IM service

  1. 25  Chris Whisonant http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/lotusnut | 7/10/2008 9:25:29 AM

    @24 - Just giving you a hard time there John... :)

    Yes, we know that - and that's why we had IM available from Day One at the site. And that's why it's awesome that we've seen over 200 concurrent logins!!

  1. 26  Charlie Reid  | 7/10/2008 12:41:06 PM

    Lotus/IBM has always done a poor job aiding the Certified community and what they do is Lame imho. But I am going to start doing some Munch's, meeting, etc in Second Life so look for Charles Blitz and we'll see if can do some networkign in there.

  1. 27  Bruce Elgort http://elguji.com | 7/10/2008 2:33:03 PM

    I would be happy to lead a new Nifty 50 effort. If you are interested in helping out send me an email. It's time for action.

  1. 28  Vasily Demin http://lotusblog.ru/ | 7/16/2008 4:57:02 AM

    Hi, Ed!

    Thank you for excellent slides! Can I get those slides for using in my job in IBM!?

    Regards,

    Vasily Demin

    Lotus Software Sales Rep (Russia)