Lord Lotus Blog - Category : DNP

Dual DominoFests!

Mike Sobczak — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 07:50:55 -0400

Yes, the Detroit Notes Professionals are insane!

There will be two DominoFests in April:

April 7, Teamstudio webinar: Web-Enabling Lotus Notes Applications
April 21, Lotus Notes / Domino 8.5 Deep Dive (to be held at the IBM Building in Southfield, MI)

To register, simply go to the Detroit Notes Professionals website.

See you there!

Group Software webinar today

Mike Sobczak — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:45:05 -0400

In honor of today's Group Software webinar, I present to you the stuffed dolphin I got during LotuSphere 1997:

Fortunately, my wife kept all small stuffed animals in the same box. Otherwise, who knows where this treasure may have ended up in our basement. (With all of my other "treasures", I'm sure!)

DNP Meeting Announcement: Wednesday, December 17 - Lotus Symphony

Mike Sobczak — Thu, 4 Dec 2008 07:11:04 -0400

This meeting will be delivered as a webinar featuring a presentation by Brian O'Curran, IBM Lotus Sales Specialist. He will speak in detail about IBM Lotus Symphony, the free office productivity tool that's included with the Lotus Notes 8 client.

For details about this meeting, click here.

We will be delivering this presentation via Lotus Sametime Unyte, which worked out very well for our last presentation.

Tim Speed presentation now available on DNP website

Mike Sobczak — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:25:15 -0400

For anyone who may be interested, Tim Speed, an IBM Certified Systems Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus, recently gave a Sametime Unyte presentation to the Detroit Notes Professionals on several topics (see below). I've posted the presentation files and the Sametime Unyte presentation itself here.

The Sametime Unyte presentation includes video and audio, by the way.

The IBM Domino Health Check
Is your Domino enterprise healthy? Tim Speed will review a formal method to analyze your Domino enterprise. This presentation will discuss tools and techniques to evaluate the 'health' of any Domino environment. As a bonus this presentation will also illustrate how you can automate a systemic 'health check' using Domino DDM. The material in this presentation is based on a large number of enterprise �heath checks conducted by ISSL at several customer sites. Tim will also share with you some sample findings and also share many of our best practices on keeping your Domino enterprise on-line and healthy. � Executing a security assessment of your Domino architecture
Tim will walk you though a comprehensive security assessment for a Domino architecture. This assessment will include a review of your Domino directory, Notes.ini, ACLs, and ECLs. IBM will also share many examples of best practices and common practices - though a common practice is not always a best practice. Tim will also provide many take always, including tools and techniques on show YOU can assess your environment. Finally Tim will share many examples and 'war' stories on common Domino security configuration mistakes.

Next DominoFest Officially Announced

Mike Sobczak — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:38:38 -0400

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, November 6. The meeting will be delivered as a webinar featuring two presentations from Tim Speed, a leading architect for IBM Software Services for Lotus (ISSL).

For details about this meeting, click here.

The last time the DNP hosted a remote presentation was back on March 16, 1999 at the Data Planners office in Southfield. That presentation was for a product called Y2K-OK, delivered by Francois Koutchouk of Atlantic Decisions. (Wow, that was a long time ago.)

I personally have always preferred in-person presentations, but I decided to give remote presentations another try for two reasons: Tim Speed and the material. I'll be very interested to see what the interest level is in the Notes community in Michigan for these presentations. If the response is positive, then I can easily see us giving more remote presentations in the future...

DNP Update: User Group Meeting next week

Mike Sobczak — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 06:02:16 -0400

The Detroit Notes Professionals are very excited to announce our next DominoFest on September 10!

Our featured speaker will be Kevin Pettitt from Washington D.C. Kevin is a veteran Lotus Notes and Domino consultant and OpenNTF contributor. Kevin will be giving the following presentations:

Templates, Templates, Everywhere – If You Know Where to Look!
SuperNTF

For more details on these these presentations, please see the meeting agenda.

Everyone is welcome to attend. You can register for this event via the DNP website homepage.

Winter DominoFest 2008 Recap

Mike Sobczak — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:43:58 -0400

Well, another DominoFest has come and gone, and I thought today's meeting was one of our best! Well, aside from the DVD of the "Worst Practices" presentation skipping repeatedly. After all of the strong words from Brian O'Curran and Ed Brill directed towards Microsoft during the day, I guess my Windows Media Player decided to settle the score. From here on out, I'll only be using InterVideo WinDVD!

One thing I forgot to do before the DominoFest ended was to officially thank everyone who made this meeting possible. So, I'd like to thank:

Brian O'Curran, for bringing back his own particular brand of insanity to the DNP. On behalf of the DNP, we missed you, Brian! Don't ever leave us!
Margaret Callaghan, who volunteered to give a presentation after only being a member of the DNP council for a month (and did a great job, by the way!)
Ed Brill, who gave an impassioned and informed presentation after flying in from New York. Does he ever sleep?!?
Jim Kennedy, who manned the sign-in desk
Rob Wunderlich, for providing the coffee
Tod Nelson, Ken Rokicki, Rob and Jim for making the LotuSphere Presentation CDs (I still have some left by the way...)
NuTechs, Data Planners and EBiz for providing lunch for everyone
Jamie Colpean, for helping me get situated in the morning

And last but not least, I'd like to thank the 65+ people in attendance for making the DominoFest experience what it is. Without you folks, we literally would not exist.

Until next time!

Cast your vote!

Mike Sobczak — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:39:04 -0400

I recently received two DVDs of sessions from this year's LotuSphere. I'd like to show both DVDs, but I have a feeling most people attending would like to head out by 3:00 PM or earlier. Since the upcoming DominoFest is being held on Election Day, I thought it appropriate to give you, the DNP members, the opportunity to determine which DVD will be played immediately after Ray Bilyk's presentation. All you need to do is select which presentation you would prefer to see in the Today's Poll block on the right and click the [Vote] button.

Here is a summary of each presentation:
ID214 Best Practices for Clustering Performance
Speakers: Kathleen McGivney, Paul Mooney
Take a deep dive into cluster maintenance, performance, and troubleshooting. Learn what to look for when monitoring clusters and how to tweak them for the best possible performance. Get an understanding of how the server availability index is calculated and how to get the most accurate calculations for failover and load balancing. Learn best practices for cluster health, scalability, performance, and achieving high availability. Find out how real-world companies are taking advantage of clustering to get maximum returns from their IBM Lotus Domino systems!

ID218 Help Protect Yourself with New Security Features in IBM Lotus Domino 8
Speakers: David Kern, Peter Mierswa
Come to this session to learn about new security features that make is easier for you to secure your enterprise deployment.We'll discuss new features to manage user identities such as On-line Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) and Internet Account Lockout. We'll provide a full overview of the other new security features as well as some tips for effective deployment. We'll also peek at cool features under consideration for upcoming releases.

Fall DominoFest 2006 presentations uploaded

Mike Sobczak — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:21:12 -0400

In case you were wondering, I hadn't forgotten to do this. With the holidays and all of the personal projects I was working on in December, I just kept putting this off. Now I can sleep easy. All of the presentation files for the DominoFest meeting held on December 12, 2006 have finally been posted on the DNP website.

Here's a rundown of the presentations given during this meeting:

Running Lotus Notes 7 on a Thumb Drive (Lisa Sarkady, Lotus Software)
IBM Workplace Forms: Integration into Domino - (Lisa Sarkady, Lotus Software)
CSS -- Cascading Style Sheets (Scott Good, Teamwork Solutions)
ProcessIt! (Steve McIntosh, Teamwork Solutions)
Practical Uses of AJAX in IBM Lotus Domino Web Applications - (Scott Good, Teamwork Solutions)

I thought all of the presenters did an excellent job. In fact, several DNP members mentioned to me after the meeting that they thought this meeting was one of the best ones we've ever done. Now, that really is saying a lot, because the DominoFest format has been around since our September 1999 meeting. I only hope that the next meeting is as good as this one!

DNP Update

Mike Sobczak — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:55:54 -0400

The next meeting of the Detroit Notes Professionals is scheduled for Tuesday, December 12th. The agenda is pretty good, if I do say so myself. Lisa Sarkady of Lotus Software will be on hand to demo running LND 7.0.2 on a thumb drive and IBM Workplace Forms for Domino. (Someone needs to tell Lisa she needs to start a blog. Maybe one based on that nifty new LND 7.0.2 template...)

Scott Good will also be presenting on no less than three topics: AJAX, CSS and ProcessIt! Unlike the last meeting, this meeting will be held at the IBM Building in Southfield, MI. If you're interested in attending, you can view the agenda and register here.

Finally got my presentation slides done

Michael Sobczak — Sun, 7 Aug 2005 20:35:56 -0400

I actually spent some time on the Microsoft website looking for just the right template. I acually settled on the Project overview sample presentation. I deleted all but the first two slides and saved it as a .POT file. As a died-in-the-wool Notes and Java developer, I typically avoid anything associated with Microsoft. Today, however, I wanted to give Microsoft credit where credit is due. I really appreciate them having several presentation templates and sample presentations freely available that I could preview and download from their website without incident. Thank you, Microsoft! Now, about all of those security vulnerabilities...

Spring DominoFest 2005 a smashing success

Michael Sobczak — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 -0400

Everything went very well today. Ed Wrenbeck was completely fearless as he gave us a live demo of the latest Workplace Designer Beta. Unfortunately, it was so sunny this morning that the light coming through the translucent shades made seeing the projection on the screen difficult. I'm thinking I need to go to Home Depot or Lowes to get a tarp or something to hang across the windows at the back of the room.

Jessica Daniels and Deb Brown of Data Planners also did a great job with their "Top Ten Things Every Domino Developer Should Know" presentation. Anyone who's ever developed a web site, either using Domino or some other platform, always appreciates hearing about websites that provides free code or free explanations of how to something in JavaScript, DHTML or CSS.

After a brief cartoon break (courtesy of Michael Golden), the meeting concluded with a rebroadcast of the LotuSphere 2005 opening session. John Cleese did a great job, as he usually does. I had to cut off Ambuj Goyal after about 25 minutes, as I could tell folks were getting restless. Ambuj sure makes a person nostalgic for the old days of Al Zollar!

My personal thanks go out to all of the presenters who made today's meeting a memorable one, as well to all of the attendees, without whom the DNP would just be an empty room with me talking.

LotusUserGroup.org - check it out!!!

Michael Sobczak — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0400

I had a great conversation with Debbie Lynd, one of the technical editors behind The View. It turns out that Debbie, Ed Brill, Dave Stevens and Chris Miller are starting a new organization to be known as lotususergroup.org. Now that the organization known as VALU has ceased to exist (Ruth Allen, where are you???), the folks I mentioned above had formed a council dedicated to helping users start Notes User Groups, as well as to assist existing Notes User Groups. Debbie and several other Notes User group boosters will be handing out some clever buttons, as well as registration cards at the opening party at LotuSphere this Sunday. If you fill out your registration card and take it to the Lotus User Group booth, you will get a free T-shirt. Too cool, huh? There will also be a Notes User Group Birds of a Feather (or BOF) session. Some of the things I would like to see this new resource be able to provide (if possible) are:

Quickplaces for individual user groups (VALU had done this previously)
a list of IBM Lotus speakers available to speak on topics like Lotus Workplace
a way to request a modest amount of IBM Lotus themed merchandise to give away at meetings
the ability to request videotapes or DVDs of the LotuSphere sessions
a place where group members can post their resume if they are looking for work
a free ticket to LotuSphere for each Notes User Group President (its worth a shot)

While I'm partial to the free ticket, I think that if any of the above items were there, it would be great for any existing user group. I wonder why IBM has never looked at user groups as a great marketing tool like Microsoft. But then again, IBM does handle DB2 user groups. In any event, I wish Debbie and her comrades much success in getting their new organization off the ground. For anyone with IBM reading this: please support this effort. Its worth it!

Fall DominoFest 2004: another smashing success!

Michael Sobczak — Thu, 9 Dec 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Today's DominoFest went very well. We didn't have the 90+ attendees we've had in the past, but I believe the topics have more to do with that than the overall Lotus Notes market here in Metro Detroit. For example, I still have well over 450 names on the DNP mailing list.

I should clarify what I mean by the topics determining turnout. I think that most Notes shops are still in the midst of rolling out various flavors of V6, meaning that V7 isn't even on their radar yet. Besides, V7 doesn't have many client enhancements in it, so I figure that Notes Administrators would be the people most interested in what's happening in that version. My presentation on the Lotus Domino Toolkit for WebSphere Studio required an interest in WebSphere Studio and delivering Notes apps via WebSphere. I'm not exactly sure how many Notes shops have blended (WebSphere and Domino) applications, but I suspect its a small percentage. Also, if you didn't have any exposure to WebSphere Studio or JSPs before the meeting, I'm not sure how relevant my presentation would have been to you. Finally, not many Notes shops I know use Quickplace (or Team Workplace), even though it is a very viable alternative to creating Domino apps from scratch. So, even though the overall attendance number wasn't outrageous, it was still a good number of people who had a definite interest in the topics at hand.

By the way, I thought Ray Bilyk and Joe Wichowski gave excellent presentations. In an interesting example of temporal coincidence, this meeting had the same exact speakers as our meeting in April.

Ran through my presentation twice today

Michael Sobczak — Sun, 5 Dec 2004 15:37:12 -0400

I'm definitely one of those speakers who can just write something down and present it in front of an audience cold. I usually need to rehearse about a half-dozen times before I'm comfortable enough so that I don't need to read from the printout of my slides exclusively. I wish I was more like my hero, Rob Wunderlich, who seems to make presenting effortless. Then again, he was a Lotus instructor for years, and even was a radio DJ at one point, if I remember correctly.

Been busy lately

Michael Sobczak — Thu, 2 Dec 2004 08:49:52 -0400

Sorry for publishing any recent content on this blog. Ever since I decided to give a presentation on the Lotus Domino Toolkit for WebSphere Studio at the next Detroit Notes Professionals meeting, I've been focusing exclusively on that after work. Expect a flurry of posts as I finish my presentation.

Invitations to next Detroit Notes Professionals meeting sent

Michael Sobczak — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, 12/9/04. If you're interested in attending, you can access the meeting agenda here.

Your invitation to the Summer DominoFest 2004 August 12th

Michael Sobczak — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0400

I sent out the invitation to the next Detroit Notes Professionals this morning. If you're interested in attending, click on the Read More link below.