Critical Masses Technology, Inc.

I had an incredible time at the Tri-State Lotus User Group meetup today. It was an all-day event with a keynote by Lotus GM Bob Picciano and a whole mini-Lotusphere roster of speakers. I was also was fortunate to meet up with old friends and colleagues Steven Pivnik, Vitaliy Dubinsky and catch up with Bob Balaban, whom I haven’t spoken to face to face in ten years or so. I was also fortunate to meet personally some real Yellowverse heroes such as Bruce & Gayle Elgort, David Leedy, John Head and Rob Novak. Of course major props to organizers Kathleen McGivney, Mitch Cohen and Jim Casale.

My biggest takeaways from a technical perspective are twofold: One is that the next version of Symphony will ship on the same Expeditor platform and JRE as the 8.5.1 version of Notes and that I just verified that it does indeed fix the crypto issues I’ve blogged about in the past. Hooray for standards compliance! (I’d attribute the source of the information, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea…) The other is how underrepresented true hard-core developers are at Tri-LUG meetings. You know who they are: The ones who breathe metadata, XML formats, JSON, CSS, languages, interop and –of course- understand workflow as if it were mother’s milk. While I’m not knocking those in attendance, I KNOW the rocket scientists are out there, I just never get to see them. (Presenters excluded.) My theory is that there’s a significant population of rock star Notes developers that just don’t feel they can learn anything from these events. Maybe the advertised session tracks aren’t technical enough; maybe they feel they have an inside ear at IBM so they have all the answers at their disposal or maybe they’re just hermetic, arrogant shut ins. I don’t know. I just want them to come out and PLAY. Perhaps the best way to lure these guys out of their holes is to offer them all presentation slots? Teachable moments are a powerful incentive to a developer. It’s a Jedi thing. (I hate myself for the Star Wars reference, but the analogy is apt.)

As always, feedback is appreciated.