After sixteen straight Lotuspheres, I'm not there this year, but I thought I'd use my distance from the madding crowds to suggest events to watch for and suggest things to do.
It's all fun and games today, as far as Sessions go:
The Seven Seas Lagoon, in-front of The Magic Kingdom®, is a decent sized body of water and also connects to Bay Lake, located between Disney's Contemporary Resort and Wilderness Lodge. Unlike the speedboat rentals at The Yacht & Beach, Port Orleans, Caribbean Beach -- which all exist in No Wake zones and thus go 5 MPH only -- the Sea Ray® Sea Raycers at The Magic Kingdom resort marinas are far more enjoyable. They are a lot of fun and something I enjoy annually, weather permitting. Follow the wb link for details on getting there, prices, etc.
FUN103 Bloggers Annual Lotusphere Dinner (BALD) (web link) Speaker: Bloggers and Wannabes Big River Brewhouse - Saturday 6:00pm - 6:00pm
Hang out with very cool (and mostly short and almost all balding) bloggers and their groupies whilst imbibing lightly (see FUN104 for heavy imbibing).
FUN104 The Turtle's Annual Drink-A-Lot Party (web link) Speaker: Bloggers and Wannabes ESPN on Boardwalk - Saturday 8:00pm - 11:59pm
Hang out with somewhat cool (and mostly already slightly inebriated) folks whilst imbibing heavily (see FUN103 for light imbibing).
But there is more to do than fun stuff. Today is your day to buy the food and supplies that will keep you going throughout the long week. Don't forget some healthy snacks such as raisins or nuts to hold you through after all the crap and snacks. It may even be a good idea to buy some of those high powered Vitamin C tablets.
Speaking of which, wash your hands frequently. I know I'm not your mom, but it is horrible to get sick on Saturday and stay sick throughout the conference.
Finally, some book picks from the Virtual Bookstore. This is the only day you may have time to browse through the Sessions db, and books you order now will likely be waiting for you when you return, easing the landing.
Admins: If you are German, you may want to see look at Lotus Notes Domino 8/8.5-Administration: Lotus Groupware installieren, betreiben und verwalten [German], and if you are French, you may want to see Lotus Domino 8.5 Administration: Tome 1, Installation et configuration [French], but for everybody else, I recommend you take a look at:
Survival Guide for Lotus Notes and Domino Administrators
IBM’s® Practical, Hands-On Guide to Supporting and Administering Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino
This is the only book that focuses entirely on the specific technical, desk-side, and infrastructure issues that support professionals and administrators encounter when implementing and running Lotus Notes in production environments. Authored by one of IBM’s top Lotus experts, it draws on the firsthand experiences of IBM professionals working in hundreds of client environments. Mark Elliott has created a true “encyclopedia” of proven resolutions to common problems and has streamlined processes for infrastructure support. Elliott systematically addresses support solutions for all recent Lotus Notes and Domino environments.
Developers: I know, I know, you are all rushing out at buying Mastering XPages, which is clearly the hit of the conference, having sold 11 copies through the Virtual Bookstore already, but there are other great books. Think outside the box. If you are going to be developing with XPages in Lotus Domino, you really ought to be very secure in your knowledge of Dojo, as they go together, so I recommend you take a look at:
Of all the Ajax-specific frameworks that have popped up in recent years, one clearly stands out as the industrial strength solution. Dojo is not just another JavaScript toolkit -- it's the JavaScript toolkit -- and Dojo: The Definitive Guide demonstrates how to tame Dojo's extensive library of utilities so that you can build rich and responsive web applications like never before. Dojo founder Alex Russell gives a foreword that explains the "why" of Dojo and of this book.
If you're a DHTML-toting web developer, you need to read this book -- whether you're a one-person operation or part of an organization employing scores of developers. Dojo packs the standard JavaScript library you've always wanted, and Dojo: The Definitive Guide helps you transform your ideas into working applications quickly by leveraging design concepts you already know.
Business People (aka Suits): There are lots of great books in the Virtual Bookstore for you, but the first you should look at is:
Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World
"If you want to understand why Wikipedia is changing the world, this book is a must read." –Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
"This book is a must read for all - social activists, politicians or managers - who have an interest in understanding how our society is morphing." –Professor C.K. Prahalad, #1 Management Guru and author of Competing for the Future
From Spy to Try to Buy
Mon, May 13th 2013 12:20p Ben Langhinrichs One good way to introduce people to the features of a product such as the Midas Rich Text LSX is to build samples. I originally thought of this as Try first, then Buy. Or to be that simple: From Try to Buy. There are 24 available on the Midas LSX samples page, which is a mixed blessing. Sometimes it is overwhelming. The biggest problem though, is that people have to request a Midas evaluation license, download the software and sample and install just to see if it is worth it to them. If they kno [read] Keywords: lsx
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Looking for Notes/Domino books for free advertising
Tue, May 7th 2013 5:50a Ben Langhinrichs As part of my new Mini-Lessons.info tutorial site, I use the sidebar to list resources (mostly books) that are related to the topic. While I have some of the obvious IBM Notes/Domino books already, I'd like to add any others that people feel are a good fit. Also, if you've written or helped with one, let me know and I'll add that as well. If you have written or know of a good book in the other categories, GIMP, ePublishing, Web Design (esp. CSS and HTML), please let me know as well, of course [read] Keywords: domino
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Mini-Lessons.info - tutorials on Notes/Domino and more
Mon, May 6th 2013 10:58a Ben Langhinrichs I wanted to introduce my new site, Mini-Lessons.info, as a place to find brief but useful demos and tutorials on a number of topics. There are a number of mini-lessons on Gimp 2.8 (a free open source alternative to Photoshop), as well as a few on IBM Notes/Domino and on our Genii Software products. I'm not sure whether I have worked out all the issues with leaving comments yet, but there are useful tutorials there. Of course, I am always open to suggestions. I want to do a series on XPages, as [read] Keywords: domino
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Time for you to revisit Google Plus
Sat, Apr 20th 2013 9:30a Ben Langhinrichs While a number of people I know in the IBM world are active in Google+, there are many others who clearly tried it out for a while but gave it up after last posting in early 2012. It's time to revisit your profile and see how things like Communities and improved Hang Outs have made Google+ more and more useful. There are IBM-related communities such as XPages and IBM Domino Developers and IBM Connections Professionals & Power Users, as well as many, many more active communities on other top [read] Keywords: connections
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Borders without Borders - tips for table borders
Thu, Apr 18th 2013 10:49a Ben Langhinrichs It seemed about time to create another video demo on IBM Notes, so this is a short exploration of some of the things you can do with borders in tables either in documents or on a form/page/etc. (which are rich text as well). No third party tools or even Domino Designer needed. All of this can be done by any Notes user. If you are curious, you can download the image file used for the border. [read] Keywords: domino
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Cut out a figure from complex background in Gimp
Wed, Apr 17th 2013 3:55p Ben Langhinrichs It's hard to believe that it was only a month ago that I posted my Elevator Pitch demos post in which I suggested that very short Youtube demos, like an elevator pitch compared to a full presentation, might have a special appeal to people. Since then, I have produced fifteen of these short videos (plus a longer one for the Crystal Coex story) averaging under two and a half minutes. Those videos have accumulated 2500 together with momentum growing all the time. Several have been on Gimp 2.8, the [read] Keywords: lsx
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Mini-lessons and mini-demos are proving very popular
Mon, Apr 15th 2013 11:06a Ben Langhinrichs My approach of making very short demos and tutorials has been well received (in my estimation). The most popular video showing the Midas Rich Text LSX has about 500 views, while the most popular Gimp 2.8 mini-lesson has about 1000 views. I have been encouraged enough to purchase a better microphone and pop filter, so I will re-record all of the tutorials and demos when that arrives. Until then, I apologize for the scratchy audio. I created my first playlist for the Gimp 2.8 videos (see below), a [read] Keywords: ibm
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Size Matters - the video
Thu, Apr 11th 2013 11:28a Ben Langhinrichs I can't only make tutorials on tech features of Gimp, Notes and our products. It seemed about time to turn my Crystal Coex story into a video. You can find more serious information on CoexLinks and how it can help with your doclink issues either on the CoexLinks page or in the video below. You can also request an evaluation license and try it out for yourself. [read] Keywords: notes
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Find and redact credit card numbers in Notes rich text
Wed, Apr 10th 2013 12:10p Ben Langhinrichs Since Devin Olson happened to mention regular expressions yesterday in a post, I thought I'd make a very short video demo of using the Midas Rich Text LSX to find and replace strings inside rich text (in tables, text or anywhere) using regular expressions. This capability has been available since Midas 4.x was released a few years ago, and allows batch processing with all of the speed and reliability you have come to expect of the Midas Rich Text LSX. You can download the sample database from o [read] Keywords: lsx
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Do you use EPUB in your company?
Tue, Apr 9th 2013 10:00a Ben Langhinrichs One of the features in our new Midas Rich Text LSX 5.0 release will be EPUB support. I would be interested in working with a couple of companies who use, or have interest in using, EPUB format for accessing data via smartphones or ereaders or whatever. While the EPUB generation is good now, there are choices to be made regarding large scale generation, on-demand generation and generation for EPUB 3 devices. Contact me if you are interested at GeniiMail("Ben.Langhinrichs", "GeniiSoft.com"); [read] Keywords: lsx
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