Very Successfully GRANITE LUG Meeting Yesterday

We had over 32 attendees yesterday at our February 2012 GRANITE meeting.  Half of the attendees were online from all over the Midwest and Southeast part of the United States.  Thanks to our speakers Russell Maher and Graham Acres for presenting plus Lisa Duke and Bernie Leung for helping with the LotusLive and voice conferencing.  We had a few technical difficulties, but everything went well.  This was one of the largest attendance we have had in a long time.

For attendees who attended online let us know your experience.  We would like expand the online broadcast as a permanent offering for everyone who would like to attend. You DO NOT need to be part of GRANITE or any local group to attend.

If you are have a local meeting, Lotus Live is a good way to broadcast your meeting to other attendees who cannot make it.  Just make sure you have good bandwidth to the Internet.  We are working on getting a permanent account so that we can use and share the account for broadcast LUG meetings.  More to come.

Hope to see more is our next meeting.

February 2012 GRANITE Meeting, February 13, 2012 and Live Web Broadcast of Meeting

The February 2012 GRANITE Meeting will also be broadcast live using LotusLive on February 13, 2012.  So if you cannot attend in person you can attend via LotusLive. The event is open to every in the IBM community. However, you will not get the donuts, bagels, and Chicago deep dish pizza unless you attend in person at the IBM Center in Chicago.  To register for this event register using:

https://events.webdialogs.com/register.php?id=a97ff27aa0&l=en-US


 
February 13, 2012 GRANITE Meeting Agenda


(All times are US Central Standard Time)


08:30 - 09:00 AM 
Registration, Breakfast, Refreshments & Networking at IBM Center for on-site attendees

09:00 AM - 09:15 AM
Presentation: "What's New With Lotus/IBM Update"
Presenter: Marcie Kane, IBM Collaboration Solutions

Marcie will provide the audience an update in on the up and coming IBM/Lotus events and what is new from IBM/Lotus.

09:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Presentation: Showtime! An XPage Dynamic Table Managed Bean
Presenter: Russell Maher, President, RGM Consulting

Heard about or seen managed beans? Not sure how to actually use them in your real-life XPage application? Need an XPage dynamic table that is easily user-configurable, is very fast and allows users to save document drafts? In this presentation I will take you step-by-step through the requirements, logic, development, deployment and configuration of a dynamic table solution implemented via managed beans and XPage custom controls. By the end of this presentation you will have plenty of information to enable you to use this code in your own applications, a detailed explanation of how this works and why, and a better understanding of when, how and why to use managed beans in your own XPage applications. Everything is easy once you know how.

10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Presentation: Using A Mobile Approach: Proven Strategies For Mobilizing Your IBM Lotus Domino Applications
Presenter: Graham Acres, President, Brytek Systems

This session presents strategies to employ when planning to build a mobile application within your Lotus Domino environment. Whether you are a project manager, admin, developer or business leader, this session is for you. Using a real-world coast-to-coast mobile customer service application implementation project as an example, the presentation will address the challenges organizations face in first-time mobile projects and the strategies that work as a result. What devices will I support? Does the business team understand the user interface considerations of a smartphone or tablet vs a browser or Notes client when providing requirements? Does the admin team have the skills to support the mobile environment? Can I take advantage of my existing Domino infrastructure and skills? How will I test and support the app? How will the application be deployed? You will leave with an understanding of the key considerations involved in building a mobile application strategy for your organization.

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Presentation: Lotusphere 2012 Recap
Moderator: Richard Moy, Managing Director, Phora Group

Attendees of Lotusphere 2012 will recap their thoughts about Lotusphere 2012.

12:30 PM - 01:30 PM
Presentation: MWLUG 2012 Planning Update
Presenter: Richard Moy, Managing Director, Phora Group

The MWLUG team will update everyone on the status of MWLUG 2012 and all the new things that are happening this year in Pittsburgh.

01:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Groups / Workshop / Networking

Focused, moderated discussion groups to address topics of major interest to attendees. So bring your problems, your laptops, your questions, and let's share some solutions. We can all learn something new at every meeting.

Missed Lotusphere 2012 Don't Cry, MWLUG Announces MWLUG 2012 Dates, Location, and Hotel

Didn't get a chance to attend Lotusphere 2012 like many that I know, don't cry. IamLUG 2012 and MWLUG 2012 is coming.

The MWLUG Team would like to announce the location of MWLUG 2012, it will be held at the beautiful and historic Omni William Penn Hotel on August 15-17, 2012 at the heart of downtown Pittsburgh. And yes they have good WiFi.  If you think the past few years were great, wait to you see what we have prepared for at MWLUG 2012.  We are bring together our MWLUG 2012 team that includes new volunteers from Pittsburgh. 

Last year we added the successful "Social Business" track which we will include again.  For MWLUG 2012, we are adding a new track which we will announce soon.  Again the cost is a $35 donation for a three day conference that includes all activities and food.  And this we might see the fake Ed Brill again.

To learn more about the Omni William Penn Hotel go to:
http://http://www.omnihotels.com/FindAHotel/PittsburghWilliamPenn.aspx?cid=sd_psg_b-property

We are currently working on the MWLUG 2012 web site, but you can see what we have in store at current the MWLUG 2011, http://www.mwlug.com.

So mark your calendar and hang on to your seat.

My Lotusphere 2012/IBM Connect 2012 Highlights, The Good, Bad, and Ugly

This year I attended both the Lotusphere sessions and the IBM Connect sessions. I am glad that IBM has devolved a portion of the conference to business cases. We need to remember that as technologist our job depends on the business side of an organization. That is why it is important even in a technology conference that the C and VP levels are on board. However, there was too much focus on how Connections is the savoy of all.  Overall, IBM's message was more clear and concise at this Lotusphere. Food was the same including the Lotusphere cookie. I avoided as much of the breakfast as possible this year because of my low-salt diet.  It would not surprise me that one breakfast exceed your total allocation of salt per day twice over. The Sunday party was average with the quality of food being average.

The Good

• Meeting all my Lotus colleagues
• Meeting new Lotus colleagues
• Mike J Fox's Opening Session Presentation
• Guy Kawasaki's Opening Session Presentation at IBM Connect 2012
• MWLUG Gathering on Tuesday, 17 fellow Lotus Geeks and Beer. What can I say. Russ Mather thanks for the beer.
• The incorporation of OpenSocial technology into the next version of Domino
• Social Mail client, (just make the iNotes client the official client for Domino)
• The Notes plugin for the iNotes client
• A chance at the Ask the Developer to request the ability for ISVs to create custom XWork/Domino installation packages. Contact me if you are interested. Need to create enough interest.
• More business focused sessions.

The Bad
This year unlike previous years, I entered in most of the showcase vendor raffles, but

• I lost the GBS Kindle Fire and I was so close, I woman who pick just before me won 
• Losing the iPad, iPhone, iPod, HTC Tablet Pro raffle
• Social Business for SMB session was only opened to the press. It would have been nice if Business Partners can attend given that the Business Partners are the one in the trenches in the SMB market. 
• As the organizer of MWLUG I know how hard it is to organize an event like Lotusphere, but would it hurt to have the old used Lotusphere signs on the highway exits to point to the auxiliary parking. Many went to Blizzard Beach instead and waste an hour of travel time including myself. 
• The bad PR disaster that IBM created with Andrew's and Gabriel's session
• WiFi was down and down so many times
• The attendance was down definitely. Many I know did not attend.  There was so many IBMers that I figure 50% of the attendees that I past by or met were IBMers.
• The 750 to 1000 students got preferred seating in the front
• Too many Connections sessions

The Ugly

• An ingrained images of a naked Darren Duke twittering during the OGS. 
• Interface for SocialBizOnline.com 

Now that Lotusphere 2012 is over, the detailed planning for MWLUG begins.  Mark your calendar, August 15-17, 2012, Pittsburgh, PA.

MWLUG Community Gathering at Lotusphere 2012

If are or would like to be part of the MWLUG community, come and join us at the annual MWLUG Community Gathering at Lotusphere/IBM Connect 2012. As usual it will be held at the ESPN Club at the Broadwalk on Tuesday, January 17th at 9:00 PM. I will be wearing my MWLUG 2011 T-shirt and will have a few to given away if you are new to the MWLUG 2011 community or do not have one. See everyone at Lotusphere.

Must Have Tool Free Tools for Web App Developers

I just ran cross another free tool that Web developers should have besides: - Firebug - HttpWatch I found a tool from Yahoo which is available on all major browsers. YSlow. The nice thing about YSlow is that it helps you optimize your Web page performance. I was looking for is a way to determine the amount of memory that a web page is using and YSlow does just that. Take a look. It is another nice tool from Yahoo. http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Two Great LUG Meetings This Coming Week, GRANITE and NEOLUG

Two of the longest running LUGs are having their December Meetings this coming week. NEOLUG will have a December meeting on December 8, 2011. Andy Donaldson who is speaking at Lotusphere 2012 will be speaking at NEOLUG. If you are interested in attending contact Gregg Eldred, gregg.eldred@ns-tech.com. Also GRANITE will have their December Meeting next Monday, December 12, 2011. We will have topics on XPages and the IBM Cloud. In addition, our December Meeting is our Holiday meeting with a special lunch rather than the normal pizza. So join us. Contact Bernie Leung at bernie@mesatech.com if you are interested in attending. Hope to see everyone at these meetings.

Signs that Show the Season is Coming to an End

Well if looks like the season for biking is coming to an end. Thanks to mother nature I am squeezing a few more days of good biking weather. Today was one of those days. I go a chance this morning to spent some time taking some great pictures since I brought my camera with me. Here in Chicago, it starts turning really bad around Halloween. We have been very fortunate this year with good weather overall. There was a few times of incredible weeks of rain and cold. But I am closer and closer to my distance goal this year. Unfortunately, they are predicting colder than normal temperatures and snow for winter.