Domino Interface

MWLUG 2012 was held last week at the Omni William Penn Hotel.  It was the most attended MWLUG so far.  Hopefully, next year in Indianapolis we will exceed this year's attendance.  We as IBM professionals talk about Social Business and Social Collaboration, but it is venues like MWLUG and other LUGs where the true sense of social occurs.  It is friends and colleagues meeting together for a common focus.  Even competitors at MWLUG were meeting together and having lunch.  It is all about us humans as a social beings.  Making some like MWLUG possible requires the efforts of many within our community including IBM Partners, Customers, and IBMers plus volunteers and others.  I would like to take the time to list all those who were involved, some were in the background and did not attend MWLUG 2012.  I just hope I did not miss anyone.  Special thanks to 4C Technologies and Sherpa Software: MWLUG Committee Richard Moy, Gregg Eldred, Barb Skedel, Susan Hosek MWLUG Event Committee Rich

Tomorrow is the start of fourth annual Midwest Lotus User Group Conference, MWLUG 2012, this year it is in Pittsburgh from August 15-17, 2012 at the Omni William Penn Hotel.  If you are not registered for MWLUG 2012 there is still time.  This year will be our most attended MWLUG conference.  So if you are look for a first class LUG conference, MWLUG 2012 is it.  So get registered: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp

This year at MWLUG 2012 we will be have three local Lotus User Group meetings on Friday morning at 7:00 AM.  So if you are coming, planning to come or not, please take the time to attend your local LUG meeting.  They need you support to continue running.  The three LUG are: Detroit Notes Professional Northeastern Ohio Lotus User Group Western Pennsylvania Lotus User Group  To see the agenda go to: http://mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Agenda.xsp

After reviewing all the candidates for this program with the MWLUG team, the winner of the free admission and hotel room for MWLUG 2012 is Paul Stockinger from Ohio who is currently looking for a full-time or contracting position.  We would like to congratulate him and see him at MWLUG 2012.

DoubleTree Hotel has extended the discount of $135.00/night for MWLUG Attendees until August 9, 2012.  However, they only have two rooms left and that it.  The hotel is almost full like the Omni William Penn Hotel.  So register as soon as you can.  For more information about the DoubleTree registration: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Hotel.xsp Also colleagues in the Lotus community who are unemployed, you must submit your submission to info@mwlug.com on why we should choose you for a free admission and a hotel stay for MWLUG by 1:00 PM CST today. For more information please click on the link below. http://dominointerface.blogspot.com/2012/08/helping-out-lotus-community-chance-to.html To register: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp If the server is 404, please be patience and notify me so that I can reboot the JVM.

MWLUG 2012 is the one of the biggest LUG events in 2012 for us within the IBM community.  And here is the top ten reasons why you should attend: 10) To learn what a community is all about 9) To learn if any of the attendees saw a ghost at the Pittsburgh Haunted Ghost Tour 8) To learn if any of the Friday Night Arsenal Bowling participants get higher then 150 after a few drinks 7) To meet the Turtle and listen to his stories about Lotusphere 6) To learn the true platform of social collaboration, BEER!!!!! 5) To check out how many white hairs Richard Moy got from organizing MWLUG 2012 4) To meet Paul Mooney 3) To see if you can match the partying capacity of Kim Greene  2) To listen to one of Darren Duke's many thousands of interesting stories and the number one reason for attending MWLUG 2012 ... 1) To see what obscure brands of beer Gregg Eldred will drink at MWLUG 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The past few years have been hard on many within the IBM community, from layoffs to elimination of training budgets. With that in mind, we would like to extend a free ticket and a free room to someone who would like to attend MWLUG. We earned some free hotel nights from booking all the rooms at the Omni William Penn Hotel. We would like to help out the community and offer anyone who is unemployed and looking for a new position a chance to come to MWLUG 2012, improve their skills, and to network with the attendees. Please submit a one paragraph description of why MWLUG should choose you to attend.  The prize is one free admission to MWLUG 2012 plus a free hotel stay at the Omni William Penn Hotel from Wednesday through Friday. There is only one winner for this contest.  You are responsible for your own transportation to and from the conference.  To qualify you must not be self employed nor an IBM Business Partner. You must be currently unemployed.  You must submit your submission

Our Omni William Penn Hotel allocation is full. If you were not able to register at the Omni William Penn Hotel for the discount rate of $135.00/night, you will be able to receive the same rate from the DoubleTree Hotel that is less than 2 blocks away. To register for the DoubleTree Hotel you must call 1-800-222-TREE (8733) and use the discount code MWLUG. Special thanks to our professional event manager, Bill Fox from Helms Briscoe for helping us get this rate. The rate is guaranteed until at least August 7, 2012.

MWLUG 2012 is two weeks away and I am glad to announce our MWLUG 2012 OGS speakers: Lindsay Patross, IheartPGH.com Kathy Olek,  4C Technologies Louis Richardson, IBM Below is brief biography of our MWLUG 2012 OGS speakers: MWLUG 2012 OGS Speaker Lindsay Patross, Co-founder, IheartPGH.com Lindsay Patross works in online community building - helping non-profit organizations and businesses grow their online communities. She has managed e-advocacy campaigns for VoteVets.org since 2008. Lindsay has worked with a number of businesses on their social media strategy. Currently she consults with Libsyn.com and pair Networks on their social media and email marketing. Past clients include the Post-Gazette, PR works, and Spreadshirt.com. Lindsay founded the blog IheartPGH.com in 2006.   MWLUG 2012 Platinum Sponsor OGS Speaker Kathy Olek, Director of Marketing and

The MWLUG 2012 Friday Social Event will be bowling at the Arsenal Bowl.  We have reserved the bowling alley for 2 hours of bowling, food and drinks.  And yes they have good beer.  The cost for this event is $11.95 plus shoes, food, and drinks.  The transportation cost is still being worked out.  So if you are staying over Friday evening, come join us for this event after an intense 3 days of knowledge and fun at the conference. http://mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Friday.xsp

Are you using or looking at responsive web design for developing mobile or web applications, using it with XPages, Dojo, jQuery, PHP, Ruby or other tools? Come join us for the "Responsive Web Design Mashup" at MWLUG. I will be leading an open discussion on the use of responsive web design; talk about the different responsive design frameworks developers may use; and how developers are applying responsive design to both web sites and applications. I will be joined by Martin Ridgway from Perficient who will be presenting NT102: Getting Down and Dirty with Responsive Web Design on Thursday, August 16, 2012.  So after learning more about Responsive Web Design in his session come to this BOF and share your thoughts.  This BOF will be held at the Sternwheeler Room at 7:00 AM on Friday. For more information go to: http://mwlug.com To register for MWLUG 2012 go to: http://mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp

The MWLUG 2012 Agenda is NOW online on our web site and we have 40+ sessions.  A couple of more sessions were added.  Special thanks to Mike McGarel for getting the agenda online.  It took a lot of work during the past few weeks in the evenings and weekends.  http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Agenda.xsp . So make sure you register now because the new rooms are going fast. http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp

The Midwest Lotus User Group Conference 2012 is not just about technology and business.  It is also about being social and connecting with your colleagues.  We are please to announce the MWLUG 2012 Thursday Social Event will be a mix of tour, food, drinks, and networking with our colleagues.  We will first learn about the ghostly things that has happened in Pittsburgh with the Haunted Pittsburgh Ghost Tour.  The tour will start at 6:00 PM in front of the Omni William Penn Hotel.  We will be assembling at the lobby. Please note that is is a walking tour.  After a scary and exhausting tour of Pittsburgh, we will refresh ourselves for the next full day of sessions and fun at the Easy Street - Restaurant and Bar.  So come join us for food and drinks.  We will be meeting at Easy Street at 7:30 PM.  Easy Street is within walking distance from the Omni William Penn Hotel. Make sure you have your badge with you when attending.

We are proud to announce that the MWLUG 2012 sessions are now posted.  This year's sessions are incredible with many great topics and great speakers.  As always, MWLUG 2012 is packed with sessions that are relevant to both our IBM Lotus and IT community.  There is still more to come with a couple of more sessions and workshops that have yet to be announced.  MWLUG 2012 is six weeks away so make sure you register soon. http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Sessions.xsp To register goto: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp

Today and tomorrow we will be sending out email notifications to all the great members of our community who took the time to submit their abstract for MWLUG 2012.  We received over 60 submissions this year which is 40% more than last year.  Unfortunately, we only have a limited number of slots available for this conference and we are pushing it as usual in what we can fit in.  There were so many great submissions. Hope to see everyone there.

We are please to announce that the MWLUG 2012 IBM Opening General Session Speaker will be Louis Richardson, IBM's Worldwide Social Business Evangelist.  I am glad we were finally able to get Louis to speak at MWLUG .  Louis is a great speaker and extremely knowledgeable about how companies are using social collaboration to drive they business.  Louis will be presenting on the Thursday's OGS along with our two other MWLUG 2012 OGS speakers which we will be announcing soon.

Today is the last day to submit your presentation abstract for MWLUG 2012.  If you are interested in submitting an abstract, please go to: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Abstract.xsp before the end of today.

Since October 2011 my home network has been plagued by slowness in the network.  I suspected that I had some type of malware on the network or our wireless network was compromised.  Each time I scanned the computers I would find Trojans.  After removing the Trojans, everything worked for awhile and then it started slowing down.  Something was stealing my bandwidth.  Even after performing rootkit scanning and removal, drive cleansing, and even replacing the routers and new passwords and security settings the issue would come back. So finally I was fed up and decided to see if I could replace Windows with Linux for my home use.  I had already move most of our servers to Linux at work.  The concern that I had was that I would not have all the tools and applications that I normally used in a Linux environment.  I decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Desktop to replace my Windows operating system.  If it did not work, then I can cleanse the drive and then reinstall Windows if I had too.  I

Registration for MWLUG 2012 is now opened.  Sorry for the slight delay.  Technical issues you know.  To register for MWLUG 2012 goto: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Register.xsp . 

As requested to help our friends with their busy schedules, the deadline for abstracts has been extended to Thursday, May 31 at 5:00 PM. So there is still time for you to submit your MWLUG 2012 abstract !!!  See everyone there. MWLUG 2012 Abstract Submission

If you are interesting in speaking at MWLUG, abstract submission for MWLUG 2012 is now open.  This is your chance to speak at a major LUG conference.  Each year we reserve a number slots for new speakers. So take this opportunity to speak at MWLUG 2012.  To submit your abstract goto: http://www.mwlug.com/mwlug/mwlug12.nsf/Abstract.xsp Thanks again to Mike McGarel and Roy Rumaner for all their hard work in getting the abstract submission database ready.  Abstract submission will close on May 21, 2012.

I would like to again thank everyone at Prominic.NET for hosting the MWLUG 2012 site again.  Each year they donate space on their servers for MWLUG and GRANITE and many other IBM community sites.  As most of you already know, Prominic.NET is great to work with.  It is IBM Business Partners like Prominic.NET that makes the IBM community so great. 

We are proud to announce the Platinum Sponsor for MWLUG 2012, 4C Technologies who is located in Pittsburgh, PA and has been a long time IBM Business Partner.  Their graphics team of Josh Schmitt and Jackie McClellan has been also helping us create the beautiful graphics for MWLUG 2012 including our web site, http://mwlug.com .  So welcome 4C Technologies. To learn information about 4C Technologies go to: http://cccctech.com

Thanks to all the hard work by Mike McGarel with help from Roy Rumaner and Josh Schmitt and Jackie McClellan from 4C Technologies on the graphics, the MWLUG 2012 conference web site is now up and running.  This starts a four month sprint to August 15 in Pittsburgh where we are planning a kick ass conference with many many surprises this year. Abstract submission for MWLUG 2012 will start in a couple of weeks and registration starts at the beginning of May. I hope to see everyone in Pittsburgh at MWLUG 2012. http://mwlug.com

Sponsorship Packages for MWLUG 2012 is going out today.  Many previous sponsors have already asked to sponsor again.  So the slots are going to fill out fast.  If you would like to be a sponsor for MWLUG 2012 and would like to get the sponsorship package, make sure you contact me as soon as you can.

Over the weekend I was trying to use Ghost to create a image of a hard drive that was having issues.  After hours and hours of trying to get Ghost running with the right drivers, I abandoned it and tried a open source solution called Clonezilla.  It does not have a fancy interface, but is worked great.  It does not do increment bare metal images but it was far easier than using Ghost.  It just works.   http://clonezilla.org

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.

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 Present

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_p

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 Connec

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.