New Track, New Speaker

Tim Davis  November 20 2008 06:04:01 PM

This year at Lotusphere, I am honored to be actually speaking. My session is part of the new 'Show and Tell' track, and I will be speaking together with Jason Hook on the subject of: 'Developing Mobile Applications - Techniques for Running Big Applications on Small Devices' (SHOW109).

The idea is for us to take the attendees through the steps needed to get a Domino app made available on mobile devices, such as mobile browsers and BlackBerrys. I am also hoping to talk a little about what you can do with the iPhone.

Here at Turtle, we produce the BlackBerry Lotusphere Sessions App each year (based on Ben Langhinrichs' Lotusphere Sessions Database), and so I hope to cover the techniques we use to make that, and talk about moving beyond it to include pushing data from Domino out to your BlackBerry apps. This year, we are also producing an iPhone version of the Sessions App, and so I will talk about what is involved in doing this, too.

Jason will be talking through how to create a consistent browser UI that will work across the variety of mobile browsers, covering the various standards, tools and tricks you need to know.

Its very exciting to be part of this new track, and to be part of Lotusphere itself, after so many years coming to this great event!

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Lotusphere Sessions 09 - All Shiny and New

Gabriella Davis  November 20 2008 01:25:11 PM

This year I have 3 shiny new sessions - all of which I'm excited about for different reasons. I'm not much good at conveying that excitement in short descriptive sentences but here goes....

BP205 Go "Advanced" with Lotus Sametime.  
I've been working with ST Advanced since early last summer and i've been amazed about how little information is out there for people on how it works, what it does, how it integrates with Sametime for Domino and how all its moving parts fit together.  I'm going to cover all of that in this session plus a few of the painful pieces of the install you can watch out for

BP207 IBM Lotus Domino Admin to IBM WebSphere Application Admin -- in an Hour!
Chris Miller and I came up with the idea for this session earlier this year when we both realised (well I guess Chris knew but it took me a while to realise) how much of our Admin work is now WAS based because of the number of Lotus extended products that are based on it.  Quickr J2EE , Sametime Advanced, Sametime Gateway,  Connections, the list goes on.  Basically if you want to start working with the more advanced collaborative tools at some point you need to start working with WAS.  What we hope to do here is talk WAS language to Domino admins - showing you the WAS equivalents for server options and features in Domino and how to configure them.  

SHOW101 ID Vault, Roaming and DAOS: Get Ahead of the Curve with IBM Lotus Domino 8.5
In the new Show and Tell track I'm doing my first session with Paul Mooney (see how i cleverly align myself with much better speakers) where we're going to show you how to configure and work with the 3 most exciting features in the Domino 8.5 server.  In fact I believe these 3 features alone are a good enough reason for you to be upgrading your servers to 8.5 and hopefully by the time we've shown you why and how - you'll be ready to do just that.

So 3 completely new sessions to write and this year about 3 different topics I hope someone out there is as interested in as I am!  

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A Play With MS Surface And Some Photos

Gabriella Davis  November 19 2008 09:46:47 PM

This week I'm working in New York (where it's freezing cold btw) and staying at the Sheraton in midtown.  In the lobby of the Sheraton we discovered they have one of the new MS Surface tables with a touch sensitive screen so Tim and I sat down to have a play.  Some photos and details below but there were things I liked and things I didn't.

• It was incredibly touch sensitive which meant I kept accidentally rotating album covers or photos by brushing the heel of my hand when I lent forward or if Tim tried to work on one part of the table whilst I worked on the other
• There was something very satisfying about swinging pictures and albums around the pushing them flying across the table with a flick then overlaying other items on top of them by sweeping across the screen
• I couldn't grasp the playlist interface, the albums were on a scroll but you had to drag the album off the scroller then click on it to rotate it (as per coverflow) then click on a track to start it playing and add it to the playlist - a lot of steps and the idea that it kept stopping the playlist and starting with the newly added track was dumb
• It was stunning how much it looked and behaved like the Apple behaviour such as Coverflow, 'spinning' an album round to see the tracks, using pinch and expand to shrink and grow a picture and finger 'spin' gestures to rotate

After testing,  I don't think it's usable unless you can 'lock off' a part of the table to disable the touch sensitivity there, otherwise you've got yourself a table you can never touch or rest anything on and what's the point of that?  Oh and i'd like to thank Tim for being such a glamorous hand model in the cool photos we took below !

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Logging and monitoring your BlackBerry Enterprise Server - recording available online

Mike Smith  November 19 2008 01:29:35 PM

If you missed Gabriella's webcast on logging and monitoring your BES you can still catch it online by going to the Lotus User Group page here:

http://www.lotususergroup.org/VUG

Just scroll down and click on "Click here to view the presentation", register your details then you will be able to access the recording.

To give you some background our own Gabriella Davis gave this online presentation at the last Lotus User Group Virtual Meeting on Monday. Basically your BES integrates tightly with your Lotus Domino environment but its many services actually sit outside Domino and are not readily accessible to, or known by, most Domino Admins. So this presentation takes you through how to monitor each of the BES services and what they do. Its ideal for anyone who is concerned their BlackBerry server 'just runs itself' and wants to achieve a greater level of control.

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Blackberry Monitoring and Logging - Free Webinar

Gabriella Davis  November 13 2008 04:29:02 PM

If you manage a BB server and have trouble working with the logs, monitoring the services, or are just curious about what options are available, you may be interested in a free Webinar I am presenting on behalf of the Lotus User Group.  It's taking place this Monday 17th November at 12.00 EST (5pm GMT).  All you have to do is register on the Lotus User Group website to attend and since I'm staying after work for an entire hour to present it, it would be nice to think there was someone listening at the other end :-)  

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Leaving Gelsenkirchen In One Piece and Dubious Confessions

Gabriella Davis  October 29 2008 12:42:45 PM

So far the week is going reasonably well.  I've just finished my last session at Admin Camp in Gelsenkirchen and it's been a great conference, a big turnout of interested attendees and great organisation by Rudi and his colleagues.  It's not their fault that my German isn't good enough to attend many other sessions.  Nor that I couldn't read enough to understand that lunch and dinner were laid on each day and so I didn't eat for 2 days, or that I couldn't translate the words 'free beer' last night.  I bring these things on myself.

We're about to head for the long drive home which will involve several hours in Belgium rush hour traffic but first Andrew's closing session entitled "Confessions of a Penetration Tester" - I'm just hoping that there's no accompanying video or a boom-chicka-chicka soundtrack frankly.  

I did manage to buy the world's slowest USB drive - 16GB for only 20 Euros which estimated 5 hrs to transfer a 4GB VM from Paul's hard disk when plugged in.  The pain generated by the ST Advanced work I've been doing this week deserves its own blog post later when I can breathe normally again, now it's time for a bit of fresh air before 10 hrs in the car.

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A Bad Luck Attractor

Gabriella Davis  October 26 2008 10:59:18 PM

It started Friday - driving out for lunch on Oxford St with Tim we got hit from behind by a large lorry which knocked us into a van in front.  Hung up on the two and with the lorry driver shouting it wasn't his fault, a double decker bus attempted to squeeze past the passenger side of the car. Since we were already wedged we couldn't go anywhere and eventually the bus driver realised the grinding noise meant maybe he should stop.  So he did.  Then he tried again and once more for luck completely crushing my side of the car and pushing us further into the Lorry.  Luckily a cabbie pulled over and gave us his details saying he would confirm it was all the bus' fault because the lorry driver and van driver both scarpered as soon as the lights changed.

We had already planned to drive to Germany on Saturday for AdminCamp and that meant arranging a hire car on Saturday.  Hertz took the booking for the car but when we turned up they had 'run out' of cars(!) so we spent the rest of Saturday getting our broken car into decent enough condition to drive across Germany and confirmed by a garage and our insurance company.

Saturday night we picked Andrew up from Heathrow only to discover his confirmed , fully pre-paid, hotel room was no longer available and the hotel was full (some kind of mix up at their end) - since it was already late at night he agreed to make do with our spare room.  Which was full of the contents of our garden shed, which had been dismantled that week and was awaiting its replacement next week.

Today I got everyone up early so we didn't miss the train only to realise too late that the clocks went back overnight and so we spent an hour waiting at the Eurotunnel station in the car, in the cold.  Oh and it rained solidly for the entire drive to Gelsenkirchen and then stopped as soon as we got here.

I have at least managed to build a CentOS VM for 8.5 tonight so that's 1 tick in the achievement box and i'm quitting whilst I'm ahead.  A new shiny week is about to start.

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Lotusphere Sessions through iTunes!

Gabriella Davis  October 24 2008 09:50:27 AM

We're trying something new for Lotusphere 09.  Each year we link up with Ben Langhinrichs to port his sessions db to Blackberry devices as a locally installed application (GPRS reception not being great inside the conference hotels).  This year we are producing the Blackberry sessions db again (with some surprises) but Tim has also been developing an offline sessions db for the iPhone platform.  I know we could go with a web app but I defy anyone to get reception in the product showcase :-)

Distribution is the biggest problem with iPhone applications as we've discovered so we're going to be issuing it through iTunes and the App store for free (obviously) download.  Anyone want to suggest a category to list it under?

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Webinar on ACL Management Online

Gabriella Davis  October 23 2008 11:09:46 PM

Tonight (this afternoon if you're in the US) I took part in a Webinar on ACL Management sponsored by the guys at Teamstudio.  We had a great turnout and either you all left your browsers running whilst you made lunch or people stayed on throughout the presentation, so I hope if you were one of the 'watchers' you found it useful.

For anyone who didn't catch it including those in Europe who had gone home, you can watch the Webinar on demand here

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Webinar on ACL Management and Control

Gabriella Davis  October 21 2008 05:03:29 PM

I've been asked by Teamstudio to join them in a Webinar this Thursday at 2pm EST on ACL Management and Control.  The presentation will be split into 2 parts.  The first part is presented by me and concentrates entirely on Domino native tools and how to best use them to manage ACLs in your environment.  The 2nd part is presented by Mike Weatherbee, Technical Director at Teamstudio and discusses how these native tools can be enhanced.

To their credit Teamstudio were very keen that the presentation deliver value for Admins regardless of whether they are Teamstudio customers or not and to that end they have asked me to talk only about standard Domino tools and techniques.  I'm very much looking forward to it (as well as being nervous because it's a live event) and I hope some of you register and get a lot out of it too.

Registration is free and is online here

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