Lotus Evangelist

Apathy or Retribution - Silo's Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Continuing on with previous posts about Silos and being an ACE or an AS we now stop to think about some reasons for the middle ground people.

The two extremes, one side uses everything and shares like beer on tap overflowing a glass and the other shares nothing and could care less. They both work in their own way and should be respected for they have made a decision.

Most of the world however, or 95% of it, if I can warp an old statistics class idea, is in the middle. Not committing to do or not to do or even try. Yoda would not be pleased. Mostly they are paralyzed by the fear of retribution should they go up against something or someone they do not believe in or trust. they may also be stuck in the land of apathy, uncaring too much of the information because it does not touch their little world (mini fiefdoms).

So now that you got here, how do you get these people to go to the other side without paying the ferryman?

In a post from October, I wrote this:

Stop Using the F, S and C words to Explain Connections

What I did not touch on was the need for people to belong and feel connected to others emotionally which is why they may use Facebook or Linkedin. That emotional need does not exist in business for most people. It's their job and unless they are 100% into their job and company the same need isn't there, thus the apathy. And also they rightly presume this may be used against them, thus the retribution.

Now compare this to a person who blogs about the issues within an educational organization who is trying to reach out to people who are affected by the decisions and yet the same people do not want to speak out or comment for fear of retribution by the community at large.

Now how do you as a sales person help your vendor sell their social business solution into a company? We have seen installations get tossed aside because of lack of usage. We have read about solutions that served them well for years to be tossed for something new. We have even seen some people choose to turn off some options because they want to force employees to think differently, the cold turkey method.

Buy-in from employees comes when they see their leadership making the effort and leading the way and showing the benefits to the company which in turn benefits the employees, or it should. Only in this way can you stave off the apathetic and assuage the fear of retribution.

It is not an easy process to accomplish and it takes time to spread this across, especially if your company has been full of Silos and fiefdoms for some time.

A Manager’s Guide to Resolving Conflicts in Collaborative Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Found this while searching on some other topics. It is an excellent paper, from 2007 which describes some of the obstacles we will face as we strive to a collaborative social business. The document is from the IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Indeed the authors: Rosemary O’Leary, Distinguished Professor of Public Administration
Maxwell Advisory Board Endowed Chair, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
and
Lisa Blomgren Bingham, Keller-Runden Professor of Public Service, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University-Bloomington

do an excellent job of the pros and cons to this topic.

Here is just one nugget from the paper:

Interesting reading, some basic sales 101 but the outlines of steps to follow for different sections could be a course in its own for those who just can not get their head around everything still.

The Accidental Silo Structure

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:29:00 +0000

http://www.mabeats.com/

In the Silo's Happen previous post I started to discuss the Accidental Silo Structure. I can't use the acronym since it will get blocked by some systems, so I will use the term AS.

If you have an AS, what do you do? Do you realize that you look like an AS? Do you think that you look like an Accessible Collaborative Enterprise (ACE)?

How do you know? What can you do to test for which side you are on?

Keeping in mind that some companies are ACE on the inside but AS on the outside and vice versa we need a litmus test for the sales teams to better understand where the customer sits on this spectrum.

As a Sales person, have you looked for these from the outside:

1) Listened to or watched a webinar or conference call between the client and their constituents, be they business patrners, vendors, customers? Have you noticed if they have an open meeting? Do they let you see everyone on the call? Can you chat with anyone or only the presenter?

2) If you read their blogs on their company website, are they up to date, even within 30 days?

3) Do they run a twitter feed that searches on the company name? Do they show they even are active on twitter at all?

4) Can you comment on their blogs without a "waitingfor approval to post your comments" line?

5) Have you noticed if there is anything other than a phone number or email address for connecting with the organization?

None of these individually rule them out, especially #5 which I use as a simple test. Similarly to the Van Halen brown M&M's contract rider, somethings go a long way to tell you about the organization.

Now what about the inside? Not so hard as you might think:

1) What does the company use to disseminate information? Is email still #1?

2) Does the company use a standard Instant Messenger solution? I don't care which one but a company wide solution?

3) If the company runs Jive, Lotus Notes Applications, IBM Quickr places, IBM Connections, Sharepoint or whatever are they actively using it and managing it? Or are there a million silo places inside each that make it seem like a needle in a haystack to find what you want?

4) When you take a meeting with the executive...is it only them in the room with you?

5) If you know the backgroound of management, do they come from organizations that are open and sharing and social or cold, dark and closed?

#5 is not meant as a failure. However, it implies that the people, who may in their own way be open and caring, ACEs actually, have a background from a place that acts like an AS. In other words, they may know better, but their mind says "this is how we did it before".

We need to stop the historical thinking!

You must bring the problems to the executives at their level. Sometimes outsiders provide greater and deeper insight to a company than their own teams. Great leaders want this information and want to see changes made because they may be tired of their "yes" people.

Don't assume anything about your potential clients, but look for the signs, they are staring you in the face. Deal with these before you try to sell your solution and you will look like an ACE too instead of an AS.

Silos Happen? Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:15:00 +0000

http://behindbricks.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/a-new-silo-a-new-obstacle/

Been a while since I posted about the competition. One reason is the competition has changed. It is no longer about this vendor versus that vendor but more insidious. It is now about Silos vs Openness.

In the past I may have painted a picture of a Silo company to look like many things but usually referred to them as Microsoft companies. Usually because Microsoft promoted the individual over the network and as an after thought provided a way to share the data. In contrast to Lotus which from the ground up was about sharing data and has been for over 20 years.

While I may have vented against the Silo companies and the people that thrive on that culture, think an evil pointy haired boss instead of just incompetent, there may be companies that have become Silo organizations purely by accident and have no idea they did it.

I was on a conference call today that sparked a number of questions and one which I am pondering in this post....can you become a Silo organization by accident?

The simple answer is of course, no. Someone or something puts other wheels in motion and before long the car is roaring down the highway with the dog's tongue hanging out the window.

As David Byrne once said, "Well, how did I get here?" This is the question. For if we can figure out this question properly, we can unravel possibly years of bad corporate culture and set you on a course of social enlightenment, beauty and enjoyment.

Most of the Social Media experts of course point out the benefits of a social enterprise. That is easy. They will tell you write a blog, post here, do this do that, but none of this will change a culture, let alone an executives mind set. Examples abound, best practices are in White Papers, but yet it does not hit home because in some cases it happened by accident over time.

To borrow a common idea, if you spent 10,000 hours being a Silo, how many hours will it take to reverse course? And if it was all by accident, now what?

Sales people will spend hours in meetings trying to gauge why an organization needs their product or will try to transform the enterprise but what if they get it wrong or are missing one key point.

Purpose.

No one wants to hear they are wrong or doing something seemingly proper only to find out they have been promoting a closed culture. Look around you at the businesses you frequent, the non-profits you assist, the schools your children attend. You can see the dichotomy and yet if you try to raise this awareness you may be pushed out or ignored. The reason is because management does not like to admit when they made a mistake and worse, if they are not sure how to get out of it, hate the messenger. This isn't about making the executive look bad, although usually their ego's are what makes them feel this way, when in fact they could be appreciative that someone has raised a potential problem of monumental meaning. It is about providing reasonable doubt that the companies efforts may be what is blocking their ability to embrace the cultural shift to openness.

In order to find that purpose again and revisit it, you need to ask some important questions. I suggest starting at the outer, peripheral items and work your way backwards. It is not a top down approach, but putting the executive in their own seat of a situation and having them see and feel the experience in a whole new way while trying to understand what the real purpose is behind the effort.

Walking in someone else's shoes is just the tip of the iceberg.

Firewalls Suck Time

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:20:00 +0000

Some days you just can't argue with simplicity. Duplicity is another story.

Junior admins remember, all is not as it appears.

While knocking off a number of issues at a client site upgrade it was reported a server was not accessible from the Domino Administration client. Funny thing is, the servers were replicating with it, no problem at all. But no clients could connect to it.

I asked the usual questions, have you verified DNS names, server document references, TCPIP references, etc.

All looked good they say. At a certain point it impedes my efforts so off I go to troubleshoot this one. Here is what I find:

1) Server document security page has no one allowed to access the server. Similarly the admin group and server group were not listed. Security settings were all default too. I know we set them, some box has an old copy that replicated, fine, changed, still nothing.

2) Can access the server via RDP and map a drive to it, which led me to #3

3) Windows 2008 Firewall. Damn, that was it. Although we set all the new servers to the exact same settings, this box did not have the clients cleared to be able to access the server.

REALLY! Having been on site at some government facilities that lock down every port, protocol and driver I should have checked it first, but you know you start with the larger focus and spiral down to smaller and smaller till you nail it.

Nailed it, now on to other things.

Sugarcon 2012 in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

This was my first Sugarcon as a SugarCRM Business Partner and user. As we saw on BP day, about 2/3 or 200 people in the room were also at their first Sugarcon, many of whom became partners this year, some as recently as the Friday before it started.

Impressive for any vendor to have that type of growth.

We also found out in turn that SugarCRM nearly doubled in size their employees to about 350 total including contractors/consultants. Many of the employees were here and it was great to meet so many people. Oddly enough for me, I met few developers, but then I have few issues with SugarCRM that require me meeting the developers. On the other hand, the executive teams and regional sales execs were openly available and mixed with everyone and most importantly answered questions uniformly without the usual "go ask him" or "let me get back to you" or any spin. Very refreshing. Plus they want input and encourage it from different angles as they are poised to grow into more enterprises.

More numbers for you to think about:
11 Million downloads of the Free Community Edition
1 Million active users of SugarCRM

380 Business Partners
40 New Business Partners in Q1 2012 alone
30,000+ developers
1,000 projects
400 VARs

I met many partners and we had discussions around go to market ideas, competitive discussions and where people have come from and where they want to go with SugarCRM. Some look forward to the IBM efforts but are wary as a Business partner what this means to them. Size matters, so does certifications and smaller partners will face similar issues to what the IBM smaller business partners have faced the last 2 years. If you are on the path towards growing your business and reaching higher levels of customer numbers life will be good for you.

The event itself was run like a large user group meeting which extended the more family and friendly like atmosphere, not bad for about 1,000 people. I compare it to other IBM events which is probably unfair given their size and stature, but in my world few events are this size, they are either smaller or larger. Not very formal about anything, they had a nice app for iPhones (My Android device had issues), good breaks and healthy snacks (It was in San Francisco) split into technical tracks and sales/sponsor tracks as well as more private business partner training sessions.

Guy Kawasaki was a great presenter, he had also spoken at Lotusphere this year I wonder when I will hear him next this year.

The analysts and pundits that provided their insights were for the most part on the money but also not tight or heavy handed. Basically everything was light and informal and I credit the SugarCRM motto of "User First" with being so open as well as being an open sourced company.

The Exploratorium is a great place to go and everyone should go when in San Francisco.

Partner training was an added bonus and I spent my time not on the tech side, I am not a developer, but on the sales and business sessions looking at the SugarCRM methodology to encourage sales with a process that works. Bruce, Olivier and Erin did some great enablement sessions and roll plays.

On a personal level kudos to the Kosher caterer in Oakland, that steak was huge and a big surprise. I also had a "baseball card" signed by Clint Oram, the SugarCRM CTO. Key speakers had these cards made up by SugarCRM which were handed out. The uncut sheet is probably very valuable.

My only complaint, aside from my android issues, is that the sessions were not recorded. When you have 6-8 parallel sessions running much is missed and slides don't cut it. A number of customers expressed this as well something to think about for next year. My session on the "Boss is Anti-Social" will be set up as a webinar or podcast at some point soon.

Congratulations to Chris Bucholtz and everyone involved in making the event so successful.

See you next year in New York, Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want more details they have the website up already over here.

SugarCRM Integration with IBM Connections

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Over the course of the last few days here in San Francisco at Sugarcon 2012 I have had some interesting discussions around IBM, integration points, IBM SmartCloud and of course Lotus Notes and Domino.

What you probably know is there has been a few integration points for SugarCRM that have included a Lotus Notes plugin for the Notes client from the iEnterprise acquisition and the LotusLive plugin to SugarCRM itself to share meetings and files.

SugarCRM and IBM have shown the integration of IBM Connections into SugarCRM. and it's pretty sweet too, even if it isn't quite ready for GA(ETA Q3). The basic principle of the integration was put together over a few weeks and was aimed at procviding a bridge between SugarCRM and the IBM Connections environment. Built-in to the SugarCRM side is a connector where you set up your logins and locations and then you have the communities and members to be listed inside SugarCRM.

A great job was done to get the business card settings to work so you can click straight over to the Connections sections like wikis, blogs, profiles, communities and activities, etc.

This may be a huge boost for SugarCRM as they strive to reach more Enterprises. Given the size of most IBM Connections installations, this may be an opportunity for Business Partners to make a huge play with their customers.

The flip side is not so great. IBM Connections is overkill to SugarCRM's bread and butter customers of the under 25 user organizations. IBM SmartCloud Engage, a slightly reduced version of IBM Connections, but one wholly based in The Cloud should be a good play if it gets packaged or bundled together at some point in the future. This is my guess at what we may see down the road. I missed the IBM session that outlined some more details.

IBM Sametime looks to be the next product to find it's way. Most likely due to Yammer being built-in to Salesforce.com. Naturally an organization can also use an online version or on premise version of Sametime but today there is no integration inside SugarCRM.

IBM Business Partners, you may want to start brushing up on SugarCRM. We have been a SugarCRM Silver Business Partner for the last year and a half and happy to discuss it with any of you.

My Session on IBM SmartClud and SugartCRM

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:39:00 +0000

My slides on IBM SmartCloud and SugarCRM can be found here.

IBM is using SugarCRM Internally

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 21:15:00 +0000

One of the things heard this morning at SugarCon was that IBM is working on rolling out SugarCRM to the company.

This is a huge boost of course for SugarCRM and for IBM and it's sales teams and Business Partners. In doing so, IBM will be putting aside Siebel.

SugarCRM which is looking to grow their Enterprise business, needs this boost. In many ways it brings validity to what many of us have known for years. Mainly that older solutions are cumbersome, expensive and they preclude others from excelling at their jobs.

With this roll out there are integration points in place today for IBM SmartCloud Engage (previously LotusLive Engage) and now there will be IBM Connections integration. More on this topic coming in a different blog post.

If you had been at the Partner day or the Keynote this morning, you may have felt, as I did, that substituting Lotusphere/IBM for Sugarcon/SugarCRM you may think you were in Orlando. Even the music/videos out front had a similar sound/feel. so naturally I feel at home. Just missing my yellowverse friends.

But as I meet new friends, customers and partners, I am struck by the feeling of deja vu. I have seen this similar growth and plans way back in R4 of Lotus Notes. yes prior to IBM buying Lotus, the company was also trying to break into the Enterprise levels. And IBM helped them get there in many ways.

Now SugarCRM is leaning on IBM to help guide the future, make inroads into bigger clients and integrate with their existing systems and extend out to newer ones. It is a good working relationship that can only help SugarCRM. But I wonder what IBM will get from this.

Back in R4 time, email was just coming out and it was the right time, right product. Now, CRM is not new nor is SugarCRM by far the only player out there, though they are the 3rd largest CRM vendor out there with over 1 million active users, 80,000+ organizations use it and 30,000 registered developers.

Their view, reiterated by Larry Augustin, CEO and Clint Oram, CTO of SugarCRM, is the USER is what is most important. Again, just like Lotus Notes wanted to help the user do more, share more and grow more. It's a great parallel.

Sugarcon grows each year and next year will be in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, April 7-11, 2013. If you want to be part of this great run, join now, try it out. You can download the mostly full installation, called Community Edition, and try it on your own.LAMP or Windows your choice. Go get it from www.sugarcrm.com

If we, as partners, can leverage SugarCRM to augment our IBM solutions it may help IBM Connections grow similarly to how Lotus Notes grew years ago.

My session tomorrow discusses this and more from a practical angle, not a sales/marketing pitch. looking forward to this future and greater information to be coming from this relationship.

Business Anti-Social: Why the Boss Doesn't Get It

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:30:00 +0000

This is my slidedeck from the Sugarcon 2012 session I just finished about ways to help executives be more social. It also covers some ideas around out thinking your competition and how to get stuff done without approval.

The link to my slides page is here. Slideshare link as well.

SugarCon 2012 Starts Today

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Business Partner day starts today. I flew in last night and got a phone call at 6am from a client with a server down. So much for sleep.

Took the 5 block walk to the Palace Hotel where the conference is located. Along the way saw many examples of inner city art, sculptures, exhibitions of artists work in almost any and every place. The things I miss working a 1/2 mile from home normally. Will try to get some pictures later this week. On the flip side sad to see so many homeless and questionable activities going on in this part of the city.

This morning Larry Augustin opened with the state of numbers. Where Sugar stands, where we as Business partners stand. He made a point, which I had put into my sessions, making life easier for the user is key.

Some great marketing plans coming out, Google ad-words campaigns now part of the ecosystem as well. Nice to see when a Vendor knows how to help their partners. The Zift program is really nice and easy to use.

Great to see other Sugar Partners in person finally and to see SugarCRM employees as well that I haven't met in person yet.

Social online helps with social in person. Now if my memory worked as well.

Will post more over the week. If you are out here, catch me either on the SugarCon app or find me at my sessions.

Changes to the Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:33:00 +0000

I have moved some of my posts to a new domain. If you want to follow my Friday TorahBiz posts, you can find them now under their own blog site. www.torahbiz.com I know, original, but the domain was not available until about 2 weeks ago.

While they may still appear in my Twitter stream, they will not be here and so your RSS feeds will go back to their regularly scheduled business, technology discussions.

More changes will be coming over the next month or 2 and I will update everything accordingly.

SnTT - Traveler, DA, Dircat and 13,000+ Names

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:13:00 +0000

Been working with a client moving them from R5 to 853FP1. A big jump and not so simple as one would think. The usual Domino items do work properly and as we move people over all is well and good, but along the way we found some gotchas that, well, if you were not around in R5 time, you may not realize the nuances.

Traveler of course is a key part of why they are upgrading. NOT for iPads or iPhones but for Android devices. An added bonus to them is the Sametime entry which is a FREE entitlement with their Domino licenses.

They were using a pair of Dircat's. Dircat for those who did not grow up with the term stands for Directory Catalog. The idea behind these was to provide, don't forget this was R5 time around 1999-2000, a condensed address book so laptop users over modem lines could easily address emails. Naturally this was a huge benefit to people like IBM with 250,000+ people at the time and a massive set of NAB's which could be shrunk down to about 150MB which in those days....

You created a database from the dircat template and then told it which directories (Notes or LDAP) to pull people or whatever fields you specified into it. Simple right? And it worked well. I demo'ed this in beta in Athens at the IBM EBU in 1999.

Flash forward to Traveler time and you see Traveler likes to work with DA (Directory Assistance). No problem, took their file and set up the DA database and configuration. And nothing happened. Show XDIR included the file but no lookups on Traveler.

After a little bit of poking around the file, it turns out the file the client told us to use was really a DirCat, not a regular Address Book. Traveler was not happy, now I knew why. Looking at the config doc I found the original file it was based on. Edited the DA and restarted the server and like magic it worked properly.

Lotus Notes Traveler just wants to see proper address books when doing lookups from your device.

What is really nice is the search finds people FAST and given this is over 13,000 names, not including their own NAB that's a huge win for everyone. Remember you need to type 3 letters before you see any hits but you can adjust that if you wish. See this wiki page for more details on lookups and configurations.

Ethical Hacking Student Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:49:00 +0000

This week I was at John I. Leonard High School in Greenacres, Florida speaking on behalf of ITWomen on the topic of Ethical Hacking.

The nature of the discussion was not how to do it but more what it is about and why it is important. While I hit the key points in the qst half of the presentation, the second half has more details about the processes and methodology for those interested.

While discussing my time with Citibank during one of their attacks, various co-workers that presented their own problems and unique resolution and my own experiences with hackers on my systems and those of our clients we hit the highs and lows of the topic.

In bringing it to the students level, I discussed how this type of police work has all the same action but with much less physical risk. We also discussed how to report questionable activities.

The high school kids also admitted Twitter has jumped the shark...only to say they prefer Facebook.

I credit 3 primary references which I used to put it together if anyone wants to look at it in the original forms.

Here is the link to the presentation.

Put the Right Foot Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:21:00 +0000

Sorry, with a busy week, this got left out last week.

In 8:23 it says:

And he slaughtered [it], and Moses took some of its blood, and placed it on the cartilage of Aaron's right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.

And you are thinking to yourself, where are we going with this, right?

The natural question is why these 3 places, and why the right hand?

In olden times, the right side of a person was a side of strength. So naturally Moshe puts the blood on the right side. When you go to a customer you want to put your best foot forward. Sorry, couldn't resist. And naturally you want to shake their hand and be a good listener.

Aaron and his sons were to be the Cohanim, the priests for the people and as such their role was to listen to the people, be strong for them and to support the masses while also being swift to justice.

If you want to be in leadership, you need to lead by listening first and that is what the blood on the ear symbolizes. It touches each part of the Cohen that is important for their roles and to remind them of what is truly important.

Leadership examples come from everywhere and can work for anyone.
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Parsha Tzav in the book of Vayikra Leviticus 6:1 - 8:36

It is said that the Torah or Bible could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring a business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom

SnTT- When log.nsf gets snagged

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Sometimes what we know doesn't always work.

Take this situation. Client running an R5 server suddenly gets errors on the console that the log file can not be found or unable to write to it.

It seems the server crashed or had something happen to it and the log.nsf may have become corrupted.

The simple response is to move the bad log.nsf out of the Domino directory entirely so you can review it for what caused the problem. You do this by shutting down the server and physically moving the file, cut and paste style. Domino will start a new log.nsf file on startup if one does not exist and you are good to go.

Not so fast. What if, as it did in this case, the errors persist? Now what do you do?

The answer, in this case, was after reviewing the template was okay and all else looked good was to reboot the server. In this case the client did not want to do this as it was a remote box and no coverage at the time.

You can run, even on old R5 servers, nsd.exe -kill. Yes it was around then. And this will clear any open threads from Notes or Domino and sure enough afer running it and starting up Domino all was good again in the world.

More than one way to solve this but sometimes you need to think about the repercussions before committing to a resolution. What would have happenned if the server never came back online from the reboot? What would you do? What do you tell your client if it didn't work? There are always options.

Volunteering for FIRST Robotics the next 2 days

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:01:00 +0000

For those that do not know what FIRST is, it was founded by Dean Kamen.

Their mission :

Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

It is a great idea and this will be my first time helping. In fact it is the first one held at FAU, Florida Atlantic University here in Boca Raton.

I will be one of the Robot Judges checking everyone is playing by the rules and keeping safe robots. Unfortunately for me I will miss the real action of the finals which are on Saturday but with 40+ teams expected there will be a lot of action Thursday and Friday.

I look forward to meeting the students and other volunteers and will post pictures during the day to Twitter and Facebook. Load in was last night and I am on site from 7am to 7pm today and 7-12pm Friday. If you are in town and want to come by, it's free admission. We are at the FAU "Burrow" arena.

FIRST has a Twitter account, Firsttweets, if you want to follow them.

In the Moment Don't Forget About the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:34:00 +0000

In a parsha filled with totally irrelevant information for modern times, what can we learn that helps in business?

I pondered this all week and came to the conclusion that it was known at the time, much of this would not be useful forever. If you believe God dictated the Torah to Moshe then why would God go into such detail about sacrifices that would have a use for a few centuries, even a millenia, but not forever?

Sometimes in business, we also go into serious details on topics or projects that it really will not matter years down the road, but it matters immensely to the short term. In some cases the choices we make have long ranging meaning. Choosing to go Token Ring or Ethernet, Netscape vs. IE, Coke vs. Pepsi think about some of the things that influenced the long term that the short term caused a paradigm shift. Some of these are still played out today. Others, are roadkill to history.

Knowing how to perform the sacrifices is something a small group of people today study and are preparing for the day when they will be reinstated as the norm. For many of us it is not likely in our lifetime, yet they persevere. Rallying behind a product or a company may provide some form of belonging to some people, for others it's a religion of sort. Still other people move on, drop the old, pick up the new, sometimes learning from the past, sometimes not.

At the end of the Parsha in 5:11 the alternative is offered for those that can not afford the more expensive sacrifices.

But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young doves, then he shall bring as his sacrifice for his sin one tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering. He shall not put oil over it, nor shall he place frankincense upon it, for it is a sin offering.

The alternative close, the always be closing effort stems from the idea that there is no one who is beyond saving or beyond a solution to their troubles. And so we get a hint that we should always offer an alternative solution because the long term is to keep the client, keep you in the fold, in some way, shape, or form.

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Parsha Vayikrah in the book of Vayikra Exodus 1:1 - 5:26

It is said that the Torah or Bible could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring a business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom

Review of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3: Upgrader's Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Packt asked me to review this book, they sent me a soft cover copy. I have been an author for them and reviewer in the past, just for full disclosure.

It was written by some IBMers named Tim Speed, Scott O'Keefe and Barry Rosen. The book follows the usual Packt logic and formats which have proven to be pretty good from my experience as an author with them and a reader/reviewer. Two of the three of these gentlemen previously published the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 The Upgrader's Guide as well.

The back cover says this book was written for power users, admins and developers looking to upgrade to 8.5.3. And additionally could be read by management looking for a high level understanding of the new options.

My feeling is the second half of that statement is the truth. The book goes into a reasonable explanation of the changes in the 8.5. series from a server and client angle. In fact that is the 1st 6 chapters alone as well as Chapter 9 on development topics. Chapter 10 is about the integration with other IBM products and Chapter 11 is solely about the DCT. Domino Configuration Tuner which Scott.

The 2 chapters dedicated to upgrading (Chapter 7) and co-existence among releases (Chapter 8) are a very high level overview. Given 2 out of the 3 authors are from ISSL, the IBM Global Services Lotus arm, we get the benefits of an outline or workflow to follow when setting up the project to do the upgrades.

Overall, an excellent guide to What's new in the 8.5.x stream and how they interact with the client and server from an admin, developer and user perspective.

Unfortunately, we get little around the actual upgrading process itself.While in general Domino upgrades go smoothly for experienced admins, there are countless issues to be discussed and the authors touch on some of these but without practical instruction leaving the reader to go look up more details. Names.nsf updates, templates, Traveler updates (and subsequent notes.ini and internet site documents which may need editing) among other basic issues receive little or no discussion. The 8.5.1 book appears to go into some of these topics in a little more detail but still not as much as a junior admin would need.

Smart Upgrade should have received more than a go look at the administration help link. It is not that simple as numerous blog posts from many of us in the field have shown. Policies receive better treatment.

As an admin, not much for us here, as a reference for clients looking to upgrade from older releases, this is a must have book filled with the WHY you should upgrade. If you are a Lotus Notes admin who has been away from it for a while, this will get you up to speed in a topical way.

A good reference to have on the shelf for clients, in fact I recommended it already to 2 of them because they do not have strong backgrounds in the infrastructure they have inherited or merged.

Finding the Expert

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:45:00 +0000

It's not easy being an expert at something. Especially when God calls you out as one. That is some high expectations.
Bezalel and Oholiab were such experts. Chapter 35, verse 30-35 Moshe is telling the people that these 2 great master craftsmen will lead them in the building of the Tabernacle (Mishkan) in the Desert. Exodus 36:2 says:

And Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every wise hearted man into whose heart the Lord had given wisdom, everyone whose heart lifted him up to approach the work to do it.

So there were more people that could perform this work, yet only the 2 of them were named. And so it continues today in business.

Clients have a problem and they say, let's get some help. Then that leads to let's get some help from a specific Company. That may lead to asking for help from a specific distributor or business partner and that in turn may lead to we want Jeff to handle this for us.

If you are the owner of a business, this is what you strive to reach. Either on a personal or a company level. You want clients to ask for you by name. It helps to have the publicity of course, but you still must get the job done and grow the respect of your peers.

In this case Bezalel and Oholiab had been given the talent they needed by God, so is it any wonder God would point them out as the designer and builder of the Tabernacle? If we all work on becoming that expert we will find not only our calling, but others calling us as well.
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Parsha Vayakhel in the book of Shemot Exodus 35:1 - 38:20

It is said that the Torah or Bible could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring a business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom

Where are your Horns?

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:25:00 +0000

Yes, my friends we come to the Parsha, Ki Tisa, which discusses Moses horns as so many call them.
Ever wonder where this ridiculous idea came from that Jews have horns? It comes from these sentences in Exodus 34:30-35. Hebrew added for those that want the details.

30. that Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses and behold! the skin of his face had become radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. ל. וַיַּרְא אַהֲרֹן וְכָל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת מֹשֶׁה וְהִנֵּה קָרַן עוֹר פָּנָיו וַיִּירְאוּ מִגֶּשֶׁת אֵלָיו:

31. But Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the princes of the community returned to him, and Moses would speak to them. לא. וַיִּקְרָא אֲלֵהֶם מֹשֶׁה וַיָּשֻׁבוּ אֵלָיו אַהֲרֹן וְכָל הַנְּשִׂאִים בָּעֵדָה וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה אֲלֵהֶם:

32. Afterwards all the children of Israel would draw near, and he would command them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. לב. וְאַחֲרֵי כֵן נִגְּשׁוּ כָּל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיְצַוֵּם אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְ־הֹוָ־ה אִתּוֹ בְּהַר סִינָי:

33. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he placed a covering over his face. לג. וַיְכַל מֹשֶׁה מִדַּבֵּר אִתָּם וַיִּתֵּן עַל פָּנָיו מַסְוֶה:

34. When Moses would come before the Lord to speak with Him, he would remove the covering until he left; then he would leave and speak to the children of Israel what he would be commanded. לד. וּבְבֹא מֹשֶׁה לִפְנֵי יְ־הֹוָ־ה לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ יָסִיר אֶת הַמַּסְוֶה עַד צֵאתוֹ וְיָצָא וְדִבֶּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֵת אֲשֶׁר יְצֻוֶּה:

35. Then the children of Israel would see Moses' face, that the skin of Moses' face had become radiant, and [then] Moses would replace the covering over his face until he would come [again] to speak with Him. לה. וְרָאוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה כִּי קָרַן עוֹר פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה וְהֵשִׁיב מֹשֶׁה אֶת הַמַּסְוֶה עַל פָּנָיו עַד בֹּאוֹ לְדַבֵּר אִתּ

The Hebrew word for horn would be transliterated as Koren. The sentence says Kahran (transliterated) which embodies light or radiance.

What else would you expect from someone who just met face to face so to speak with God? That they would grow horns?! For sane, logical and intellectual people to think one grows horns from seeing God is interesting.

Now that question about seeing my horns, is that because you want me to reveal what God is like to you? Would you prefer to think that I was so gifted? Trust me, I have tons of questions for God and I am sure you do as well.

So what does this have to do with business? When someone has a presence or an aura about them, and I don't mean actors/actresses, I mean someone who is a titan of business or a leader of people, these people glow from within.

They can embody that which many of us can not. They can diffuse tense situations, orchestrate complex dealings into simple efforts, produce impossible conclusions. In short the have been blessed by God and you recognize that power when you are in their presence.

And that is why the translation of horns makes no sense and when you are faced with data or guidelines that do not make sense, you need to dig deeper to understand the real explanations.

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Parsha Ki Tisa in the book of Shemot Exodus 30:11 - 34:35

It is said that the Torah or Bible could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring a business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom

Help! Domlog.nsf is 1.5GB...did you..

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:03:00 +0000

Follow all the directions and set up logging and all in the server document properly?

Of course you did, yet there it is that daily or monthly report log file that somehow is just HUGE!

Asked a few people but int he end, found this technote #1161104 which pointed me to an agent that had been disabled, for some reason. Enabled it back on and off we go.

The premise question was my own too:

How can you reduce the size of the Domino Web Server log (domlog.nsf)? You enable this feature to record requests handled by a Lotus Domino Web server, but find that the log database is growing large.

Here is the short answer, read the Technote for more options and details:
Cleanup agent

The Domino Web Server Log includes a Cleanup agent that removes older documents from the log. By default, it runs once a day at 1 AM and removes documents for which the date created is older than ten days. To enable the agent, take the following steps:

1. Open the Domino Web Server log (domlog.nsf), and select View, Agents.
2. Highlight the Cleanup agent and set it to Enable.
3. When prompted for the server to run on, select your Domino server's name.
4. If you wish, you can edit the schedule. For example, you can set the agent to run on a Monthly basis, instead of Daily.

Note: Make sure you leave the Target setting as "All Documents in the database." Do not select "All new and modified documents since last run" as this will affect the results

Checks and Balances of Leadership

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Interrupting my usual schedule due to Purim which starts tonight.

Once again, the problems we face today, were faced over 2,000 years ago as well.

It was then that King Achashveros gave one of his executives, Haman, carte blanch to do what he wanted with a certain group of people he had persuaded the King were against him. That in itself is not unusual of course, but the story has more to it than this tidbit.

As it turns out, one of the King's wives turns out to be a member of this group. Not good luck for Haman.

What is interesting is the King shows no attention to the matter until his wife tells him about it. Thus leaving Haman to almost complete his mission of wiping out all the Jews of the time int he kingdom.

In business we see executives sign off on projects and then barely pay attention to them. Rightly so, they have better things on their mind, but shouldn't they at least know what is going on? Culpable ignorance perhaps to be claimed by the executive but still, are there no checks and balances? Achashveros gave Haman his ring to seal decrees which meant only another decree sealed by the king to change it. Sound familiar? It would take an act of God or the CEO to change their mind.

What we end up with is a classic story of greed, management by benign neglect and vanity or pride that almost took what was a reasonable happy kingdom full of parties and royal decadence.

So why do we wear costumes on Purim? Because it reminds us that not everyone is what they appear and sometimes that layered approach to seeing people is what causes the greatest despair and the utmost ecstasy when we finally get to meet the person underneath the mask or costume.

2nd Session Speaking at SugarCon 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:45:00 +0000

An even bigger surprise to me yesterday when I was researching something for SugarCon and found out I was doing a 2nd session!
The first time, I found out via blog post, this time via Google search.
I had wondered about the session because it is one which I am quite sure no one else was doing, namely:

Full Power Collaboration with IBM SmartCloud Engage and SugarCRM

The session was meant to be about the points of integration between SugarCRM and ~~LotusLive~~ IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. However, it was also about how to integrate older Domino CRM applications into SugarCRM. Since SugarCRM bought the iEnterprise CRM solution it is not such a rip and replace.

ideally we want to help every company with a Domino infrastructure looking at SugarCRM to recognize that it is not an all or nothing effort. There are choices and using 2-3 client case studies we will be outlining the options and demo them as examples, where posible.

So if you will be in San Francisco April 23-26 let me know and if you have SugarCRM questions or Domino CRM questions ask away.

Good oil is hard to find

noreply@blogger.com (Keith Brooks) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Leadership knows how to wring every last drop of effort out of their followers.

In this week's Parsha of Tetzaveh God asks the now desert nomadic Jewish people to do something nearly impossible from the first sentence (Exodus 27:20):

And you shall command the children of Israel, and they shall take to you pure olive oil, crushed for lighting, to kindle the lamps continually.

Really!? PURE olive oil!? They are in the desert you remember. So olives just grow wild in the desert and they could make pure oil because they had nothing else to do at the time. And it would be used for lighting right? And do you not think they knew this already and had been doing it so they had light at night?

The fact is leadership, no matter if you say it was God or Moses, asked for it and they did it. No questions asked, just did it. Speaking of Moses, he is not, repeat not found in this parsha at all by name. That is even greater leadership, people follow you without your name even being used. We should all be that gifted when we are leading our companies. Then again we are not God.

Think about this too, maybe they needed the olives as food in the desert? They already had the Manna so any other food was excess and thus available for alternative uses.

But the bottom line is these lucky olives were going to be used for the Cohen or priestly workings. The people gave them up willingly because they didn't need them to eat, although they needed them for light.. In contrast most executives rarely ask for what isn't needed and fewer get it from their employees. Instead the carrot and stick routine work for them. That attitude doesn't work today any more than it worked 1,000's of years ago.

If you know you need better sales from your team, you can wring out the olive oil the hard way or ask people to give up some time to learn something new or get some training or help others so together 1+1=3. They need the time, no question, but they really need the sales and thus more commissions and this little sacrifice, for the right leadership, is possible.

Purim is next week on Wen and Thurs, Chag Smaeach.

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Parsha Tetzaveh in the book of Shemot Exodus 27:20 - 30:10

It is said that the Torah or Bible could be interpreted in over 70 ways. More likely these days 100's of ways. In light of this idea, I am writing some posts that bring a business sense to what we can learn on a weekly basis. Enjoy, Shabbat Shalom