July 16 2010 Friday
Lotus community shouts again: Now what?
Two weeks ago, I blogged about recent discussions after Jake's decision to learn Sharepoint...
Now, a recent conversation arised between Jake, successful blogger of codestore.net and Yancy, the owner and founder of planetlotus.org.
I am not going to discuss the issue in depth and present 'yet another opinion'. In summary, Yancy wanted Jake to split his blog because he is blogging too much about Sharepoint as well as Lotus. Jake appealed, Yancy offered to delist him and move to PlanetSharepoint which is another blog aggregator Yancy owns. Jake said something, Yancy said something and it became tense. Jake, then posted the situation on his blog; Yancy posted the entire e-mail thread on his own blog. Of course people reacted the incident quickly. Each entry had over 600 hits in two days which is a quite big number for an ordinary post and Both have been commented by many readers.
My problem is not the issue of what they said, whether one of them is right about it or not. I just have fun while reading :)
Two years ago, Apple announced iPhone - EAS (Exchange Active Sync) support for MS Exchange users. Then Ed posted a blog and assured the community that IBM is working on iPhone but also called for 'community action' to create a customer pressure on Apple. What a big mistake!
I loved Volker's anology that time: "The blame game started!".
Partners blamed IBM, developers blamed Lotus, customers blamed everybody. One guy even accused IBM to take down Lotus Software. Some members of the community were suggesting that 'IBM should develop a basic traveler client for iPhone'. But iPhone SDK was not letting the developer to run a background application. If there is no background process, there will be no push mail. It's simple. Another one started 'IBM do not want to afford licensing' argument, which is actually ridiculus. The whole argument was again total nonsense. IBM was officially telling 'we are working on it' and people were answering 'you should have been working harder', like mom said.
Evantually, two years passed and Lotus now supports EAS protocol for iPhone and iPad. Now the same argument can be told about application support.
Several weeks ago, at a roundtable meeting with Kevin Cavenough, I bugged him with never-ending questions including mobility strategies, Connections software, the future of Quickr and several more about domino issues. He has given very sincere answers. Since I don't know about confidentiality issues, it would not be right to share the details. But it is essentially important that no matter how you are powerful in the market, you are simply bounded by certain limits. You may produce the finest batteries for notebooks. However, when the case gets hot and your battery is dead, who will be responsible? Is it your fault? It is the same for relations between Microsoft-Intel, Oracle-HP, IBM-Microsoft and IBM-Apple, of course.
I am not happy that XPages applications are well-supported in iPhone but not in Blackberry or Nokia. The easiest thing to do is to post an entry with "Hey Lotus, hear me, don't piss me off and support nokia browser!".
It does not mean that I am not going to blog about mistakes of IBM. Regarding the nature of blogging, it would be quite wrong to suggest some issues should not be told public. Just be nice about it. I am trying to be... I loved the blog entry of Marie L. Scott lasth month: "Top 15 Ways to Get Noticed on Planet Lotus".
My point is that the Lotus Community tends to be nervous. They love polemics about unnecessary issues, like Ed Brill tweeted:
Now, a recent conversation arised between Jake, successful blogger of codestore.net and Yancy, the owner and founder of planetlotus.org.
I am not going to discuss the issue in depth and present 'yet another opinion'. In summary, Yancy wanted Jake to split his blog because he is blogging too much about Sharepoint as well as Lotus. Jake appealed, Yancy offered to delist him and move to PlanetSharepoint which is another blog aggregator Yancy owns. Jake said something, Yancy said something and it became tense. Jake, then posted the situation on his blog; Yancy posted the entire e-mail thread on his own blog. Of course people reacted the incident quickly. Each entry had over 600 hits in two days which is a quite big number for an ordinary post and Both have been commented by many readers.
My problem is not the issue of what they said, whether one of them is right about it or not. I just have fun while reading :)
Two years ago, Apple announced iPhone - EAS (Exchange Active Sync) support for MS Exchange users. Then Ed posted a blog and assured the community that IBM is working on iPhone but also called for 'community action' to create a customer pressure on Apple. What a big mistake!
I loved Volker's anology that time: "The blame game started!".
Partners blamed IBM, developers blamed Lotus, customers blamed everybody. One guy even accused IBM to take down Lotus Software. Some members of the community were suggesting that 'IBM should develop a basic traveler client for iPhone'. But iPhone SDK was not letting the developer to run a background application. If there is no background process, there will be no push mail. It's simple. Another one started 'IBM do not want to afford licensing' argument, which is actually ridiculus. The whole argument was again total nonsense. IBM was officially telling 'we are working on it' and people were answering 'you should have been working harder', like mom said.
Evantually, two years passed and Lotus now supports EAS protocol for iPhone and iPad. Now the same argument can be told about application support.
Several weeks ago, at a roundtable meeting with Kevin Cavenough, I bugged him with never-ending questions including mobility strategies, Connections software, the future of Quickr and several more about domino issues. He has given very sincere answers. Since I don't know about confidentiality issues, it would not be right to share the details. But it is essentially important that no matter how you are powerful in the market, you are simply bounded by certain limits. You may produce the finest batteries for notebooks. However, when the case gets hot and your battery is dead, who will be responsible? Is it your fault? It is the same for relations between Microsoft-Intel, Oracle-HP, IBM-Microsoft and IBM-Apple, of course.
I am not happy that XPages applications are well-supported in iPhone but not in Blackberry or Nokia. The easiest thing to do is to post an entry with "Hey Lotus, hear me, don't piss me off and support nokia browser!".
It does not mean that I am not going to blog about mistakes of IBM. Regarding the nature of blogging, it would be quite wrong to suggest some issues should not be told public. Just be nice about it. I am trying to be... I loved the blog entry of Marie L. Scott lasth month: "Top 15 Ways to Get Noticed on Planet Lotus".
My point is that the Lotus Community tends to be nervous. They love polemics about unnecessary issues, like Ed Brill tweeted:
Wouldn't be a summer week without a tempest in a teapot over on PlanetLotus.org.
@Henning,
I am not claiming that 'Lotus community is whining about not nothing'. There are many issues to be pissed off. I am unhappy with marketing strategies of Lotus, like I am blogging sometimes. But what I am trying to explain is more than that.
I have given three examples here. Except 20% of the first one, the discussion is not about what IBM is doing wrong. On the other side, have you seen anybody admitting 'Hey! I was saying IBM totally sucks in marketing but they sold 30K Lotus Notes to a MS customer last week and I was wrong.'?
There is very little rational ground in many discussions between the community. 'You should have been faster' is different from 'you messed up, like you always do'.