So I was remiss on blogging about the death of Lotus SmartSuite, but I am basically here because of it. I need to give it some proper due.

Back in 1993, I picked up my first copy of Lotus Ami Pro 3.0 and my technical career started. I then moved on to Lotus SmartSuite, Word Pro, and the other apps. I became the go to person for intergration of SmartSuite with other products. I got to speak at Lotusphere - and Lotus Europe in Berlin. It led me into working with Notes, integration, and so much more. It took me from Artron to Boom Vang. Synergistics hired me because of the mail merge work I did. PSC hired me mostly because of my Notes work, but we did plenty of SmartSuite. I was proud to host the SmartSuite developers website, write magazine articles, and be quoted in the press.

So it's death is sad. I will miss the best macro langugage in any app ever (hello Ami Pro). The amazing divisions and subdivisions in Word Pro. The flaming trash can in Organizer. The vastly overlooked Fast Site. And the power of the Lotus SmartSuite toolbar and drawers that no one ever figured about.

Here are a few photos of things I still have around that highlight my fondness of Lotus SmartSuite. I just can't let go of the memories :-)

My 'Lotus Team' certificate from 1995 - back from the Compuserve days ...

Interactive Week article about Lotus FastSite in which I was quoted, from April 6th, 1998


"Developing SmartSuite Applications using LotusScript" manual from IBM which has a bunch of my code.

Thanks SmartSuite!

The results are in. You can access them at this page: www.psclistens.com/ibm-survey-results.aspx

The results are interesting and can be interpreted in many ways. I will save some personal thoughts on it until people can consume the information,
Infographic: www.slideshare.net/PSCGroup/pscs-ibm-notes-domino-survey-results-2014
Presentation: www.slideshare.net/PSCGroup/notes-domino-survey-results-2014

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

As of 10 am today, I am officially no longer part of the OpenNTF.org elected Board of Directors. It’s the first time since the rebirth of OpenNTF.org in 2009 and elected officers that I am no longer participating. I made the decision a year ago to retire and it was the right call. I will miss OpenNTF.org and working with it actively, but I knew it was time to do something new. I have been really active with STEM in Chicago and a non-profit called Lumity, and I have to pick where I spend my time.

OpenNTF.org is a passion for me. Something I truly believed in and was always happy to provide time for. I remember vividly when Bruce asked me for PSC to host the OpenNTF.org server. Mark Roden sits next to it every day in Schaumburg – I find it fitting that one of the leaders of the new Modern application movement in the ICS community sits next to one of the catalysts of that community from 2002. There is a lot of history with OpenNTF.org. Watching Bruce and Nathan stir the pot. People coming and going. Successful projects. The rebirth/relaunch lead by Brent Peters in 2009. Being the figurehead and leader for the licensing effort & drama. Watching Nathan leave, and come back. And last year, seeing Bruce move on. It pleases me greatly that I was a small part of something bigger than any one person. OpenNTF.org will continue in some form long after I leave – or anyone else.

OpenNTF.org plays a significant story in my career. I am incredibility lucky to have been involved in such a movement, organization, and mostly importantly – with the people. Thanks to everyone involved, especially Bruce, Nathan, Niklas and Vince. Good luck to the new board.

I am very excited to announce that I will be speaking at SharePoint Fest Chicago 2014 on December 8 - 10, 2014 at McCormick Place Convention Center West. This is not a user group, but a paid conference.

The session:

DEV 201 - Beyond Responsive Design – Turning SharePoint into a mobile and modern web application platform

John Head and Chris Johnson - PSC Group

When you think about building modern and mobile applications with SharePoint, most people think about responsive design. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In a word of MEAN and Twitter Bootstrap, mobile and modern web development means something much more. This session will cover the larger strategy around a mobile and modern web application platform and how to achieve that with SharePoint as the platform. We will then show you how we implemented this strategy on top of SharePoint 2013 and the outcome.
 
From the high level executive strategy to the implementation details, you will walk away from this session with the knowledge and excitement on how to not just make SharePoint responsive, but how to put it into the center of your modern web development and mobile application strategy.

PSC is one of four title sponsors for the event. We have 4 sessions (1 workshop and 3 regular sessions) and I am proud to be speaking with my coworkers and many of the best speakers in the SharePoint world. The session will cover PSC's thought leadership around SharePoint mobile and a real-world application that showcases Twitter Bootstrap added to SharePoint - with custom theme support. Will be a great session and hope to see many of you there!

So those of you that follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram know this - but last week, I was lucky enough to attend ProgPower 2014 in Atlanta. I made the first ProgPower 15 years ago here in Chicago, but this year's line-up really was a no brainer for me.

So we all have our own musical tastes. Mine have shifted in the past 15 years or so. I used to really love the power metal style - think Helloween, Stratovarius, etc. along with progressive - my readers know how much of a Dream Theater fan I am. The past few years have seen me drift from power to metalcore and technical metal/djent. Think Killswitch Engage, Periphery, and the likes. But when I saw the line-up for ProgPower 2014, I had to attend. Here was the line-up:

ProgPower XV	Country of Origin
Need	Greece
Orden Ogan	Germany
Leprous	Norway
Overkill	USA
Seventh Wonder (playing Mercy Falls in its entirety)	Sweden
Stratovarius (playing Visions in its entirety)	Finland
Withem	Norway
Divided Multitude	Norway
Voodoo Circle	Germany
Masterplan	Germany
Pain of Salvation (playing Remedy Lane in its entirety)	Sweden
Jon Oliva's Pain (playing Savatage's Streets: A Rock Opera in its entirety)	USA

Kick-Off

Kick-Off	Country of Origin
Draekon	USA
DGM	Italy
Pagan's Mind (playing Celestial Entrance in its entirety)	Norway

Mid-Week Mayhem

Mid-Week Mayhem	Country of Origin
Theocracy	USA
Vangough	USA
Pain of Salvation	Sweden

On my bucket list, both seeing Remedy Lane and Streets was on there. Plus Visions - my favorite Stratovarius album - and Mercy Falls. No way I was missing this. Need, Orden Ogan, Leprous, Withem, Divided Multitude, Masterplan, Pagan's Mind, Draekon, DGM, and Vangough were all first time live for me. They all put on great shows. I wasn't a big fan of Voodoo Circle - too Deep Purple/Whitesnake for me. Overkill kicked ass as they always do (I think this was my 8th time seeing them) and Pain of Salvation was incredible twice.

Due to Kickstarter, I got to go bowling with the guys from Vangough - who are from OK. Nice guys and great musicians. That was a fun afternoon.

I went down by myself, having lucked out getting tickets from a gentleman who had an extra to sell - as the event sold out in the first 30 days! And what an event it was. Besides the music, which was incredible, I can't tell you how incredible this event is put on. It felt like a user group meeting that so many of you reading this understand. A core group of people who go every year. They go early and hang out. That 'going early and hanging out' has extended the event from two days to four. The bands hang out with the fans - not just at official signing's, but at the bar, at the hotel courtyard, and just in general. People were friendly, helpful, and just there to have fun. It's almost as if the event is a backdrop to a group of friends who enjoy spending time together. Sounds familiar. Now - unlike one of the user groups, this event attracts a large number of people and has logistics to run. And the core team, led by promotor Glenn Harveston, do an incredible job. It was weird being at an event like this and being the newbie and on the outside. Put me in an IBM event and I know most of the people - and they know me. But here, I watched others hug and give gifts. It was a bit refreshing. I got to watch it from the other viewpoint. It made me really cherish what we have in the IBM space as a community.

If you are into this music, you need to get to ProgPowerUSA once. ProgPower 2015 looks like a great event - which I will probably not attend. It has nothing to do with the event at all. I highly recommend and endorse it. But it's a big power heavy for this prog guy. We shall see - maybe I will go. But if you like any of these bands - some of which only play the USA at ProgPowerUSA. Go. Seriously.

I am really excited to announce that I have accepted a position on the executive committee of the Board of Directors of Lumity as the Outreach Director. As a current board member, this just extends my involvement. I have been lucky enough to help with the business development processes and performance the past two years, and in July took over as the chair of the Operations Committee. My new role is slightly wide open in terms of specifics, but it will let me get more involved in an organization I believe in.

Lumity has really double-downed our investment in STEM and Workforce Development. This summer, the organization hosted a Summer Youth Employment Program that had real impact on lives. I saw our Executive Director, Kara Kennedy, get really emotional this morning on the impact it is having on her. I am lucky to be able to give back to the community on a topic I believe in to much. We can only improve the quality technology professionals in the marketplace if we start in the schools - as early as possible.

Have you ever wondered what other companies plan on doing with IBM Domino? Now is your chance to find out. PSC has committed to collecting feedback from Domino users worldwide, and sharing the results of this survey back to the community.

Please take 30 seconds to answer the questions below and share this URL via social media. The more responses gathered, the more valuable this information is. Let’s work together to capture the big picture view of where companies see Domino in their future.

The poll will run until October 3rd, 2014. We will release the results on October 6th at www.psclistens.com/ibm-survey-results.aspx - or you can enter your email in the survey to get them emailed.

We are not doing this to gather anyone's info for solicitation. This is about trying to get a handle on active use and strategy around the IBM Notes & Domino products. We plan to share the data with the community so we can all have access to the numbers.

You can access the survey at bit.ly/PSCXPagesSurvey

So my blog turns 11 today. [add comments about number of blog entries]

PSC Group, LLC has published a new video on why having great talent is so important to a successful company. Having worked here 13+ years, I find this video to be spot on with our PSC approaches and values or team.

Over the summer, PSC Group received two recognition's that I wanted to highlight.



The first was back in June. PSC was named one of 'Chicago's 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For' for the third year in a row.



PSC Group was also named to the Inc 5000 for the second year in a row, jumping over 1000 places since last year.

This is a testament to the amazing team at PSC Group. Congratulations to everyone!

MWLUG 2014 is less than two weeks away! Are you attending? PSC Group will be there two.

First, you can meet us in the vendor showcase. We will be talking about our services and solutions and will be all ready to talk about how we can help you.

We also have 4 sessions given by PSC Group team members.

Don't fall asleep using Relational Databases: Using Hibernate with XPages
Toby Samples
Friday, August 29th, 2014 at 11:30 AM - Gerald Ford room

Domino is THE all-purpose Application Server that fits all of your needs even if those needs involve relational databases. Hibernate is an object-relational mapping library for Java and can be used with XPages. The framework can help you easily combine the relational databases that you have with the secure, flexible environment you already know and love. In this session I will demonstrate that with a little setup Hibernate allows you to treat records in a relational database in a similar manner as Domino documents in a Domino Database. You will learn how to setup Hibernate on Domino, setup eclipse to use Hibernate tools, and build an XPages application that is bound directly to your Relational Database.

Java versus Javascript: There really is no competition
Andrew Barickman
Wendesday, August 27th, 2014 at 5 PM - Gerald Ford room

Should you use Java or JavaScript to write XPages applications? The answer is yes. XPages facilitates creating great applications written almost entirely in Java and written almost entirely in JavaScript. There are no right or wrong answers, only circumstances and ramifications. The determining factors as what is best for your development team are many and complex. In this presentation Andrew will seek to dispel the myth that there is even a competition. The answer should always be - it depends. Come and see the session and make your own mind up.

The Mobile Distruption - Why XPages Development is targeting Mobile First
John Head and Matt Engstrom, IBM
Thursday, August 28th, 2014 at 11 AM - Grand View room

Over the next five years, enterprise apps will increasingly be built for mobile as the target platform. This session will cover the business reasons why you need to focus on the mobile experience, from both the IBM and a business partner perspective. With mobile, social, cloud and big data being the top priorities of most CxOs worldwide, we will look at how XPages can play a key role in your application strategy. We will guide you on how XPages can fit into your MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) strategy, what you can do today to position yourself for success and demonstrate real world examples of why XPages is a smart choice.

Write once, run anywhere - Angular.js in XPages
Mark Roden
Friday, August 29th 2014 at 3 PM - Imperial room

The business requirement to surface functionality from one application inside of another has long existed and is often difficult to implement. There has always been a gulf between displaying data and creating a functional application. Mark will demonstrate how the power of building a solution based on Angular.js allows an application to be "moved" from Domino to another platform easily and with the bare minimum of code re-write. Taking "Write once, use anywhere" in the literal sense, you will see how to make Domino applications running natively inside of other platforms. Client side frameworks such as Angular.js are the future of web development - come and see it in action.

Look forward to seeing everyone in Grand Rapids!