Ed Brill

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1. 1  Graham Dodge  | 4/6/2008 12:13:30 AM

   A stint running the Lotus hotline in Australia in 1988 gave me awareness of this new software being developed by Lotus called "Notes" but no-one could easily describe what it was. It wasn't a word processor or a database or a spreadsheet - very mysterious. After I moved to a consulting organisation in 1989 I was sent over to Lotus in the UK to learn about Notes version 1.0 and bring the skills back to Australia. I've been working with it since then.

1. 2  Jacques  | 4/6/2008 3:04:55 AM

   Funny how we start something. In my case,I got this new position (More or less Software translator) after university. This new company used Lotus Notes.. 4 dot low...

   I remember how much I used to hate it.. With Passion even! It used this Contextual Menu thing! Yuck! Then I found out why they did that..

   Soon after, our administrator left for a better position in the States. Before he did, my soon to be Manager came and ask if I wanted the position... I never had been an Admin.. I spoke with the wife and a few days later, I said Yes..

   5 days of Hard "This server does this, that server does that! And by the way, we have 350 users on 22 servers across Canada!" and I was off to the race...

   This was back in 1998. A lot has changed since then but you may have a hard time finding someone (this side of the border) more convinced about Lotus products.... I even sell it to my smaller clients (between 5 and 50 users). Just thinking about Outlook or Exchange and I run (oups.. BRB!!!) for the Gravol...

   Looking back, I would not change a thing.

1. 3  Ge http://www.wolfswinkel.net | 4/6/2008 3:07:28 AM

   I was a teacher, but was out of a job. I liked fiddling with computers, so I decided to pursue a career as a trainer in software, teaching MS Word and stuff like that. e-office had a job opening for such a teacher, and I applied. After the first interview, they explained the central concepts of Lotus Notes to me, and then said they needed Notes admins much more than software trainers. As I didn't have a job, and that Notes stuff sounded good, I became a Notes admin! The first day at the job as a Notes admin, was the first day I even saw Lotus Notes :-)

1. 4  Neil Gower http://ngower.me.uk | 4/6/2008 8:05:48 AM

   I left Uni with a degree in Geography and Geology (not the most useful subjects!!)and ended up in a call center selling loans until I could find a "proper" job. In the call center every day we filled in a paper call sheet which had a lot of calculations on it, and every time you got it wrong, you had to go back and re-do multiple sheets.

   I suggested that a spreadsheet (Lotus 123) would be a better option, and they said show me! So I did. Saved hundreds of man hours a week and I was offered a position in systems support as a developer.

   Once in systems support I did a few more spreadsheets, and the company then started rolling out Lotus Notes (v3), I read up a little about it, and thought this sounds cool. So I asked to learn to be a Notes Developer, something most people would say I have still not managed to achieve LOL.

   That was over 10 years ago, and I still get excited by Lotus Notes today, I count myself as very lucky as I not only love what I do, I really like the product I use (even with its little idiosyncrasies)

1. 5  Laurie Desautels http://www.kryos.com | 4/6/2008 10:26:35 AM

   I was first introduced to Lotus Notes, version 2.0 or 2.1 (I think) back in 1989. As a developer and Information Centre Analyst with team members in 2 cities, I immediately saw the benefit of using this type of software. The first thing I developed was a Tips & Tricks database that the entire team used for over 5 years. Since then I've seen the tool grow into something that is still ahead of it's time and I've stuck with it. While I don't program much anymore, I'm a huge advocate of the technology and how companies can effectively use it.

1. 6  JFranchetti  | 4/6/2008 2:23:22 PM

   I started in about 1992, not sure of version. I ran IT for a medical device manufacturing and sales firm. Our sales team needed a way to track activity in the 8,000+ US hospitals that we did business in. They struggled for years with products, consultants, processes.

   I bought a $300 hospital database in TXT format, imported that info into a blank Notes DB and created "Hospital Activity Tracker". The power wasn't the DB (though it was nice how I could make changes that they wanted in minutes). It was the sharing and collaborative input from the various areas in the company. Sales team, customer service, technical service and even accounting updated the hospital records with activity. We looked smart when going into clients, and turnover of sales reps was much easier.

   The solution was highlighted in a 1994 edition of PC World - which actually was what got me my next job, and on we go.

1. 7  Cristian D’Aloisio http://www.dominobaloney.com | 4/6/2008 3:23:08 PM

   Here's my story ;-)

   { Link }

1. 8  norm Van Bergen  | 4/6/2008 4:34:23 PM

   Hmmm. Got "handed" the Notes administrator role back in the late R3.x days when I was a cc:Mail admin at Canada Life Assurance. Took me months to figure out what the hell Notes was. Once I "got it", I've been doing it full time ever since - even had the privilege of starting a consulting firm with two colleagues that specialized in Notes. Am still doing Notes/Domino full time and am still as passionate about it. Sounds like a similar story to many out there...

1. 9  Andrew Kennel http://akennel.blogspot.com | 4/6/2008 8:29:08 PM

   I was working as a PC tech in my first real job out of college. It was a small 2 man IT department running CC:Mail. My boss tossed the install floppies to me and said, 'Corporate says we have to migrate to this. Have it running by the end of the week.' This was version 4.5. I remember having to put my Windows 95 upgrades on hold while I frantically read through manuals.

1. 10  Kathleen McGivney http://www.kmnow.com | 4/6/2008 11:41:33 PM

   My story: { Link }

1. 11  Joachim Haller http://www.lostriders.se | 4/7/2008 3:20:30 AM

   1992, young, ambitious, eager to learn something new, fed up with the Dark Side, Lotus was the perfect bate, admin, development, user training, fun, fun, fun!!! My head was filled with ideas like Notes can do this and that and...wow" And now some 15 years later the product just blew my mind again. I love the 8.0.1 and found that long lost passion once again! Look out world 'cause here I come.

   //Joachim

1. 12  The Unofficial Poster Child For Lotus Notes and Domino http://www.bobbaehr.com | 4/7/2008 6:33:38 AM

   I was thrown to the lions with Notes/Domino running on OS/2 platform running R3!

   Am still in the "lions den" - and lovin' every minute of it!

   Cheers

   The Unofficial Poster Child For Lotus Notes and Domino

1. 13  Bill McNaughton http://www.kryos.com | 4/7/2008 6:43:07 AM

   I was working at Lotus UK as a Systems Engineer in Spring 1988 when I saw an internal job posting for an Application Analyst on a product which was just entering Beta testing. It was client-server, had a graphical user interface (Window 2.0), and enabled completely new ways of working so I had a feeling it was going to have a long future ... Flew to Cambridge, MA for training with Will Raabe, Sarah Bier, Eric Saal and the small band of enthusiasts who were trying to bring Notes to market (fighting mainly internal resistance), then off to Europe to find customers who could see its potential and build prototype applications for them.

   It was an exciting time to be a part of but I agree with the comments that with Notes 8's Composite Apps, Expeditor integration etc. that there's a renewed enthusiasm for the next generation of applications.

1. 14  Steven Kennett  | 4/7/2008 7:15:59 AM

   Wow, reading these makes me feel like a baby in the community ! ;0)

   I was supporting an internal finance system when I was offered the chance to learn application development with Lotus Notes 4.5 (2002 !), which I did for 2 years and really enjoyed but unfortunately the work started to dry up with other technologies being used and the team being trimmed. So I moved onto supporting other internal bespoke applications for a year and a half.

   In mid 2005 I asked another company on my customer site if they had any jobs going and knowing that I had done some development offered me a Notes admin position. I have now been doing admin for nearly 3 years and love what I do, the plus part for me is understanding development aswell as admin this makes such a difference to what you are capable of, even if only a intermediate developer.

   In a couple more years I would like to get more into consultancy work with Notes/Domino so I believe with the way the product is going I am hopefully on the yellow brick road !

1. 15  Peter Ward http://www.wardpeter.com | 4/7/2008 7:16:39 AM

   It was 1993 I was working for Ingres the db company in London and we were looking at using it to support our internal operations.

   There was a bit of concern on the product as we were a db company.

   I remember the Elvis sight seeing training db. :)

1. 16  Susan Bulloch http://notesgoddess.net | 4/7/2008 7:49:41 AM

   I got too wordy also - here's my story - { Link }

1. 17  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 4/7/2008 8:40:55 AM

   Confession time. I failed my first interview at Lotus, probably around 1988. I'd never heard of Notes at that time, but if I'd known where to find a 1-2-3 circular reference I could have joined the customer support team even earlier.

   / Worksheet Status - something I may never forget.

   Things actually worked out well, I got a job doing NetWare admin and Paradox development (odd combination, small IT department), oh, and Symphony macros - so when I did join Lotus in November 1991 I was more rounded.

   I started using Notes 2.0a for e-mail and applications, started writing applications, and in 1994 (I think) moved into the sales team as a Systems Engineer - gradually 1-2-3 and SmartSuite fell away and Notes took over.

   Some more confessions - I turned down a job with Borland to join Lotus, and after two weeks at Lotus I enquired whether the Borland job was still available. But I stuck with Lotus and was very glad. And a few years ago I was in talks with another software company but it didn't work out... and again, I'm glad. As for the final confession... maybe another time ;o)

1. 18  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 4/7/2008 10:13:49 AM

   They should get Jon Raslawski back in front of the cameras. He was great during the old "Lotus Masters Broadcast."

1. 19  Steven  | 4/7/2008 11:10:04 AM

   I don't have a blog, so my "WAY too wordy" history is here: It was 1988, and I was teaching college in NW Michigan. We were a 100% IBM shop; mainframes, PCs, the works for both faculty and students. We also had 1-2-3 v2.01, but who didn't? In addition to teaching Statistics and computer courses, I was responsible for doing new technology research briefings for my colleagues in the "Data Processing" department. OS/2 was all the rage and I wowed everyone by formatting a floppy disk while simultaneously doing spreadsheet calculations with dynamically updated graphs in multiple windows using 123-G for OS/2. So I first saw Notes 1.0 in Lotus Magazine in '89,(yes, boys and girls Lotus had its own magazine for about 6 years), we started looking at it to see how we could use it. I'd say the rest is history, but it was not until the early 90's at my next job with Uncle Sam that I got to get my hands on Notes again, again as a research project. Notes 3 has just been released and based in my Notes 1.0 work, it looked like a good fit for our projects. It was one of those hard learning experiences for me, though. I was simply the network admin for the R&D team and no one "up stairs" listened to me (yes the R&D team was in the basement). When my boss's boss's boss saw Notes at a tech briefing and thought it was nice, HE got all the credit for bringing in this great tool. So tiny pockets of Notes 3 and then 4 crept there way in for about 5-10 people to use for minor apps and "personal collaboration", but nothing too big, 2 servers. Well, negative experiences like that often force you to make tough choices, so I moved out of R&D and into LAN centralization at the same organization. The first thing that needed fixing was the cc:Mail for DOS infrastructure. 50 Post Offices on too many different Netware servers managed by 25 different LAN support staffs and a room full of DOS PCs running the type-1 router task. The previous staff actually had them all hooked up to those light timers you'd used to turn your Christmas tree lights on an off so the PCs would get a reboot every night. Even after centralization and consolidation, we were quickly outgrowing the abilities of cc:Mail even when the routers were upgraded to NT and running multiple instances of type-1 and type-2 router. DB corruption was killing us as a single user's PC config could bring down the PO for an entire division. We had to get to something more stable where the stupidity of the few did not kill the access of the many. Well, there was this big project coming called the 2000 CENSUS and beginning in 1997, and our cc:Mail for Windows base would be growing from 5000 users to about 14,000 in 2 years. There was a big need for web access to mail in about 500 new offices all connected via 128K frame relay. Everyone else would be on a fat client. cc:Web was just not gonna cut it, so with the "help" of Lotus, we "decided" to move to Notes 4.6 (yes, Ed, you know what I mean). Before the decision was made though, we spent at LOT of time with MS engineers and Lotus FSS. Both were invited in to our lab and tried show how they'd migrate our cc:Mail environment over to their respective systems. The MS folks were unbelievable in terms of the engineers, massive hardware and technical support they were able to put on the project. The big problem was their system at the time could just not meet our migration and coexistence requirements. So Notes 4.6 on Windows NT replaced our cc:Mail 6 on Netware environment. I went from a cc:Mail admin to a Notes Admin have been doing Notes/Domino ever since. We were able to take advantage of the broader Notes user base (up from 10 before the email migration) and push out a few enterprise-wide apps, but most of the "Notes beyond email" was pretty much limited to the IT areas. Something about the user interface.... There have been some bumps along the way and we've had a few users who really hated Notes. One even added to a trouble ticket that he could not wait for the day that a all hands email would come out saying we would be migrating to Exchange. On the other hand, it is hard to argue with the technical success we've had with Notes over the past 10 years. It has been a lot of fun too. Sorry, but I just couldn't stop typing...

1. 20  Alan Dalziel http://alandalziel,blogspot.com | 4/7/2008 11:23:01 AM

   @12 - are we related? That's exactly how I started in Notes - 3.0 on OS/2 1.1 (or 2). That was ~ 1993 and I'm still around it today, on another continent.

1. 21  Chris Pepin http://www.chrispepin.com | 4/7/2008 12:10:48 PM

   I got started with Notes 2.0 in 1993 as an advisory programmer for IBM Global Financing (then IBM Credit Corporation) on the OS/2 platform. 3.0 came out shortly thereafter and I had to become Lotus certified in order for IBM to maintain it's business partner status (this was before IBM acquired Lotus). I joined Lotus in 1996, after the acquisition but since HR hadn't been integrated yet, I had to resign from IBM. HR functions were eventually integrated and I got credit for all my years at IBM/Lotus. My 15 year anniversary is coming up in August

1. 22  John  | 4/7/2008 12:53:58 PM

   Back in '93 or '94 I used to read about this very intersting product called Notes in Infoworld. I worked as the only IT person in a 100+ employee business doing sub-contracting for the automotive industry. Notes was the kind of thing I would love to get my hands on but our company could never afford.

   In '95, I took a contracting job with a multi-national chemical company with a small plant in South Arkansas. They were running Notes 3 as an app dev platform and cc:Mail for email. Soon after I started there, we converted to Notes for mail as well. I finally had my chance to get my hands on the product I had read about so much.

   From the get-go, I was impressed with how flexible Notes was as an app dev environment and and for email, well, it just did the job well.

   I changed companies several years later, to another Fortune 500 Notes shop. Eventually, I kind of became the Notes "guru" and continue in that role today. I still like the flexible architecture of Notes and as an admin, I appreciate VERY much how stable Notes/Domino has been. "It just works". This diamond is not flawless. There are things that aggravate me, but in general I love it as much or more as the day 12+ years ago I first used the product.

   In my current company, Notes has primarily been the email platform. Most dev work has been for IT stuff. As different business units have added IT people, and as others have come on board in my own department, I find myself more and more needing to prove the value proposition of Notes inside the department and corporation-wide. Most newcomers are very slanted to MS. I have my work cut out for me.

1. 23  Brett Hershberger  | 4/7/2008 1:08:30 PM

   It was back in 1994 working at Price Waterhouse when I had my first experience with Notes, it was R3.11 at the time. I was desktop support technician and along with our email, it was also a tool used by us techs to record tickets etc. I wanted to make enhancements to the application but was told that all dev work done out of another office. Never the one to give up, so I dived in myself and realised how fun and easy it was to develop applications in this new and wonderful Notes! I was soon building apps left and right. One day my boss was talking to a Partner whilst standing right next to my cube, they were talking about how much they loved Notes, and that his greatest fear was that "one of his guys" would realize they could go off and make another $10k somewhere being a Notes developer. That's all it took, and I was self studying my way all the way out of there.

1. 24  Bill Geimer  | 4/7/2008 1:27:00 PM

   I first did Plato Notes at U of I (75-76) to annotate bugs in bio and physics lessons. Or was it to keep score of trek played against the Aus. users. Hard to be sure. In 1990-91, we were running mainframe sql data bases down to MS SQL Server on OS/2 and brought up applications on Notes 2.1 to use the data. I implemented cc:Mail from v.2 though 6 and then converted 30,000 to Lotus Notes mail 4 and then 4.5. Since then, its been four or five successful server and version upgrades over the years.

1. 25  Roger Hintz http://www.rogerhintz.com | 4/7/2008 3:11:40 PM

   In 1996, I was finishing the last year of my MBA at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, TN when we had an in-class software demonstration of a product called Lotus Notes. Little did I know... By 1997 I had finished my MBA and moved to Denver, Colorado. I was determined to make a career change as I had left more than ten years of work as a drafter/designer in product research and development. I took an entry level job with a large international corporate legal defense firm. They immediately sent me to two weeks of Notes development training. From there, I spent a year developing a file check-in/check-out system and Lotus applications for litigation support. In that year I became a Certified Lotus Professional for 4.5 application development.

   My next position was at the US Fish and Wildlife department as a Lotus Notes developer. Here we developed a menu system on Notes 4.6 to access several agency applications via a browser. This menu system was essentially a portal before portals were called portals. Ironically, it is still visible online at efmis.fws.gov (only the help documentation is publicly available). This position also allowed me to get a deeper knowledge of the administrative side of Lotus Notes, now known as Lotus Domino. After a brief contractor's position at IBM, I began working for consulting firms in 2000.

1. 26  Joyce Davis http://www.joyceanndavis.com | 4/7/2008 5:44:05 PM

   This Saturday, my Lotus hire group is going out to dinner to celebrate our 15th anniversary with Lotus/IBM (10 out of 24 still at IBM -- 1 retired). In the early 90s, I worked for an insurance company who used Lotus Notes as a virtual "suggestion box." It was set up on a standalone machine in a conference room -- just one ID that everyone used -- THAT'S how they handled anonymous access! Ha! When I heard that Lotus was coming to Austin, I wanted to be part of it....but not because of Notes. My real love was 1-2-3, which I learned as a high school co-op for IBM in the mid 80s(version 1A....remember swapping the 5.25" floppies?!). I was hired by Lotus to support 1-2-3, which, until social software, was the most fun I'd ever had in a job. Notes became an integral tool for work, and has remained so throughout my tenure and many roles at Lotus/IBM. My hire group (April 12, 1993) is one of the last to be grandfathered in for a 2nd sabbatical. So, as much as I love Notes, there will be at least one 4-week period this summer where I won't TOUCH IT. At all. :-)

1. 27  Andrew Brew  | 4/7/2008 6:37:48 PM

   OK, I'll join in, since I haven't started blogging yet...

   I go back with Notes 17 years this month. April '91 was the international release date for Notes, and I was working for one of the three Australian companies who were chosen as the initial BPs. Two people from each of three states were to be trained in Notes (2.0) and I made sure I was one of them. I converted my department, and installed my first customer Notes server later that year (that customer is still using Notes, two acquisitions later, and still relying on an application I started writing in '97).

   On the wall next to me is a copy of my first LCNS certificate (Lotus Certified Notes Specialist - the then-equivalent of PCLP) dated May 2 1992. We flew Marjorie Kramer, from Lotus US, out to give us advanced cert. courses in both dev and admin, and invited a few outsiders to join us. Dave Harrison, for years the Notes man in Lotus Australia, was on that course.

   I left Ferntree a couple of years later to start my own Notes consulting business, and have never stopped working with it and finding new things to do with it.

1. 28  Graham Dodge  | 4/7/2008 7:28:37 PM

   @27 ... so when are we going to have that beer we've been talking about for the last three months?

1. 29  Ingo Erdmann http://www.xing.com/profile/Ingo_Erdmann | 4/8/2008 2:27:14 AM

   In 1996, I was sitting in a Lotus Notes class at the Groupware Competence Center, University of Paderborn (GCC). It was the first day of five, and we were discussing enduser stuff. The guy next to me sent me a Notes e-mail that contained a button. When I clicked it, a prompt box appeared, where I could click "Yes" and "No". Depending on my choice, it brought up other boxes.

   I said wow, show me how you did that. He showed me the @formula code, and I was fascinated about how easy it was to create UI stuff, compared to what I created before in C or C++. The following days of the class were dedicated to application development, and I was really amazed about the rapid application development capabilities of Notes.

   I started to work for Prof. Nastansky at GCC, got certified in app dev and sys admin and passed my ICE course to become a certified instructor in 1997. 12 years later, I still love it, and new releases still amaze me with respect to capabilities and innovation.

1. 30  Alexander Kluge http://www.kluge.de | 4/8/2008 5:01:04 AM

   Wow, it is a long time I have spent with my friend Lotus Notes :-)

   { Link }

1. 31  Sjef Bosman http://www.bosman.fr | 4/8/2008 7:41:55 AM

   Started? That must have been somewhere back in 1995 or so. We were a group of 8 Project Managers at RAM Mobile Data NL, and we needed a means to share project information. The reasons were that one PM could have several projects concurrently, which made it difficult not to lose track of individual actions, and colleagues had to be able to take over when necessary. I got fed up using only mail, shared directories and Word documents because were not helping me in doing my job at all. So I went for a chat with our Systems Manager to find out what the options were. He said that we were a Lotus Business Partner and he had a tool on the shelf that could help me, but: "it was illegal in the company". I said I didn't really care much: nothing ventured nothing gained. "Ah, by the way, you need a spare PC to install the server on; there you are".

   So I installed OS/2 (version unknown, probably 3), and the Notes server (I think it was 3.21), and a Notes client. I made a lot of mistakes, didn't have a clue about what I was doing, so I installed it again, and even a third time. From that moment on, we were in business. We modified the Customer template to include project information (still no clue), and gradually we developed our Project Manager environment. We managed to survive several thirteenth commandments ("Thou shalt not use Notes in this company!") because we could prove that our environment worked.

   Later, I switched to a consulting firm developing Notes solutions, and I'm a freelancer now. Funny when one thinks back, my first real collaboration steps were with the Digital Notes Conferencing application. We've come a long way...

1. 32  Pedro Quaresma http://playroom3.wordpress.com | 4/8/2008 11:30:28 AM

   Added my story here

   { Link }

   (yes, I now have a blog in English as well ;) )

1. 33  NeilT  | 4/8/2008 1:12:09 PM

   I got involved because my manager at the time thought it would make a better document manager system than Access.

   After a less than impressive demo from Lotus, it all hinged on one thing. Notes had a login dialog. In Access it was seriously difficult to do at that time.

   So I wound up with a 3.0c Windows 3.1 test server and ended up deploying multiple Notes 3.1 for Netware 3.11 on SPX and TCP/IP.

   The rest, as they say, is history. And it's looking much more like history as every day goes by with the dearth of EU jobs in the field.

1. 34  Art Zoutendijk http://www.ecit.nl | 4/8/2008 5:43:10 PM

   Since I was employeed at the IT-department of Price Waterhouse in the Netherlands mid 80's, I was one of the few persons that was fortunate to start with Lots Notes from really, really the beginning. During an European IT meeting, Notes was showned briefly during a presentation and we got floppies with us back home (I believe 5). No manual, no help, just the floppies. My really first reaction when installed and tried to create a database was... "where the @#$@ do I have to enter the max length of this text field". The programm was so new, that we have given presentations for Lotus NL, to show them their product :-)

   As pioniers we learned a lot, mostly by "mistakes" (1 big europe domain, with administrators in every territory, all with admin rights :-). Big shit when a territory removed a little bit to much person documents... Glad we had no high speed internet connections at that time. We could "just" find a country that didn't had dialed in and ask them to turn-off there modem, so at least one replica was saved. It has been a few weeks before this copy was distributed (via floppies)and implemented to all territories again.

   A major relase for us was version 3. Whow, we got 3 new @functions. @dblookup, dbcolumn and @dbcommand. We now could develop (as what we called :_) relations between documents. A new world was born for Notes applications. Of course after lotusscript was released in R4, creating Notes applications became available for VB programmers as well. Unfortunattly during these days "spagetti" programming was part of the job. Just adding elements was easy, since you could "glue" them via lotusscript.

   Another big movement was that at this point you couldn't really be a senior allround (admin/developer/architect)Lotus notes specialist anymore. To much areas to handle/discover.

   I'm still a Notes/Domino consultant and glad I was able to developed in R3...Still using technics that can't be done via scripting (yet)...

1. 35  Graham Dodge  | 4/8/2008 6:23:10 PM

   @34 If you were using Notes 2.0 it was six 1.44mb floppies containing the client and server code for Windows and OS/2. I still have a copy of R2 Notes but the floppies are now unreadable... wonder if I can get them re-imaged somewhere?

1. 36  Art Zoutendijk http://www.ecit.nl | 4/9/2008 5:27:36 AM

   @35 IBM has posted the old versions at the 15th anniversary of Lotus Notes/Domino. I've downloaded a copy at that time, but pretty sure I'll need very old hardware to install it :-)

1. 37  John Mackey http://www.groupwareinc.com | 4/9/2008 6:08:26 AM

   I believe it was 1994. I was at Newsweek Magazine and we were looking for CRM software for the salesforce located throughout North America. The leading product at the time was ACT!. There was just so many issue around combining and collecting the data nightly for the NY HQ. Then I had a vendor demo Notes 3 to us. The replication functionality was revolutionary!

   We selected it for the project and ran it on Novell in all the remote offices. It just spread from there to all the business offices worldwide. It drove the installation of our LANs as well as my career. I was now the worldwide Novell LAN mgr, Notes Admin mgr, and Development mgr.

   John

1. 38  Bill Medley  | 4/9/2008 2:39:30 PM

   Like many of the rest of you I was thrust into the lotus world on a lark. I was working for the now defunct ADP financial as a Network admin who got stuck maintaining of all things an MS Mail server running on windows for workgroups. I had been a cc:mail admin at a prior job, so when a government contract company contacted me regarding a position that required lotus mail technology experience I thought I was going into another cc:mail shop, but upon taking the contract I found that it was this product called Lotus Notes, and part of the project was to do a migration from cc:mail to Notes 3.12 on OS/2. Needless to say I dove in and was amazed at how functional the product was and how easy it was to learn to manage. I have gone been in both lotus and MS shops, but always find myself going back to Notes/Domino. There just isn't another product out there that can hold my interest.

1. 39  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 4/9/2008 5:32:57 PM

   Since I was my normal long-winded self when explaining the origins of my LotusGeek existence (why use 3 words when 10 will do ;) ), I have posted it at my blog here:

   { Link }

   BTW, these stories are fascinating - not only in their variety, but also in how many of us have similar steps in our paths to where we are now.

   --Rock

1. 40  Graham Dodge  | 4/10/2008 1:23:35 AM

   @36 Where did they post the code?

1. 41  Daniel Lieber http://www.iiui.com | 4/10/2008 3:44:50 PM

   I'll chime in as well. Like many here, I got started in the Notes/Domino industry by happenstance. In 1993, I was working as a desktop support analyst for Waste Management at their Illinois headquarters. I was handed these two floppy disks called "Lotus Notes Release 2.1" and told to "figure it out" and "get it to work." As the guy who could figure stuff out, I did figure out how to get it installed and configured, but had no idea what to do with it for quite a while. Little did I know it would change my life from that point on! A few months later, having had "experience" with Lotus Notes, I was asked to be a project manager with a college/university near Boston to pilot Lotus Notes for collaboration among staff and students. The pilot was a success and my N/D career took off, leading me through just about every role from developer to administrator to certified instructor to architect and end-user.

1. 42  Dave  | 4/10/2008 4:31:07 PM

   It all began back in 1989 - I was a Novell Netware guy and was contracting at the largest Accounting firm in the world at the time to do a Banyen Vines to Netware migration. One day "Connie", a WANG admin, asked me if I knew how to install OS/2 and I told her I saw it once before so before I knew it I was swapping floppies in an IBM Model 70. Next, she said we have to load this new e-mail software called "Notes" -I said sure I'm getting paid by the hour why not. After swapping more floppies we had an OS/2 server running Notes 2.0a. After some challenges with networking 4mb token ring and Netbios ( the only supported protocol at the time)we had client connectivity. So since I was successful I became the resident Notes expert. What started as a 3 month network migration gig turned into a rollout of Notes to several thousand users that lasted over 2 years. While I was there I had the chance to work with Notes 3.0, 3.0a, 3.0b,3.0c, 3.0d and 3.0e. Those were version that fixed many bugs in the largest Notes implementation at the time.

   After that gig,I switched my focus from Network consulting to Notes consulting. My focus was cc:mail, Microsoft Mail/Exchange migrations and setting up Notes/Domino for fortune 1000 companies. A couple of decades later I now work for IBM where I continue to work with Domino and other Lotus brand products.

1. 43  bv  | 4/11/2008 7:12:21 PM

   I started with Notes in 1995 on R3 at Egghead Software (RIP). They were looking for a junior developer at their corporate headquarters. Egghead graciously paid to send me through Notes development and training. Cheers to Walt, Loree, Franklin and the rest of the Egghead crew wherever they ended up after we all parted ways.

1. 44  karim  | 4/17/2008 4:52:41 AM

   Hello, I am karim manager in a software publisher and partner IBM. Which markets applications for the Lotus Notes client examples wizard consumpt the NSF and other produit.est what you can send me documentation About lotus notes ie those technical and commercial benefits

   Thanks in advance