From Google Apps: A Love Story:

Blame the consumerization of IT. BI-LOs users learned how to use Google Apps and similar Web applications in their personal lives. According to an internal company survey, 30% of employees already used Gmail at home and another 25% used a different Web-based e-mail service, like Windows Live Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. That familiarity translated into prior training — training the company didn’t have to pay for — and pre-existing affinity for the cloud.

In my eyes this is another good example of why there is a need for some kind of scaled down home version of Lotus Notes, with POP/IMAP support and possible connections to the most popular webmail providers, like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. It must also be possible to combine all mail into one inbox, no matter the origin, and reply to mail making it look like it is sent from the correct service. So if I respond to a mail sent to my Gmail address, my reply will have my Gmail address as sender as default. Of course, I want to be able to change that before sending.

Today would have been the 85th birthday of my mom, Marie-Luise Martinsson (born Groeling). I recently posted a blog entry about her on the anniversary of her death.

I am as old now as she was when I was born. Amazing how the time just keep passing, she has been gone longer than the times she was a part of my life. But I still remember her birthdays, how dad got her flowers and some nice gift. One year it was a nice stereo, my mom loved music and used to sing in the church choir. She also had a nice collection of music, mostly classical music. She usually made the birthday cakes herself, she was very good at baking and cooking.

Happy Birthday, mom!

The other day I tried a new dish, and it turned out blog worthy. So here it is.

Take five to six chicken breasts and trim off any fat. Cut an incision about 2 inches long (or just above) along one of the sides, to shape a pocket. I extend the cut section inside the chicken as close as the edges I can without cutting though, to make the pocket as big as possible.

Microwave a tray of deep frozen spinach for 3 minutes. It should be soft but not cooked. Add some ground nutmeg and stir. Mix in a generous amount of shredded cheese. Fill the check pockets with the mix and put chickens on an oven safe dish covered in aluminum foil.

Salt and pepper the chicken breasts. Then dust them with paprika powder, smoked chipotle powder, ancho chili powder and similar spices. Put in preheated oven and cook for 20 minutes in 400-425 degrees F.

When finished, serve with your choice of vegetables and potatoes/rice. For a luxury version, or if you are doing low carb, add a spoon of fresh cheese like Bressot, Cantadou or similar (garlic and herb flavored soft cheese) and let it melt on top.

This week the children in the Stockholm region where I am from have sportlov (transl. "sports break"). This break from school goes back to World War II. Despite Sweden being neutral and not participating in the war directly, the rationing and lack of coal used to heat the schools became a problem. The solution was to close the schools for a week during the winter to conserve cost.

Different activities were arranged for the out-of-school children, and quickly the activities were focused on outdoor activities and sports. That is where the "sports break" got it’s name from. Today the dates are different in different parts of the country, but it takes place in the end of February or in March.

When I grew up, I was not very interested in winter sports. My parents had me learn ice skating and I also did cross country skiing, but I was more interested in less strenuous activities… My sister on the other hand did enjoy Alpine (or downhill) skiing, both locally on the island where I grew up where they had ski lifts and prepared tracks on a small mountain, in northern Sweden (Scandinavian Mountains) and in Italy in the Alps.

So what did I do? Well, eventually I managed to convince my parents, using my excellent verbal skills (in combination with several warm winters with no snow, when skiing and skating was not really possible), that being outside freezing and potentially getting sick was not the best use of the break. I was about 10 or 11, and I started to try different activities arranged both on Liding??>, the island where I grew up, and in Stockholm itself. The Swedish Army Museum in Stockholm had, like most museums, activities, and one year I went there and built a plastic model of a SEPECAT Jaguar.

I then started going to a local indoor shooting range, where a local shooting organisation arranged for children to test air guns, shooting .117 caliber pellets. We had to sign up for a timeslot, and after 30 minutes of shooting time, we were allowed to sign up again for a later slot again. I frequently walked to the nearby library to read or get some new books while I waited. This way I often got three or even four sessions of shooting in.

Other years my parents took the opportunity to go down to visit my dad’s family in Blekinge in southern Sweden. I usually spent a large part of that time reading, both during the 8 hour drive (today it is less than 7 hours, due to new roads and increased speed limits) and during the stay.

After I got hooked at computers in 7th grade, a couple of times I managed to borrow a computer from the school during the break, or some years actually got to spend time in the computer room despite the school being closed. The maintenance staff often used this week to repair things or paint stairs or walls, and as I was trusted, I was let in.

I am following the Apple event online right now, and the new iPad2 sounds impressive this far. Dual core processor, up to 9 times faster graphics, dual cameras (front and rear facing), gyroscope like in iPhone4 and iPod Touch, 1080p HDMI output, as well as 33% thinner (8.6mm vs 13.2mm) is all very impressive. It even comes in two colors, white has been added. Steve Jobs claim the battery life is still 10 hours, like in the original iPad.

The price will be identical as for the first generation iPad, starting at $499 for the base wifi only model with 16 GB memory. It will be available in the US on March 11, with 26 more countries on March 25. The same day Apple will also release iOS 4.3, not only for iPad2 but for the original iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The video conferencing program Facetime will be available for iPad2, so the users can communicate with iPhone4 users using video. For iPhone4 the new iOS 4.3 will also add wifi hotspot functionality.

I played around with the first generation iPad last summer. I liked it, it was a cool gadget, but I have my reservations. I am totally tied into iTunes, and if I want to copy any of my movies over from my collection (which is mainly in the formats AVI (Divx/Xvid) and MPEG, I have to re-encode them or convert them into Apple’s format. Personally I prefer a tablet where all standards work, like mp3, wmv, avi, divx, Flash and more.

Steve Jobs also showed a new cover for the iPad2, which attaches to the front using magnets as well as some other accessories. So it is a cool toy, but not something I can motivate spending that money on right now.

Stuart McIntyre just posted a blog entry that I think everyone should read. He is actually in turn re-posting a blog entry by Single Dad Laughing, who has given permission to repost it. So I will simply copy the full blog post below. It is fairly long, but I hope everyone that read this blog will read the full text. It really made me think, and I also recognize me in several sections. I am sure the same will happen to you.

Thank you.

 

As a warning, the following post was written in complete desperation. I have recently learned some very sobering truths from people that I love dearly.

These truths have set in motion a quest within me to do whatever I can to make a change. Today is not geared at funny. Today is geared at something greater. Read it to the very end. I promise you will be affected in a way you have always needed to be. I spent more than twelve hours writing this post because its message is that important to me.

I wonder. Am I the only one aware that there is an infectious mental disease laying siege on us right now? There is a serious pandemic of "Perfection" spreading, and it needs to stop. Hear me out because this is something for which I am passionately and constantly hurting. It’s a sickness that I’ve been trying to put into words for years without much success. It’s a sickness that I have personally struggled with. It’s a sickness that at times has left me hiding in dark corners and hating myself.

And chances are it’s hit you too.

What is the disease called "Perfection"? Perhaps a list of its real-life symptoms will help you better understand it. We live in communities where people feel unconquerable amounts of pressure to always appear perfectly happy, perfectly functional, and perfectly figured. "Perfection" is much different than perfectionism. The following examples of "Perfection" are all real examples that I have collected from experiences in my own life, from confidential sources, or from my circle of loved ones and friends. If you actually stop to think about some of these, you will cry as I did while writing it. If you don’t, maybe you’re infected with way too much of this "Perfection" infection.

"Perfection" is a wife who feels trapped in a marriage to a lazy, angry, small man, but at soccer practice tells the other wives how wonderful her husband always is. "Perfection" keeps people from telling the truth, even to themselves. My husband is adorable. He called me a whore this week because I smiled at a stranger. When I started crying, he said he had a game to go watch. I love him so much.

"Perfection" is a husband who is belittled, unappreciated, and abused by his wife, yet works endlessly to make his marriage appear incredible to those around him. "Perfection" really does keep people from being real about the truth. You would have laughed, guys. She said that I suck at my job and will never go anywhere in life. Then she insinuated that I was a fat, rotting pile of crap. Isn’t she the best?

"Perfection" is a daughter with an eating disorder that keeps it hidden for years because she doesn’t want to be the first among her family and friends to be imperfect. She would give anything to confront it, but she can’t because then the "Perfect" people would hate her as much as she hates herself for it.
"Perfection" is when a son has a forbidden addiction, and despises himself for it. "Perfection" makes us believe that nobody else could understand what it is like to be weak and fall prey to the pressures of the world.

"Perfection" is a man who loathes himself for feeling unwanted attraction toward other men.

"Perfection" is a couple drowning in debt, but who still agree to that cruise with their friends because the words "we don’t have the money" are impossible ones to push across their lips.

"Perfection" is a mom hating herself because she only sees that every other mom around her is the perfect mother, the perfect wife, and the perfect neighbor. I’d give anything to be Mrs. Jones. Today she ran 34 miles, cooked six complete meals, participated in a two-hour activity with each of her seven children, hosted a marriage class with her husband, and still had time to show up for Bunco. What this mom doesn’t know is that Mrs. Jones is also at home crying right now because the pressure to be "Perfect" never lets up.

"Perfection" is a dad hating himself because he can’t give the same thing to his kids that other dads do, and then hates himself further because he takes his self-loathing out on his kids behind closed doors. You know what would have been nice? If you were never born. Do you realize how much money I’d have right now? Now come give Daddy a hug because I can force you to give me validation.

"Perfection" is a child hating herself because the boys at school call her fat, and when she goes home she tells her mom that school was fine. Her mom never stops to question why her daughter doesn’t have any friends, becaue her mom doesn’t want to think that anything might be less than "Perfect".

"Perfection" is a man feeling like a smaller man because his neighbor just pulled in with a new boat.

"Perfection" is a woman who is so overwhelmed that she thinks about killing herself daily. "Perfection" makes it so that she never will because of the things people will think if she does. How could I make my suicide look like an accident? If I kill myself, I don’t want anybody knowing that I ever had any problems. She never stops to look at why she wants to do it, because healing means admitting imperfection.

"Perfection" is a man who everybody heralds as perfect, and inside he is screaming to be seen as the faulty human being that he always has been. Because to no longer be "the perfect one", that would be freeing.

"Perfection" is a woman having an affair because she’s too afraid to confront the imperfection in her marriage.

"Perfection" is a twelve-year-old boy killing himself because he is ashamed that he can’t stop masturbating.

Stop, and read that one again.
There is a twelve-year-old boy buried 20 miles from where I sit because the "Perfection" that has infected the people around him infected him to the point that he deemed his own life worthless. "Perfection" pushed him to take his own life over something most of us would consider negligible in the life of any teenage boy.

"Perfection" is my friend’s cousin swallowing hundreds of pills because she just got the news that she was pregnant, out of wedlock, and the shame was too much to bear. She was only attempting to cause a miscarriage. 24 hours later, she closed her eyes and never opened them again. She is dead because of the "
Perfection" infecting those around her. We’d rather you die than shame this family. Thanks for taking care of that, honey. By the way, we’ll do the right thing and make ourselves out to be the victims now. We have to. We’re infected with "Perfection".

I could go on. This is all a small sampling of the disease called "Perfection". You have brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, extended family members, neighbors, friends, and children who are ALL these things, yet none of us will ever know. "Perfection" is a hideous monster with a really beautiful face. And chances are you’re infected. The good news is, there is a cure.

Be real.

Embrace that you have weakness. Because everybody does. Embrace that your body is not perfect. Because nobody’s is. Embrace that you have things you can’t control. We all have a list of them.

Here’s your wake-up call:
You aren’t the only one who feels worthless sometimes.
You aren’t the only one who took your frustrations out on your children today.
You aren’t the only one who isn’t making enough money to support your lifestyle.
You aren’t the only one who has questions and doubts about your religion.
You aren’t the only one who sometimes says things that really hurt other people.
You aren’t the only one who feels trapped in your marriage.
You aren’t the only one who gets down and hates yourself and you can’t figure out why.
You aren’t the only one that questions your sexual orientation.
You aren’t the only one who hates your body.
You aren’t the only one that can’t control yourself around food.
Your husband is not the only husband who’s addiction sends him online for his sexual fulfillment instead of to you.
Your wife is not the only wife that is mean and vindictive and makes you hate yourself.

Why didn’t somebody, anybody, put their arm around that 12-year old boy and let him know that they loved him and would always love him? What was he being told and taught that he would end his own life over something that almost no teenager can control? Maybe that beautiful and wonderful boy would still be alive if even one person had broken down the "Perfection" that completely controlled all those in his life from whom he desperately craved validation.
Why didn’t somebody, anybody, tell a beautiful pregnant girl that there was nothing so big in life that it couldn’t be made right. Maybe that incredible young woman would still be alive. Maybe her now one-year-old child would be learning to walk or say "Mommy" right now. Maybe.

Maybe.

The cure is so simple.

Be real.

Be bold about your weaknesses and you will change people’s lives. Be honest about who you actually are, and others will begin to be their actual selves around you. Once you cure yourself of the disease, others will come to you, asking if they can just "talk". People are desperate to talk. Some of the most "perfect" people around you will tell you of some of the greatest struggles going on. Some of the most "perfect" people around you will break down in tears as they tell you how difficult life is for them. Turns out some of the most "perfect" people around us are human beings after all, and are dying to talk to another human being about it.
You’ll love them for it. And you’ll love yourself even more.

Let’s not forget this quote: "I went out to find a friend and could not find one there. I went out to be a friend, and friends were everywhere." Somebody who is being a friend doesn’t spread "Perfection". Somebody who is being a friend spreads "Real". Then, and only then, can we all grow together.

I am not perfect, nor do I want anybody to think of me as such. Here’s my dose of real:
I once stole a box of money that was meant for a child with cancer. There was more than $150 inside. That was 12 years ago, and I still hate the person in me that did that.
I believe in God, but not religion. It took me 30 years to find the courage to say that. It took me 30 years to believe that I could be a good man and still believe that.
I once got so angry at my wife that I hit the wall. The dent is still there, haunting me every time I see it because I never thought that was something I would do.
I once sat in my bedroom crying uncontrollably because I felt like everybody thought I was fat and ugly. I was a full grown man.
There are some people I avoid bumping into in public because I feel like I’m not as good as them.
I judge people harshly who share the same features that I hate about myself.

Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I’m not funny. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Sometimes I stay at home on a weekend because I just don’t want to see the "Perfection" going on around me. Sometimes I want to drop-kick a perfect person’s head across the room.

"Perfection" infects every corner of society. It infects our schools. It infects neighborhoods. It infects our workplaces. This is not to say that there aren’t a lot of genuinely, happy people. I am one of those people. Most of the time. There is nothing more beautiful than a person finding true happiness in who they are and what they believe. No, this is not me trying to diminish the happiness in others. This is merely me pathetically attempting to put a face on a problem that I see everywhere but few people ever notice.

This is me, weeping as I write, asking the good people of the world to find somebody to put their arm around and be "real". This is me, wishing that people would realize how beautiful they are, even with all of their imperfections. This is me, sad and desperate for the girls in this world to love themselves. This is me, a very imperfect man, trying to help others feel a little more perfect by asking you to act a little less perfect.

Will you help me spread "Real"? Tell us below just how perfect you aren’t. You never know who might be alive tomorrow because you were real today. You never know who needs to feel like they aren’t alone in their inability to be perfect. Even if you comment as an anonymous guest, please comment. Tell us what you struggle with. Tell a sad or dark secret. Get vulnerable. Get real. Let’s see if we can get 1,000 people showing the world that we’re not defined by perfection.

And if you like, share this post. If you want the people around you to start being real, you have to be real first. If it’s your first time here, we’d love to have you follow us. I promise it’s not always this intense (or nearly this long). I’ll post something really funny tomorrow.

Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing Being Real

This image was inspired by a twitter conversation last night…

Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate Saturday (BALD) and Sunday (Kimonos after the Welcome Reception/Party) at Lotusphere 2011.

 

 

 

 

It is now two weeks since Lotusphere ended. After I got back I was thrown into a project initiated by the CEO, to be presented this morning during a manager meeting. Now when the presentation is over, I will try to put my thoughts about Lotusphere down.

As always, the conference is busy, fun and overwhelming, and it have been taking me a while to wrap my head around everything.

Sessions 
Let’s start with the sessions. I was not able to attend nearly as many sessions as I wanted, but I managed to catch some great ones. Thanks to Ben Langhinrichs’ excellent Lotusphere session database the planning was easy. I attended a number of sessions on Xpages, a jumpstart session, a show-and-tell as well as several Xpages-related sessions. I also purchased a copy of Mastering XPages during the signing on Monday. I been stuck on an older version of Notes for a long time, but it seems like we will get to a current version shortly, so I decided to spend the time and effort on learning Xpages.

There was very little classic Notes development at Lotusphere. Kathy Brown had a great session (as always), this time on @Formula language. Scott Good and Henry Newberry had several sessions about web development, covering subjects like CSS and JSON. SNAPPS had Rob Novak and my fellow countryman Viktor Krantz had their 10th Great Code Giveaway, with loads of useful code. Julian Robicheaux (also from SNAPPS) had a session about feeds that I attended as well.

But if I have to single out one session, it would be Mat Newman and BP206 "Where is the Love?". I love the energy, the humor and enthusiasm of Mat. IBM should hire him right away. He gave me a few things to think about, and many things to bring back home to the people responsible for end-user training…

Social Business 
As I was participating as member of the media, I had meetings with several IBM executives. One of the most interesting was with Uffe Sorensen. He is responsible for the messaging and collaboration business in eastern Europe, Middle-East and Africa, and he focus on social media, mainly Connections, but also mobile applications.
Uffe made a very interesting observation. Most companies are already using social networks, they just don’t know it yet.
As we all know, the tagline of Lotusphere this year was "Get Social. Do Business.", and while some executives see it s just the buzzword of this year, I think IBM actually get it.
Jeff Schick, who I also got to meet, is the Vice President of Social Software at IBM. He told me that IBM have been a social business for many year and that the employees "eat their own dog food". The tools have been modernized, and Jeff talked about how the employee catalog evolved into the social portal it is today, with expertise search and much more. I think this is crucial, that IBMers actually use social tools. Some critics recently pointed out that some IBM executives are not on twitter or Facebook. To a certain level I agree with Ed Brill, who said that not all IBM executives need to or should be on twitter. A Swedish journalist, who was not at Lotusphere, wrote an article during Lotusphere where he called IBM "a giant who got tired" (in Swedish, Google translation here) , because Sam Palmisano was not attending, thus indicating that IBM does not care about Lotus. That is about the same argument.
I think that highly visible representatives for a company that push social networking and business should have some activity on public social networks. But I can understand that Jeff Schick may not have time to be on twitter (he is on Facebook), just like I can understand that Sam Palmisano really do not need to be at Lotusphere.

Take the Lotus out of Lotusphere 
A lot of comments have been made from the fact that the Lotus branding was almost nowhere to be seen this year. No "Lotus Software" signs, no yellow labels on the water bottles (they were white instead, for the first time since 1998 when I first went), and the badge holders just said "IBM". Well, I am not sure that is a bad thing. We all know that "Lotus" have gotten a bad reputation. I talked to Ed Brill right after the closing session about this, and he said that Lotus lost business because of the name and people pre-conceived notions about the brand. I think everyone will win on a re-branding of the current Lotus products. IBM Connections, IBM Notes, IBM Quikr… Does not sound too bad. Just keep the name Lotusphere.

To the cloud! 
Cloud computing is still important to IBM, and a strong push for LotusLive was made during Lotusphere 2011. LotusLive Symphony was announced during the conference, and IBM also announced strategies for Domino applications in the cloud. Since I work for an insurance company, it is very sensitive where we store information. As far as I know we have no plans to switch from on-premise to cloud computing, but I can see it making sense for other businesses. IBM even support hybrid solutions, part LotusLive and part on-premise.

Being Social 
Part of Lotusphere is meeting and reconnecting with my many friends in the community. It started Saturday with BALD, followed by The Turtles party at ESPN. I dropped by Kimonos a few times, but I also had a number of other events going on in the evenings. I was invited to the Penumbra "Ice Cream Tuesdae" reception, as well as dinners with IBM Nordic and CDW. I also participated in the Blogger Open, where I played on the same team as Mat Newman. Friday, before I headed to the airport, I toured Downtown Disney with Paul Mooney, Mark Myers and Julian Woodward. This is a big part of Lotusphere to me, being social IRL.

You can find some presentations from Lotusphere 2011 on SlideShare.

IBM released more info about their cloud offerings during Lotusphere 2011 (#ls11 on Twitter). Already during the opening session it was revealed that Project Concord, the online collaboration document editing that was shown at last years conference, was now a full product called LotusLive Symphony. Another product unveiled this week is LotusLive BES, a hosted Blackberry Enterprise Server offering that works together with the email in LotusLive.

– This will allow a small company to get email, mobile support and much more without the need to purchase hardware, install the software, provision users and hire someone to maintain and administer the server, Brendan Crotty at IBM explained to me.

– LotusLive is not intended to rip-and-replace, we think that most customers will use a hybrid model, he continued. There is a LotusLive Connections offering, currently supporting Profiles, Activities and (most recently added) Communities. The products are designed for a hybrid model.

Uffe Sorensen, responsible for social business in EMEA, echo this. He point out that Xpages was developed to bring most of the functionality of the rich client to the web.

– Now you can do almost everything you do in the Notes client on the web as well, he said.

– Domino powers an incredible amount of applications, and we can’t demand them to be thrown out, so a hybrid model is important.

LotusLive Notes lets customers host their Notes applications in the cloud, but they still use the Notes client. By rewriting the applications, or parts of them, they can be deployed as web applications as well.

So IBM is getting a more and more complete cloud offering, with options to run hybrid models if the customer wants to. Personally I think IBM is on the right way, and they have a solid offering. Imagine a new company going to ibm.com, selecting the services they need and then paying online with a credit card, and moments later they have the tools they need, without having to purchase hardware, software or services for an on-premises solution.