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Monthly Archives: October 2018

Are you a Champion? Nominate yourself or someone else!

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in #IBMChampion, Community, IBM/Lotus Leave a comment


The yearly nomination of IBM Champions is once again open. Do you know someone who deserves to be recognized for their contributions to the community or to IBM? Nominate that person!

Do you think you deserve to be an IBM Champion? Nominate yourself! I know it feels strange to nominate yourself, but you are the one that knows best what you have been contributing. There is no way for IBM to know what everyone out there have been doing during the last year, not even if they enlisted IBM Watson…

So how are the IBM Champions selected? Here is the list of criteria IBM published:

We want IBM Champions who:

  • Demonstrate both expertise in and extraordinary support and advocacy for IBM technology, communities, and solutions.
  • Share advocacy and influence within and outside their organizations or customer engagements.
  • Influence and mentor to help others make the most of investments in IBM software, solutions and services.

[Significant] contributions [over the last 12 months] must be above and beyond a nominee’s job duties, but may be internal or external. The list below is just a few examples:

  • Regularly blogging or creating other technical content
  • Speaking at multiple events
  • User Group Conference Committee member (involves the planning and execution of one or more conferences, events, or meetups)
  • President, Leader, or Board member of a worldwide or local user group
  • Providing customer references
  • Regularly being an advocate for IBM products inside your organization, making connections, and educating users

Now is your opportunity to recognize people for what they have been doing during the last 12 months. And don’t be shy, submit a self nomination as well, if you think you deserve it.

Nominations are open until October 22 at https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/ibmchampion/entry/2018ChampionNominations. Don’t miss the deadline!

 

Thirty Years – What A Ride!

Posted on October 11, 2018 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in Generic, History, Microsoft, Notes/Domino, Personal, Programming, Technology, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Thirty years. It can feel like an eternity, or like just yesterday. That is how long I have been working in the IT industry, as of 2 weeks ago.

When I graduated the Swedish equivalent of High School in the spring of 1988, I did not know what lay ahead. If anyone would have told me where I would be 30 years later, I am not sure I would have believed them.

Computers, and especially programming, was my big interest. I had spent every available hour in the computer room in school. I went there during breaks between classes (if only 15-20 minutes) as well as during lunch break (usually 1 hour long. I learned to eat really fast, to maximize my time in front of the computer… Then after school I often spent 4-5 hours learning to program, either from books, magazines, or from other students.

After I graduated, I was not really motivated to go to college. But I found an intensive one-year college level education in systems programming and computer science. It would be classes 8am to 5pm, 5 days a week. Today you would probably call it boot-camp…

Unfortunately the class did not make, it needed a couple more students. So in the beginning OS September 1988,after about 2 weeks of classes, we were told to come back in January. We were encouraged to find a job or internship in the mean time. So I started to call around to different companies I found in the yellow pages.

After a few days I got a hit, a company was looking for a first line support technician. I sent in my application (I did not even have a formal resume) and a copy of my high school grades. A week later (on a Friday) I had an interview, and the following Monday I started working there. This company was Microsoft.

Needless to say, I learned a lot at Microsoft. I return to the class during the spring semester, worked at Microsoft during the summer break and then again after I graduated at Christmas.

After a year in the Air Force for the (then) mandatory military service, I intended to go back to Microsoft, but I was offered a job as a programmer at another company, and I jumped at that option. From there it just continued, via 5 years as an IT journalist and then over 20 years working mainly with Lotus (later IBM) Notes and Domino.

There are times when it feels it was just like yesterday I was writing Pascal code for a computer running CP/M-86 as operating system. Or when my coworker and I, who lived in the same apartment building (but on different floors and in different ends of the building) decided to run RG58 coax cable between out apartments, so we could network our computers. Or when I went scuba diving in Egypt and brought an IBM ThinkPad 701C (the model with the expanding keyboard) and a digital camera with me, so I could write a diary to publish on my personal website. Yes, it was pretty much a blog, way back in 1995…

But when I look at how technology has changed, it feel like the middle ages.

Our network at school (yes, we actually has one!) had a hard disk the size of a small shoebox, and with a capacity of 30 MB, to be shared between students and teachers. Yes, it’s not a typo. 30 Megabyte! Today most hard drives have at least twice that amount of memory just for cache…

Compare that with my mobile phone, on which I am writing this post while riding a bus from Dallas to Houston. It has 2185 times that memory (64 GB) built in. I have an additional 200 GB in the form of a micro SD card. This amount of storage would have been unfathomable 30 years ago.

Today we have internet access everywhere. I can sit in my car, in a restaurant or on a bus in the middle of nowhere and still have access to all the knowledge (not to mention cat videos) in the world. In fractions of a second I can perform a search that would have been virtually impossible 30 years ago.

I can turn on and off the lights at home, no matter where in the world I am. I can check the temperature in the different rooms and change the AC settings, if needed. I get an automatic alert if there is smoke I the house, or water where it is not supposed to be. And I can check the status of my laundry remotely.

I can talk to the computer, phone and other devices and have them turn lights on or off, tell me what the weather will be later that day or the next few days, or play any music I ask it to play. This is just like in Star Trek or 2001, except it is for real.

I can buy anything I need from the comfort of my home, or from anywhere in the world, and get it delivered within a day or two, sometimes even the same day.

At the same time I do miss the days back when I started with computers. It was like a new frontier, an unknown area where you had no idea what could happen next.

I still remember the excitement when I managed to create something new and cool, and I got it to work after spending countless hours working on it and troubleshooting the code. It is rare that I feel that excitement today, in the same way. But it still happens. .

I am very fortunate to be able to work with what I love, and have been able to do it for this long. I am looking forward to the next 30 years with great excitement.

#oldfart #memories

#DominoForever – Release Day

Posted on October 10, 2018 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in Administration, AppDev, IBM/Lotus, Lotusscript, node.js, Notes/Domino, Web Development 1 Comment

Finally it is here, the new version of IBM Domino. After the world premiere yesterday in Frankfurt, the world-wide launch is taking place today.

The focus in this release is on application development and administration. Features like self-healing of databases and increase of the maximum database size to 256 GB are among the most popular with administrators, while developers have a number of exciting additions.

The two most talked about features are the new Domino Query Language and node.js integration with Domino. Domino Query Language has been written from the bottom up to be fast, and the demonstrations I have seen confirms this. It is fast, very fast! And it can handle searches that would not only take a long time to create in earlier versions of Domino, but would take forever to run. Now the result comes back in a second, or even less. This really blew my mind when I first saw it earlier this year. John Curtis, the engineer that pretty much single handed wrote this code, did an amazing job, fully on par with when Damien Katz rewrote the formula language in ND6 and increased the performance several times over.

The second big feature of Domino 10 is the integration with node.js through the domino-db connector. It will be delivered in a separate application development pack, which will enter beta this week. This is a slight disappointment, I had been hoping this functionality would be available at the launch. But I rather wait the time that is needed for IBM and HCL to make it a fully stable product, instead of rushing something unfinished to the market.

Another product announced today was Notes for iPad, which makes it possible to run existing Notes applications unmodified on an iPad. All the functions we know and love are supported, like replication, offline access to applications, Lotusscript, Formula language, and more.

To support mobile Notes applications, there are enhancements in Lotusscript, for example camera and GPS support. Lotusscript has also been extended with other new classes, for HTTP requests and JSON parsing directly in native Lotusscript. No need to call Java or system API:s anymore!

HCL has done an amazing job in a short time, and Domino is on its way to become a very powerful and extendable platform for modern web development. A company can now not only deploy their existing business applications on iPads, they can also hire young developers who have experience of node.js and modern frameworks/libraries like Angular and React, and have them develop new solutions that can access existing data in Domino databases. Why use Mongo DB for data storage, when you have the much more secure Domino server available?

Domino 10 is not the end point. Domino 11 will be out next year, and IBM/HCL have committed to a long future for Domino. Forget #domino2025, now it is #DominoForever!

If you were not able to attend any of the launch events, here is the live stream from Frankfurt :

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=310707186390803&id=111720058922703

#domino2025 #dominoforever #IBMChampion

8 hours left to Domino 10

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino 2 Comments

It is now just 8 hours until IBM and HCL will unveil the brand new version of the collaboration platform Domino. On October 9, at 10:15 CEST, the audience at Think Germany in Frankfurt, Germany will be the first to see the new version of Domino and Notes 10. The next day, October 10,there will be launch events all around the world.

Personally I am very excited about this launch. It has been 5 years since the last major version was released. In 2017 IBM switched from numbered releases to feature releases, keeping the version number 9.0.1 even when new features were added. This of course confused customers, who got the impression that Notes and Domino were in maintenence mode, with plans to eventually disbanding the product.

After HCL took over the development of the platform last year, the (in my opinion) smart decision was made to change the version number, to make it clear to the market that it is a brand new version, and that development is continuing.

A number of the new features in Domino 10 have already been demonstrated and talked about, but I am sure IBM and HCL have been holding out on some exciting features, and I am looking forward to hear about it tomorrow and on Wednesday.

Join the live streams, if you can’t attend in person. You can find them at https://www.ibm.com/collaboration/ibm-domino.

Domino 10 – Almost here!

Posted on October 4, 2018 by Karl-Henry Martinsson Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, App Modernization, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino Leave a comment

[ujicountdown id=”Countdown to Domino V10 ” expire=”2018/10/09 03:15″ hide=”false” url=”” subscr=”Countdown to Domino V10″ recurring=”” rectype=”second” repeats=””]

In just a few days, on October 9, IBM and HCL will unveil the new version of IBM Notes and Domino at an event in Frankfurt, Germany. The next day, October 10 (or 10/10, if you so like), there will be events in cities around the world. You can attend in person or watch a live stream. Find out all the details at https://www.ibm.com/collaboration/ibm-domino.

 

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