iamlug

XPages201 TackItOn Day

IamLUG is just a week away and I have been remiss in not mentioning the XPages201 training day which I am running next Wednesday after IamLUG in St Louis.

This video explains a little more…

The aim of the day is to dig a little deeper into XPages if you’ve been playing with them for a few months. So I’m going to cover some of the basics that I’ve seen commonly misunderstood, like Scoped Variables, but then also we’ll look at some more advanced things such as using Java and Managed Beans in your XPages applications.

If you’d like to sign up then head over to XPages101 and if you’re already registered for the IamLUG conference itself, don’t forget to use the discount coupon code which you received in your confirmation email for a $100 discount.

July 25, 2011 by 0

Heading home

It seems like a long time since I went away on holiday, and it is. Since the middle of July I’ve been to Latitude (great), Madeira (great), IamLUG (great) and run an XPages101 day (seemed to go well). So all in all it’s been a really enjoyable few weeks.

I’m sat in JFK airport in New York waiting to start the final leg of the journey home and much as it’s been a great couple of weeks away, I am *really* looking forward to getting back home and just decompressing for a couple of days before getting back into the real world with a vengeance on Monday morning.

IamLUG was a really superb event, Chris and the rest of the team do put on a good show. Everything was run incredibly smoothly, the content was very good indeed and, as ever, the people were great company. I presented my “Ten XPages Design Patterns” session, probably for the last time as I’ve used it for a year now. So I need to start thinking about future sessions pretty seriously now. (Bet you can’t guess what I plan to speak about next time!).

After IamLUG, we had the inaugural “Tack It On” day, and I’d really like to thank David Leedy for his invaluable assistance during the day. I had been rather lax and not given him a huge amount of guidance before the day itself but he dealt with all of the questions with good grace and humour. Things really wouldn’t have run as smoothly without him there. Overall I think the day went pretty well. I’m sure there’ll be more of these sorts of things happening in the future.

August 5, 2010 by 0

Gone fishing

Well it doesn’t happen very often (it’s over two years since I last took a proper holiday), but I’m off on holidays for the next two weeks. This weekend we’re heading up to Suffolk to the Latitude Festival and then later next week it’s off to Madeira for a family trip where we’ll be celebrating important birthdays for my parents amongst other things.

When I get back from holidays I literally switch airports and fly straight off to St Louis for the IamLUG conference. (If you’ve not registered for it and the Tack It On day which follows then what have you been doing?)

So all in all it’s going to be a fun few weeks. But if I don’t respond to your email you’ll know why.

July 15, 2010 by 1

My IamLUG Session

Yesterday Chris Miller announced the first batch of speakers and sessions for this year’s IamLUG conference in St Louis. I’m fortunate enough to have had my abstract accepted. And so I’ll be presenting an updated version of my “Ten XPages Design Patterns” session.

There is already a great list of speakers and sessions announced, so if you’ve not registered yet then get over to the IamLUG site quickly to get signed up, it’s a free conference remember!

And then, of course, there’s the Tack It On extra day of deep dive content provided by Rob Novak and the SNAPPS team, Chris Miller and myself. All in all, three days of great sessions, interesting people, and I’m sure more than a little fun as well.

June 8, 2010 by 0

GSX Day, travelling and Portland

After IamLUG finished up about 30 people stayed on for the GSX Day which was all about setting up your environment to monitor what’s going on, prevent significant outages and make everything run smoothly in your organisation. Even for a lowly developer such as myself this is useful content to know. The GSX software itself looks very interesting from a performance monitoring and scalability planning point of view and of course now that Elguji is running more and more hosted sites we need to make sure that our servers are in tip top shape.

The day itself was very well planned to not be a sales pitch, so the presentations were valid even without the GSX software. A very clever way of doing marketing I’d say.

Then yesterday really was the end of the trip to St Louis, with a very relaxed start to the day and some fun and games on the travel following that. US Airways cancelled the second leg of my flight to Portland so when I got to the front of the queue to re-book the lady looked a little shocked and said “But you’ve been booked onto the flight that leaves in 45 minutes from Terminal 2!”. Oh it was very entertaining getting my bags, changing terminals (in 111 degree heat), checking in, getting through security and boarding all within 30 minutes. But I did manage it at least so I was only half an hour late to meet Bruce and Gayle, so ultimately a successful day.

Today we head off to Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast to relax, catch up and spend some quality time working on IQJam. Interestingly, this is the first time that Bruce and I have actually worked in the same place before in the two years that we’ve been working together. Either we’ll get lots done or I’ll need to go back to being 5000 miles away 🙂

August 7, 2009 by 1

IamLUG Day 2

The second and final day of IamLUG was jam packed with sessions including Mary Beth Raven, Jack Ratcliff talking about EXT.ND (which is looking great by the way) and, of course, Rob Novak’s Free American Beer session.

The point being here that there was great content from some industry leading speakers. The best thing about all of the User Groups that I’ve been to, though, is the community aspect. Lots of the usual suspects are there and it’s great to catch up with them, but then you always meet interesting new people as well, it’s all about the networking.

The IamLUG crew did an amazing job, they really deserve what sleep they managed to get last night!

Today it’s onwards to the GSX day which promises to be interesting. I know it’s admin stuff, but the server performance monitoring side of things looks really useful when you want to make a very performant Domino web application. More on that tomorrow I hope.

August 5, 2009 by 0

IamLUG Day 1

Into the user group conference proper yesterday. I have to say that the organisation of the hotel, the speakers, registration, food and so on have been amazing, having seen behind the scenes of ILUG and UKLUG I know how much hard work is going on, but as an attendee here it all just works very smoothly. So a big well done to the Chris, Francie and the rest of the team.

The keynote by Kevin Kavanaugh was perfectly pitched, no techie content but a very good summary of what’s going on in the Lotus world at the moment. And then, of course, we got the early announcement of the “Lotus Knows…” marketing campaign that is going to be kicking off in a couple of weeks time. I’ve been among the most cynical over IBM’s commitment to getting the Lotus brand into the public consciousness over the last few years, but I have to say that this does feel like the right approach to me. Over the next 18 months hopefully we’ll begin to see some improvement in the public perception of Lotus Software.

The sessions that have been laid on are so far very good, I especially enjoyed Julian Robichaux’s getting data out of Domino presentation, and Ed Brill’s strategy session was also good.

Today it’s a day full of sessions so it’s about time to go and get some breakfast before we get going.

August 4, 2009 by 0

IamLUG Day 0

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The early arrival on Saturday was so that a group of us could head to see St Louis play at Busch Stadium. With beautiful weather, a nice shaded seat, a couple of beers and some good company, I’m very glad we came along, a great afternoon. Followed by a very good steak and an early night (the jetlag really kicked in at about 10pm), it was a great setup for the conference proper which starts in a couple of hours.

According to Chris there will be live coverage of the Opening session here, so if you’re interested to see what’s going on then it may be worth tuning in.

August 3, 2009 by 1

Matt is out of the office

I flew out to St Louis yesterday, a long but relatively easy journey. As soon as I arrived I started bumping into IamLUG attendees and shared a few (surprisingly nice) beers with a few of the gang before crashing quite early due to the long day.

Today it’s off to the baseball to see St Louis play Houston which should be fun. And then tomorrow it’s into the conference proper. From what I’ve seen so far Chris and team have done an amazing job, the hotel is ideal with large rooms, nice public areas and helpful staff. Can’t wait to get into it.

Following the conference I’m heading off on tour to go and see Bruce and Gayle so I’ll be checking email but not nearly as much as normal. If I don’t get back to you, then you’ll know why!

August 2, 2009 by 2

IamLUG Agenda Posted and maybe a baseball game?

There’s less than two weeks until IamLUG now and the Agenda has just been posted. If you’ve not registered yet and have a couple of spare days it’s looking like a great event.

A lot of the stalwarts of the Lotus Community will be there presenting which is great as it gives me the chance to catch several of the sessions I missed at Lotusphere this year!

On the Twitters yesterday I asked if anyone fancied going to the baseball on Sunday 2nd. Several people replied so if you’re coming along to St Louis and want to come along with us just add a comment here and I’ll add you to the list. At the moment we have @davidleedy @kjbrown13 @johnhead @mitchcohen confirmed.

July 22, 2009 by 0