I have been to many Lotus Notes customers in the past several years and many do not even know about PlanetLotus.  I think there is a clear disconnect between partners and customers in the "information know" of what is available online.

As a member of many developer and partner communities I see what many companies are doing well (and not).

There are many opportunities for IBM to educate their customers about the non-IBM ecosystem that is there to educate and serve them.

The issue I see quite frequently isn't that there is a lack of knowledge about the community, but that there is a lack of caring about the existence of the community. Many of the Lotus professionals I have worked with over the years fall into two categories: the passionate and the clock-punchers. The Passionate have already found the community, and if they have not they will. It is a natural process for The Passionate to seek out like-mined individuals that are also passionate. The Clock-Punchers don't care. Some know that there is a community. Some even are aware of the bigger names in the community. And some are simply oblivious. Regardless, the Clock-Punchers consider what they do a job and nothing more and therefore do not have any inclination to seek out the community.

My point here was not to be negative, but to state that there is no need to highlight the existence of the community. The Passionate will find it.

According to my experience most 'consultants' know what is out in the yellowsphere (they make a living selling their experience).

Most clock-punchers really dont care that they can increase their knowledge in an active format. They want to attend courses because it gets them a couple of days away from their offices.

Well said Corey!

Corey speaks the truth. The clock punchers are not Lotus people out of any desire, they just got stuck doing this Lotus thing and God knows it shows by the horrendous way their networks work, or don't.
So how do you help someone that got assigned the role, as punishment or just "luck" to like it. Sure, some "get it" eventually, if they are technically interested, but most do not.
The response, about blogs in general, from clients is "We don't trust them, we trust vendor docs." Honest I have got this from a few customers lately.
I countered that when they have a problem, dev or admin, how do they search for an answer?
The majority answer is Google. I pointed out that my own blog posts come up for issues they have had and they said, "we know, we used yours, but we trust you, we don't know all these other people".
So I was dumb founded. How do I sell these people on Connections with this mindset?
It's teaching/learning to help them get into the new world. It takes time. Have patience. Repeat the Mantra. Do good work and give credit when credit is due to other bloggers, IBMers or whomever so your customers can start trusting more people as well.

Clock-Punchers or passionates. Sometimes I think some overrate the status of the Lotus community. All Java developers that are not participating in JavaRanch are Clock-Punchers!? There are still other things like language barriers or restricted internet access at work.Not everyone speaks fluent English and for many Administrators or Developers Domino is just part of their job.

What about the passionate clock punchers?  I'm a full time notes developer working at a company with 50k employees.  For better of worse, I work directly for the business and not IT.  This has disconnected me in terms of IT resources (training, hardware, software, other developers, etc...).  For me, the website (and all the aggregated blogs) have been a great resource for researching development ideas and has given me a broader perspective on the capabilities of Lotus products.

I saw this post on the forum and here - do I get a prize?  :)

I think the 'clockpunchers vs passionates' theory sounds a little bit elitist to me.  The majority of Lotus professionals are probably somewhere in between.  I'm somewhere in the middle, having slowly fallen behind because of a lack of spare time and an overwhelming workload supporting old apps.  I'm not contributing to any community because I feel that I don't have much to contribute other than more questions.  One thing I will mention is that it does seem to me that the 'success rate' for questions asked on the 8.5.1 forum has dropped off from my POV, which is disappointing, but understandable.

I still read planet lotus though, but I don't have anything immediate to apply all the cool new stuff to.  If anything, PL for me is a constant, gentle reminder that I really need to fire up, skill up, start a blog, re-develop my company's apps and start impressing people again.  That day needs to come soon, but until then I guess I'll have to remain a passionate clock-puncher.  :)