Hey Chris, interesting idea. To the extent IBM would be on the hook from a liability standpoint for such work, it probably wouldn't fly. However, if IBM provided some sort of sponsorship or subsidy funding for "special" clients (i.e. ones that are at risk of becoming former clients), so that they could bring one of us in, it might work. There may be other creative arrangements that are more practical yet. Then there is the issue of defining who "us" is.

I haven't been in a Notes shop yet that couldn't benefit tremendously from a quick injection of senior Notes talent of this sort. Anything from deploying a discussion db or perhaps an OpenNTF offering to quickly overhauling the cosmetics of a really old database (without "breaking it" of course :-)).

One of my favorite "quick win" pieces of functionality is the addition of a hotspot around any user names that appear on database forms that will pop up a contact info dialog box for that person. For example, many forms record the original author of a document, and perhaps the name of a person the document is assigned to, etc.. You want to call one of those people? Click a little rolodex icon next to their name and their profile pops up into a dialog box with phone number, location etc., pulled from the names.nsf (or other directory if available). If their supervisor is listed, you can then click that name to bring up their profile, and so on up to the CEO. One form, one script library, and one line of code per hotspot, and BAMM!, you just made every Notes application much more collaborative.

There's definitely value to be had from this arrangement, if we can figure out how to pay for it!

pro-bono? as in free? I seriously doubt that you'll find very many (if any at all) proven Domino developers who are willing to do this.

Contributing to OpenNTF in my free time is one thing; showing up at the door of a business and doing consulting work for somebody is another thing entirely.

Salary, yeah you need to make between 125 -150K, it is 75% travel for that kind of role.

I also felt like I did not know enough to go out there and champion for Lotus when I joined at the CTO's request.

But once you get out there you see you don't have to be the encyclopedia, just know 3 simple words I learned from Lou Gerstner " I Don't Know". If you can say this to a customer(not about everything but specific areas outside your influence) you will have a much better relationship with your client.

The 2nd half of what he would say is: But someone here(or in the office) does and I will let you know.

It also helps if you are able to improvise fast, on your feet, while being blindsided while presenting to 2-200 people. :-)