Within 5 minutes, Angus McIntyre provides a great introduction and overview to Lotus Domino Designer. I'm really excited about the material that's coming from IBM lately: introduction, overviews, and documentation, all to support user and geek education of the product and platform capabilities.

Yes, True Believers, that's me on the front page of IBM developerWorks Lotus Developer Domain!

I was interviewed for a new segment called Meet the Developers!. Each month (I believe...), IBM will feature an interview with a community member. And with the release of Lotus Notes Domino Designer in Eclipse 8.5.1, I hope we all have the problem of needing to introduce the contributing members of the Lotus Online Community to new and eager developers!

Hopefully my interview isn't too boring -- hey, I got to mention Stormtrooper Zombies! -- and properly kicks off a great series that puts faces and personalities to some of the names that really make this product tick.

Direct from IBM developerWorks, two webcasts featuring social Jazz and the opportunity to attend a Q&A with IBM Chief Scientist and co-author of UML Grady Booch to discuss social media and the future of software delivery.

Please join us for these upcoming IBM Working Smarter Web events.

Enriching the Jazz environment with social software
Date: Tuesday, August 25
Time: 1:00 p.m. (New York)

This interactive teleconference will answer your questions about combining social software (instant messaging, team wikis, blogs, and professional networks) with software delivery tools. Explore practical benefits of using Lotus Advanced Collaboration and IBM Jazz products to find a developer with unique skills fundamentally improving the effectiveness of an organization.

A conversation with Grady Booch
Date: Thursday, August 27
Time: 1:00 p.m. (New York)

Join Grady Booch in a freewheeling, interactive conversation on the future of software delivery in the current internet culture and new social media vehicles. Hear how software teams are responding to wikinomics and the democratization of ideas, how open source initiatives are changing software economics and how the software delivery team of the future will be more global, collaborative and transparent than ever before.

Both web conferences are a part of the IBM Working Smarter community initiatives, and are recommended (especially the Q&A with Booch) for anyone interested in extending their grasp of social media in the marketplace.

This afternoon, while chatting with Joyce Davis about the agenda for our August 2009 Lotus Technical Information and Education Community Meeting, we had the following exchange:

Chris Toohey I worked on an article last night. Sure, might not be everyone's cup of tea but it's showcasing a development technique that will be the basis for future-proofing applications - regardless of the technology platform used. Readership so far is luke warm.

Joyce A Davis you posted it in the wiki?

Chris Toohey no, not too sure if it fits in there.

Chris Toohey it's stuff that, well, out of context would be confusing to say the least - it might be too niche.

Joyce A Davis Chris, nothing is too niche for the wikis. People won't read it if it's not interesting/important to them.

Chris Toohey ok, you've convinced me.

Admittedly, it wasn't a hard sell. I absolutely believe that the Domino Designer Wiki is an excellent resource for the greater Lotus Development community... but I was hesitant nonetheless.

I'll explain.

On my site, I can post whatever nonsense I want. I can post about some off-the-wall concept that's crawled into my brain that hour or bang out a few quick examples of the playground-level thing that I'm working on at the moment.

The idea of cross-posting my Now() + n series to the Domino Designer Wiki just never occurred to me, more because I felt that the Wiki is a location for more best practices approaches while (especially in this series) my work is often intended for non-RAD developers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that I'm some uber-l33t coder or something like that - I just don't that most of the things I discuss here will really find their way into the day-to-day development practices for the occasional reader of this site.

Back to the point: Joyce is absolutely correct. The Domino Designer Wiki is the perfect place to put such an article. It's not only a concept that I believe it, but it's something that - if properly adopted - can save a developer countless hours of hack-work to achieve the ever-changing functionality that your customers demand.

So I plan to cross-post each of my Now() + n articles to the Domino Designer Wiki, and have started with my first: Leveraging MVC-style design techniques in Domino Application Development.

This way, my article not only has the potential to reach more readers, but I can work with the Domino Wiki Leads - as I mentioned the other day - and get developerWorks Author Achievement Recognition Program points... for something as simple as copy/pasting my own content.

And I'm not the only one doing this. Another member of our community - who has recently been producing some truly amazing content - is in talks with the program leads to ensure that the cross-posting of his content is recognized.

So whether you run your own website or not, just keep in mind that no content is too niche, too simple, or too "well everybody knows that!" for the IBM Domino Designer Wiki.

Taglined "The Geekiest Social Network", My developerWorks just keeps getting better. As I mentioned, the IBM developerWorks crew have really taken the social network via Lotus Connections to the community, resulting in an influx of new IBM Online Community (not everyone sticks to Lotus - sad to report ;-) ) Bloggers making the scene and really contributing some great content.

Aside from content generation, there's also the added bonus of grabbing your own Subject Matter Expert Connections Profile - which can work 24-7 for your business networking and collaborative efforts... provided your honest in your tagging and bio information of course!

If you haven't signed up yet, check out the following demo video showing off My developerWorks. And for those of you not particularly interested in social networking -- y'know... those of you with resession-proof jobs that know everything you'll ever need to know right now and are too busy telling the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn -- consider this yet another public example of a solid Lotus Connections playground!

And for those of you already in the Lotus Online Community who have an established blog, I'm actually working with the crew at developerWorks on that. More details on that as they materialize - which will hopefully be soon!