I was contacted the other day by someone who came across my website -- specifically my Disabling $KeepPrivate documents! article -- who was looking for a method to add a Readers-type NotesItem to selected emails in his mail NotesDatabase. The issue that he was running into, he explained, was that his company prohibited personal Agents (and I suspect that each user only has Manager access to their mail NotesDatabase).

After explaining the potential issues with doing this - from the obvious "you could potentially lock yourself out" to the potential legal and corporate policy implications - I found out that he was concerned about his "nosey" boss reading his email.

Now, while I want this person to know that there are capabilities within the Lotus Notes client that will allow them to gain a richer experience and can improve the way that they perform their day-to-day functions, I don't want to condone such actions by me telling him how to do this.

And therein lies an issue: where do you draw the line?

I like to consider myself - at times - a Lotus White Hatter, but one person's White Hat can be another's Black Hatter. And in this particular case, I think the actions - at best - would be considered black hat, if not actionable!

So, Constant Reader, have you run into a similar situation?

The best thing about this community - that is the Lotus Online Community proper - is that we're all willing to help each other. I've seen our band of SMEs selflessly reach out first via discussion forums, then via what became the Lotus Online Community via SME-led websites/blogs, and even today via the various social networks and services like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and et al.

As collaborative technology evolved, so has this community - which admittedly only makes sense due to our usage and expertise in collaborative technologies - and we continue to find new and exciting ways to spread our collective knowledge outside of our ever-expanding community.

Just recently, fellow Lotus Advocate Bruce Lill, IBM Lotus Advocate Community Manager Joyce Davis, and I discussed ways that we could reach out far beyond our Yellowverse and reach those customers and fellow geeks that are either unfamiliar with or do not frequent the Lotus Online Community or otherwise outside of the breadth of our reach, but that could benefit from our help and expertise.

We came up with a few ideas and really wanted to get feedback from the community on them:

NOTE: Since Twitter is today's latest public-facing mass-adopted social technology, we were thinking of using it as a platform to help reach out to and support the global community of Lotus product customers, admins and developers.

• We could create a Twitter account, publicize it's availability, and instruct people to tweet their questions.

  Those community members inclined could then subscribe to that account and see said questions, and actively engage the original poster.

• We can use hashtags - specifically a Lotus or Lotus Product-themed hashtag - on [our] existing Twitter accounts.

• Engage customers and fellow geeks via a technology, platform, or approach that we've yet to consider...

So - to recap - we're looking for a simple and easy way of engaging customers and fellow geeks that run into issues. We're looking at - speaking to a specific technology/social networking medium/communty for phase 1 - creating a specific Twitter account or a specific/product family-specific hashtags. And, most important, we're looking for your thoughts and suggestions on how we - as a community - can reach out into and beyond our online community, which you can provide via comment to this post!