Just saw this in the IBM Lotus developerWorks Lotus 8.5.1 Forum:

IBM is hosting an Open Mic conference call with Lotus Development and Support Engineering to discuss "Customizing the Notes Install Kit".

The Open Mic call will be held on Wednesday, July 21. The call will take place at 10:00 AM US Eastern Time and will last for 1 hour. Please dial into the call 5 minutes before the scheduled start. This conference call is designed to be an open question & answer format, so bring your questions. Please refer to the Open Mic technote #1433037 for more details.

Please post any advanced questions within the ND8.5 forum by creating a response to this post.

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for Lotus Professionals to get their questions answered on all-things Notes Install Kit! I know of two admins who will want to attend, so even if you're a developer (and could care less about the install kits), let your friendly neighborhood Lotus admins know about this upcoming event.

Perhaps next time they won't lock you out of the production environment...

I was very lucky this year in that I had the opportunity to not only attend but to speak (3 times!) at The View Lotus developer2010. My sessions, including the Birds-of-a-Feather on XPages, were as much a learning experience for me as I'm hoping they were for those who attended. I thought I'd take a few minutes to discuss my experience at the week-long event.

(Click thru to read my extended coverage...)

IBM Lotus Connections 2.5: Planning and Implementing Social Software for Your Enterprise from IBM Press states it's the first book to cover the newest version of the breakthrough product from IBM: Lotus Connections 2.5. The authors -- an eight-member team of IBM Lotus Connections experts -- look to cover not only the Connections product but also give you an understanding of social networking in the workplace.

A foreword from John C. P. Allessio (Vice President, WW Software Services, Lotus Collaboration and WebSphere Portal Software) that discusses the fundamental ideas behind Lotus Connections (and social networking as a whole) at IBM creates a nice transition to the first chapter...

(Click thru for a complete review and giveaway contest rules!)

Another drive-time podcast where I discuss the use of XPages as XAgents to act as HTTP Request Consumers for IBM Lotus Notes Domino Web Applications! In this post, which runs just shy of twelve (12) minutes, you'll get more information on my Domino RESTful Web Service efforts, as well as some behind the scenes info about YellowCast!

(If you subscribe to the RSS Content Feed, you'll get this MP3 as an enclosure. Otherwise you can download it or stream it directly on this site!)

I was asked via email the other day by a developer (and reader of the site) how they could improve the speed of one of their Lotus Notes Domino Applications. I run into this now and then: an application that's quick and responsive when deployed becomes slower and slower the more it's used. This is often attributed to a combination of transactions (ie., number of concurrent users hitting the application) and data (n number of NotesDocuments, etc.). In this case, it was indeed a combination of both - the function in question being an AJAX-based call to a Lotus Notes Domino Agent Design Element to return JSON data. The more users hitting the application looking for their particular data combined with the growing volume resulted in poor response times from the server.

You can imagine the rest of the story. Taxed application == poor UX == frustrated users == Why aren't we running our applications on Sharepoint|Google|Notepad?

It's a slippery slope, people - and I'm here to tell you how we can dig in with a slight application architecture modification. Now, this might not be applicable to all Lotus Notes Domino Applications, but there are certainly scenarios where this can be one of the most effective and efficient ways to deliver content and avoid scaling issues with Domino HTTP RPC Agents.

(Click thru for a LOT more...)