Events / People by Paul Withers
Engage 2024 
By Paul Withers | 4/10/24, 1:00 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Later this month I will be attending Engage 2024. It will be a bittersweet experience. Engage was the first conference at which I spoke, a session that was way ahead of its time, highlighting the power of repeat controls in XPages and advocating against using View Panels. Ironically, at Engage this year, one of the sessions I’ll be delivering has some similarities. But I’ll cover the sessions I’m involved in chronologically.
Goodbye Nathan
By Paul Withers | 4/12/21, 5:01 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Over the weekend we lost another long-standing member of the Domino community, Nathan T Freeman. Nathan was outgoing, often controversial, but passionate about open source and helping others. Everyone who met him will have stories about him. But I know he is one of the individuals I have to thank for being where I am today.
Travels In Manila
By Paul Withers | 1/14/20, 9:25 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
As I sit in the airport awaiting my flights back to the UK, I’m reflecting on a busy and eventful 10 days in Manila. For those not aware, in addition to some global members of the team, the bulk of the HCL Labs technical team are based in Manila in the Philippines. This was my first chance to meet the team in person, as well as my first chance since joining HCL to sit down with Stephan Wissel in person.
Need Advice for Collabsphere Contest?
By Paul Withers | 7/17/19, 9:12 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
Recently Richard Moy announced the Collabsphere 2019 Beauty Contest, a competition to enhance a yet-to-be-decided database for use on DMA. I don't intend to be involved on a specific team. However, I do intend to make myself available to offer advice and experience to anyone looking to get involved.
Goodbye IBM and ICS, Hello HCL and Digital Solutions
By Paul Withers | 7/1/19, 12:19 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
One thing with a tight community like our is that good news spreads quickly. Yes, there are times when news should be kept quiet and it is. But when news spreads, it always spreads quickly. So it’s already an open secret on social media that HCL’s acquisition closes today (June 30th) of Domino, Connections, BigFix, AppScan, Unica, Commerce and Portal. Since HCL became involved with Domino there has been a resurgence.
The Future of Collaboration Solutions Under HCL - Replay and Additional Questions
By Paul Withers | 6/11/19, 7:19 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Matteo Bisi
A couple of weeks ago we presented an excellent webinar with Uffe Sorensen titled “The Future of Collaboration Solutions Under HCL”. Obviously there were topics that were off-limits until the acquisition closes. But it was useful to see some of the visions and the themes of the Digital Solutions portfolio.
Engage 2019 Summary
By Paul Withers | 5/19/19, 6:31 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Historically Engage has been shortly after a major conference in US, so it’s been an opportunity to catch up on sessions missed there. This year it followed the Factory Tour by a few months. Unfortunately for me, most of the key products sessions conflicted with sessions I was delivering or preparation.
Preparing for HCL’s Domino: What The Community Needs to Know
By Paul Withers | 5/3/19, 8:42 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
Following on from my last blog post it’s also a good time to assess the readiness of the community for the future. I blogged last year about the importance of community to the product, and I reiterate that importance. But that didn’t make any value judgement on the health of the community. It’s worth highlighting a few points:
Take the Quiz
By Paul Withers | 3/18/19, 4:40 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
The hugely successful release of Domino 10 and the impending investment from HCL has got everyone excited about the future.
But how well do you know the past?
Take our fun Notes/Domino quiz and discover if you are a Collaboration Contender, a Domino Defender or a Notes Ninja!
HCL Factory Tour Episode 2
By Paul Withers | 3/1/19, 4:17 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
This week I’ve spent a hugely beneficial amount of time at the HCL Factory Tour Episode 2. As with the previous factory tour, the ability to get quality time with key individuals from HCL and IBM, as well as not only hear but feed back on progress is invaluable. Before going I’d also intended to use the conference to crystalise my focuses for Engage. And obviously it was a great opportunity to have influential discussions regarding OpenNTF and open source, discussions that would normally have happened at IBM Think.
OpenNTF Snippets - Investigating The Design
By Paul Withers | 2/11/19, 7:06 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
As you’ve hopefully seen, we’ve relaunched XSnippets as OpenNTF Snippets. There are quite a few changes, some decisions made that are less than traditional, but driven by some key factors. Indeed some may seem bad practice and are certainly not what may be made for other applications. But the driving force is a deep understanding of the application and its administrators.
IBM Domino, HCL and Websphere
By Paul Withers | 10/7/18, 6:44 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
One of the announcements from HCL at ICON UK was that their partnership with IBM had expanded since the HCL Factory Tour to include work on additional products, one of which is Websphere. Historically the word “Websphere” has often grated with Domino developers, because it seemed that Websphere was the preferred app dev environment over Domino.
Domino 10 Betas Announced, Domino 10 Build-Up, Countdown To IBM Think 2019
By Paul Withers | 6/13/18, 2:40 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Barely has the dust settled from Engage, but the build-up to Domino 10 is continuing. Barely has the dust settled from Engage, but the build-up to Domino 10 is continuing.
Engage Debrief
By Paul Withers | 5/24/18, 4:20 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
The last few days at Engage have been very interesting and extremely useful. The event began on Monday for me, with Red Pill Now’s Take-5 Modernization workshop. The event was very well received, reinforcing my experiences from the face-to-face Domino Jam and since, namely that design thinking is a powerful and effective approach for engaging a diverse set of individuals to achieve better answers to more complex questions.
Repost: "On The Shoulders of Giants - How We Learn"
By Paul Withers | 5/10/18, 11:25 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
Today, I came across via Twitter a blog post from Gab Davis, community and IBM Champion legend – and I make no apologies for calling her that, because she is. The blog post concerned me a lot because our community is lauded – rightly so – as being generally more helpful, more collaborative, more open than other IT communities.
IBM Think Presentations
By Paul Withers | 4/3/18, 2:37 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
At IBM Think I presented four sessions. Two were on The IBM Champion and Community Day on Sunday. One was titled “Social Zero to Community Hero” with Tony Holder and Alex Ivanov, who was also announced as an IBM Lifetime Champion that afternoon. This detailed what a Champion is and the different paths a champion takes.
IBM Think Review 3 - Domino App Dev
By Paul Withers | 3/28/18, 10:49 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
I was fortunate enough to have a number of discussions with various people from IBM and HCL while I was at IBM Think. Some of those were with people I’ve known for a while, like Jason Gary and Barry Rosen, while others were with newer contacts like John Paganetti, Andrew Manby and the (quite new) marketing people.
IBM Think Review 2 - ICS Announcements (Excepting App Dev)
By Paul Withers | 3/28/18, 10:45 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
There were a host of announcements at IBM Think, some of which I may have missed. But I’ll cover all the ones I did catch here. I will leave Domino app dev for a separate blog post covering everything announced about V10 to date as well as my thoughts about what they mean to all kinds of Domino developers.
IBM Think Review 1: Non-Technical Observations
By Paul Withers | 3/25/18, 3:49 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
There will be a number of reviews of IBM Think from me, on various topics – gone are the days when there was a very tight narrow focus to my attendance at an IBM conference. But this first post is a review of some of the non-technical aspects of the conference.
Great Start to IBM Think
By Paul Withers | 3/19/18, 3:40 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
The IBM Champion and User Group day was a great start to IBM Think with some interesting sessions, although my morning was busy with delivering a session twice with Tony Holder and delivering a Lightning Talk.
On behalf of OpenNTF we also launched open badges for user groups to thank them for their support of OpenNTF. More open badges will come in the future as we expand the programme further.
IBM Think: Sessions and More
By Paul Withers | 1/19/18, 8:22 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
Two months from today IBM Think will officially start, although the IBM Champion day on March 18th will be my first – and no doubt very busy – involvement. And the great news is that I will be delivering two sessions that week. Developing with Watson Work Services Java SDK (Session ID 3249).
A Warning Tale for Presenters
By Paul Withers | 11/1/17, 8:26 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
One of the aspects of Social Connections that I meant to include in my blog post summary but forgot was the issues around wifi access. No matter what a venue says about their readiness, it’s an aspect that I’m sure is virtually impossible for conference organisers to check or test beforehand.
Big News for Domino, Connections and OpenNTF
By Paul Withers | 9/15/17, 2:35 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
There are signs you can tell summer is over. For us in the northern hemisphere, the weather starts feeling chillier (although it’s been very changeable in UK most of the “summer”). And things start ramping up as people get back from holidays and Q3 comes to an end.
Engage Review and Slides
By Paul Withers | 5/11/17, 10:59 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Over the last few days I’ve been attending Engage. As ever, it was an excellent conference, with a great attendance from across Europe. (If you’ve not attended a user group recently and will not this year, put it on your list for next year, May 2018.) As ever, Theo is a brilliant organiser and the social events were great. As ever, the speakers were top quality.
IBM Connect 2017
By Paul Withers | 2/13/17, 12:56 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
With a little over a week to go, IBM Connect 2017 looks set to be as busy as ever. 2016 was a challenging year as a Domino developer, testing the faith and patience of many. My attendance at IBM Connect as a speaker, Business Partner and IBM Champion may seem “business as usual”, but it has not been a straightforward journey. So I hope the experience is as positive as last year but with a more positive rest of the year.
Thanks, David Leedy!
By Paul Withers | 9/19/16, 6:23 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
It seems very fitting that part way through a blog post about community, Marky Roden released his “Not NotesIn9” celebration of David Leedy. It’s been a pleasure to know Dave and call him a friend for so long. So, somewhat belatedly, here’s my video. Below it there’s a picture of Dave, if you don’t know him (sorry, couldn’t resist!).
The Importance of Community
By Paul Withers | 9/19/16, 4:17 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
Back in April, after Engage and an XPages on Bluemix seminar at IBM Ireland I wrote a piece called “The Future of (Domino) App Dev in a Single Word”. That word was community, and the feeling was driven by public and private initiatives around XPages and XPages development. This seems a profoundly apposite moment to revisit that sentiment.
Communication and Community
By Paul Withers | 7/30/16, 4:26 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
A couple of days ago I posted this tweet. It was prompted by experiences in a variety of technical communities over recent months and year, good and bad. Anyone who knows me or has been involved in the IBM Collaboration Solutions community will be aware of how passionately I believe in the power of community and the importance of empowering those within the community.
Paul Withers Blog: Background and Purpose
By Paul Withers | 7/12/16, 4:12 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by Oliver Busse
For the last six years, I have blogged heavily (375 posts in 3 years and nine months, more than one post per week) on Intec’s blog. So the question naturally arises why I should choose to start a personal blog, and why now.
IBM Connect 2016 Review
By Paul Withers | 2/11/16, 12:48 AM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger
As many others, I went with a degree of trepidation. Verse was released to a fanfare earlier this year, when the promise was still of Notes Next and on premises Verse by the end of 2015. The focus during the rest of the year seemed to be on migrating IBM to Verse and getting XPages to Bluemix.