RAD – The official name for domino development

RABID – Domino development with a insanely demanding project manager and when devs have designer access to live

RANCID – When you have to fix/update databases that MS Access level programmers have written to make their CV look better i.e “i wrote a custom HR solution”

REWARDING – Then you can produce a great solution using domino in half the time it would take using something else, PARTICULARLY if some daft a**e is playing silly political B***ox and saying domino is ‘legacy’

RED-EYE – when a project manager sells a RABID solution as RAD and you have one night to save the world (or Domino’s name is mud)

REALISTIC – When domino developers start writing in JAVA,Flex,Hibernate on Jboss to keep their jobs.

Been watching all the “sticking with notes”/”moving on” talk on all the blogs, and only just realised that i was one of the offenders, the reason why i only just realised is not simply because im dumber than a sack of bricks, its because i have taken the domino 8.5 splash screen to heart, it says “built on eclipse”, just as the flex splash screen says “built on eclipse”, and the myeclipse screen (well duh!)

When you realise that, the reason for conflict just seems to melt away, your an eclipse developer, Domino is suddenly a back end and a UI interface, just as flex is, and hibernate, etc etc, you may have a STRONG preference for one toolset, but your core is eclipse (providing you are on a modern version of notes), so we can just write amazing apps, why make life complex (shrug).

Now that the London Developer Co-op has been up for a few months, I cant believe that i did not try and get into something like it before, admittedly its got big guns like Matt White , Ben Poole in it so I’m at the bottom of the heap, but to be able to point to a “support crew” and have proper branding and such when you are surprised with the chance of a big job or a posh client for whom you being a “single contractor” will just not cut the mustard, is amazing, you attract attention from areas you would not have had access to before, also you meet people like Andrew Magerman who is trying to do the same thing with http://www.notesnet.ch in Switzerland (pop over to see them), hopefully we can do some work together.

All in all, well worth the effort.

I got these images done for a college of mine for lotusphere, who for the feeble reasons of remaining in gainful employment and being professional will not be using them, I therefore throw them open to public (mis)use

(before you click on the attached links, you agree that you are not offended by mild pornographic imagery and I’m not responsible for anything that you do with them,or any result of their display, and that your not going to complain or get me in trouble or sue me or not employ me on their basis or anything boring and nasty like that)

So, I’m back in the UK after my first lotusphere looking at my credit card bill, lost earnings for the week and twittering about if i will be in trouble at my major client on Monday, what are the ups to counter act these downs?

1) I got access to the Lotus devs/Big boys and got them to listen to my Cognos problem, and they TOOK NOTICE!!
2) I got to work with Bruce Elgort, Gayle Elgort, Matt White (again) and Kitty Elsmore, a top bunch of people, very professional and very very tolerant.
3) I learnt Loads and loads and Loads (and Loads)
3) The amazing boys at Ytria have offered me a copy of their software which includes, the completely indispensable scanEZ (a bit of software that i would sell my left kidney to have)
4) I got to be a part of the IdeaJam phenomenon (and access to the indecently beautiful code).
5) Made a S**t load of contacts all of them with fun people who are smarter than me.
6) I got to go drinking with “Wild Bill” (and lived)
7) I had my photo taken with sponge bob.

Now do all these, offset the cost in this financial climate?…. well Yes quite frankly they do, even if i was a permy and also had to pay for it my self, yes!!, i WILL be going next year

(but i WILL be booking early to keep the cost down, ICK!!).