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I’m not entering into this blog post lightly. I had to create a whole new category (Tennis) and it’s not one I’m likely to use that often. As we Brits had to sit out Euro 2008 (well done Spain by the way) we really need some other sporting success to lift our spirits. We might be doing okay at cricket at the moment, I can’t really say, but as it’s about as interesting as reciting Pi to a million places it doesn’t count. What else can we rely for success? Ah yes, it’s Wimbledon fortnight… tennis… hmmm…

Basically the state of British tennis is like this… we have one good player (Andy Murray) and everyone else is ranked lower than a one-legged bloke from Western Samoa. So when commentators make superlative remarks like “Britain’s hopes rest on Andy Murray’s shoulders” they really aren’t kidding. Back in the days when they said the same thing but replaced the words “Andy Murray” with “Tim Henman” it seemed that disappointment was never far away.

Andy cruised through his opening three matches - not “cruised through” in that “wipe the floor with them” kind of way that Roger Federer does, but by British standards Andy did brush them aside and dropped only one set (and that was on a tie-break). But the problem with an extended stay (i.e. into the second week) at Wimbledon is that sooner or later some unreasonable official is going to insist that you play one of the seeded players. This was usually Henman’s downfall. And so it came to pass that Britain’s great hope had to meet the #8 seed, a French fella by the name of Richard Gasquet. That’s probably French for gasket. Do you think he’s got a ‘tete gasquet’ in the engine of his Renault Clio? Anyway, I digress, this was to be Andy’s first big test of the tournament.

After ninety-two minutes Dickie Gasket found himself two sets up and it was all looking a bit Henman. “That’s him out” commented the wife. Then something amazing happened and Andy knew it was his time. We’re British… we don’t want to see our heroes cruise through life, we want to see them hanging by their fingernails, seconds from their demise and then clawing their way back to victory. Not for us the walk in the park that wimps like Federer seem to favour.

Wasn’t it great to see a British tennis player gritting his teeth, clenching his fist, celebrating every point won, keeping his composure on points lost? A tight third set and then in the fourth set Andy came back better than Rocky ever did after he’d staggered to his feet on the count of nine. By then Dickie Gasket was on the ropes, and Andy finished him off in the fading light. Marvellous.

Okay, Andy meets Rafael Nadal in the quarter finals. Young Rafa, the #2 seed, is no slouch (even if he does have girl’s hair). It’ll be a tough match, but if Andy shows that spirit again he’ll do us proud. I may even use the ‘Tennis’ category again.

I’m not usually one to jump on the bandwagon (apologies to Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Wild Bill, and others), but Wordle seemed like a bit of fun so I let it analyse my curriculum vitae. Not a big surprise to see ‘Lotus’ appear as the biggest word but neither ‘Notes’ or ‘Domino’ appear until the word count is upped to 150.

By the way, I can explain why April, out of all the months of the year, makes the list.

It seems that my good friend and Domino / Blackberry expert Mike Smith (of The Turtle Partnership) has lined himself up with a busy week in September. For the first three day of the week commencing 15th September, Mike is busy as one of the chief organisers of Collaboration University in London. For the unenlightened, Collaboration University is an absolutely first class education event covering IBM Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr (note, with a lowercase ‘r’) and making it’s debut this year, Lotus Connections. As in previous years, there’s a host of great speakers, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

After three days of hard graft Mike should be putting his feet up, but it seems he’s a sucker for punishment. Mike has volunteered to be on the organising commitee of UKLUG (that’s the UK Lotus User Group), and the two day event in London follows straight on from Collaboration University. Warren Elsmore, task-master that he is, has already got Mike working on a rather important part of UKLUG (I’ll say no more). Note that the UKLUG event is spread over two days this year, and we’re hoping for around two hundred and fifty attendees. Registration is open now. I hope to see you there, and if you see a tall guy looking happy but a bit worn out… go easy on Mike, he’ll have had a busy week.

Getting in front of an audience of five hundred people for forty-five minutes is a doddle compared to a) speaking in front of a camera and writing on a white board and b) speaking on a live web broadcast for ten minutes. I did the white board sessions last year, and a recorded interview, and last week it was the turn of the live web broadcast.

Together with Gethin Owen of the Salvation Army and Bob Tarzey of Quocirca (oh, and not forgetting the anchorman, Bryan Glick, editor of Computing) I spoke on a live web broadcast on the subject of ‘how to be more productive and competitive through collaboration technology’. Live meant live. No re-takes or after-the-event editing… live to over a hundred people watching on the Interweb.

I found with the white board sessions last year that the lack of an audience makes a presentation difficult - the human element, the eye contact, the small fragments of visual feedback are missing. Doing it live galvanises you somewhat, but the most difficult thing… ten minutes? One hour, two hours - no problem, I can fill that time-slot, but ten minutes is very difficult. I think I did twelve in the end. Bob did look bored at one point, but I’m sure he wasn’t. Well, I hope he wasn’t.

Watching it back now it’s better than I thought it was at the time. I thought I’d rambled, I didn’t really, but I could still do with dropping the errrs and errrms. Bryan on the other hand was the epitome of the cool presenter, and I’m surprised he hasn’t been snapped up by the BBC.

Finally I want to say a special thank you to Gethin - I think he was a tad nervous but he did a great presentation, and I’ve always said that I love the fact that Lotus software is used by an organisation that does so much good in the world. From everyone in the Lotus brand, thank you Gethin.

If you want to view the webcast replay you have to register, that takes a few seconds, so head on over to the launch page.

The nice people at Mozilla want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours and are using the launch of Firefox 3 in a bid to achieve it. So this coming Tuesday, the 17th of June, is officially Download Day 2008.

I’ve already blogged about Firefox 3 here so I don’t need to do it again. Let’s assume that if you’re already a Firefox user you’re going to want the new version. At the Spread Firefox web site you can pledge to download version 3 on Tuesday and then see how the pledges are totting up worldwide. At the moment there are 52,955 pledges from the UK, but we’re trailing France, Italy and Germany (come on people, nothing like a bit of healthy competition to spur on us Brits). Poland is way ahead in Europe with 89,313 pledges, but of course the US of A is the worldwide leader with 215,355.

Mozilla need 1.6 downloads to set the record, currently the total pledges stand at just under 1.3 million. So what are you waiting for? If you do pledge, remember to actually do the download.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… I love Lotus Activities. One of the main reasons I love Activities is that (despite loving the Notes 8 experience) I hate getting lots of e-mail. So much so that I listed my top e-mail hates at a recent event we did with the Butler Group. In no particular order:

• I hate having a vertical scroll bar in my inbox.
• I hate anyone who forces me over my mail quota.
• I hate anyone who sends me two e-mails when only one was required.
• I hate people who mark every e-mail they send as high priority (but I get my own back by not treating them as high priority… unless they really are, but that’s up to me, not you).
• I hate e-mails that start with “I was give your name by…” - and if you think it’s amusing to send me an e-mail like that after reading this, forget it, it’s not amusing.
• I hate e-mails that start with “I know you’re busy but…” - but what? But you don’t care?
• I hate anyone who sends me an e-mail and then immediately phones to discuss it. Just phone me.
• I hate anyone who continues to reply-to-all way after the point at which I’ve ceased to be involved or interested.

Now I’m not one to complain (no, really). Don’t take that list too seriously. Some bad habits there, but often trumped by people who place the location of a meeting in the subject of an invite (here’s a wacky thought… try the location field). Or include a conference call number for every country on the entire planet for a team of people who all work in the UK.

Where were we? Ah yes, Lotus Activities. Most of the world’s knowledge workers work with teams of people, and they share information, content, dialogues (conversations), tasks - what I call ‘information artefacts’. A business activity will include many information artefacts, and these really shouldn’t live in your e-mail. I don’t want to start a debate on whether e-mail is collaboration or merely communication, but let’s just say it’s not the best way to collaborate.

The Lotus team in our region, UKISA, have been using Activities since before the release of version 1. This year we used an Activity to plan Lotusphere Comes To You, and we were able to share presentations, agendas, media, lists of attendees, tracking of tasks - barely an e-mail was sent on the subject. It worked extremely well, with one important caveat in mind - you have to define which tools you’re going to use and make sure that the team are clear on this. Like the old adage about leading a horse to water, you can throw the best collaboration technology on your Intranet, but people need to understand the value and the ‘why’.

Recently our Connections infrastructure was upgraded to version 2 - presumably a late beta, but it works flawlessly. There’s improvements all round, but I’m now getting to use the great stuff I saw at Lotusphere - namely Activities version 2. Although there’s heaps of new capabilities, the one I like most is very simple - the ‘entry templates’. I’ll give you an example…

My partner-in-crime, the legend that is Brendan Tutt, and I are scheduled to record some podcasts for IBM’s General Business Services team. A very nice lady sent me an e-mail which included the subjects and the synopsises. For this I forgive her, and I prompty created an Activity and invited her (and tomorrow I’ll explain Activities to her). I created an entry for details of the first podcast, and using a new feature in Activities 2 I added two custom fields - speaker and recording date - to go along with the title, details and tags. Ah, but the other three podcasts would also require these details… so I saved the first podcast entry, with it’s custom fields, as an entry template. For the other three I created a ‘Podcast overview’ and the structure of the entry was there waiting to be filled in. Simple, but very effective.

I’ll leave you with a thought… e-mail will probably never disappear completely, but there are many people who believe it will get side-lined. Maybe one day Activities will be the collaborative tool you focus on all day, rather than living in your inbox and being reactive to what arrives (even if those e-mails are trivial and less important than your business activities, you feel compelled to act upon them and head your head above the water). Lotus are ready for that day.

As I failed to blog about the release of the Notes / Domino 8.5 public beta and the release of Symphony 1.0, let’s turn our attention to the kitchen renovation. The kitchen units have been fitted, the worktop templates have gone off to the granite masons, and therefore it’s time for the flooring guys to do their thing. Work started today, and tonight the once-rough floor is now smooth having been covered by a latex screed. The application of the screed was a smelly process, the ammonia-scented solution filled the house with the aroma of a tramp’s underpants on a hot day. Thankfully it’s now dried and the smell has gone.

By Thursday the floor will be done and we can move the fridge-freezer, washing machine and tumble-dryer back into the utility room. About a week later the worktops will be fitted, and then I can finish off stuff like skirting boards and the last of the painting. And then finally a new television so that Lauren and I can gawp at whatever’s on (or whatever’s recorded) while eating.

One other thing… happy birthday Zoe, hope you had a great day.