IBM Premier Business Partner Open Logic will be hosting four LotusLive webinars in the first half of May. Our own LotusLive technical specialist Thomas McErlean will be joining to help with the Q&A sessions.

To register simply visit Open Logic’s home page and click on the link.

If you missed the UK LCTY events, or you attended and want to enjoy the sessions all over again, you can go here.

It has been noted that the audience looks a bit sparse, but that’s because the camera captures the first few rows. And as you all know, people tend to avoid the front rows. I don’t know why – I know you get wet when you sit at the front at SeaWorld, but that doesn’t tend to happen at software events.

Every time someone mentions ‘the cloud’ this week your mind wanders… are the talking about ‘the cloud’ as in that fuzzy collection of Internet-based services and storage, or that cloud of volcanic ash which is keeping the airport duty-free shops empty and raising the profit forecasts of car hire companies? The article I’ve been reading, from the BBC ‘Click’ web site, discusses the Internet-based cloud and whether your data is safe. If you go to any search engine and type in the name of a well-known cloud service provider beginning with G followed by “security breach”, you’ll find enough articles to consider that your data (whether personal or work-related) is not safe. In their own blog, they state that a recent attack was not just aimed at them but also at “at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses”. Google (okay, that’s who it was) are now suffering from having a big target painted on their back in the same way Microsoft have. And any other software company that goes to market with a campaign labelling themselves as ‘unbreakable’. Here’s my head, and here’s me putting it above the parapet.

Security is a big topic… by that I mean that it has many facets. I was once the lead UK Lotus Technical Sales Specialist for the Domino web server (many moons ago) and was fairly knowledgeable on the subject of public / private key infrastructures, X.509 certificates and the various flavours of Secure Sockets Layer. Whenever someone invited me to a meeting about security I’d have to qualify it – on one occasion I was lined up for a customer meeting about security which turned out to be about securing the server room (thankfully this fact was discovered before the meeting took place). Security is not just about encrypting data. Access control is an incredibly important aspect – if you start showing one person’s data to other people you’re in trouble. Authentication is pretty important too. So, anyone who thinks SSL on it’s own is secure better think again.

The chap from Evernote tells Click that their premium (i.e. paid for) service is protected by SSL. Our own LotusLive service is SSL-enabled, but not just for paid users – if you log in as a guest your traffic will be encrypted. IBM have a very good track record for security, but we’re committed to the fact that there’s no room for complacency in this space.

Here’s a favourite quote of mine, from the book ‘Digital Certificates’ by Feghhi, Feghhi and Williams (which sits on the bookshelf in my office)…

Cryptography is the science of making the cost of improperly acquiring or altering data greater than the potential value gained.

That may sound a bit dull, compared to (for example) a Groucho Marx quote (“time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana”). What it’s saying is that anyone who has invested in time and skills for nefarious purposes will be after the big fish in order to get a return on their investment. However, that book was published in 1998 and the world is now a very different place. Given that anyone – including the slightly gullible – can have a computer, an Internet connection, an e-mail account and a bank account, the average phisher can reach a decent economy of scale. The weakest link is not necessarily the technology, often it’s the operator.

I couldn’t really let the opportunity pass. The volcanic apocalypse is yet another example of the disruption that we all potentially face, one of those things that scuppers our travel plans. Other things outside of your control include inclement weather, terrorism, strike action, and incompetence – for example, you missing your flight because an idiot lorry driver has crashed and the motorway has been closed because his cargo of pigs is now loose. Don’t laugh, it happened last week. Ah, poor piggies.

So how can you reduce your chances of that important meeting being ruined by Mother Nature or worthless idiotic humans? The answer is LotusLive Meetings – the rich capabilities are easy to access (just provide the URL to everyone), easy to use, secure, and you can add audio and video to the experience.

Okay, you could never replace all of your face-to-face meetings with web meetings, but your first step in cutting costs would be to work out which ones could be replaced. Or look at it in a positive way – which meetings don’t take place today but could be useful if you could access the right medium to hold the meeting? And then there’s the education aspect – in the Lotus brand we have two or three scheduled learning sessions a week, all delivered via LotusLive Meetings. It’s a quick and convenient (and inexpensive) alternative to classroom-based training.

If you want to try LotusLive Meetings, or any of the other LotusLive services, just click here.

This promised to be a busy week – two LCTY events, and in the middle I had to go to Dublin for a day to provide some Lotus strategy / portfolio training. That involved flying from Heathrow to Dublin, Dublin to Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh to Heathrow. Mother Nature had other ideas, but more on that later.

LCTY London was a knock-out – I don’t know the final attendance number but the place was swarming with customers and business partners. I spent a lot of the day with the film crew from our PR agency, ensuring that we were capturing the thoughts of customers, partners and IBM staff. You can see the results here… of course I managed to get my handsome mug on camera, but unfortunately the edit gives the impression that I repeated myself (probably because I did).

The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the closing talk by Professor Brian Cox, discussing the vast and tiny aspects of the universe. To say that he had the audience mesmerised was an understatement. I had the chance of a brief chat with him before he went on, and I asked how long the ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ series took to film (answer: from March to November 2009) and if he really went to all those places just to film some relatively small excerpts (answer: no, because while there they took the opportunity to film content for other programs). Professor Cox, like so many of our favourite speakers over the years, stuck around to chat afterwards, and even autographed Wild Bill’s iPad.

Click on the picture of Professor Cox for a larger version.

After a day in Dublin I boarded a plane (with propellers) to Edinburgh. Twenty minutes after the cabbage crate was due to take off, the pilot informed us that we would now be leaving (good) but would be making a brief stop in Glasgow so that they could drop off an engineer and some spare parts (oh, great). Upon landing at Glasgow, the stewardess said “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Glasgow”. Like we wanted to be there… which, of course, we didn’t. The subsequent short hop from Glasgow to Edinburgh was over before the plane could get above thirty feet.

I then joined some colleagues in a sports bar to watch Tottenham versus Arsenal, and the least said about that the better.

Thursday morning started with news of the volcanic apocalypse, and after breakfast with my frolleague Richard Bye I checked whether the hotel could extend my stay. Seconds later a text message from British Airways arrived, stating that my flight had been cancelled. Very efficient BA… and the text message arrived at 7:47 (yes, 747, how ironic).

I quickly investigated the possibility of returning home via train, and in a matter of minutes the 16:30 and 17:00 trains became fully-booked and unavailable. So I booked the 17:30 train. After another successful LCTY (with more filming) I boarded the train and got home around midnight. Some of my colleagues arranged a convoy of rental cars and arrived home a lot later.

I guess I have to thank Mother Nature for delaying the ash cloud by twelve hours… I think a journey home by ferry and train from Dublin would have been a lot longer and more stressful.

One more snippet of info, discovered by Mike Smith of The Turtle Partnership. There was one other LCTY event going on that day, the 15th of April. Do you know where? Rekyavik… that’s in Iceland.

…for Warren Elsmore and Matt White. While my journey from DanNotes last year was a little stressful, it’s nothing compared to the odyssey that they’re currently enduring to get home. Like me they were supposed to take a flight back home on Thursday but plans were scuppered by the volcanic apocalypse. Unlike me, they were in Denmark – I had the relatively easy journey from Edinburgh to London by train… not the most entertaining five hours I’ve ever spent, but at least I was on the same land mass as my home. Warren and Matt are currently driving from Copenhagen to Brussels, where they will take the EuroStar to London. Warren has the added ‘bonus’ of living in Edinburgh so will need to take the reverse of my train journey.

Warren is currently tweeting the journey and using a #greatgeekescape hash-tag. I wish you a safe journey guys.

It was Lotusphere Comes To You week in the UK, with two great events in London and Edinburgh… more about those in another post. But it was while in Edinburgh that I got an early morning text message from my airline-of-choice telling me that my flight was cancelled. The reason…? Because a volcano had erupted in Iceland.

C’mon, did they honestly expect me to be believe that?

Thanks go to Paul Mooney for discovering a useful WordPress plug-in. WPtouch adds a mobile theme to a WordPress blog – a theme that is optimised for the iPhone or iPod touch. So rather than trying to navigate around the plethora of interesting content on dadams.co.uk using the standard look and feel (which can be a challenge as there’s so much to enjoy), you get a simplified and easy-to-navigate interface. If you prefer the full dadams.co.uk experience you can switch back to it.

Got an iPhone? Give it a go.

Normally I’d be writing blog posts on my iMac or ThinkPad upstairs, but as WordPress for the iPhone / iPod touch is now available I can now write blog posts and (if necessary) approve and reject comments from the comfort of the sofa or in the kitchen. It won’t make dadams.co.uk any more interesting, but it might make the blog posts a bit shorter.

WordPress for iPhone is basic but very easy to use. It’s free (which is nice) and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store right now.

This was announced on Twitter today, but I wanted to provide some more information. Following nine months in the role of Messaging & Collaboration Business Unit Executive (North East Europe) I’m moving back to a role with Lotus UK & Ireland (UKI as it’s known). In the this new role I’ll be looking after the growth markets of Unified Communication & Collaboration and software-as-a-service. In other words, Sametime in all it’s flavours, Sametime Unified Telephony, and LotusLive.

Perceptions are interesting. I received a great many ‘congratulations’ messages today – thank you for those. I also received a few messages along the lines of “what happened?”, “was I happy about it?” and “was I pushed?”. I know the reasons for these questions – essentially the North East Europe role could be seen as senior to the UKI role. I’m returning to a role very similar to my previous role, albeit with different aspects of the portfolio.

To answer those questions… yes I am happy and no I wasn’t pushed. I instigated the move. I was asked to re-consider, and I received a great many internal e-mails citing disappointment (and best wishes) and an acknowledgement that I’d done a great job.

So why did I make the move back? I’m not going to discuss it fully here, but one of the main reasons was travel – multiple days away and arriving back late at night was not suiting me or the family. I know some people relish it and find the travel exciting, but I didn’t realise the impact it would have.

My new title will be something like ‘Portfolio Manager, Unified Communications and On-Line Collaboration Services’ – let’s see if that will squeeze onto a business card.