IamLUG America’s Lotus User Group 2-Day Event Justification Document
Why should your company allow you to attend IamLUG?
Training
Four tracks of sessions. Application Development, Administration, the Social Business
Comes To You track, and “I Don’t Know Where This Fits” which includes strategy,
product roadmaps, and sessions that cross Administration and Development. Sessions
given by industry experts, including 13 IBM Champions. See sessions listed below.
Networking
Breakfast, Lunch, Breaks, and the Monday Night Reception are all great opportunities to
meet with fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors. Some of the most difficult issues
can get resolved with a quick chat over lunch.
Cost
IamLUG is free to all attendees, thanks to the sponsors. That’s right, free. Two days of
technical training for free. The host hotel for IamLUG has a discounted rate of $104 per
night. Excluding food and incidentals, IamLUG would roughly cost $508 for two-days of
technical training.
IBM Connect’s 2013 pricing was $2,495 for five days (four, plus a jumpstart), or $499
per day. (If you only purchased a two-day pass it was $1,495 for both days, or $748 per
day!). Airfare averages around $300 within the US. Hotel at the host hotel was $267
per night. Excluding food and incidentals, IBM Connect cost roughly $766 per day, plus
$300 airfare. Even using the discounted five-day rate, two days of IBM Connect would
cost $1066.
Two full days of technical training, provided by many of the same industry experts as
Connect for HALF the cost.
Sessions
Be a Domino Detective: Hunting the Gremlins
Speakers: Kim Greene David Hablewitz Track: Administration & Infrastructure
Gremlins. Every environment has them. Some suck the performance from your servers.
Some wait for the worst possible moment to sabotage the system. Still others silently
create gaping holes in security. Learn from the experts how to be a Gremlin Hunter. See
how to use the database catalog to find risks in ACLs. Use Cluster Analysis to find
potential problems before you lose access to data. Create a custom view in the Fault
Reports database that can make you a hero. Find out what to look for in your Domino
directory that can slow server reboots and stop mail from routing and make
troubleshooting it a nightmare. Discover how to take abstract symptoms like "Notes is
slow" or "transactions are timing out" and break it down into a resolvable problem. See
the methodology and tricks involved to find the true culprit zapping your servers of
performance by using tools such as NSDs, semaphore debug, memory dumps, call
stack analysis, and server monitoring. Learn how to put activity logging and trends to
work for you to find the hot databases on your servers and how obsolete tuning
parameters can inhibit your servers from using all resources. This session will be
packed with tips you won't want to miss. You’ll learn how to unravel the mystery of how
to debug performance issues and free up resources from buried contention and will also
take away a thorough checklist of items to inspect, along with how to document,
prioritize and address them.
Crouching Firewall, Hidden Proxy - Is Your Network Ready for Mobile and the Cloud?
Speakers: Wes Morgan-IBM Track: Administration & Infrastructure
With all the talk about BYOD, mobile strategies and cloud computing, too many folks
seem to forget that their enterprise network was designed to reach their data center,
NOT the cloud or a host of mobile devices. We'll take a look at the essential points you
(and, perhaps, your network team) need to understand about supporting mobile and
cloud users, we'll talk about a few self-inflicted wounds experienced by others (so that
you can avoid them), and you'll be prepared for a smooth migration back home.
Fast track users for IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business with Tivoli Directory Integrator
Speakers: Mitch Cohen-Champion Track: Administration & Infrastructure
Learn how you can leverage the data in your existing on-premises or cloud systems
(Domino, LDAP, AD or Connections) to provision users in IBM Smart Cloud for Social
Business. We will provide a basic introduction to TDI, demo how to connect to multiple
data sources and create users in IBM Smart Cloud. Whether new to TDI or experienced
veteran, this session will help you prepare for the supersonic jump to the cloud.
From Frustration to Fascination: Dissecting Replication
Speakers: Benedek Menesi Kim Greene Track: Administration & Infrastructure
Replication is one of the most important pillars of the IBM Notes and Domino
Architecture. Whether you're an administrator or developer, replications plays an
integral role in your life, and let’s face it, this relationship has its ups and downs. These
two industry experts will reveal how its underpinnings work, what can go wrong, how to
setup and manage selective replication and why, how to best consolidate cluster and
standard replication, how to benefit from PIRC, what traps to look for and how to get out
of them once you’re caught, the impacts of server and database security and field level
encryption, and more. Join us to learn about tips, tricks and code that will help you
debug and tackle the toughest replication problems (conflicts, ghosts, inconsistencies
etc…) like a pro. The speakers will share numerous stories, best practices and mistakes
to help the audience prevent or solve problems like selective replication anomalies,
deletions stubs, parent-response problems and more. At the end of this session, you will
walk away with an in depth understanding of how the replication engine works, and
you'll be ready to turn this sometimes tumultuous relationship into a harmonious and
happy one.
Keep Connections Running - What does a Connections Admin have to do?
Speakers: Victor Toal Track: Administration & Infrastructure
There are many good "Zero to Hero" abstracts on how to build a Connections
environment and how to integrate it with other IBM systems. But what it is that a
Connections Admin really has to be able to do? what are your daily, weekly, monthly
tasks? What kind of tricks do you need up your sleeve to be be successful? Learn about
WebSphere in general and wsadmin commands in particular, how to manipulate the
Connections dB, some regular administrative tasks that will keep your environment
healthy and your basic troubleshooting actions - plus allot of take-home commands you
can use in your own environment.
Linux School: Advanced Administration for IBM Software
Speakers: William Malchisky Jr.-Champion Track: Administration & Infrastructure
We've covered the basics before, now let's deep dive and get to the advanced items.
We'll quickly review partition approaches, then demo many command line tools and
skills that can help save you time with your Linux installation and maintenance tasks -customized for IBM/Lotus software. Tips, knowledge, techniques, and as much
information as I can provide in an hour. This is a brand new session offered only to the
IBM/Lotus community. I am thrilled to debut it at IamLUG. Get ahead of the crowd and
join us in St. Louis!
What's in it for me? How Your Life as an Administrator will Improve When Your
Company Moves to the Cloud
Speakers: David Hablewitz Track: Administration & Infrastructure
Many administrators dread the thought of their company moving to the cloud,
anticipating it will be a job-ending move. This session will discuss how your role as
system administrator will change from repairman to strategist. With your cloud provider
taking over the mundane tasks like backups and disk drive failures, you will be able to
focus on projects and services that add value. Find out what system administration
tasks will stay the same, what will change, and what will go away when you move to an
IBM SmartCloud Notes, iNotes, or hybrid environment.
Your Auth is open! Oversharing with OpenAuth & SAML
Speakers: Andrew Pollack Track: Administration & Infrastructure
We’ll discuss several different ways to authenticate a browser user onto your IBM
Domino Server from another trusted source including the popular new open standards
“OpenAuth” and “SAML”. We’ll start with why you might want to do this at all; we’ll dig
into the differences between the various specifications and their different use cases,
and what steps you’ll need to take to make them work in your own environment.
Speakers: Track: Development
Alternative XPage Frameworks
Speakers: Matt White-Former Champion Track: Development
When you create an XPages application for the first time, OneUI seems wonderful. But
the shine quickly wears off... what about mobile, or plugins from the Internet? In this
session we'll look at some of the leading alternatives and how they can be used with
XPages. You'll walk away with samples of using Bootstrap, KendoUI, jQuery UI in
XPages. We'll also look at how to choose which framework to use and what happens
when your chosen framework goes into maintenance mode!
Become a Control Freak: discover XPage components that will make your apps
awesome
Speakers: Tim Tripcony-Former Champion Track: Development
In the early days of Lotus Notes, most end users had no home computing experience.
Today, nearly everyone has a laptop and a mobile device -- if not several of each.
Applications developed behind the firewall must now compete for users' mindshare with
their daily use of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other publicly available services that
they perceive to be modern. Providing user experiences that delight users, regardless of
their screen resolution or physical location, can seem like a daunting task... but it
doesn't have to be. This session will take you on a tour of XPage components that make
it easy to develop -- and maintain -- compelling, modern user interfaces.
Building Your First Mobile Notes App Using XPages
Speakers: Richard Sharpe Track: Development
This session takes a tour of the XPages Mobile Controls, showing how to use and test
them on smartphones and tablets by actually mobilizing an existing Notes application
during this session. The same application will be mobilized using both JQuery Mobile
and a new Mobile XPages Controls Project from OpenNTF. The pros and cons of each
framework are discussed using the single application as example.
Creating PDF's using Apache FOP
Speakers: Paul Calhoun-Champion Track: Development
From IBM Champion Paul Calhoun: PDF’s have become a necessity in almost every
application development environment including Notes/Domino and XPages.
Unfortunately the available commercial tools can be expensive and still require
developers to write code to provide custom solutions. Apache FOP to the rescue! FOP
is an open source library that will allow developers to take XML input (like the XML from
?ReadViewEntries) or custom XML and apply an XSLT formatted stylesheet to it that
contains PDF output instructions to create a PDF document. This session will guide
participants through the complete setup, configuration and implementation. Source code
of all example will be provided that can be used as templates for duplicating the solution
in participants projects.
Customizing IBM Connections Look and Feel: What to do when the Boss says "Make it
More Reddish"
Speakers: Jerald Mahurin Track: Development
IBM Connections is a powerful enterprise social platform built with IBM's "OneUI"
standard for its theme and other appearance and behavior cues. Like most web
software, you will want to make some modifications to the user experience - colors,
layout, login screen, logos, etc. While ti would be great for there to be a single place to
make all these changes, the fact is that there's a lot more to it than your typical HTML
and CSS. You have to know where to put it! In this session we'll work our way through
the maze of UI customization, explaining when to use CSS, when to modify JSPs, when
some JavaScript is needed, and most importantly where all this happens!
Don't Roll Your Own, Integrate...Collaboration On the Ground and In the Clouds
Speakers: Troy Reimer Kathy Brown-Champion Track: Development
Your users want to collaborate, so how do you provide that ability within your XPages
applications without coding from scratch? Troy and Kathy will show you how to take
advantage of existing collaboration capabilities and integrate them with your apps. They
will begin with a simple integration of XPages and TeamRooms. Next they will
demonstrate more complex integration, using XPages to surface data like files and
activity streams from IBM Connections and SmartCloud Engage, using the IBM
Connections API.
Managed Beans: When, Why and How
Speakers: Russell Maher-Champion Track: Development
"Use more Java!" Ever hear that? Managed beans to the rescue! Managed beans
improve your apps and can make you a Java expert all at the same time. We'll cover it
all: why, when, how, Java syntax, configuration, scopes, expression language binding,
debugging and more. Everything you need to know to get going with managed beans
and you can even take home the code! Get your Java on with managed beans!
Opening the Toolbox: Tools for the Domino Developer
Speakers: Julian Robichaux-Champion Kathy Brown-Champion Track: Development
It’s always important to have the right tool for the job. You wouldn’t use a screwdriver to
hammer in a nail. It might eventually work, but it would take a lot longer. Tradesmen like
plumbers and electricians make it look easy, but sometimes it is because they have all
of those specialized tools. Julian and Kathy will open up the toolbox and show you
some of the tools available to make your job as a Domino Developer even easier. Even
better, most of the tools are free! They’ll cover tools for agents, XPages, browsers,
testing, ideas for building your own tools, and more. It's like a home improvement show
for developers!
So A Gadget and a Widget Walk into a Bar: Extending IBM Connections with
OpenSocial Gadgets and IBM iWidgets
Speakers: Rob Novak-Champion Track: Development
IBM Connections is an enterprise social network, which means it's also a "container" for
OpenSocial gadgets and other kinds of widgets. Learn about the OpenSocial standard,
syntax, simple and complex examples, and when to use each technology. We'll cover
development from Notepad to deployment (well, Eclipse...more about that later).
Discussion topics will include mobilization of gadgets, Notes/Domino integration, OAuth
and more. We'll touch on IBM iWidgets and explain when it's still appropriate to use
them. After this session you'll have a better understanding of gadgets and widgets how, when and where you can use them to enhance IBM Connections.
Speakers: Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
25 Years of Lotus and Still Going Strong
Speakers: Carl Tyler Track: I Don't KNow Where This Fits
In this session Carl Tyler will take you on his adventures of working with Lotus products
for over 25 years. In between stories of his adventures, Carl will provide demonstrations
of some of the older products and how some of the features have evolved to become
what they are today.
Choosing a Mobile Device Management system - it's not as easy as pie
Speakers: Gregg Eldred Barbara Skedel Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
While Traveler is nice, it isn't a full featured MDM and your security/HR/legal teams may
require a full MDM for your mobile devices. In this session we will review several MDM
solutions, examine on-premises/cloud/hybrid MDM's, and how BYOD may affect your
choices. To assist you with your own MDM review, we will provide you with the criteria
and methodology that we used to select one for our environment. Finally, you will leave
with our "Lessons Learned."
How to be a Productive Remote Worker
Speakers: Jessica Stratton Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
Have you been given the ability to work from home or a mobile environment? This
session will give you tried and true strategies for keeping you, your employers, your
family, your desk, and your body happy when you’ve been given the chance to
telecommute. Learn which cloud software can allow you to work from anywhere, and
ease the transition from being in the office to being in your home.
IBM Domino Doublecheck: Competitive Evaluation of Your IBM Notes/Domino
Infrastructure
Speakers: Viktor Krantz-IBM Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
Many IT managers, IT architects and decision makers find it challenging to define a
future social strategy among the onslaught of demands to try something else. This
session will arm you with crucial information to defend years of successful investments
in the IBM Notes and Domino platform, producing factual data that can be trusted. You
will learn how your roadmap becomes stronger when obtaining evidence from your
environment that reveals how your business is making use of the IBM Notes and
Domino platform so successfully deployed.
Nerd Girls present Spark Ideas
Speakers: Kathy Brown-Champion Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
Spark Ideas is a chance to bring together a group of our colleagues to discuss what
inspires us. We'll share our experiences, inspiration, challenges, etc., during this
compilation of five minute talks. Talks could range from how you were inspired by your
math teacher to go into computing, how you juggle your busy job and coaching little
league soccer, dealing with stress, or describing a hobby or family project. Join us for
this always inspiring session!
Unconference
Speakers: Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
Back by popular demand. The last IamLUG had amazing success running an
unconference session. Everyone came together with no agenda set and ended up
running over into the next session timeslot. This format is an open discussion. No
leader. No presentation. Pick the hot topics and have some actual conversation.
What's Next in IBM Sametime
Speakers: Marlon Machado-IBM Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
2012 was a pivotal year for IBM Sametime. Riding on four major releases in three years
and a series of major updates to our offerings and technology, we kept busy in 2012
taking Sametime to the cloud, giving our customers state-of-the art mobile apps, and
cementing the foundation for transitioning from UC to Social Communications.
What’s Next? Application Modernization Roadmap For Socializing IBM Notes and
Domino
Speakers: John Head-Champion Track: I Don't Know Where This Fits
Some organizations neglect or under-utilize one of the greatest IT assets in their
portfolio - the line of business application. Most were built 10+ years ago with no Web,
mobile, or social. This session describes the application revolution taking place,
covering the options and best practices required for success. Migration and new
development will be compared and contrasted. Real-world data will demonstrate the
positive potential return on investment. We will discuss PSC's Application Modernization
Center and how it helps move customers from merely maintaining Notes applications to
increasing their value with XPages. If your organization is considering a migration or an
XPages solution for your Notes/Domino investments, this session is for you!