DanNotes 48th conference in November

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Per Henrik Lausten

The DanNotes 48th conference takes place on November 28 and 29. We have lots of interesting sessions and speakers:

Ed Brill: keynote speaker
Frank van der Linden: activity streams, embedded apps and XPages
John Foldager: HTML5
Abigail Roberts: Teamstudio Unplugged
Paul Mooney: Lotus Notes Traveler High Availability
Christian Dencker: iNotes 8.5.4 infrastructure, SAML and SUT-lite
Mat Newman with his popular User Blast session and also a session on Lotus Notes 8.5.4 Social Edition
Mona Håkansson and Mikkel Heisterberg: IBM Connections 4

I will also be speaking at the conference on the subject of XPages for administrators. The purpose of the session is to introduce administrators to XPages and to lots of useful tips and tools that can improve the use of XPages within their organizations. I am looking forward to this as it is my first speaking engagement at a Lotus user group conference.

If you are interested in joining the conference, then head over to the DanNotes website and register. There is a Facebook event, a LinkedIn event and a Lanyrd event for the conference if you are interested in tracking the conference using social tools.

I hope to see you at the conference 🙂

Update November 21: I will also be speaking about source control with Domino Designer 8.5.3.

DanNotes 47th conference: links to presentations

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Per Henrik Lausten

The DanNotes 47th conference takes place today and tomorrow. Here are links to presentations available online:

The 46th DanNotes conference is a wrap

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

Last week we held the 46th DanNotes conference. We had 80 participants and 7 speakers. Some of the presentations are available now as links on the agenda. Others will be added to the agenda later. We will also publish videos from the event once they have been edited.

On the agenda you can find links to the presentations by Chris Connor on XPages, Java, and Mobile – and links to the presentations by Ulrich Krause on compact, compress, DAOS and more. The presentation by Ulrich is also available on Slideshare.

The following presentations held by Stuart McIntyre and Niklas Heidloff have not yet been added to the agenda:

Stuart McIntyre: IBM Connections – Bridging the Gap
Stuart McIntyre: The IBM Mobile Collaboration Portfolio
Niklas Heidloff: OpenNTF Overview
Niklas Heidloff: XPages Mobile Controls

Niklas has blogged about the event – his blog entry contains links to the projects and controls that he showed in his sessions.

Stuart has blogged about his impression of the event. He even calls DanNotes for “the daddy of all user groups“.

I look forward to the 47th conference which takes place in May, 2012. Let me know if you are interested in speaking at the event.

IBM Certified Application Developer – Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

Last week at the DanNotes conference IBM offered certification tests at half the price. I took the LOT-951 test in record time between lunch and the developer BOF and passed with a score of 87.5%.

The test focuses on Domino Designer in Eclipse features, some @Formula and Lotusscript programming enhancements, and a lot of XPages. If you plan on taking the test, then rememember to have a look at the test objectives while preparing for the test.

Next up for me is the LOT-922 test which is required to upgrade my certification to the advanced level.

I’m a guest on This Week in Lotus episode 79

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

A quick blog post to let you know that last week I was invited to be part of This Week in Lotus episode 79 together with Stuart McIntyre, Darren Duke – and Gab Davis as the 2nd guest. We discussed Sametime, OpenNTF, XPages and very naturally the 46th DanNotes conference which took place the day after the recording.

It was great fun and I look forward to being a guest again sometime in the future. By the way, this was my 2nd appearance on the show as I was a guest on episode 24 too.

My 1st year as self-employed consultant at PHL Consult

Posted on October 20, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

One year ago I started as self-employed consultant at my own company PHL Consult after having worked for IBM for 16 years – and what a great year! Starting on my own has proved to be one my of my best decisions ever.

It has been a year of classic Lotus Notes application development work, XPages development work, teaching courses and much more. I started with one customer and have since then been doing work for 10 other paying customers and been involved in proposals for a handful more. Furthermore, I reviewed David Leedys XPages cheat sheet, and reviewed the IBM course “Modernizing Lotus Domino 8.5.2 Applications”.

This year I also became member of the boards at NotesNet, DanNotes and OpenNTF.

The following are public sites that I have implemented for customers during my 1st year:

startdithjerte.dk: a portal (in Danish) on heart failures and defibilator products with a related web shop where you can buy automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and accessories. I implemented the solution using XPages.
mediaplus.dk: a company web site with a backend CMS. I implemented the web site using XPages and brought the proposed web design to life by extending the OneUI CSS.

Lessons learned (and assumptions confirmed):

Networking is important: several of my customers have chosen me for their work because we were connected in some way.
Advertising helps: I advertise my business services on the Google advertising network and know for a fact that some customers came to me via that channel.
Being social: I am a strong believer in blogging and social networks and the impact that it can have on you and others.

I look forward to the next year and what it will bring me of interesting work and projects.

One final advice: pursue your dream!

DanNotes: The 46th Danish LUG conference is in November

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

DanNotes is the Danish Lotus user group. It started as a Lotus user group back in 1993 and has since then organized 2 day conferences for the Danish Lotus community with a schedule of 2 a year. The next conference in November is conference number 46! That’s an impressive number of conferences.

I am proud to have been selected as member of the board at the spring conference in May and I am thereby part of the group of organizers that plan the next conference.

I am really looking forward to meet Anders Holm Petersen who is the new country manager for IBM Collaboration Solutions in Denmark, to meet our great lineup of speakers: Niklas Heidloff, Stuart McIntyre, Ulrich Krause, and Chris Connor – and also to meet the many members of the Danish Lotus community.

If you are interested in joining the conference, then head over to the DanNotes website and register. There is a LinkedIn event and a Lanyrd event for the conference if you are interested in tracking the conference using social tools.

DanNotes – Danish Lotus User Group – 45th conference

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Per Henrik Lausten

The Danish Lotus user group DanNotes is hosting its 45th conference on May 11 and May 12, 2011.

I am participating in the conference as a member since PHL Consult is a member of DanNotes. I have created a LinkedIn event for the conference. Will I see you there?

Update May 9: I have accepted to be the moderator for the Developer BOF session on Thursday. I am looking forward to a great discussion of developer topics.

My first two months as self-employed consultant

Posted on December 11, 2010 by Per Henrik Lausten

This is a followup to my first two weeks as self-employed consultant at PHL Consult.

2 months have now passed since I started as full-time consultant at PHL Consult – and I am really enjoying it! It has been exciting to focus on my own business and see the immediate results of actions that I take. I have been in discussions with several potential customers and potential business partners about projects where I can offer my services. Some of these discussions has turned into real work for me and I am happy to say that I now have more than just the one customer I started with 2 months ago. The new customers and new projects are primarily focused around Domino administration (setting up new servers, upgrading existing servers) and around modern web development using XPages.

Almost all of my meetings with new and potential customers have been set up through my social network. This really shows that networking is very important for establishing business contacts. One customer, however, contacted me because they found PHL Consult through a Google AdWords ad when using Google to search for a Lotus Domino consultant. I have set up some Google AdWords ads because Google sent me a free trial of ads for $100. So maybe I should consider using AdWords when my free trial has been spent.

Starting a full-time business also require that I take care of administrative tasks. I have had meetings with my accountant to discuss the structure of my business and have decided to go with a one-man business setup (instead of setting up for instance a limited liability company). I have also talked with insurance companies in order to establish necessary company insurances to cover professional liability and business property such as my IT hardware.

I participated in the 44th DanNotes Lotus user group conference in early November. It was great to meet many of the Danish Lotus customers, Lotus business partners and Lotus consultants. I am also still an active member of the Danish Notesnet group of Lotus specialists.

DanNotes – Danish Lotus User Group – 44th conference

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Per Henrik Lausten

The Danish Lotus user group DanNotes is hosting its 44th conference on November 3rd and 4th, 2010.

The agenda consists of IBM and IBM Business Partner presentations on November 3rd and of development and administration tracks on November 4th. The developer track is hosted by Carl Tyler from Epilio while the administration track is hosted by Chris Miller (I do Notes) from Connectria.