December 26th, 2005
2005 in review
This is the review that was never meant
to be. At the beginning of the year, a prediction
was made that “Blogging
will fade away from the corporate world and be considered a consumer tool,
no longer a credible source of news. “ Here at the end of
the year, when I think about things like IBM’s
corporate blogging policy
and the substantial increase in IBM
bloggers that resulted, some
of the incredible blogging going on from companies all over the industry,
and the use of blogging by companies as diverse as GM
and Boeing,
I don’t think blogging has faded from the corporate world. At all.
In my little corner of the blogosphere, my Technorati
ranking has dropped from 5000
to 6000 — still pretty impressive considering that they are now tracking
23.5 million blogs. The daily blog hit count has increased 50% since
my 2004 review, so thank you and welcome to all the newer readers. 10-20%
of all browser hits daily are google searches — and after the October
“google dance”, those searches tend to be mostly relevant. About
30% of page hits daily are new visitors, and I’m glad to see some of you
are staying around.
Yet one interesting thing about there now being 23.5 million blogs is that
there are simply too many blogs to read every day. I know I’ve discovered
20-30 new “Domino blogs” this year that I should have supported
more by adding to my blogroll or linking to or whatever. I just can’t
track them all. I’ll even admit that I don’t read all the blogs on
my blogroll regularly — some have gone days without me getting time to
look at them (other than my evil twin Alan,
of course), and I’ve been too lazy to add some of them to my RSS reader.
I wonder when (or whether already) it’s all gotten too big. In
the last few months, for example, there are a half-dozen topics I’ve covered
that I expected to attract a diverse set of comments and voices. Perhaps
the explosion in blogs has made readership a bit more self-selecting –
while attempts to solve the problem through blogdigger, memeorandum, technorati,
del.icio.us, etc. haven’t really fulfilled that mission IMHO.
Anyway, without further pontification, here are my top ten events covered
on edbrill.com in 2005:
————————————————————————————————————————
1. Release
of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 7.
A top-notch release that continues to be the best technology in our
industry. Over 20,000 people attended 200 launch events worldwide,
with first-rate advertising and marketing activities. (Category:
Notes/Domino
7)
2. Celebrating the 15th anniversary of shipping
Notes at Lotusphere 2005. He may have gone on to bigger and better
(?) things, but having
Ray Ozzie on stage in the opening session was an electric moment
– as we knew it would be when designing it.
3. The announcement and planning for Lotus
Notes “Hannover”
has re-captured attention
and imagination for Notes.
From what I heard out of the Lotusphere rehearsals this week, the
demos are going to knock you out of your seats.
4. A business school dream fulfilled as I had
my first
mention in a Forbes magazine cover story.
Not
quite how I imagined it…
5. Throughout the year, I chronicled Microsoft’s
latest
efforts
to migrate
Lotus Notes customers to the Microsoft platform.
At year’s end, Gartner
advised that the efforts had
met with limited success, despite all the noise. The market now has
a clearer understanding
of Microsoft’s “Notes Compete” effort
and its “trojan
horse” characteristics,
and a few funny
moments.
6. Microsoft’s roadmap
for Exchange
continued to be littered
with potholes
and detours.
The focus now is on the entire sixteen products in the Windows/Office
System that will
at some point possibly provide a collaborative framework.
7. Customer
successes
with Notes/Domino were regularly
discussed,
including
coverage of cool applications, templates, even podcasts.
The continued
growth (four consecutive quarters)
of IBM’s Notes/Domino revenue is testimonial
to this market success.
8. I
joined the Machead crowd with an iMac G5.
It’s still early days, but I’ve been incredibly impresed with this
machine and it’s all-around coolness and fun (Thanks to Bruce,
vowe,
Bob@Apple and others for helping me find my way around it).
9. Meatspace: While it wasn’t my top travel
year ever, I did speak at a diverse set of events around the world. Travel
highlights are below, but I would like to acknowledge and thank many of
you who hosted the incredible events I spoke at throughout the year –
forgive me for not linking all of these. The list includes edcom,
Workflow Studios, Paul Mooney/Declan/Bill and the Irish Notes UG crowd,
Jack Dausman and the DC UG crowd, Brian Benz and the new Vegas UG, the
Boston UG, the Pittsburgh UG and partners, the Columbus UG, the Western
Michigan UG, The View for Admin2005/Admin Europe 2005, DNUG for the Hannover
event, and the Jamaican Computer Society. Apologies if I left anyone
off the list.
10. The tenth event for ‘05 is the one I didn’t blog, but
that those of you I’m fortunate enough to count among my friends know all
about. Thanks to you for everything.
Travel highlights from 2005:
————————————
- Miles flown: Approximately 120,000
nautical miles, including the eight-minute flights to/from Inishmor, Ireland. - Countries visited: Canada, Jamaica,
Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, France, Austria, Bulgaria,
Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Australia. (Four new countries) - Airlines flown: American, United/Ted,
Delta, Southwest, Airtran, Air Canada, Aer
Arann Islands, Air Jamaica,
KLM, VLM,
Lufthansa, Privatair, TAROM, Adria, Qantas. (Six new airlines) — 2006
status: American Platinum, United Premier Executive. - New airports: DTM, MBJ, BWI,
SMF, SOF, OTP, LJU, NNR,
IOR - Long(ish) distance trains: Acela,
Deutsche Bahn, Sydney CityRail. - Selected memories:
- Driving a Porsche
911 at 211 km/h on the Bavarian autobahn,
with my dad, vowe & Ute, Wolfgang and Markus. - Visiting
Australia’s Blue Mountains - Hoover
Dam, Lake Mead, and the Valley of Fire - Seeing the incredible
beauty of Western Eire - London
and Amsterdam in December
– more about the company than the places
Wishes for 2006
——————–
As I’ve said in my two
previous
year-in-review blog entries, I never expected blogging to turn out like
this. Interacting with all of you on a daily basis gets me up in
the morning, makes every day interesting, and inspires and assists me to
do my professional best, Thank you for reading, writing, calling,
mailing, chatting, and txting, and best wishes professionally and personally
for 2006. –Ed
Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on December 25, 2005, 11:46am
