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Category Lotus Our Community
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The economic news of late has been depressing - deepest recession since the great depression, skyrocketing unemployment rates, and so on. And now the dire economic straits are beginning to hit closer and closer to home. More and more of our friends and community members are being laid off - the largest number of which have been at IBM itself. According to eWeek:

IBM has laid off some 2,800 employees, with more to come, according to the Alliance@IBM organization. Big Blue has had job cuts in both its Software and its Sales and Distribution groups, with more to come in the company’s Systems and Technology Group, sources said.

Many of these layoffs have hit close to home, occurring in Lotus' Product Development and Sales organizations. Friends of mine that were considered leaders in their respective groups within Product Dev, some with unique jobs and tenure of over 10 years, have been unceremoniously shown the door. And the layoffs are not just at IBM/Lotus - many of our friends and colleagues in the community are finding themselves unemployed as well.

This is the time where we need to help one another and, whenever possible, reach out to help our friends and colleagues in need. Offer to provide letters or recommendation and/or be a reference where possible (and where you feel comfortable doing so). Keep a lookout for opportunities - both permanent and contract employment opportunities. If you hear of something, pass it along.

If you're finding yourself unemployed, then take proactive steps to put yourself in the best situation possible. Some ideas include:

• Broaden your horizons - be willing to take work as a contractor, even at a less-than-desired rate. As the old saying goes, it is easier to find employment when you have employment.
• Join various social networking sites, such as LinkedIn - and then "work the system" to broaden and deepen your profile.
• Most importantly, work your network. Most jobs are obtained through friends and professional colleagues, not "cold" from employment sites. Reach out to your friends and associates and let them know you're looking. Provide as much information as possible - what you're good at, what skills you have of which they may not be aware, if you're willing to take contract work, and so on. Ask good friends and/or colleagues for referenences and/or letters of recommendation.
• And even though it isn't as successful, go ahead and put a profile/resume' on the various employment sites. It can't hurt, and you never know - you may get some work.
• If you haven't already, start a blog. Begin posting topics that help demonstrate your skills - but don't make it look like a "resume' site". Give helpful tips, tricks, etc. that show off your depth and breadth of expertise in a variety of areas. Most potential employers will look for your blog, so make sure they find something worthwhile.
• Volunteer. One way of expanding your network that is overlooked quite often is volunteering. Volunteering serves many purposes - it helps expand your network, it helps you stay active, it keeps your skills sharp, and it looks good as a part of your resume'. Plus, it is better to be out volunteering instead of sitting home on your couch, in your underwear, watching the soaps and eating Cheetos.

I'm sure my readers have other suggestions that I have forgotten, so please feel free to add to my list.

Times are tough - and in tough times we need to lean on each other to survive. Just keep in mind that "this too shall pass", and you'll be back on your feet in no time flat. And if you're still a member of the gainfully employed, make sure you help when and where you can. We've all made it this far, and through other tough times.

Hang in there, folks. Hang in there. And remember, you have friends and colleagues who care.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 11:41 AM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Announcements Our Community Teamstudio
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UPDATE - I have posted an explanation of each of the Teamstudio blogs here in response to a comment by Dave Harris (thanks for asking Dave!). If you too are confused, I encourage you to check it out. **Rock

I am very proud to announce the launch of a new blog entitled Teamstudio Voices. This is a blog designed to allow the Teamstudio associates to interact with and get to know the people in the community, and vice versa. Teamstudio has always been known as a great company who makes innovative and useful tools; but it is rare that anyone knows a person, or "face" within Teamstudio.

And I don't like that.

Teamstudio is comprised of an amazing staff of individuals who are dedicated to building and refining the best tools in the industry for managing the product lifecycle, from cradle to grave; and I think everyone should get to know each other. So, I invite you to visit Teamstudio Voices and see what we're all about. I will be managing the blog (the "blogmaster"), but in the upcoming weeks you will have the opportunity to get to know some of our excellent people.

Oh, and I want to convince Yancey to let me add Voices to Planet Lotus (which is an exceptional, amazing web service for this community) - I'll let you konw how that goes

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 4:30 PM Location - WDW Dolphin - Speaker Room, FL | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2009
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Monday was a good day at Lotusphere 2009. One of the nice benefits of being involved in the content management at Lotusphere is that you get to sit up front to watch the Opening General Session (OGS). As I was coming in I noticed the "Bloggers' Area" which as identified by a whole host of yellow bean-bag chairs. Each bean-bag had a blogger's name on it on a paper on top of it, so that each blogger had an easy time finding their bag. I think this is a very clever idea (i.e. the bloggers' area), and I'm glad to see Lotus continuing it.

As you have probably heard by now, the exciting performing act for the OGS was the Blue Man Group. They were outstanding, and they really are exciting to watch. If you haven't seen them, it is extremely hard to explain; suffice it to say that it is very popular performance art, and it makes you feel good when watching it.

The "guest" this year was none other than Mr. Ghostbuster himself, Dan Ackroyd. I thought he actually didn't speak as much as other guest hosts in the past, nor was he involved as much; but in any case he was mildly interesting, but not great nor memorable.

This was also the coming out party for the new head of Lotus Software, Bob Picciano. I must admit that, so far, everything I have heard about Bob is excellent. In fact the most ringing endorsements come from a few friends of mine of whom their impressions I respect greatly, and who are very picky on their judgements of people. He's a technologist at heart - something we haven't had since Ambuj Goyal - and he is a down-to-earth man, not afraid of having meaning conversations with anyone in the community, and he seems genuinely excited to be at the helm of Lotus. The best thing about Bob, however, is that his wife is a Notes/Domino developer. I can't think of a better thing than to have a Notes supporter in the bedroom with the head of Lotus, with his, *ahem* undivided attention. This should bode well for the future of Notes/Domino, at least as long as he's there

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I worked on my presentation with Bob, and I think it came out really well. That evening I helped lead this year's instance of Jamfest, and it was great. It started out a bit slowly - we didn't have the benefit of Red Box Panic opening for us - but we had some early, enthusiastic musicians get up there to get things rolling and after awhile everyone was into it. I know I had a blast, and I hope everyone else did as well.

Tuesday has also been pretty good, so far. Bob and I gave our "Lotus Notes Mythbusters" presentation, and the audience reactions seemed to have been very positive. We had very full rooms in both the original and repeat slots, which means there was a bit of interest in the topic. During the first session we also timed it perfectly when we announced our last myth: "A black man will never be President of the United States". We showed the myth, and then we cut over to a video feed of the inauguration, and it was RIGHT before Obama took the oath, and we broadcast that. There was a great deal of applause, and even a few weepy eyes. It was a perfect ending for an exciting session.

This evening I have been hosting SpeedGeeking along with Bill Chuck, speaker coach extraordinaire. The crowd was sizeable, and they were enthusiastic. We had 20 tables set up, some admin, some developer. The crowds seem to have liked what they heard, and I know the speakers had a good time as well.

Later this evening I have a couple of dinner parties to go to, and then it starts all over again tomorrow. I'll be back tomorrow to let you know how things are going.

Remember, if you're here please stop by and say HI, ok? I love to meet new people.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 7:02 PM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Category This Blog This Site Our Community Medical
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Hey... It's been a long, long, long time. Sorry. I regret not talking sooner, not sharing, learning, and most importantly, not gaining strength from this community - a community I dearly love.

I've had a tough time lately. I am having some medical issues, and it is affecting everything in my life - my home and family, my work, and my professional life. The worst part is that I knew I was having a problem, but I didn't want to reach out. I didn't want to whine, bitch, and moan to those that I love (which includes you, if you're reading this), so I kept my issues to myself. I have always believed that if you're going to complain, you better damn-well have some ideas for a solution to offer - or you're just bitching and moaning.

Come on, you all know the type of people I'm talking about - those people you avoid, those people that you deliberately avoid saying "How's it going?" to them because you know that's simply the invitation they've been looking for to dump their entire life's laundry list of problems on you - and honestly, you don't really care. Their whining and moaning becomes "white noise", and even if there was a real problem for which they truly do need help, you probably wouldn't hear it for all the "white noise" surrounding it.

Think: The Boy Who Cries Wolf, but in the real world. Ugh

Well, I've had my share of them, and I never, ever want to become one of them; so, for right or wrong, I tend to keep my problems like this to myself. Why? Because the solution is not in the near future, and so what's the use of complaining if there's no way to fix the problems? That's my mindset - but at this point you're probably thinking, "What problems are you specifically talking about?" Well, gentle (and cherished - more on that later) reader, let me give a brief explaination.

Some Background
As you may or may not know, I was in a very bad auto accident in March 1995, and 15 corrective surgeries later I am still having issues. There is a whole litany of crap that has gone wrong over the years as the direct result of the accident, but to avoid boring you to tears let me attempt to crystalize the issue a bit more for you so you don't have to know the "whole" story to get the gist.

Of the many things that have gone wrong as a result of the accident, the main ones I am having problems with are my two knees and my left hip. Let's start with the legs.

I had tibial plateau and fibular breaks of both legs (what is a "tibial plateau" break, you ask? You can read about them here or here, or you can Google it if you're really interested), which means that on top of having the tibial plateau breaks in both knees, my fibula was broken in both of my legs as well. As a result of this my knees, to put it bluntly, are trash. I have no cartiledge or menisci in either knee. When I walk, it is "bone on bone" in both knees. I have had both ACLs (no, not the control list in my databases, silly ) replaced, although they are both "sloppy" right now and may be torn again. In any case, they are trashed. Oh, and I have severe nerve damage in my right leg as well - I have no feeling below the knee. This will serve me well someday if I get a tattoo there, but it also means that I have to be very careful to make sure my skin isn't damaged when I am, say, working in the yard or walking in the woods with shorts on.

My left hip was dislocated and fractured. The femoral head was merely cracked and chipped in a few places, so they originally re-set my left hip using and "open reduction", which means that they reset my hip into the socket (the "reduction" part) by cutting me open (the "open" part). As a result of the trauma to the bones and tissue in that area, I grew what is known as Heterotopic Ossification (HO) in my left hip - or more specifically, in the tissues and from the bones of my hip area, not really in the "socket" itself. I defined Heterotopic Ossification in an earlier post as, "...which means that I have bony growths growing from my hip bone and my pelvis, and they are trying to fuse together". Because of this, I had to have surgery to try to remove this HO from my left hip area - and the goals of this operation were to a) give me more mobility and range-of-motion in my hip, and b) reduce the fairly severe pain caused by my hip. I was very excited about the surgery, and as mentioned earlier I blogged about it here. I must admit, in hindsight, that I "got my hopes up" about this surgery; I hoped it would give me a new lease on life, make me more mobile, with less pain, which would open many new opportunities for ways that I could interact with my kids - ways that were unthinkable in my (then) current condition. Or so I had hoped.

Well, the results weren't what I had hoped for. I was "re-opened" using the same scar that was used to perform the initial "open reduction". This scar is about 12in (30.5cm) long, through my left glutimus maximus (my left ass cheek). The operation was more invasive than the opening used for replacing a hip, by comparison. My recovery was rough in the hospital - much rougher than I had anticipated. After the operation I had to go have my hip area shot with radiation to attempt to prevent the HO from growing back. To make a long and tedious story short, the end result was that I gained a decent amount of mobility in my hip, but the pain came back - albeit in different places, it came back and in many ways worse than before.

The moderate success (OK, in my eyes the "failure") of that HO surgery on my hip has been very hard on me, physically and emotionally. I know I am going to need to be cut, AGAIN, to attempt to fix this (not to mention my knees) - and I dread it after the rough time I had recovering from the last surgery. It has also been devastating that I have had to remain under the care of a (wonderful) Pain Management specialist. He's doing a great job with me, but I was really optimistic that I would be able to basically come off of all of the drugs I was taking except for something light (i.e. non-narcotic) for my knees. I was so, so wrong.

So, to restate: I need two new knees. I need to have something done to my hip, again. I am taking enough pain meds to kill a horse. And all of this is so, so hard on me.

But, like I said before - I don't want to be a whiner. If I'm going to bitch, I want to have at least attempted to figure out my possible solutions - and that's what I did.

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 1:36 AM Location - Swan Hotel (3rd Floor), Orlando FL | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)