The Future of Lotus
Alan points to a Q&A on LinkedIn that I happened to read while listening to one of my favorite tunes. I guess it was karma.
With apologies to Mos Def...
People be askin me all the time "yo Nate, what's gettin ready to happen with Lotus?"
I tell 'em "Y'know what's gonna happen with Lotus? Whatever's happenin with us"
"If we phased out, Lotus is gonna be phased out. If we doin alright, Lotus is gonna be doin alright."
People talk about Lotus like it's some giant livin in the hillside... comin down to visit the townspeople.
We ARE Lotus. Me, you, everybody... we are Lotus.
So Lotus is goin where we goin.
So the next time you ask yerself where's Lotus goin, ask yerself, "where am I goin? How am I doin?"
And you get a clear idea.
So, if Lotus is about the people, and Lotus won't get better until people get better, then how do people get better?
From my understanding, people get better when they start to understand that they are valuable. And they aren't valuable because they spend a whole lot of money, or somebody thinks they're sexy. But they're valuable because they're part of a community.
And that community makes you valuable.
And whether or not you recognize that value is one thing.
You got a lot of vendors and companies trying to be community -- wishin they were community. They wanna create licenses and contracts everywhere and make you think they're the all-pervasive presence. I guess the Last Poets wasn't too far off when they said certain people got a God complex. I believe it's true.
Lotus might be a trademark. It might be a whole owned subsidiary of IBM Corp. But if you think that's all it is, you are sorely mistaken. It's us.
Comments
Posted by Chris Blatnick At 09:16:45 PM On 08/10/2007 |
Posted by Chris Whisonant At 09:45:59 PM On 08/10/2007 |
BTW, in the latest R8 Beta, is the LotusScript debugger still a default part of the Universal palette? You promised me you'd get it pulled :)
Posted by Timothy Briley At 05:00:52 AM On 08/11/2007 |
Be interesting to see whether the IBMers would feel the same - I am sure that the "yellow-bleeders" such as Alan and Ed might, but I can't believe that the Exec level folks would be so honest? Also interesting to ask would be whether you would say the same is true of the Websphere community (if there is such a thing)?
Posted by Stuart McIntyre At 08:16:27 AM On 08/11/2007 |
Posted by Scott At 11:25:48 PM On 08/11/2007 |
Posted by jonvon At 10:00:30 AM On 08/13/2007 |