Be The Horse, Not The Wagon

Occasionally, I look back on what I've accomplished and analyze where I've gotten off track. One theme correlates closely with the times I've felt successful and productive. That theme is when I take on the role of the horse in pulling the wagon. The times of dissatisfaction occur when I've become lazy and allowed myself to play the role of the wagon. Wagons have a legitimate purpose in that they carry the loads; loads much larger than the horse could carry on its own back. At times, being the wagon in your work life and even in your private life is fine. It pays the bills and gets the kids to school, but you're still being dragged around by some horse. Oftentimes dragged to destinations not of your own choosing.

Horses on the other hand are out front and steering the wagon. They control the amount of exertion it takes to speed up or slow down. They choose the path that suites their needs, avoiding the potholes that might twist an ankle. Still, horses have alot more responsibility than just looking out for their own needs, they must also make sure the wagon doesn't run into hazards. Horses need wagons to get the job done.

The amount of energy required to be a horse is way more than to be a wagon, but the rewards come in equal proportion. For me, this little exercise serves not only as an observation, but also as a reminder to not let others drag you around. Put on the harness and start pulling.

Domino Designer 8.5

Yesterday I listened in on Maureen Leeland's Lotusphere Comes To You Online presentation on Domino Designer 8.5. Although I was interrupted several times during the presentaion, what I saw was quite impressive. Being somewhat famiar with the Eclipse IDE, I was eager to see which of the modern IDE features made their way into the new Designer.
I was glad to see that property boxes are going away (albeit not entirely) and that the bookmarks will be co-existing with the Java-like perspectives. Things I really want to drill deeper on are:

• Code Folding
• Object highlighting and browsing
• Client extensibility for third party tools like oXygen's XML tool.(I'm fairly certain this will work, but I'd like to know the level of integration and interoperation between the Notes pieces and the plug-ins.)

One of the surprises I saw was Xpages. Although I had read about these, I didn't realize their potential until I saw them in person. I can see this technology being a real lifesaver for moving old Notes apps. to the Web.

'Today' in View Columns

I had a request this week to add a column in view to calculate the number of days a document was on a workflow step.

The use of "Today" in this exercise got me to thinking about performance considerations surrounding view selection formulas. Although the view selection formula in this case did not involve "Today", I still wanted to review the literature to verify best practices in this area. A very good resource for this topic is Andre Guirard's recent white paper, Performance Basics for IBM Lotus Notes Developers. He points to an article on IBM's support site entitled Time/Date views in Notes: What are the options?

I've always relied on a nightly agent that writes a date field containing today's date and using that date in the view selection formula. However, after reading these articles, any future work in this area will certainly include some consideration for using the method that utilizes @Text to determine if a document sits in a particular date range that may include Today.

These clever approaches always make my work more rewarding.

MinneBar Follow-up

Long, but good day at MinneBar today.

Rode up with my good friend Bill, who is embarking on an iPhone adventure -- really exciting stuff!

Thoroughly enjoyed the presentations by Bex Huff on communication (thanks for signing my book!) and Rich Hoag on Social Search in the Enterprise.

Also, alot of thought provoking discussion from how to run a consultancy, to the mathematics of music to storing/cataloging content, to artificial intellegence. Needless to say my head hurts...

Would have liked to see the GTD presentation, but just ran out of stamina.

Thanks to all the sponsors for making this possible.

MinneBar

Headed up to MinneBar for the day tomorrow. Excited to hear some of the presentations...

• Communication for Geeks
• Social Search in the Corporation
• Consulting for fun/profit
• Mathematics of Music
• Storing Files/Content Mgmt.
• Put info. in the Rearview Mirror
• GTD

...and maybe make some new friends. See you there.