Leaving The View

Posted: June 20, 2013 | | Categories: IBM Lotus Domino

Back in 2010, The View (www.eview.com) magazine approached me and asked me if I was interested in becoming a technical advisor to the publication. Being a long-time IBM Lotus Domino developer (a really, really long time) and a speaker at several View Domino Developer conferences, I of course said yes. We spent some time discussing what they needed from me and we decided that a series of articles on mobile development for Domino would be a great fit for my area of expertise. I was onboard.

I spent some time thinking about some articles I wanted to write and I solicited some articles from mobile developers I knew. Before long its three years later and I've published 20 articles for the magazine (the official 20th one was published last week) and advised on some articles from other authors. It was a great relationship and a lot of fun. At times, I'd have multiple articles in a single edition of the print version of the publication. I even got an article into their best of 2011 Anthology which was distributed at Lotusphere 2012.

Over time though, I moved further and further away from the IBM Lotus Domino space. My last real work with Domino ended in 2006 after I'd left Wolcott Systems Group (where I created the award winning Automated Deployment Toolkit for Lotus Notes) and wrapped up a few independent consulting engagements. After that I went to work for RIM (now called BlackBerry) and tinkered a bit with Domino and BlackBerry.  At that point any official connection to Domino development ended and it was just a hobby.

When I worked at AT&T, they were kind enough to let me dabble in Domino development and speak at some Domino development conferences (the View conferences of course, plus several MWLUG conferences). Now that I'm at SAP, there's really no way for me to continue to work with Domino. I can't justify it in my new role as a product manager for the SAP Mobile Platform (SMP) and I'm simply too busy with my day job working on the platform along with my side job of writing Apache Cordova/Adobe PhoneGap books.

A few months back I had a conversation with my new editor at The View and discussed a few article ideas I had. As we talked about it, I really didn't have anything new and interesting to write about. They were looking for more stuff on Xpages and I didn't have the skills (or the time to get them). At the end of the conversation we decided that the final article in the Sencha Touch series would be my last for the publication.

I'd always wanted to see the article series published into a book. Take my articles and add some of the other mobile development articles that were published and make an 'everything you ever wanted to know about mobile development for Domino' book, but I doubt that will ever happen. If it does, it'll make my day (and be my 5th book, my 4th on mobile development)!

I'm beginning discussions with the editors of some of the View's sister publications on SAP technologies; but who knows where I'll end up next.  I do love to write. I'll have a new book coming out before the end of the year and hopefully another one early next year.

Anyway, it's been a fun run and I've really enjoyed sharing my Domino mobile development experiences with all of you.  Stay in touch!

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