There are very few shirts left now: get them while you can!

Also, Mark, Matt and I all still have a few remaining shirts, in various designs, so do find us and ask for one!

Whatever.

So, here’s the image. That’s right: it’s a truly terrible pun. What did you expect?!

C.U.L(DC).T. shirt for Lotusphere 2012

(Click for a larger version)

If you don’t get the pun … (a) what is Spock? (b) what are we about to do to him? (c) reverse those two words. Still not? Ask an LDCer.

Anyway … Matt White, Mark Myers and I still have some of the ‘official’ LDC shirts to give away, so hunt us down and demand one. Of course, we may demand in return that you actually wear it for at least half a day while you’re at Lotusphere, but that’s fair enough isn’t it?

Having been a member for the last 3 years, it will be interesting, and I suspect challenging in all sorts of fun ways, to fulfil this role along with my board colleagues Lisa Duke and Jamie Magee.

In the meantime, so far as this week goes, I’m looking forward to the Penumbra dinner tonight, and the (relatively recent tradition) ice-cream Tuesdae (sic) social event. And a very big thank you to Jamie, and to outgoing board members Carl Tyler and Wouter Aukema, for herding the Penumbra cats and organising these events.

One of the two connection options one gets with the CCK is a USB port, designed to allow the camera to be plugged in directly with needing to remove the SD card. So I thought to myself … what happens if I plug the USB half of my Plantronics wireless headset into that? Lo and behold, there was rejoicing in heaven and on earth: it works! So now I have a nice way of making comfortable and private Skype calls from the iPad.

All good, given that I shall be laptop-less at #ls12 this year for the first time. I still have to suffer the indignity of using LogMeIn (or similar) to remote onto a real computer in order to be able to use a Notes client. But there are very few (albeit some) reasons why I would need to do that. And my hand luggage will be a LOT lighter than usual

For those less into the in-jokes, C.U.L.T. stands (stood) for “Certified Unofficial Lotusphere T-shirt”. They were great fun over the last 10+ years, and Rocky Oliver, Henry Newberry and Andrew Pollack are all owed a debt of gratitude by us members of “the Lotus community” for the volume of effort they put in to make these happen year after year.

Now, it so happens that, late in 2011, after the LDC shirts for Lotusphere 2012 had been selected, I thought of another shirt idea. And, having thought of it, I simply had to have it made, because I (and I may be alone in this of course) happen to find it very amusing. In a gentle nod to the absent C.U.L.T. shirt, this one is the “Certified Unofficial LDC T-shirt”.

There’s no sponsorship – I’ve paid for these myself – which means there really is only a tiny number of them, and they will inevitably therefore be immensely valued as family heirlooms and great cultural treasures by future generations. Possibly.

Stop me at Lotusphere and demand one. Or, of course, demand one of the many other ‘official’ LDC designs that we of LDC will also be carting around with us. They’re all available in sizes up to XXXL (the shirts, not the LDCers).

A week before IBM Lotusphere / Connect we realised this was by far our biggest conference yet, with 2 speakers, 3 sessions, 2 sponsored parties and bleeding t-shirts everywhere. So, what have we been up to during the last year?

Well, bucking the global slowdown for one thing, new clients now include one of the world’s largest media websites, another multi-national insurance company, and myriad smaller interesting clients, with some monster projects in the pipeline (fingers crossed).

International clients are now the norm rather than the exception, with contact coming in from all over Europe and the US. To cater to these requirements our skills set has diversified even more. Adding to bleeding-edge IBM and Microsoft stuff, we have had large client implementations using Spring and Spring webflow, PHP and advanced HTML5.

Nearly every new project contains a mobile element and all coding now caters to this as a matter of course.

This was especially true of our XPages work which seemed to really reach a tipping point in 2011. Like other projects, everything we’re doing with XPages also has some mobile aspect to it, but the interesting thing is that there is now a constant stream of new applications being created with XPages (NB: that’s “new new”, not “new upgrades”). And 2012 doesn’t show any sign of slowing down.

2012 will be more of the same, providing more for our clients and keeping pace with the ever accelerating rate of change in both IT and business requirements.

It’s time to kick arse (we’re British) and write / delete code (remember: less is more, and more code means more test cases!).

Onwards and upwards. Tally ho. Etc.

LDC news

Looking forward to boarding the plane to #ls12 in 7 days and a handful of hours. This year, in a radical departure, I’m staying in the Swan rather than the Dolphin. I know, I know, SO exciting. A greater departure from the norm is that I’ll be sharing a room with the wonderful Gregg Eldred, so if you see him around please do buy him a drink: he’ll probably need one

Also looking forward to the @openntf AGM, which is just before the Wednesday party (usually a quietish time in the week, relatively speaking, so no excuse for not attending). And, of course, to kicking off the proceedings properly on Saturday afternoon with the great reunion and meeting of minds (and beer glasses) that is B.A.L.D., and then the Penumbra dinner on Saturday evening.

Until then …..