How I got into: Notes
Posted by Theo Heselmans on April 5th, 2008
Around 1993 I worked for and co-managed a company called Vers a Versa. I was responsible for the AppDev team. We developed applications for our customers, primarily using MS Access, MS Excel, 4th Dimension and Filemaker.
One day, this guy, Luc Limère, showed up at our office. He was Business Development manager for Lotus in Belgium, and had with him a weird tool called 'Lotus Notes': Version 3 ! If you've never seen/used this version, head over to 'The History of Note and Domino': a great nostalgic read. The first months I played with it, I started to see the potential. Two things stood out for me: distributed (off-line) working and workflow. The development environment itself was weak compared to e.g. Access or 4th Dimension. Many (stacked) dialogboxes, no IDE, no 'decent' programming language (only Formulas), no fixed form-layouts,...
As I grew accustomed to it, the tool itself began improving. Notes 4, arriving in 1996, was a huge step: IDE, Lotusscript, Actionbars, Calendars (in 4.5),...
We started getting lots of business, and hired some dedicated 'Notes' people. I went to my first Lotusphere in 1996, and came back exhilarated !
Notes kept evolving, improving with every release. Even after 15 years, I still get excited when discovering new stuff, new ways to satisfy customers. I wish I kept (at least screenshots of) all the apps I wrote !
I'm happy I got into this 'groupware' thing, into this community.
Thanks Lotus/Iris/IBM.
Update: I'm pleased to see the blogosphere picking up on this idea.
I compiled a 'Hall of Fame' !
Category: Lotus Notes Domino | 
Technorati: Lotus, Notes, Domino
Comments (2)
Well said Theo! :)
I came to Lotus around the same sort of time, but from a slightly different angle. We were using cc:Mail and the admin left to further his career in London. I was on holiday at the time and when i returned I found out that I had be "volunteered" to be the new admin right in the middle of the migrate to notes project.
I was pushed from dBase, foxpro, C and C++ integration with System 38's to the world of collaboration in 3 months. Scared the bejaazus out of me at the time but I have never looked back!
Steve
Hey Theo,
Is het echt waar dat ik, ondergetekende, jou voor her eerst met Notes in contact heb gebracht? Ik val van mijne stoel. En tegelijk ben ik heel blij, want tot op vandaag laat jij je sporen na in mijn professionele wereldje. Leuk om lezen.
Bij deze wens ik jou:
Een lange adem, om je hoogste toppen te kunnen bereiken
Sterke benen om uit diepe dalen te klimmen
Een groot hart om veel te geven aan anderen
Open armen om te mogen ontvangen wat je toekomt
Een ruime geest om nieuwe paden te ontdekken
Heldere ogen om je realiteit anders te kunnen zien
Liefdevolle aandacht voor elke levende cel in je lichaam
Stilte om te reflecteren over wat écht belangrijk is.
En ik laat aan Ruby, een 21Century Leader, om je rijkdom te wensen: { Link }