How I got started in Lotus Notes (long post!)
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So, this proves I'm young...
It was 1993 and like every other person in my year at school, we went off to do 'work experience'. Basically, they send you to see what a real job is like for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I go to Dungeness Nuclear Power Station and have a ball helping out the Helpdesk fixing PC's. I sense a career choice coming on!
The next year, I'm back at Dungeness to work through my holidays, then the following year I work there for a whole year before I go to University. During this year, we create a helpdesk from the ground up, fix most people's problems and spend alot of time with OS/2 RPL load workstations and Lotus 123. Also during this time, the IT manager goes off to start a special project and one of the things that they look at is Lotus Notes. Of course, being the busy helpdesk person that I am - I don't get any time for special projects. I do remember asking 'what does it do?' and not really getting a straight answer though!
3 months at University and I'm back at Dungeness (my choice), with more OS/2. Servers get moved to NT4 (New Techology!) and RPL load gives way to Code Loads. After another year or so though, we've got the point of receiving around 5 helpdesk calls PER WEEK. Say what you will about OS/2 - it works and never went wrong! So, with nothing to do I start looking for a job. After a while, I end up with Albany Life Assurance. Now part of Canada Life, but at the time part of MetLife. MetLife use Notes. Alot. Although we didn't have Notes internally (Albany had some mainframe system I forget the name of), I get my first introduction to email. Can you believe I didn't use email before then? No, me neither.....
Albany Life had a few people that used Notes. The internal Audit team did, as they were part of MetLife. So did the managing director (head honcho). Being the head honcho, we had a Notes system just for him and someone had to support it. Queue my team leader saying 'someone has to support this Lotus Notes stuff, so I'm making it you'. Basically at that point it was in at the deep end. I had 5 days of MCE training towards my NT4 MCSE, followed by 9 days straight of Lotus Notes training, followed by the exams. Funnily enough, I took all that training in a building that I ended up in much later at Computacenter. But I digress.
I do remember just how much my head physically hurt when I first looked at Notes in detail. Why did I have files to represent users when NT just needed my name? Why did the client need so much configuring when all my clients were setup in exactly the same way? Lots of things didn't make sense, but it slowly all clicked into place eventually. Of course, I only had one user, so my life was pretty easy. At least until I moved to Pearson.
Pearson Technology was setup by Peason Inc to manage their new SAP rollout, and I moved to them shortly after they started. This was (still) one of the jobs that I learnt the most from in a number of ways. We had new offices, new PC's, new Sun SAP servers, brand new Compaq services that I specced, checked, order, racked, installed and configured. We had Notes too - a cluster in the UK and satellite sites. I speced the New Jersey office and then later even was flown to Manhatten in February 2000 to do the local install. The people were great, I was single for the first time in a long time and, well, fun was had by all! At this point though, I was still a general network admin. I had Notes, but along with NT, Mimesweeper, desktop support, network support etc etc etc.
My next move really cemented my love of Notes. I moved to Pearson TV, who were in the process of rolling out a worldwide ISDN, VPN, Notes and NT solution. More greenfield but really pushing the boundaries this time. When your reseller AND Cisco can't get something working but you do is does give you a sense of achievement. I had a proper network to manage now. Thousands of users, many many countries, remote users, different languages - the works. I got the chance to deploy DWA with our R5 rollout and heard about Lotusphere for the first time. Of course, I didn't get to go. For that I'd need to move on....
In 2001 I moved to GE Capital IT Solutions as a groupware consultant. Now, I just did Notes. I don't miss much data I've ever lost - but the presentation I created in 2001: 'Notes versus Exchange', I really, REALLY regret loosing*. It must have been a corker, because it landed my the job and moved my career into consultancy. Of course, now we're into customer territory,so I can't mention any names, but GECITS was eventually bought out by ComputaCenter, whom I eventually left to form BE, who eventually became part of Bluewave just last year. I don't really ever think I had a Notes 'epiphany', but at each step in my career I've seen or done things that have cemented my love for the product. I just hope the next 15 years are as interesting!
Bookmark :
So, this proves I'm young...
It was 1993 and like every other person in my year at school, we went off to do 'work experience'. Basically, they send you to see what a real job is like for a couple of weeks. Anyway, I go to Dungeness Nuclear Power Station and have a ball helping out the Helpdesk fixing PC's. I sense a career choice coming on!
The next year, I'm back at Dungeness to work through my holidays, then the following year I work there for a whole year before I go to University. During this year, we create a helpdesk from the ground up, fix most people's problems and spend alot of time with OS/2 RPL load workstations and Lotus 123. Also during this time, the IT manager goes off to start a special project and one of the things that they look at is Lotus Notes. Of course, being the busy helpdesk person that I am - I don't get any time for special projects. I do remember asking 'what does it do?' and not really getting a straight answer though!
3 months at University and I'm back at Dungeness (my choice), with more OS/2. Servers get moved to NT4 (New Techology!) and RPL load gives way to Code Loads. After another year or so though, we've got the point of receiving around 5 helpdesk calls PER WEEK. Say what you will about OS/2 - it works and never went wrong! So, with nothing to do I start looking for a job. After a while, I end up with Albany Life Assurance. Now part of Canada Life, but at the time part of MetLife. MetLife use Notes. Alot. Although we didn't have Notes internally (Albany had some mainframe system I forget the name of), I get my first introduction to email. Can you believe I didn't use email before then? No, me neither.....
Albany Life had a few people that used Notes. The internal Audit team did, as they were part of MetLife. So did the managing director (head honcho). Being the head honcho, we had a Notes system just for him and someone had to support it. Queue my team leader saying 'someone has to support this Lotus Notes stuff, so I'm making it you'. Basically at that point it was in at the deep end. I had 5 days of MCE training towards my NT4 MCSE, followed by 9 days straight of Lotus Notes training, followed by the exams. Funnily enough, I took all that training in a building that I ended up in much later at Computacenter. But I digress.
I do remember just how much my head physically hurt when I first looked at Notes in detail. Why did I have files to represent users when NT just needed my name? Why did the client need so much configuring when all my clients were setup in exactly the same way? Lots of things didn't make sense, but it slowly all clicked into place eventually. Of course, I only had one user, so my life was pretty easy. At least until I moved to Pearson.
Pearson Technology was setup by Peason Inc to manage their new SAP rollout, and I moved to them shortly after they started. This was (still) one of the jobs that I learnt the most from in a number of ways. We had new offices, new PC's, new Sun SAP servers, brand new Compaq services that I specced, checked, order, racked, installed and configured. We had Notes too - a cluster in the UK and satellite sites. I speced the New Jersey office and then later even was flown to Manhatten in February 2000 to do the local install. The people were great, I was single for the first time in a long time and, well, fun was had by all! At this point though, I was still a general network admin. I had Notes, but along with NT, Mimesweeper, desktop support, network support etc etc etc.
My next move really cemented my love of Notes. I moved to Pearson TV, who were in the process of rolling out a worldwide ISDN, VPN, Notes and NT solution. More greenfield but really pushing the boundaries this time. When your reseller AND Cisco can't get something working but you do is does give you a sense of achievement. I had a proper network to manage now. Thousands of users, many many countries, remote users, different languages - the works. I got the chance to deploy DWA with our R5 rollout and heard about Lotusphere for the first time. Of course, I didn't get to go. For that I'd need to move on....
In 2001 I moved to GE Capital IT Solutions as a groupware consultant. Now, I just did Notes. I don't miss much data I've ever lost - but the presentation I created in 2001: 'Notes versus Exchange', I really, REALLY regret loosing*. It must have been a corker, because it landed my the job and moved my career into consultancy. Of course, now we're into customer territory,so I can't mention any names, but GECITS was eventually bought out by ComputaCenter, whom I eventually left to form BE, who eventually became part of Bluewave just last year. I don't really ever think I had a Notes 'epiphany', but at each step in my career I've seen or done things that have cemented my love for the product. I just hope the next 15 years are as interesting!
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