BoF topic in more detail

Well as you can see it will be a VERY early morning for all of us. Especially after the night before. Carl Tyler was right :-)

Swan Heron room, seats 20-45, so maybe SRO will occur.

Remote admin, outsourced admin, good or bad, right or wrong, we will get to the bottom of it.

I do it, and have done it for others for years, but it usually is met with fears, doubts, costs.
You outsource your development, because you aren't afraid of backdoors?
You outsource your development, because you don't think they can get the project done on time or under budget?
You outsource your development to save money. Well maybe this one works.

And the same can be said for admin.
Maybe you need a night admin because your day staff is too busy?
Perhaps having an experienced admin handling outsourced higher level issues is required?
What if security was an issue, how could you do the outsourcing? VPN or locked down laptops are common.
Maybe you are in the middle of nowhere and relocation is not useful or there is no great crop of experienced people willing to work for under $40K with 5 years of experience. I am not saying this is low pay because for some people it is higher than they earn, but do you want to trust your security and intellectual property to someone who meets this requirement?
If your servers are in a data center/NOC some place remote from your admin, why do you make your admin go to the office? Why not outsource the remote admin already?
What is the value to you, $3,000, $5,000, $7,500, $10,000 a month?
In return what can you receive? Less downtime, quicker resolution of non-hardware issues, proactive monitoring and enhancements, cleaner NAB/Directory, more efficient leverage of your network resources, consolidation of servers, migrations to newer versions(7.0.2), training other admin.
Now look at your staff, can they do that, have they done it?
Everything I listed just now I did for my client or am finishing and the total time required is about 3-4 months(mixed environment, 3,500 users, 10-15 servers).
How's your staff?

My Birds of a Feather Session Details

Now You See Admin, Now You Don't
Lotusphere Session Details

Session ID: BOF310
Session Track(s): BOF - Track Three: Planning and Managing your Collaboration Infrastructure

Speaker Name: Keith Brooks
Speaker Company: Vanessa Brooks, Inc.
Session Abstract: What if you could manage your network remotely -- would you? Why should you? When would it help? Do you need a night administrator so you can sleep
better? Let's explore the options and see how to save money while increasing
your security.

Session Date: 01/23/2007
Session Time: 07:00am - 8:00am
Session Location: SW Heron

BoF vs. Track Sessions

I always thought BoF were more about the real world activities of clients, compared to say the product manager view of the world found in session tracks.
Having not been in Lotusphere for 1 or 2 years I expect to see many old freinds and meet some new ones and some people in person I only get to read about or email.
For the Lotus staff, hopefully someone can provide me some insights to get a session track next year over some drinks.
Better to be recognized than not.
But with the family in tow my time will be stretched anyway in Orlando.
See you at the Swan.

"Birds of a Feather" at Lotusphere '07 a gift from my Peers

Cool news, some of you and others in the Yellow world have voted my BoF session be included at Lotusphere 2007.
I'd like to thank everyone who voted for it even if it was only my friends ;-0.

The topic is Now You See Admin, Now You Don't!
I am not sure completely what i wrote about the abstract but it probably was the one dealing with remote admin(outsourcing) or how not to let others manage your network for you without some guidelines. But since everyone voted and it was selected presumably I hit a point of contention.
Well that or only 2 other people submitted sessions which is unlikely given how many were submitted overall according to Ed Brilland the emails I received from Lotus.
Either way, I am sure some input will come from Lotus and other people along the way. So please inquire and let me know your thoughts.
I guess I have to dust off the old Lotus presenter shirt, black button down with a lotus logo by the pocket.

Domino Admin Blogs, Where are they?

Now maybe I'm being simplistic, but are there any blogs dedicated to Domino admin or SMTP or routing or any of the infrastructure aspects of Domino which DO NOT involve appdev?
Maybe us Lotus Managers, Administrators, Architects feel like Rodney Dangerfield, we don't get no respect.
So any ideas?
Ed Brill pointed me to Susan Bulloch's www.notesgoddess.net
Anyone?

Domino SMTP Routing vs. Notes Native Routing

The solution works but the problem remains.
Why does lotuscript not perform lookups the same way as @functions for the purpose of email routing?
In theory they should work the same, but that is not the case, at least in R6 and R7.
If I send an email to the 'net or internal people it routes fine from a notes client.
if i do the same from the webclient, it works as well.
If I try it from a purposeful built web app in Domino it fails at the Notes routing level.
Someone with a better appdev view might help me understand this sometime.
Why don't all "send mail" actions work the same way? This seems illogical to me for something so significant.