LotusUserGroup.org Blogger Award 2007 - Vote For Me!
You might have heard that LotusUserGroup.org has been organising the Lotus Blogger Award 2007? This started with a nominations stage and I'm happy to report I've been nominated as a finalist. Voting opens today and it's now down to you lot to choose the winner out of the seven finalists.
The idea is as follows (emphasis my own):
...this award will go to the blogger who, over time, has provided exceptional information, education and community support...
Whether that will be the case or not remains to be seen. I have mixed opinions about the whole thing. While I'd love to win — and be as touched as I was reading the comments of nominators listed below — I'm not holding my breath. The fact that I can't make the award's presentational dinner at Lotusphere this year and that you have to be a registered Lotus User Group member to vote won't help. I'm just not a member of that whole group of Lotus bloggers and I expect the results will reflect this.
What I'd like to see is another award for the most promising new-comer. It's all very well rewarding the long-time bloggers we all know about but what about giving some air time to the new guys like the Tommy Valands and and the Michel Van der Meirens!? Rewarding the best(-known!) blogger is just making the fat fatter.
Anyway, let's not get too political for now. I'll save my vitriolic spew for when/if I don't win ;o) For now I just want to share what was said about me. Award or no award it's enough for me just to read these!
Jake started it all. He was among the first (if not THE first) of the Domino bloggers, and continues to post gems on a very regular basis. There are many who have contributed a LOT to the Lotus community, but it'd be hard to find someone who has contributed more - and over so many years - as Jake.
The amount of tips, tricks, help, advise, and general humor that on this site is unbelievable. The shear amount of time put in over several years, and the contributions to the domino community rate this as one of the best blogs ever created. Most of the very limited web development that I've been able to do is thanks to Jake. What seemed impossible he has turned to the possible. Thanks Jake for great entertainment and help, you are a credit to yourself, your business and your young family. All the best.
Jake has been an endless source of help, encouragement, and fantastic ideas for years. No one deserves the award more than him.
To whoever wrote them and all of you who nominated me a massive thank you. It means a lot.
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Congrats Jake, We group of developer has greatly benefited from your tips & article over the years. we have overcame many notes development limitation from your tips. guess to whom we are going to vote for :o)
You already have my vote. Among the contestants, you have by far the most relevant content for my area of work.
Regarding the contestants/politics, three(?) of seven are IBM employees. I found that a little odd.
The way the blogger award is worded, it seems more of a "Lifetime Achievement Award", than a "Best of [year]".
Thanks guys.
The results are out on the 18th. It will interesting to see who wins. I have an idea who will but will wait and see.
Jake, I think you're so wrong about this.
wasn't Notes about collaboration? so who is the best is less important than sharing knowledge?
thanks everyone for their blog contributions anywhere :-)
Vitor. Wrong about what?
Patrick. And how exactly do you measure "best"? In this case it's merely going to be a measure of who has the most number of readers willing to take the time out to register/vote for them. Not really a measure of the best. Most popular might be nearer the mark.
Jake
Jake - I dont know why I'm on that list - I hardly ever do content.. So here's hoping you get this!
:-)
---* Bill
Jake, the fact that you won't be at the awards dinner at Lotusphere or that you're "not a member of that whole group of Lotus bloggers" makes no difference.
I do think you will be the first to get this award.
Awards can call attention to the subject. In my case, I've known about your site for years but I didn't have your blog in my feed reader. Now I do and I'm glad for it.
Good luck.
@Jake, congrats to you and I don't think you should care whether you are part of "those bloggers" or not in this regard.... you are part of the community as much as the next blogger.
@Tommy, "Regarding the contestants/politics, three(?) of seven are IBM employees. I found that a little odd." Honestly, I do, too. In my first posting about this award, I indicated (in comments) that I did not want to be nominated. I would much prefer to see the community recognize the community. However, if I had blogged this morning that I don't want to win, that would have sounded arrogant or undermined those who toook the time to nominate me.
For what it's worth, I didn't vote for myself to win.
I think you should win too, Jake! :-) As the first comment said, you're the one that started it all. I was actually inspired by your site way back when it first started and I built a custom database for own blog shortly after Codestore appeared on my radar. Of course, I was not sure anyone really wanted to read anything I had to say, so I never actually put it on the internet! :-D
In any case, I feel honored to be in the same company as you, but as far as I am concerned, you should get the award hands down.
(I did, however, vote for myself, as I wanted to get at least *one* vote! haha)
Weird that I don't read blogs from most in that list. Only other one whom I read is Bill Buchan and that too after hearing him speak in last year's Lotusphere.
My list is:
1. jake
2. nsftools
3. breaking par
4. ben poole
5. lekkim
6. bill buchan
7. openntf
8. wissel
9. news4notes
10. dont panic
11. escape velocity
I voted for myself too. Just to see if I could. I tried twice, but they'd covered that ;o)
@veer, why would you say that you don't read the other finalist blogs? Awareness, interest, too off-topic? Part of what I think is great about this award process is that it is raising awareness of both LotusUserGroup.org and the Lotus blogging community. The community is bigger than most think, and not everyone reads (or should read) every blog.
Congrats to all those that were nominated, including you, Jake! I remember YEARS ago thinking, "I love how I can go to the home page of Jake's site, and he always has something new there..." I couldn't even call it a "blog" because, well, that term just didn't exist then!
I know there's been lots of controversy about the LUG awards. While I wasn't part of it, I'm sure it was well-intentioned for a spot of fun and to promote awareness of LUG (which was created for everyone, and even has a communal blog).
I don't think they realized that bloggers are analytical by nature. :-) Kind of reminds me of a Spaceball quote: " 'Preparing to go, sir'. 'You're always preparing! Stop preparing! Just go!' "
So now, change that too, " 'Your'e always analyzing! Stop analyzing! Just have fun!" :-)
Ed,
There was a time I had more than 60 notes blogs in my feed reader. I began to categorize the blogs as high , medium and low based on what was interesting/important to me and as I found less and less time, I began to read only the high frequency ones.
Finally I removed the medium and low frequency blogs as I never had enough time to get to them. The only time I will go to other blogs is when one of the high frequency bloggers mentions others ( I include them in my reader if it catches my curiosity ).
Other than notes blogs, I read java blogs, news, finance, entertainment etc. This is after my 9 hour work day.
No disrespect to other bloggers, but as a developer, I tend to read things which I can try out and have an impact on my work directly. Most of my blog reading time includes trying out the demos, or tips suggested.
Hi Veer,
People write and read blogs for all sorts of reasons. It's nice to hear that you read and try out all the code/demos/tips. Many of us have noticed that lots of times, when we post code or some other cool thing that we'd expect people would want to hear about, there's no response. And then when we go and post something off-topic, such as tv-related, the comment floodlines open. So, it's good to hear that this stuff gets tried every once in awhile. :-)
@veer, you might find the new planetLotus (www.planetlotus.org) useful then. I find it much easier than a feedreader to check up on Lotus-related blogs.
@Jess,
I started off, responding with thank you for something which I find good. but I realized them to be not adding much value, and didn't want to fill space.
I can say, the only place where I continue to learn is through blogs only.
@Ed,
Thank you so much for the planetLotus website.
I myself was planning on writing something to pull feed from different websites in one big page, to quickly go through blogs.
This website might already give me what I want, or help me in writing something where I can use the contents of this site.
@Veer,
Don't ever feel like you won't add value or will fill up space by posting a comment. Value is perception and created by those of us that use the info - posters don't realize how valuable the information they post really is!
I myself need to do a better job of saying thanks... many times I do a Google search to find a "how to", and usually find a blog post with just what I need. It's not just Domino, either. It's my car, my PDA, everything! :-)
Jake,
To be honest, i was not even thinking of you when the announced the process, which sadly only makes one award. That is because I never thought of you as a blogger, but more as a great technical resource I looked to more than a few times.
So much congratulations on being a finalist!
Chris
Cool beans, Jake. That's a treat, eh? You deserve it, mate. I'd vote but then I'd have to sign up, so I'll just cheer you on from here. :-) Best of luck! I expect you're a lock.
Done.
Cheers!
.::AleX::.
Vote Jake,
I did
You Know it makes sense
Hey, I haven't done any Domino/Notes development for about 12-18 months and I still read this blog. It's that good! :P
Good luck Jake.
Jake - whilst not wanting to be cheesy - if you don't win, like all good award ceremony's "Lifetime achievement award" for your blog has to be created ;)
"I voted for myself too. Just to see if I could. I tried twice, but they'd covered that ;o)"
Actually, the validation is only client-side Javascript as far as I can tell. It would be trivial to write something to do backend POSTs for you.
I was definitely able to submit two votes if I just went "back" after submitting the very first one.
I voted for codestore
I voted for you m8 - as have been a long time reader of Codestore, and have picked up tons of extremely useful information here - couldn't have survived without all your effort.
You also get my vote as a local fellow :)
All the best
Ian
Hi Jake,
I did it!
Good luck.
Don't know who wrote the the voting form, but come on guys you can do better than that surely, all I got was the default "Form Processed" returned.
Replacing the url with /All at the end showed everyone elses votes too.... and who they voted for.
How poor/insecure is this...
...come on Jake show 'em how to write a voting system with out the gaping holes in it !!
...before someone decides it's not worth the effort of using a system which could easily be spamed or blown appart pretty easily. Wasn't the same team that does the US elections was it ?
10 Vote "Jake" ;
20 Goto 10
run
hmmm that should do it.. Good Luck mate!
Brilliant! I just took a look at about 30 votes to see if I'm in the running and I was pleasantly surprised.
It would have been funny to find a so-called "friend" who didn't vote for me, but alas, I didn't recognise any names.
If they want to promote Lotus they're not doing a great job of it. Their site looks sooo Notes.
Jake