I, along with a reported 1,500+ others, attended the IBM/HCL #domino2025 webcast today. I was happy to hear the excitement in the voices, the number of questions being answered, and the overall positive reviews from the faithful. But then, the skeptic in me kicked in, and I wasn’t that surprised at all; IBM/HCL was preaching to the one group of people that would be overjoyed to hear about the future of IBM Notes/Domino.
After some introductions, IBM/HCL launched into their presentation. The first slide that caught my attention was titled “Experience in Domino V10:”
I sure hope, that after my last post, the highlighted area is well and truly delivered when the product is released, sometime in late 2018.
Then, there is this slide:
I suppose that “Rocks JavaScript” is a fun little phrase. However, it is the “future proof” and “abundant skills” that caught my eye. I’ve heard a similar take on “future proof” as it dealt with earlier releases, hell, I can probably find something like it from the R5 days. But if you don’t keep pushing forward, you find yourself at the back of the pack. And then there is the “abundant skills.” I don’t know a damn thing about Node.js, however if you tell a prospective developer that he will be working on Node.js in Domino or with Domino, is that a guarantee that the developer will be happy to sign on? Or, do you play it safe and not even mention Domino?
Keeping an eye on the Q&A chat, there was a lot of “yes, we are looking into that,” but there was also this question and answer:
This really pleased me, as it appears that IBM/HCL actually listened to us. What gets delivered this year will probably be a “bit” different, but at least they were reading IdeaJam. Mr. Skeptic wonders, though, “What took you so damn long?” Years of adding ideas, voting on them, IBM had a gold mine of improvements from the people that actually use the product, in the real world. Your customers were telling you exactly what you needed to know to make the product better. But then, some other things probably got in the way. Hopefully, this is the one area that HCL will leverage to their advantage.
Time for a poll question.
That looks pretty good. And, based on the reactions from the presenters, exactly what they were expecting.
Finally, their “Go to Market” slide.
So, they’ll be presenting their vision and slides to more of the faithful this year. Good, get them all happy to see the new version. However, what’s the plan for those that aren’t attending THINK or any of the user group events? And by that, I mean, those that may already have Notes/Domino but never attend any of those events? Shouldn’t you be contacting them in some manner, letting them know what is on the horizon? Allowing them to realize that they aren’t running “legacy” software? That is a pretty tall order, I know, but there is only so much THINK and user group attendees can do for Domino 10. You are basically rebooting Domino, how about rebooting how you communicate with your customers, from the little shops to the large corporations?
Finally, about the presentation itself. It assumed a lot of knowledge from the attendees. There were a lot of jargon and abbreviations thrown around with no explanation of either. Based on the Q&A chat, I wasn’t the only one confused at times by what I was hearing and seeing. If you’re going to use jargon and abbreviations, please allow the speaker to explain them so that nothing is lost during the presentation.
Overall, I was very happy to see and hear the new directions that Domino is taking. There is a lot on HCL’s plate and it will be very interesting to see what is delivered later this year. Hopefully, we’ll continue to see the progress that HCL is making during the year and also learn more about the message that will be delivered to the marketplace.
Gregg Eldred 
When you are so deep in the hole, you don’t worry about digging new holes. You worry about getting out of the current hole and filling it up. I agree with what you wrote, but to start, they need to reengage the faithful. They need to stop the bleeding. They need to keep current clients from migrating. After the past two years or mismanagement, strip-mining, and some outright deception – you have to start somewhere. I think this is the right place to start – and you don’t blow your biggest guns three weeks before your biggest conference of the year. I am going to assume the new client stuff and the roadmap is being saved for THINK, for the biggest bang. They will have time for marketing and sales effort around the new release for new customers as they get near the release.
good that ideas from ideajam are taking serious finally. most of them are quick-wins, nothing to loose on them. people spoke and vote with their hearts and minds then. i am also reserved about the NodeJs switch. My main question is about Java on Domino. What is that good for?
Gregg, good stuff. I was on the call as well. I certainly hope that some things will change for the better.
Regarding the chat about IdeaJam, I’m not sure that the question and answer refer to the same thing. The question was about IdeaJam and the answer was about “the Jam”. This was another thing that IBM recently did: https://www.ibm.com/collaboration/announcements/domino-jam2025
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/collaboration-solutions/2017/11/21/update-domino-2025-jam/
Now maybe it’s a reference back to IdeaJam, but I’m not sure that we can say that it was without more clarity.