I just wanted to take a minute to say how absolutely impressed I am with IBM about a couple of things.
First, and this was covered in detail on The XCast podcast, but they really did a great job of responding to the community regarding the XPages forum. We asked… ok for some of us, myself included, I think “demanded” would be the more appropriate word. And they delivered. They’re not finished with that but they moved very quickly on working with the community in an unprecedented manner.
The next thing they did is a little more personal.
You see I’m a member of one of the Notes Design Partner program. As such I’ve signed an NDA which means I can run early Beta’s but must not divulge anything inappropriate. That means that I can’t run the beta code in my home environment because of the NotesIn9 screencast. But what do you do when you get to a point where the Beta has such an important feature that you don’t want to go back to 8.5.2? It has something that you’ve always wanted, started using, and now can’t live without? Well here’s what I did:
1.) I emailed a contact at IBM asking if it was ok for me to use the beta code in NotesIn9 as long as it’s a disclaimer. There was a similar arrangement pre 8.5.1.
2.) I hear back – Same day mind you, that sure- it’s not a problem. Yay!
3.) But hold the phone! I then hear that there was a misunderstanding and that technically it’s not ready until the NEXT code drop. 🙁 But wait. What they will do for me is create a waiver so I don’t have to wait and can continue with the CURRENT software.
How awesome is that?!?! Seriously. IBM is this HUGE company and sure, they’re not perfect – I still have never gotten my Lotusphere evaluations… but in at least these 2 cases they’ve gone out of their way to be accommodating to community requests. I could also mention the fact that they’ve been supplying the LUGS with printed XPagesCheatSheets as another big win.
Do other companies respond to their communites like this? I have no idea but I’m very glad IBM is really taking to heart the whole “Be Social. Do Business” thing. Thanks IBM!
What’s this killer feature I’m so interested in? You’ll have to wait for the next NotesIn9 for that!
🙂