I don't know about you but everything around OpenNTF feels like a whirlwind right now, lots of new content (best new quality in a short period for a long time for me), Notes Domino base templates being made available on OpenNTF (a first), Notes Domino Discussion Template being open sourced on OpenNTF (another first), constant top 1-5 on Planetlotus.org interest (giving edbrill.com a run for his money), Lotusphere 2010 planning, competitions (and not just competitions but LOTUS awards), large numbers of new registrations (over 7,000 since Lotusphere 2009), high download traffic and record page hits. I also see "new" interest in adding code to OpenNTF and people identifying "how OpenNTF can work for you".

Our biggest problem is actually keeping up with everyone's expectations, which is nice, but can be frustrating so please bear with us sometimes as we move the 7 year old environment forward. We finally have all servers running the same version of Domino (8.5.1) and we are near to having a new catalog which is important as we have many GPL and Apache entries queued up for entry (the existing GPL one keeps corrupting for some reason). The upgrade of the project management system is taking longer than planned which really is my fault due to time but the old system is holding out ok (just doesn't always look great). If anyone wants to help form a project group for this then let me know.

The forums will get yet another update soon, with the 8.5.1 servers being in place we will replace it with the base 8.5.1 version, add in the OpenNTF styling and move forward from there and add in the results from the Discussion next generation project. We have had some IE8 issues etc due to the Domino/Dojo version so hopefully this is/will be resolved.

Lotus Awards
As you have heard from Niklas Heidloff already, its very exciting that OpenNTF has two award categories in this years "Lotus Awards". This demonstrates a fair size commitment from IBM for this project.

The official Lotus Award details are also here, however the important detail, which is missing from the awards site but will be updated soon, is the fact that entries need to be in by January 6th 2010. If you read Niklas's blog entry linked above you will see all the conditions and what the judges are looking for etc but basically you need to have the code on OpenNTF and the second important information is to register your entry at the Lotus Awards site using the Nomination process and form. Now personally the form has a few questions which are not relevant to our category but we need to use the Lotus Award system, so bear with us and we will recognise that some parts of the form are not always necessary for an open source project. Any queries email us direct or use support at openntf dot org with the word 'award' in the subject.

Lotusphere 2010
So far it is in our planning to have an open, annual general meeting at Lotusphere 2010. The details are still being worked on so more soon. We also hope to place a position in the developers lab for OpenNTF so someone is always available for your questions. We thought this was better than a full pedestal as that is too detached from the "developers" area and logistically was easier for potential IBM representation.

We have other sessions pencilled in, however it is too early to talk about these as the track managers are still doing their planning work.

Technical Committee
As I mentioned at the top of this post, we have all the servers running 8.5.1, and we are, slowly, updating various parts that continue to cause us problems. We have also carried out an environment survey, thanks to Gab of Turtle Partnership, in order to make sure things are running as smoothly and securely as possible, We are also grateful to Prominic here for their efforts in keeping everything up and running.

I also mentioned the project management system is behind on being upgraded (its a huge task) and again will repeat if anyone wants to help form an action group to speed this up - just let me know.

TriStateLug
Continuing our stadium tour around the world, Bruce Elgort will be presenting a session on OpenNTF at the TriStateLug in New York November 9th. This session will be key noted by Bob Picciano.

Vince Schuurman also presented OpenNTF recently at the NL Lotus User Group.

New Content
Since the last friday review I think we have had the best period of great new projects for a long time, in my opinion anyway. This is all on top of the great news about adding most of the Notes Domino base templates to OpenNTF. So for the first time you can download these templates outside of the Notes Domino installation (yay!).

In no particular order here are some highlights:

xTalk Discussion Forums - xTalk Discussion Forums is a 100% XPages application written for IBM Lotus Notes And Domino 8.5.1 utilizing XPages in the Notes Client styled after many of the popular PHP web forums

Time Tracker - Time Management experts will tell you an individual only has 24 hours in a single day; proper time management isn't finding time in your day, but rather discovering and dealing with inefficiencies in your day.

File Explorer - The File Explorer is a sidebar plugin to explore files in the OS file system. The plugin supports Drag&Drop of files from/to Notes.

XPages Namepicker - A picker control for selecting notes names out of the Domino Directory, inspired by the Facebook namepicker.

SSO for Web for non Windows Servers - Achieve single sign-on for Domino Web users in an environment where some servers are Domino Windows 8.5.1 servers and other servers are on alternate platforms.

XPages Framework - Quickly create XPage applications using this framework which automatically creates the css layout for you.

Widget Library - various widgets that can be run in the IBM Lotus Notes client.

PlainTextView - This sidebar element displays the selected mail message as plaintext. This means, a Notes message is displayed with no format and a internet mail message is displayed with all the MIME headers and information.

Discussion Next Gen - Lotus Notes Domino discussion template open sourced on OpenNTF.org with new Client interface

assono Framework 2 - assono Framework 2 is a great fundament for developing modern Notes client and Domino Web applications. It consists of a system of LotusScript classes, forms, views etc. which fulfill most non-functional requirements for applications thus you can concentrate on the specific requirements of your current project.

Communication Center - The communication center is a Notes (composite) application that allows easy access to several communication/messaging applications, e.g. Twitter, Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook etc.

Active directory name picker and search - Sample database contains LS code to search Active directory ( or other LDAP ) from Notes client and Java Servlet code to build name picker for non-domino web applications.

Updated Projects
You can see all the projects that have been updated here.

New members
Membership of OpenNTF is fully open, and we will shortly be holding elections for some new steering Committee Members. This is your chance to help shape the future of OpenNTF.

Remember you can join at anytime and your support is very much appreciated.

Your News
Remember if you have any news to share - email us at newsdesk@openntf.org

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