GroupWise at BrainShare

Novell’s sub-army of GroupWise zealots came in force to BrainShare this year, and Novell was on a mission to make sure that we shared the love. On Wednesday, we closed out the general assembly keynotes with a view of the new GroupWise client interfaces.

Rather than me try to describe the demo, you can watch it online if you go to Novell’s website for BrainShare. Nat and my demo starts at about 1:27:00 into the video.

(I’ll confess that there are some odd restrictions about me linking my blog to Novell’s website, so no URL for you. Use the first link on this Google search. Any further editorializing and I get myself into hot water.)

Skunked

Those who know me well know that I pride myself on my presentation skills. It’s my one area of confidence: give me a subject that I am passionate about and put me in front of an audience, and I’ll knock the socks off the audience.

So when this report from BrainShare came in, apparently several people let my wife know about it, thinking that I’d be upset by it. It refers to me in this sentence:

The Identity Management demo was followed by Nat Friedman and another Novell engineer from the desktop group, who came on stage to demo some of the new desktop stuff in GroupWise for both the Windows and Linux versions of the tool.

“Another engineer from the desktop group.” That’s me.

Novell has this keynote available online as a flash video.

Nat’s Friday demo’s on futures of desktop Linux showed Beagle, Tomboy, and f-spot. And then he absolutely blew the doors off the convention hall showing the capabilities of XGL on Linux. It was one of the coolest tech demos I have ever seen, and Nat tied the technology to vision and articulated his point to clearly and succintly.

It’s one thing to have a self-opinion of one’s presentation skills, but you got to know when you’ve been skunked.

I give Nat one heck of a hard time, and call him the bane of my existence. Still, it really is a privilege to be the little-known other-guy on stage.

Red Army Embraces Desktop Linux

BrainShare in Salt Lake City is winding down, and my accelerated schedule is starting to slacken enough that I can share some of what has been going on.

First mention is that we have been overjoyed about the reception for Novell Linux Desktop at BrainShare. This is the first major event involving the loyal Novell customer base since we released Novell Linux Desktop. And while my team and my product management peer Bryan Cardoza’s team have been hoping for a warm welcome of the product, we were not sure whether it would get the love we wanted it to.

Any minor trepidation we had over this vanished immediately. Out counter in the BrainShare technology lab was constantly abuzz with customer inquiry all week. I finally had a chance to talk to some customers and answer questions last night and found that the enthusiasm for this product is huge.

Novell’s opportunity here may be unique. We have masses of loyal Novell enthusiasts who have been working in influntial IT roles for years now looking at how they can start bring desktop Linux into their organizations. So, with their help, this year may be the year that we begin to see serious traction for desktop Linux.

We did a lot of activities to help accelerate the situation. All of our Novell Linux Desktop sessions drove our main message about finding right-fit roles for desktop Linux. We even had a pretty well attended session called “Selling Your Boss and Your Boss’ Boss on Novell Linux Desktop,” which focused on how to properly advocate using desktop Linux in your organization without getting mired in the technical issues with people who want to know the business drivers and advantages.

We’re also trying to build “the Cult of NLD.” On of my team produced a computer decal to replace the “Designed for Microsoft Windows XP” foil sticker that comes on machines. The decal came adhered to a card showing very straightforward instructions on how use the new decal in place of the old. It was a huge hit and now we have to find a way to offer these through some kind of online ordering system.

The Novell “Red Army” has always been Novell’s power base, the lifeblood of the company’s historic success. (Andreas Bach sent me an email chronicling how his flight got grounded in Minneapolis, so he and his friends rented a car and drove to Salt Lake City–1350 miles–in order to get to BrainShare!) Having these die-hards embrace Linux on the desktop may prove to be a watershed event for Linux. These people have the experience and tenacity to take Linux in force into places it has so far only dabbled in, places like the business desktop.

GroupWise Client Work

Yesterday, The GroupWise engineering team gave Bryan Cardoza, Nat Friedman and me a full tour of the updates to the GroupWise clients. I went to the meeting without very high expectations only to have my socks knocked off by the incredible amount of work that had been done across the board.

Every one of the client interfaces that Novell produces for GroupWise had gotten a serious facelift, and the functionality that comes with the cosmetics was equally exciting. The GroupWise WebAccess interface is beautiful. The team has pushed some new user interface boundaries in the Win32 client–actual pioneering work in this area. The crossplatform client (for Mac and Linux) has undergone major improvements, too. We have one other client that we’re working on as well, but I’m not going to talk about it yet. (Hint: I’m not talking about Evolution.)

Best evidence of all as to whether the team is doing their work well was Nat’s reaction. Nat has been with Novell for only a short time, and his oversight of GroupWise has been literally a few months. Consequently, Nat does not have the deep emotional attachment to GroupWise that people typically get over any technology in which they have a vested interest. Also, Nat is a user experience zealot. He really gets that the look and feel of software has as much (or more) to say about its quality than the actual functionality. So, Nat gushing–I mean, literally gushing–about the demos after seeing them speaks volumes about the work being done.

For me, the demos got me really charged up about the upcoming launch of this next version of GroupWise. This is going to be a fun product to show off and market. I know that our current customers are going to love the strides we have made with it, and I also have a renewed confidence that we can start attracting Linux-ready shops to consider adopting GroupWise instead of swallowing the Windows-Exchange pill.

We’ll demo the interfaces at BrainShare next week, and I do not want to steal any of the thunder from the keynotes and breakouts that will feature this release. Suffice to say that it will be quite good.

Advocating Open Source: O’Reilly media

Jono Bacon gets it. In a new series of articles started on O’Reilly’s Linux devcenter, Jono Bacon is putting down solid thoughts on strategies for advocating open source. Why do I like it? Probably because Bacon is saying some of the same things I have been harping about, but perhaps more eloquently.

From the “how to blog about this” suggested text:
Sowing the Seeds of Open Source Advocacy by Jono Bacon — Advocacy is critical to the spread of open source and free software. Good advocacy can help spread freedom and software quality, while bad advocacy can reinforce unpleasant stereotypes. Good advocacy requires far more than just being right, though. Jono Bacon explores how to approach the message and the audience.