IdeaJam.net is a great forum for the Lotus community to share their ideas on improving the Lotus software and voting on your favorites.  It gives IBM great feedback for what we really want.  And as smart as the few dozen developers at IBM are, most of the best ideas are bound to come from the thousands of us who use the software in ways they never considered.

So what’s about to happen there that is so amazing?  First, it just surpassed 4,000 ideas submitted!  Over 10,000 comments have been made on those ideas.  With a mindshare like that, IBM has an incredible resource that no other software or software company has — FREE.  It’s combining the innovation of open source with the financial strength of private industry.  Wow!

Next amazing point:  IdeaJam is approaching 100,000 votes by all of us!  It is currently at 98,907 votes. Check out the stats here: http://ideajam.net/IdeaJam/P/ij.nsf/welcome?readform

Now here’s the bad part:  It looks like people aren’t contributing as much lately as they have in the past.  Why aren’t you voting?  Are you disillusioned because you don’t think ideas posted there are making it into the product or having any influence?  Well, yeah.  Me too.  And I think it’s because IBM is not participating in those discussions.  IBM, we need to know you’re listening.  Just being lurkers that read but don’t respond leaves us guessing if you care or if you are paying attention at all.  IBM, if you value this rare input from your customers, then show it.

If you have been to the last two Lotuspheres and attended the “Ask the Developers” or the new session titled “Ask the Product Managers”, then you’ve heard me present ideas that got good applause from the audience.  Those ideas came from IdeaJam.  They were already proven to be very popular.  Several of those ideas have been added to the product.  One in particular is the feature to block replication if a replica has not replicated within the purge interval.  This is coming in 8.5.3.

Check out the ideas of the top innovators and take the time to vote.  IBM, you need to step up to the plate too and start being more responsive to your community or people will abandon it and you can kiss this great asset goodbye.