Author Archives: Dave Habz
Notes/Domino 14.5 Fix Pack 1 Just Released!
HCL just released Fix Pack 1 for version 14.5 of HCL Notes/Domino (formerly Lotus Notes & Domino).
It is available in the HCL Software Downloads Homepage: https://my.hcltechsw.com/
If you have an older version of Notes & Domino and don’t have access to the download page or access to contact HCL Technical Support, contact me directly and I can help you get your licenses reinstated and get access to the latest version of software.
There is a wide variety of fixes in this update, with the largest categories being XPages and Security. Visit the HCL fix list to see what bug fixes were included in this release. While you’re looking at the list, which fixes do you find the biggest reason to install this Fix Pack? Please post a comment.
Toastmasters: “Where Leaders Were Made”
The motto of Toastmasters used to be “Where Leaders are Made”
Or as I like to say:
“People join to learn public speaking
and stay to learn leadership.”
What seems to have been forgotten by Toastmasters International is that in the process of deliberately teaching Leadership driven by a dedicated Competent Leadership manual, Toastmasters had a baked-in process to perpetuate and build clubs. With the focus now exclusively on public speaking, once someone gets comfortable with that skill, they have no incentive to stick around and develop their leadership skills or pass those skills on to others. This is certainly a contributing factor to the decline in membership.
While Toastmasters International has dropped the focus of leadership, I am hearing more and more clubs are re-introducing the Competent Leadership Manual as a supplement to the Pathways program. There is practically no overlap and it is motivating members to take more meeting roles and club officer roles that they otherwise might not.
If your club is interested in doing this, here is the .pdf of the Competent Leadership manual.
The one thing that is missing is a convenient source for getting the CL .pdf printed as a manual (not just a stapled booklet). If you have a suggested source for printing, please share it in the comments.
Notes/Domino 12.0.2 Fix Pack 7 Released Now (Lotus Notes)
There is a new FixPack released for the 12.0.2 series of Notes and Domino. Unlike other releases which occur across all currently supported major releases, this is only a fix pack for 12.0.2. Nothing for 14 or 14.5. Rather than repeat all of the details, check out the technote by HCL:
There are 44 bug fixes published in the list of fixes. The most notable one for me is the one created as a direct result of a bug I reported while working with a database with 13 TB of data DAOS data. You read that right, 13 Terabytes (1.3×10^13 bytes or 13,000,000 MB). Quite possibly the largest Notes database in existence today. If you have a database of comparable or larger size, I would love to hear about it.
This also reveals a limitation in the database properties panel. It can’t properly display a database size that large. This one isn’t fixed yet.
The Essentials of the Pause Counter
I have slightly modified the Pause Counter form to encourage identifying missed pauses and clarifying the types of pauses. The updated form is at https://bit.ly/pausecounterform
A more in-depth discussion and video can be found at https://davidhablewitz.com/2024/02/27/power-of-the-pause/
If your club uses easy-speak.org to assign meeting roles, you can add the Pause Counter to your agenda following the instructions found in my article on adding Pause Counter to EasySpeak.
Take a moment to post your comments about how you have implemented the Pause Counter in your Toastmasters club and share this article and the Pause Counter Form & Guide with Toastmasters in other clubs near you.
For more on the topic, you might see what Vinh Giang has to say about the pause: https://youtube.com/shorts/-Cl8uKG3PuY?si=1Y05V2jy32jQmGkD
HCL Notes and Domino V14.5 is Released!
Version 14.5 of HCL Notes (Lotus Notes) and HCL Domino have been released today. Some details you might like to know…
You can watch the replay of the release announcement on youtube right here:
The download website is here and rather than remember that, just bookmark my page with all the Domino links you’ll want in one place!
HCL Support Forums have moved to new HCL Developer Community
HCL migrated the support forums from the old community where you also created support tickets, to the new website used for other community functions. All of the data has been brought over. You may need to create a new login if you haven’t already accessed the new website.
New site: https://developer.ds.hcl-software.com/
The Former site: https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=csm_index
You still visit this former site to create tickets with HCL technical support.
Don’t feel like you need to remember all of this? Just come here to my blog and click the Essential Notes/Domino Links link on the right-hand side or bookmark the short URL.
New Notes/Domino Community hosted by HCL
HCL just launched a new online community around their software. It supports blogs, events, presentations, job postings and a number of other resources to make it a central place for users, administrators, and developers to communicate with each other and with HCL.
Here is a link: https://developer.ds.hcl-software.com/
I have also added it to my Essential Notes/Domino links Page so you just need one link to get to everything: https://bit.ly/dominolinks
Toastmasters Pathways: A Case Study of Reverse Improvement?
The photo above has Bill Maher’s definition of the term Reverse Improvement. Watch the video below to hear how Bill Maher describes Reverse Improvement in colorful detail.
Do you think this term applies to what Toastmasters International has done to the education program that had successfully educated nearly 8 million people before TI converted to Base Camp and Pathways? Watch the video, (pardon the colorful language) and be sure to listen through to the end to get his conclusion. Then leave a comment to share your perspective.
Restoring the Focus on Leadership and Meeting Roles in Toastmasters
Yes, in Toastmasters, we give prepared and impromptu speeches to develop public speaking skills.
But many (most?) aspects of Toastmasters meetings are actually intended to build leadership skills.
Grammarian, Ah-Counter, & Evaluator all develop critical listening skills.
Timer, Speaker, Toastmaster, & Table Topics Master all develop time management skills.
Speech Evaluator, General Evaluator, & Grammarian all develop skills on giving feedback.
Toastmaster develops people management and meeting preparation skills.
Club officer roles give additional opportunities to learn and practice leadership skills and provide a template for running an organization.
Three ways we’re putting a focus on leadership back into our club:
- Paper signup sheet for meeting roles by the door at the meeting (to simplify the sign-up process)
- Personal meeting role record sheets (to track individual progress)
- Written evaluations for leadership roles (to provide feedback for improving)
Some clubs ask members to go online to their club website (easy-speak.org or toastmastersclubs.org) and pick a meeting role for each meeting. Other clubs have the Vice-President of Education (VPE) assign meeting roles for everyone in the website. We prefer to allow members to choose their role, but have had a problem with getting people to sign up on the website on their own. The solution we are going to try out is to have a paper sign-up sheet at the meeting.
Additionally, we’re providing a means for members to track their own progress on filling the different meeting roles. Yes, if your club uses Easy-speak.org, the VPE can pull this information from the website, but it is not easily accessed for all the members. So we’re exploring tracking this on a paper form.
Lastly, Toastmasters mantra is that the key to improving is in getting feedback after every speech or leadership activity. However, with Pathways, leadership roles are not addressed and no feedback is given for them. So we’re re-introducing giving each other written feedback when a member performs certain meeting roles to improve their leadership skills.
This is an experiment. Watch for updates on our progress!
Ted Lasso shows why we practice Table Topics
In this video clip, Ted lasso (from the Apple+ series “Ted Lasso”) shows his brilliance at giving anecdotes to answer questions in a much more appealing and meaningful way than just giving a straight answer. In Toastmasters we practice this in a game called Table Topics.
This scene from Season 2, Episode 1 is one of many brilliant speeches he gives in this series. He is answering a reporter’s question after the team mascot was killed when a player accidentally kicked the soccer ball into it during a match.
He really demonstrates how to effectively bring your audience on a powerful emotional journey that sways their hearts in a 1-2 minute speech.
Make this your goal in every table topics speech you give at Toastmasters and you will build your skills to be ready to give this kind of answer when it really counts: at your next press conference, job interview or a simple social gathering.
Also pay attention to his use of pauses. Learn more on this topic at https://davidhablewitz.com/2024/02/27/power-of-the-pause/
See more Toastmasters tips at my blog: https://davidhablewitz.com/category/toastmasters/
OpenNTF brings back “Ask the Developers!”
Thanks to a collaboration between HCL and OpenNTF, OpenNTF will be hosting a recurring event online with HCL named “Open Mic”. In these events, there will be one or more experts from HCL making themselves available to answer questions on a specific topic.
It is a unique opportunity to talk directly with the brilliant people who actually write the Notes & Domino software. You may want to know why they created a solution in a particular way, or have a specific question that isn’t really fit for a ticket with HCL support, or anything else you may want to get an answer about the area of expertise first-hand.
So many times I was first in line at the microphones positioned around the audience, waiting to ask the first question (and many more) in the “Ask the Developers” session or the “Meet the Developers” in the labs at Lotusphere. In fact, at one point I was invited on stage and graced as an “honorary developer” and even donned a yellow shirt by one of the developers.
Now I have the humbling honor to serve as your host for these events! I will not be bringing my own questions. Instead, I will be moderating the conversation with our distinguished panelists and the audience, taking your questions live or in advance.
These Open Mic sessions will generally be held the 4th Thursday of each month. Check the OpenNTF.org website each month for details. The first event will focus on Security and Domino Authentication Protocols led by HCL team member David Kern. This Open Mic will take place on January 23rd from 11:00 AM (New York time) to 12:30 PM.
(Updated Dec 14) Critical Alert: Do Not Restart Domino Servers After 2024-12-13 Without the Hot Fix
14 Dec 2024 UPDATE: Less than 24 hours from first posting and the technote below has already been updated to include links to the hot fixes for the latest versions of 11, 12, and 14 with additional fixes coming. Note: You must be current on your software support license to obtain the patches. Also updated that patches will be provided for V9 and V10 for customers paying for extended support. HCL is doing a great job handling this.
HCL released this alert regarding all versions of Domino on all platforms.
In short, there is a date/time bug in the code that will cause mail routing to fail if the server is restarted as of 13 December 2024. Read the technote for details:
“CRITICAL ALERT: Mail not routing after Domino restarts beginning 13 December 24”
https://support.hcl-software.com/csm?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0118192
This is the first time I have ever seen such a notice regarding Lotus Notes / Domino ever. To this I will say,
First, impressive that this is the first time in 30 years (including leading up to Y2K) that they have had such a notice and
Second, that by mid day, they had identified the issue and are working on the hot fix.
Third, this is only an issue if you restart Domino, (though I would avoid restarting the router task as well) and Domino is renowned for its reliability, so hopefully you we can all just leave well enough alone and wait for the HF.
NOTICE: if you are one of those companies who quit paying your software and support licensing, you’re about to get a reminder that software isn’t free. You will need to re-instate your licenses to get access to the hot fix. Even if you are running *OLD versions* (9.0 and earlier even), your server will not route mail once it is restarted. An impactful time bomb for sure. (UPDATE: The technote has been updated that a hot fix will also be created for V9.0.1 and V10, provided you are on extended support)
With that in mind, If you need to re-instate your licenses so you can access the hot fix, send an email to me at Info@divergentnw.com . Don’t wait until your server restarts.
My heart goes out to the developers working to generate a hot fix for this. Not the kind of pressure anyone wants going into a weekend. My turn will come in this event. I will be the one installing the hot fix on servers everywhere as soon as it is available.
The Notes Guy in Seattle 