Just a quick post - I've been pretty busy lately - with a return to work, and keeping up with Emily, things have been pretty hectic.

One thing I just wanted to put out there though, is the current state of play of the market in Sydney - I've advertised for a couple of positions and have had some trouble filling the roles - the one that I'm especially surprised about is the Domino role - it's the classic web development role with a Domino background (internet, intranet, extranet sites) but I haven't exactly been inundated with heaps of applicants. There have been a few - some too pricey, some underskilled, some pretty good - but certainly not as many as I would have expected.

What are other's comments on the market at the moment (elsewhere as well as Sydney)?. To me, it seems that the market is pretty good if your skills happen to fit one of the niche jobs (they have some good dollars to offer), but for the rest of the roles, there seems to be a lack of candidates. I've talked with a few friends who say the same sort of situation is represented in places like Melbourne and Canberra so maybe we're in a bit of a rut at the moment. What's interesting though, is that despite the market appearing a little tight, the salary ranges aren't reflecting the demand - there seems to be a price set on a developer salary and no matter what the market is dictating, most places aren't looking to extend beyond their current ranges.

At the moment, it's almost as if there are more positions than candidates - I know that's not the case, but in the past you'd see 10 or 20 people applying for a role on the first day it's announced, now there's more of a trickle effect.

Am I just an anomoly? (don't worry - I've been called worse!)

so...

Yesterday was "Lotusphere Comes To You" (LCTY) for Sydney - there was a pretty good turnout for the 4 or so hours of information on offer - a good sign for those of us in the local industry to see that there is still a lot of interest in Notes8. It was a bit hard to tell, but I think there were around 5-600 guests - most of which who were pretty excited about some of the things they saw and what's just on the horizon for Notes and Domino.

[executive summary - again, another great year of development in the Lotus brand - lots of new stuff on the horizon, looks like a lot of fun to play with, but more importantly it looks like creating a more effective and efficient user experience in the Lotus suite - good stuff guys]

Unfortunately I don't really have a lot of time at the moment but just wanted to kickstart myself into blogging about some of the details - I hope to give a bit of detail about the sessions, but this entry is a more general outline of the (half) day's events.

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Just a quick request to anyone who might be able to point me towards some useful software to convert Lotus Notes documents into PDF files. I know that there are a number of applications/add-ons out there, but most do some, but not all, of my wishlist:

1 - enables printing of Lotus Notes documents to a PDF file
2 - doesn't require a client side installation of a printer driver
3 - doesn't require any client side dll files
4 - doesn't require http to be running on the server
5 - handles rich text fields without conversion/issue
6 - enables the pdf generation to be done programmatically
7 - is quick enough to be real time
8 - is free/open source (ok - this isn't a "must have" but would be nice in an ideal world)

The documents are just normal documents - but they do contain rich text fields which can potentially have formatting (eg letter templates, images, tables etc)

anyone got/used/heard of something that might help?
(note items 4, 5 and 6 - they seem to be the biggies - I can't seem to find something which does them both)

also - if anyone has played with iText, I'd be interested to hear how it went with rich text fields...

Last night we rocked along to another Lotus User Group meeting in Sydney to hear the news from the latest IBMers to travel across the void and enjoy the sunshine in the beautiful southern hemisphere.

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I just had a comment from Adam Osborne asking about whether Fusion was discussed at the Ed Brill event in my writeup - I started to kick off a response, but once it got to 3 paragraphs, I thought it deemed a top level entry.

I didn't put it in the entry, but yes - there was some talk.. not completely sure of the intention behind it, but there was a "questionaire" that everyone filled out which asked if you would attend a Lotus Fusion-type event.. and whether you'd pay, and how long it should go for etc... It was Lotus-branded so hopefully that shows that it is at least being considered again.

I hope/expect they would get an overwhelming response of "Yes" - I know of a lot of people who wrote on the last set of feedback forms "Bring Back Fusion!" so hopefully that has converted into a 100% success rate requesting a Fusion-like event to be held regularly again in Australia... it's been too long between drinks for something good in the Australian developer market...

One of the things that I desperately hope isn't going to happen is that we get sold on a Fusion-like event, we all toddle along full of expectation and we end up seeing marketing presentations for a couple of days. There are many people that I've met over the last couple of years who are capable (and willing - if you assume conversations held in late night conference-related drinking sessions actually reflect their willingness) to do some good technical presentations then it would be a shame not to see it happen.

I'm not sure of the logistics, but given a few of the slides from Lotusphere, I know of a few business partners and interested parties who would be more than capable of presenting the same content with a little bit of local flavour kicked in the spice things up.

let's wait and see I guess....

The next question is "Where do you want it to be held?" - in your hometown/major city (Sydney/Melbourne/Brisbane I would suggest as top runners), or somewhere exotic (hmmm.. does the Qld Coast qualify as "exotic"?)