Today's the Day

My son, Jeff has the afternoon booked off work.

He requested the time off several weeks ago - the moment he learned Steve Jobs' Macworld Keynote address would be available later today at the Apple website.

What is it about the Apple brand that would cause my 16 year old to interrupt his life to take notice?

Perhaps it's the aura of rebellion that the "Think Different" brand evokes. Perhaps it's the fact that he already owns a Mac Mini and several iPods. Perhaps it's his experience with OS X, purchased the first day it was available at the Mac store. (In fact, Dad still has the T-shirt given out to the first 500 customers who waited outside in line, that chilly evening.)

I remember that same feeling once before.

It was at Lotusphere many years ago, during the launch of Domino 5.0.

Over 12,000 avid fans attended the event in Orlando, late in January. I led a contingent of about a half dozen of my developers, managers and engineers. Our company had, years earlier, made the decision to use Lotus Notes enterprise wide. And we were happy with the decision.

Some very bright team members made Lotus NOTES so much more than email. We built knowledge management applications, project management applications and employee review applications with the platform. Our corporate intranet was built on the Domino platform.

We hung on every word of each conference session. The keynotes were like rock shows. You could feel the energy in the crowd. People believed in the product and the applications it made possible. Lotus was innovating at light speed. They had features and capability that Exchange just didn't have.

Not only did Lotus have customers, they had fans.

Perhaps it was a sense of community, rising up against the Microsoft machine. Perhaps it was a sense of adventure. Whatever it was, it was exciting.

And I plan on recapturing some of that feeling this afternoon - when Jeff and I listen to the Macworld Keynote together.