2) Less than five percent knew what RSS was or how to use it
3) Less than twenty percent knew about Hannover
4) To maximize the feature-set available in Hannover Notes and Domino developers will need to start learning Eclipse and Java
As for items one and two what I should have asked is how Notes and Domino developers get their news about Notes and Domino outside of the blogosphere. I think we as bloggers tend to over estimate the sphere of influence our blogs/podcasts have including bloggers such as Ed and others. Maybe it's just regional here in the Northwest as we do live and work in Microsoft-land but, after I took these show of hands polls during my presentation I realized it was time for a reality check. As for item three I know that Hannover is still a relatively knew announcement and that it will take some time for the word to get out hence, LCTY's :-)
As for item four - like I said it's time to for Notes and Domino developers to learn Eclipse and Java as Hannover >= Notes. Julian and I covered some of this in Episode 18 of the Taking Notes Podcast.
More thoughts on this later.
Technorati: Hannover Lotus Notes Domino blogging
Comment posted by Chris Whisonant04/07/2006 11:57:21 AM
Homepage: http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com
That's interesting that people read blogs without using RSS... I know that I try to keep people informed about certain things I read on blogs. Often times, though, if I send a "blog" link to someone they will retort with something to the effect of "that's a blog and it's probably just unreliable opinion"... gee, thanks!
Comment posted by Dovid04/07/2006 01:14:16 PM
@1,
Well of course! Look whose site you're on! 
Comment posted by Chris Whisonant04/07/2006 01:22:31 PM
Homepage: http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com
Well I didn't want to come out and say that!!
Comment posted by Bruce Elgort04/07/2006 01:24:49 PM
Homepage: http://www.bruceelgort.com
@Chris and Dovid,
Feelings, nothing more than feelings...... 
Comment posted by Chris Whisonant04/07/2006 01:59:05 PM
Homepage: http://cwhisonant.blogspot.com
I just want to come on the record and say that I truly value your unreliable opinions... 
All in fun...all in fun! Have a good weekend!
Comment posted by Jack Dausman04/07/2006 04:35:29 PM
Homepage: http://www.leadershipbynumbers.com
Those numbers are in range with what I see. It's strange, but a lot of IT professionals have an institutional perspective about what they do. When I used to interview job applicants, one of my top-ten questions was to ask about recent technical reading (e.g., books, trade journals, etc.). Do you know what was the most common response (by over 80%)? "When I have a problem, I read the manual." Mind you, I wasn't asking about how to solve a problem, just how one keeps abreast of technology.
Comment posted by Julian Robichaux04/07/2006 06:12:01 PM
Homepage: http://www.nsftools.com
I think the key to understanding the low number of people who read blogs or know anything about RSS is to understand how few people actually think of their jobs as anything more than... a job.
For most people, they're in the technology business because that's what they're getting paid to do. Ideally they have some knack for understanding technology too, but that's not a given (based on people I've met). But in any case, they're not going to spend their free time reading about technology any more than a fry cook at McDonalds is going to go home and read forums and blogs about deep frying potatos (I have no idea whether or not there are forums and blogs on such a subject, but the Internet continues to amaze me).
Anyway, point is that most Notes people aren't going to read Notes blogs because they don't find Notes (or any technology) especially interesting in the first place. Why on earth would they torture themselves by reading about the Notes community in their spare time? When they'd rather be watching DVDs or going to bars or something?
That's my take, anyway. I know plenty of computer professionals who don't even go home to check their personal e-mail at night. Their attitude is: I've been sitting in front of a computer all day, I'm not going to go home and do it some more.
Comment posted by Ganapathiram Natarajan04/07/2006 11:08:25 PM
This statistics surprises me. I never imagined it would be so low. Perhaps, it's just a question of people starting to realize the benefits of updating themselves with blogs?
Comment posted by Matt White04/07/2006 11:44:24 PM
Homepage: http://www.11tmr.com
@Julian,
I completely agree with you, to the point where during interviews we always make a point of finding out what "cool" stuff the candidate is playing with at home at the moment. If they aren't doing anything in their own time then IMHO they're not going to be very good at their job, I want to work with people who have a passion for their technology specialism (be it Notes or whatever), not because I want everyone to be geeks but because the only way you can be really good is if you put in the extra hours learning.
Bruce's figures ring true with me, although it's worth noting that I work with some really good people who think the whole blogging thing is "just wierd" (Hot Pockets 
) and they keep up to date by reading Advisor etc and just playing with code on their own.
Matt
Comment posted by Libby04/08/2006 06:45:17 AM
Homepage: http://www.lotususergroup.org/blogsphe.nsf
When we launched the LotusUserGroup.org blog at Lotusphere, the folks working our booth were talking to everyone who came by about blogging live from the show. These numbers are very in line (maybe even a little more optimistic) than what the folks at the booth were seeing from the general population. While our numbers during the blogging panel at Lotusphere were higher, that makes sense considering the self-selected audience.
Libby
Comment posted by Laurette Rynne04/09/2006 09:36:00 PM
Homepage: http://www.lauretterynne.com
I think the numbers would be even less here is Australia, but I suspect that's it's just a slower take-up. Before Lotusphere, Tim & I weren't aware of any other Australian bloggers - now we know of 4 or 5 others.
We do get some Australian hit reading our blogs, but it's mostly Europeans & US readers. Most other developers I know who read the blogs, only read a couple of the most prominent - edbrill and codestore are probably the two most well known down here.
It is starting to change slowly now, and I think by the end of this year Australia's figures would be about the same as you are showing here.
As for Julians' comment - I know people who would be classified as "computer professionals" - both admin and dev based, and non-Notes - who don't even have a computer at home, let alone spend any time reading/writing blogs!
