Outside of the hard-core community. most people do not know about PlanetLotus, BleedYellow, OpenNTF, or IdeaJam. Let me put it this way ... way more people did not know about all 4 of those sites than those that did.
I am realizing more and more how small our community really is and how we tend to think that everybody reads blogs, listens to podcasts, downloads creates ideas on IdeaJam etc. Considering there are over 100 million Notes/Domino users I think I, and you my beloved blog reader and podcast listener live in a relatively small echo chamber.
Somehow I feel this ties in with some of the recent topics on Ed and Nathan's blog. Maybe I am wrong but hearing what John wrote is a bit discerning.
Comment posted by Ed Maloney03/19/2008 03:33:56 PM
I agree with this assessment. Those inside the bubble (the blogosphere) have an entirely different perception of what is going on with Notes than everyone else. We take for granted that everyone knows what we know. The Notes/Domino coverage in the mainstream media is negligible compared to Microsoft coverage, creating the impression that Lotus is no longer relevant. I think that IBM has been doing a better job of promoting Lotus recently, but is still losing mindshare in the industry. I don't know what the solution is to this, but some sort of outreach effort from IBM and the blogging community would help.
Comment posted by Volker Weber03/19/2008 03:36:24 PM
Homepage: http://vowe.net/about
Bruce, you have 93 subscribers on Google Reader. Ed or Alan whose sites have been heavily promoted have about 15 times more. Top blogs on planetlotus.org get 1000 clicks in 5 days. Ideas on ideajam have dozens of votes.
This all leads me to believe there are 10k max people following this game. Every single one of those 10k people have 10k people who never played. That's all assuming that the number of Notes users is not inflated.
Comment posted by Bruce03/19/2008 03:50:49 PM
@Vowe,
I do have 630 on FeedBurner 
Comment posted by John Head03/19/2008 05:55:37 PM
Bruce - I wrote it because I do not believe we are realistic in what the Lotus Community is ... but also because it is a huge opportunity for us to grow! Not 100% negative comment by any means
Comment posted by Bruce03/19/2008 05:58:44 PM
@John,
Acknowledged..... I was simply making a statement based on my observations. Now who will grow it and how will they grow it?
Comment posted by Nathan T. Freeman03/19/2008 06:00:32 PM
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com
@Vowe, and there's a solid 5% of that reading vowe.net.
Keep up the great work! Truly you are an asset. Or at least part of one.
Comment posted by Andre Guirard03/19/2008 07:49:42 PM
Homepage: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/bpmpblog.nsf
The realistic potential audience for these blogs, forums, wikis and so on, however, is not the total Notes user community but the total Notes developer/admin/sales community -- a much smaller number -- but still much larger than we have yet been able to reach.
I think a lot more people read the LDD forums than read any blogs. But that's just a guess -- I don't have stats.
Comment posted by Volker Weber03/20/2008 01:25:10 AM
Homepage: http://vowe.net/about
Bruce, I don't mean you have 93 readers. Of course you have hundreds if not thousands. But that is a very far cry from the millions of Notes users.
I don't see this as a problem. Andre points in the right direction. You can't reach the office clerk who uses Notes as an application which is "just there".
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred03/20/2008 06:12:40 AM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
I am still amazed at the number of people that do not follow the blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. I, like a lot of you, always ask groups of Notes people if they are aware of the community outside of the LDD forums and am surprised by the small number of hands. And the audience is usually developers/admins in large(er) organizations.
I'm not asking for participation, I am asking for awareness.
I wonder if we can leverage LotusUserGroup.org or something similar?
Comment posted by Bruce03/20/2008 06:14:37 AM
@Gregg,
Read into my message a bit more and you will figure out "who" can help move this along.
Comment posted by Sean Burgess03/20/2008 08:01:43 AM
Homepage: http://www.phigsaidwhat.com/
Well, I have taken it upon myself to setup a brown bag lunch meeting with the rest of the Lotus contingent in the consultant company I am working through. The purpose of this meeting is to introduce them to things like BleedYellow and IdeaJam. Hopefully, they will take the information and join the community, but it's not a guarantee.
Comment posted by Jess Stratton03/20/2008 11:34:33 AM
Homepage: http://www.lotususergroup.org/blogsphe.nsf
Well, certainly having all these channels for people to find is a start, right? It's not like these are hidden sites. The more sites exist, the more opportunities for people to find them.
I DO think there needs to be more user-focused sites. Could the 100-million Notes users all benefit from sites where it's primarily only useful to admins and developers? Not really. Could they all benefit from Alan Lepofsky's tip site? Yes, including the admins and developers, because we are all client users also.
@Ed - I can't see how we are taking for granted that everyone knows what we know. Isn't the point of all the blogs, coverage, podcasts, etc. to spread the word so that everyone CAN know? 
