The nomination phase is over (due Oct 31) and now people at HCL are selecting the future HCL Ambassadors for 2025 in the next month and then finally present them in December.
This time I won’t be on this list, because I didn’t nominate myself for it - this is a prerequisite for it in general as it states that you want to be part of this remarkable group of people. This time I thought I won’t qualify for it anymore. In this post I’d like to explain why I decided not to apply again.
Benefits
I won’t mention the childish discussion about “swag” here which was a running gag for years in the HCL Ambassador calls, because I never cared enough about wearing a shirt or using a mug with the logo on it. Actually, I find all those branded items a waste of resources. The picture actually shows an award made by the German subsidiary of HCL for the local DACH Ambassadors before we finally got some official stuff in summer 2024. A nice touch.
My main interest in being treated as “a special person” was getting useful information prior to others with the goal of testing and evaluating it for my customers before it reaches the public. It always was a lot of fun to do that. For me the pinnacle was reached with version 12 and the One-Touch and the Domino Leap workflow editor stuff I saw in presentations years ago. Now this is just normal daily stuff - crazy, how time flies.
Events
Thanks Covid, my last international on-site event was Engage 2020 in Arnhem but during and even after Covid, at least my life wasn’t the same as before. I never missed travelling to customers during this time so I also didn’t miss events in general. Additionally my company also didn’t bother about events anymore as they were expensive and didn’t deliver anything back in the past - except great memories for those who attended (me!). When Nintera was sold in September 2023 to MEKO-S, the idea of attending HCL-related events was completely buried. At least I don’t have to attend Microsoft-related events either - oh, the lucky boy I am. We are still HCL business partner because we still care about the products.
Anyway, I didn’t deliver any presentation in years, neither for a customer nor at an event.
Engagement
I am an OpenNTF board member in the 10th year now - but this does not qualify me to apply as an HCL Ambassador. If so, every board member should automatically be one, right? This is not the case unfortunately. To be honest, lately I also don't see me as engaged here as well.
Strategy
I was very enthusiastic when HCL took over the “collaboration solutions” part from IBM - and they were, too. I don’t see the strategy going to a reasonable direction lately. Don’t get me wrong: the fact to have a Notes client on your mobile device and browser is nice, but actually I don’t see why I should go and create apps using legacy elements and Lotusscript now to run in a “modern” environment.
In 2024 there are still some elementary things missing that do not work in these environment, most of them in the UI - which already was crap in the “real” Notes client - now it’s even worse.
I am building web apps for decades using Domino, first using forms, agents and pass-thru HTML, later using XPages. The latter didn’t get any love in years - and I am actually quite pissed about that as I am using them on a DAILY basis! They are still the fastest and easiest way to create comprehensive web apps on Domino - but no one seem to love them anymore.
Anyway, the tool of choice, the Domino Designer, didn’t get much love, either - and bugs that are there for decades are still driving me crazy. The latest v14 is not usable for me since I cannot migrate all the apps I maintain to the new Java backend at once - if any of them, so v14 is currently not on my list.
The server did very well though, but it seems to me that features were added that are still quite buggy (backup) and poorly documented (almost everything new since v12).
The quality of the support also recently dropped a bit. Overall my impression got some damage.
Conclusion
Do you read frustration and/or resignation in my words? You may be right. The final piece of the puzzle for my decision not to apply again.
I any case I enjoyed being around the HCL Ambassadors for 5 years (and 4x IBM Champion before that) and everything that came with it. To all HCL Ambassadors of 2025, rejoined or new, congratulations & enjoy the ride!