Ray Ozzie and others are celebrating and musing on the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the development of Lotus Notes. He acknowledges his co-leaders on the software project, Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell. Tim and Len had joined him from Digital Equipment Corporation, where they had worked on VAX NOTES, a discussion-forum software platform that was the conversational life of Digital Equipment (known to some as DEC).

Elsewhere in today’s email, the Fred Nikols asks the com-prac community for examples of “true” communities of practice. Their numbers at Digital were legion. VAX NOTES was a perfect example of a collaboration tool that satisfied the needs of the users, was integrated with email, and provided “easynet” access to colleagues (actual and potential) worldwide. In particular, the software services organization in Digital — providing support to customers by interfacing with the software development groups, helping customers install and customize programs, and so on — could not have been effective without VAX NOTES. I titled an article that I wrote about Notes, “The Camelot of Collaboration,” because in later years, as the world wide web doomed the proprietary NOTES, collaboration suffered because there was no replacement as easy to use and ready to hand.

Meanwhile, I always thought I was missing something because none of the companies I’ve worked in for the last 15 years used Lotus Notes. I am currently working with a client who uses it and I’ve learned it to communicate and set up meetings. The interface confuses me, and I’ve been very unsuccessful (a hard admission for an old techie like me). Fifteen years? And the interface is still this hard to use?