Here's a fun little game: Go through articles that aren't about Lotus Notes and Domino per se, and pull out the complimentary quotes. The pickings are especially ripe in the articles about Ray Ozzie. The title quote comes from a recent article in Fortune, Microsoft's New Brain. Here's the context:

And who was in charge of this retreat? It wasn't Ballmer. And believe it or not, co-founder and chairman Bill Gates wasn't even present. Running the show was Ray Ozzie, who had been a Microsoft employee for less than two months. But the chairman and the CEO already had so much confidence in Ozzie - a renowned programmer who had created Lotus Notes, one of software's biggest triumphs - that he had become Gates' proxy.

And a little later in the same article, there's this:

"With Ray, it was like he had always been part of us," says an executive. That deference dates back to the 1980s, when Ozzie began working on Notes, a breakthrough communications and collaboration tool for internal corporate networks that pushed Windows to its technological limits. Indeed, Gates says no one gave the company better feedback on Windows than Ozzie.

You can play this game, too! Whenever you find an offhand compliment paid to Lotus Notes and Domino in articles that aren't directly about it, post a response here, or post it to your own blog and post a link here.

1. Philip Storry04/26/2006 06:19:21 AM
Homepage: http://www.not-so-rapid.com

That Fortune article is about the problems with Microsoft, and yet quotes Ballmer with a straight face:

Ballmer says, "We have the birthright to lead the pack. We've got more technology. We've got more experience."

So, seriously, is this what you'd want to hear from ANY software supplier?

Not that they should lead through better technology, or through better experience, or through providing better value for their customers - but because he thinks that they were first on the block and that it's their right to lead?

(Not that they were first on the block, but nevermind...)

Someone should put a mirror in Ballmer's office, with a placard above it that reads: "This is the problem with Microsoft".