About

My name is David Killingsworth. I started managing Domino back in the R3 and R4 days. Initially, I joined the Lotus Notes team at Amoco (the previous American energy company) from the desktop support team.

Some of my first projects were making sure that the backups were configured properly using Amoco’s ADSM infrastructure. I also worked on migrating OS/2 servers to Windows NT. I built the first Windows NT domain and infrastructure at Amoco (we were a Novell shop).

Those were the days. Remember NotesPump and InterNotes Web Publisher? That first web server was such a huge headache! That server was up and down like a window shade in a 3rd grade classroom, as my old co-worker named Don Karner used to say.

From there BP and Amoco merged, I became an infrastructure architect and I designed a new 3rd Domino infrastructure that was hierarchical, had development and pilot servers, had processes and standards that were followed before applications were allowed into the environment, and basically had all the bells and whistles andy self discerning admin/technical architect could want in an environment that would support 100,000 users.

I spent 2 or 3 years consolidated Amoco’s environment and BP’s mish-mashed environment into the new domain. This meant rationalizing applications, moving legacy systems into the 21st century, and pulling apart a joint venture Domino infrastructure that BP built with Mobil. BP’s Domino infrastructure was managed by several different groups, and many of them weren’t really sanctioned. On top of the rationalization, we had to diplomatically take control of all of the existing BP servers.

Then came the purchase of Arco, Burmah Castrol, and Veba (a German lubricants company) all of which were Notes/Domino shops. I worked on consolidating all of those environments into the BP Amoco Domino infrastructure.

I took a year out of doing Domino, to work solely on something called “collaboration technologies” This meant piloting and implementing the early versions of Sametime and Quickplace. Sametime was an instant success and Quickplace was seriously too infantile for enterprise level usage. Specifically, Quickplace couldn’t tie into an existing Domino directory or LDAP infrastructure. That product was a serious headache.

After a year of part instant success and part headache, I moved back into the Domino side of things and worked on maximizing the technology available in Domino to externalize our Internet facing Domino applications to servers hosted and protected by UUnet at first, and then once that migration was complete, the company decided to move all Internet facing hosting from UUnet to IBM.

I took a large severance package, and a much needed sabbatical and did some part time Domino/Sametime freelance consulting, traveled all over Asia, lived in London a year, and also got more into Internet technologies and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) while running my own Linux web server/with cPanel and WHM. Thus I had my own small web hosting company. During this period, I did a small amount of Domino freelance jobs, had a couple of Sametime installation jobs, and taught myself graphic design ala Photoshop and Illustrator and even Final Cut Pro.

Bowing down to financial needs I got back into Domino administration / architecture in May 2007, where I’m now managing an almost email only Domino infrastructure for a commodities trading company in Hong Kong.

Thus that’s why my tag line is Domino administration with a designer’s appeal. I’ve learned alot about design that I never saw in the major corporations that I worked with before. They have graphic design teams or groups, but never any design appeal. I knew those people and got along with them really well, but they were forced to follow the marketing standards set by the top level execs, which basically leaves out any design appeal. I also find that most corporate IT types, don’t know much or care much about design and aesthetics.