Lotus Agenda
software used for organizing one's personal information
Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Development.
Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it is entered into the database. A phrase such as "See Wendy on Tuesday 3pm" can be entered as is without any pre-processing.
Its distinguishing feature was the ability to allow users to input data before the creation of database tables, giving the program flexibility to accommodate the myriad pieces of information a person may need to keep track of.
The program was an attempt to create a "spreadsheet" for words. The computing industry was at first quite taken by its audacious goal and the power it brought to users as they were given a tool that allowed them to structure "real life" information in any way they wished.
Its flexibility proved to be its weakness. New users confronted with so much flexibility were often overpowered by the steep learning curve required to use the program. Attempts to overcome this through packaging pre-built databases with the program were insufficient to lift sales to adequate levels. In the end only a few hundred thousand copies were sold.
The public source identifies “Lotus Agenda” as software used for organizing one's personal information. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lotus, Agenda and software.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lotus Agenda” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.