It literally feels like yesterday when
I posted this.
One day I will get it together, but all in all its getting there.
Easing back to work on Wednesday, but starting to read emails now
and get back into the run of things. So what has happened over the
past 3 weeks in geeksville? A lot it seems, but as Alan Lepofsky
says, Locustsknow that ;). Expect posts tomorrow and onwards.
Taking two weeks off (for real this time).
See you all on the other side. In the mean time, I will be
lying by a pool. Yesterday I took the bike down to Dublin, and for
the first time felt semi-confident, albeit cocky on the bike, until my
Brother in his F1
came out "to play" with me. Its very good to be put back
in your place from time to time.
See you on the other side. And
no, the luggage still hasn’t turned up (looks directly south west towards
Ms Tanner).
Anyone following me on twitter or facebook
knows that although I made it back from LA on Friday, my luggage…well…
didn’t. Not only do I have no idea where it is, apparently neither
does British Airways. Numerous polite (so far) phone calls have been
made, and I can imagine that after tomorrow it is not looking good for
the suitcase. Lousy timing as I need a lot of the stuff that was
in there next week.
Anyways – I tweeted for people to guess
where my luggage went to. Many
answers, all funny. This… by far.. was the best.
Click here.
Captions welcome.
I should of done this last night, but I
was fubar’d by the time I got to Belfast. My trip home took…….
The winner was Rachel
on Twitter with 22hours being nearest. Beer en route to you as we
speak…
As I wait for my cab where I am working
these past few days, its about as good a time as any to reflect on the
past week. I have the "Lotusphere" tiredness kicking in
now, which means everything is hazy and I feel punch drunk.
Always a sign of Lotusphere.
On Sunday I travelled to St Louis (via
Chicago) to get to the first IamLUG conference. And what a conference
it was. Chris Miller, Francie Tanner and the team managed to pull
together a technical, paced, deep, fun two days, throw in lots of free
(good) food and beer, and gifts for attendees/speakers. The cost?
Free.
IamLUG reminded me of UKLUG and ILUG.
It had the same feel that I noticed some US bloggers talking about.
"Like Lotusphere but more intimate and less marketing".
Yep, that about does it. The event ran on time and very little
(if anything) screwed up. An outstanding success. Although
highlights were aplenty some come quickly to mind.
And finally about IamLUG, the announcement
of "Lotusknows" was met with an enthusiastic, optimistic albeit
cynical response. If Lotus is going to start to make people aware
of the project (not IT people, not managers – just USERS) it could be the
turning point the product needs. Yup I’m cynical, but I am not going
to knock a new marketing approach (especially since it is not a ridiculous
"viral" video) when it is exactly what the product needs. I
am really looking forward to to seeing the fruits of a real visible marketing
programme, and will assist if asked. Lotus have said they will market….
I can only imagine the response from the community if it turns into vapourmarketing.
I have set a date in my diary for 1st December, to review the fruits
of the programme.
On the Wednesday, I presented at the
GSX day in St Louis. An excellent, interesting day where many guest
speakers presented, entertained and abused (me) on the value of monitoring.
Kudos to the GSX team – they did themselves proud.
Wednesday night I flew to LAX with Kathleen
McGivney and Atom, stopped off an at an apple store then went to dinner.
Thursday and Friday working with a new customer on interesting projects
combined with planning some further visits stateside in the near future.
All in all a very hectic week, and I badly need sleep, but meeting
up with great friends, hearing positive business news and getting productive
work done easily justified it.
Onwards to the airport.
LAX – Heathrow, then Heathrow – Dublin,
then drive from Dublin to Belfast. Any guesses?
Just found out in Ed Brills session that
Trend Antivirus has just announced upcoming support for 64bit Domino on
windows. Great news and about time. I have not heard any other
vendor stating that.
No internet access in the room, so no live
blogging. Offering to plug in an Apple Airport express to their wired
network didn’t was. I suppose a bunch of geeks plugging into a casino’s
network may be against the rules ;). The layout and logistics of
the event is fantastic. We discovered the "booty sweat"
drink (thanks to John Rolling). Will post some presentation information
as it goes and replicate later.
9.00 am
Miller on stage
Going through the who, what, where,
when, why.
Miller admits to having social problems.
Anything tagged on twitter with #IAMLUG will appear on a screen for
the whole two days.
9.20 am
Kevin Cavanaugh on stage.
Talking about the market and quoting
Gartner – "IBM has actually leapt
to the head of the e-mail client pack by merging the traditional Notes
client with Lotus Expeditor". Message of Notes8 getting out
to the market.
Butler – "Microsoft, has its SharePoint-based
offering, but this does not yet offer the features and level of integration
displayed by Lotus Connections"
Bloor – "Symphony has the full
engineering excellence-reliability, usability, support and maintenance
- that we expect of any enterprise product, especially one from IBM"
Gartner 2009 Marketscope for Instant
Messaging: "Sametime presence is the anchor technology that
brings IBM’s collaboration and communications components together.
Nemertes – "Look at what IBM is
doing with Quickr. It is extremely extensible and gives organisations
a lot of opportunity to customise applications, to build new functionality"
Hurwitz – "IBM is changing the
conversation about collaboration and social softare. IBM Lotus will
be doing this on several levels: extended collaboration, the value
the openness brings to the collaboration equation and the importance of
using collaboration to optimise talent"
Elguji getting some love from KC – discussing
pilot ideajam applications in Singapore.
John Vaughn quoted on Notes application
development turn-around times.
IBM is very serious about Symphony,
taking the time to make it right. It is considered a long term investment
and a marathon race. Not trying to change the market overnight.
LotusLive.
Lots of the cloud stuff (pricing) is
analyst insanity. IBM will go toe to toe with any competitor (Google,
Microsoft Live) and beat them on value.
Louts Notes defeated Microsoft Exchange
2010 in a competitive product review in CRN Magazine. Apparently
the comparison was originally with Exchange 2007, but it was too one-sided
to domino, so was changed to 2010.
Announcement: Marketing is going
to change…
New advertising. Major campaign,
running, starting this week for at least 18 months. Picture of advertising
on cabs is an example. There will be print advertising, airport advertising.
www.lotusknows.com
www.doyouknowlotus.com
They will be reaching out to the Lotus
community and looking for assistance on this. "Help us tell
people what Lotus does". (Funny, I thought we did that).
Share what you know. In two weeks,
Lotus will start a Jam. There will be a blog site, twitter site,
videos. Asking for assistance in promotion.
Total non-technical presentation. Although
I am a cynic, it looks like Lotus are going to really try a marketing/advertising
camapign. Time will be the judge of this, but I am willing to give
them another chance to make the product visible, and even offer to assist.
IBM this year is 100 years old. Formally
known as CTR.
Mitch Cohen reminded me to stop it at
checkin. So there we are.. all in all, not a bad run (especially
for me). Lots of familiar faces here already. Shaping up to
be a great few days.
