From Belfast to my room in the dolphin hotel. Any guesses?

In the archiving and eDiscovery space, no vendor does everything. If you meet one that says so, call them on it.  And while Symantec consistently ranks as a leader in market share and presence year after year, we take pride in building and maintaining a robust partner ecosystem that helps us more completely address our customer’s most pressing IT challenges.  Join this webcast to hear the latest on several partnerships we’ve forged specifically to complement Symantec Enterprise Vault™ for Lotus Domino:

I will be speaking along with other partners.  Go here to register.

Via Christian.

On Jan 31st, 2011, we all queued up and got in line, ran to front row seats and started to get ready for a “get social. do business” techfest that should be the OGS.  COllege students were waiting to be enthused and excited.  The loyal and even the not-so-loyal were there, waiting for a shot in the arm of technology.

We got panels.  Two of them.  Heavily scripted.  And as dull as you can get.  Read this live blog thread from last year.  It was over 90 minutes before we got to a demo.  IBM were aware of the heckling via twitter and also by looking at the restless crowd and reacted with too little too late.  Hat tip to the demos at the end though and the bloggers that did their best to big up the finale online.

IBM accepted the mistake.  They even joked about it at the Leadership Alliance Council.  We know Lotus knows what went wrong (see what I did there).  Let’s see how it all changes on Monday.  Thoughts?

On Monday morning (16th) at 08:00EST we will start live blogging the Lotusphere Opening General Session.  As combined bloggers expect to see posts from:

• Matt White
• Stuart McIntyre
• Gabriella Davis
• Me
• Bill Buchan

We have separated the areas to comment on, but expect general mayhem as we cover all the demos, demos and demos without the hint of a single on-stage panel.

Update: As requested, it is the Speck Black Satin cover.  Very nice fit and available in the online Apple store.

Today:

• Try to finish off day job work (unsuccessful)
• Review of my two sessions that I present with Gab Davis
• Finish off some Show and Tell session session work with Gab and Christian Hosling
• Order a few bits an pieces online
• Add to the list of crap people want me to buy for them in the USA
• Make some modifications to my Adminblast session
• Start setting up the VM for my Speedgeeking session

And today

• Make some slight adjustments to my Adminblast presentation.  Work on the (very) few demos that will be in the 60 minutes of madness
• Send reminder emails to customers (LS week is one of the few weeks were we are very hard to get hold of)
• Continue to read/review the Sametime Administration book
• Make list of “things to buy for people while in US

After a MONTH of no planes, it all kicks off again tomorrow.  Flying from Dublin to Zurich to present a Lotus Traveler workshop for the day on Friday with Teamstudio.  Hope to see you there.

I never got around to posting about speaking at Lotusphere.  Yep, I will be (after the hog ride of course) and here is where to find me.

Monday January 16th

Traveler – Level up! (With Gab Davis) SHOW100. Osprey 1 and 2.  14:00 – 15:45.

Installing Lotus Notes Traveler in your organisation is the easy bit, but are you ready for it to become business critical? Are you braced for all the additional demands for custom features? What are your options for high availability? Join Paul Mooney and Gabriella Davis as they take you through an advanced Notes Traveler deployment. In this technical session, we break down how Notes Traveler behaves, how many servers you need, where they should be placed and what the security implications are as well as how to manage performance. You already have Notes Traveler installed in your environment, so learn additional features such as customisation, field mapping, configuration files, and more. Take a product that just works and make it work harder, better, faster, and cooler.

Tuesday January 17th

Speedgeeking (Geek101)  Apple/snapple…  It’s all Lotus Notes.  Pacific Hall 18:15 – 19:30

The users are revolting (in many ways).  Have they started to demand their technology of preference?  If yes, the you may see computers with half eaten fruit appearing in your workplace.  It’s their choice.  It’s their decisions.  It’s your problem though.  In this 5 minute speedgeek session, Paul Mooney will take you through the Lotus Notes installation on the Mac.  How to install, where the files go and how it all sits together in the Mac OS.

Wednesday January 18th

Adminblast 2012 (BP101) North Hemisphere A-C.  11:15 – 12:15

It’s back. For the fourth year in a row, join Paul Mooney as he unleashes 60 admin tips in 60 minutes. Walk away from this session with his favorite all time tips and tips he has picked up this year. Go home with knowledge you can immediately use!

Leveraging all the entitled software you never knew you had with License subscription (with Gab Davis) BP301.  North Hemisphere E.  13:30 – 14:30

OK, you have IBM Lotus Domino deployed. It has been there for years, but have you really taken advantage of all your Lotus Domino subscription offers? In this session, Paul Mooney starts with a typical Lotus Domino architecture, and expands on the goodies you may not realize come along with your subscription. Utilizing all the software you have subscription entitlement to, we investigate the enhanced value you could provide for your business. No sales terms, no marketing speak. Just useful information you could use to look like a rock star without hurting the budget

The last one specifically is non-technical.  Gab and I have seen customers spend money on software not realising they had a free alternative.  We try to dig through the murky underbelly of licensing and show you what you have access to.  Funnily enough, I think that is the one Gab and I will be most nervous about.  Not that I am not scared about presenting at Lotusphere.  Ever.