Francesco Pellegrini and Fabrizio Marchesano conduct the crowd at their Show and Tell session on Lotusphere symphony. Excellent!

I took time (for various reasons) when
I returned from Lotusphere before writing my wrap-up post.  This year
was by far the fastest moving, busiest, complex yet. Product wise Lotus
Notes got a number of mentions and "announcement love" with xPages,
Traveler (and iPhone support) and a few other features.  But specific
features remained mostly silent (DAOS, idVault).  I find that unusual
as the idVault would have admins dancing in the aisles (and end users).

Blackberry got A LOT of love, including
xPages support, connections/quickr support and plenty of airtime.  I’m
sure this had a lot to do with the subsequent activesync support.  Blackberry
deserve it – proven and reliable.

Connections is now a proven technology
with numerous deployments under its belt.  2.5 makes it more solid
and functional.  I think they will have a tough year making sales,
with the global recession, but I hope to be wrong.

Domino.doc got a gravestone.  I
have some customers that are wondering where they can go with quickr -
time will tell.

Sametime 8.51 looks very promising,
although the meeting server utility will remain "as is" on Domino.
 If you want to use the new meeting server, it will run on another
box, and not on Domino.

Lotuslive (bluehouse2.0) is the IBM
SAAS offering.  How that pans out is unknown as yet, but I am interested,
and will be watching.

From a session perspective, I got to
attend… wait for it… 1 and 1/2 sessions.  The full session was
on Citrix and the 1/2 was Eileen’s ITIL session (who made ITIL interesting…
a miracle!).  I gave, in hindsight, a lot of sessions.  Although
its tough, I do love it, and love when people are interested in learning.
 For the most part, they seemed to go well.  The second Adminblast
session was great fun, with Rob Axelrod, Andy Pedisich, Francie and I having
rows on stage about server id files and passwords – great fun.  Lotusphere
IDOL was excellent, and having two twenty-one year olds win made me feel
old.  Presentation Karaoke went ok, in my books, but the most excellent
Bill Chuck saved it with his amazing method of getting people involved.

Bitching about numbers at Lotusphere
was (IMHO) a waste of time.  If there is a conference that has equal
numbers attending this year to the previous year I will be surprised.  Lotusphere
though, is special, it is a collaborative event like no other, with people
like no other.  This year, I was on the blogger programme, which upped
the ante for our involvement.  There were so many inclusions in this,
both visible and behind the scenes.  The thanks for this incredibly
well run programme goes to the most excellent Erica Topolski.

So many people to thank.  Kathleen,
Warren, Ed, Rocky, Mac, Bob Balaban, Susan and many more.  Duffbert,
Volker,  Francie, Bill and Alan Lepofsky will always get a special
mention (Alan, FWIW you are on sabbatical from IBM, according to IBM! -
enjoy your time, they will be foolish not to hunt for you in the future).
 The people from GSX, Blackberry, Integra and ideajam remind me what
"good companies" are like.  There were a few examples of
companies I would never ever work for at Lotusphere.  I think business
Karma will apply to them in the long term.

So, I’m still knackered, and plan on
doing very little this week (yeah right).  Lotusphere is all about
the people – and making relationships.  I cannot wait until the lotusphere
20 in 2010!

Is also available for download on my resources
page.  I must point out that RIM impressed me *a lot* in relation
to this.  I was asked with very little time to put together a rough
best practices guide to BES admin, in return for a Blackberry Storm.  I
agreed on condition that I would be totally honest about what I liked and
disliked about the BES server platform.  Not only where they ok with
that, they encouraged it and told the audience that I have been told to
be totally impartial.  

So, natrually I started about the impending
5.0 server, with an expected release date of 2045.  Followed by my
impressions of the Storm!  The delegates appreciated the honesty and
also what was obviously my respect for such a powerful platform and device.
 If only every vendor encouraged such honesty.

Are now posted on my resources
page for download.  These
include the "world gone mobile" session with Warren Elsmore and
the Clustering session with Kathleen McGivney, not to forget the Eleven
Commandments session I gave with Bill.

Currently en route to Gatwick on the overnight
British Airways 777.  Many yellow bags knocking about,  and many
tired people with sore feet and legs sharing stories.  Lotusphere
is a grueling slog of a week, and as much as I love being there, I can’t
wait to get home.  Post-sphere pain is setting in, from the feet up
everything is sore.

LotusLive, formally known as bluehouse
is the SAAS offering by IBM.  I have not really looked at this yet,
but it is interesting to see and I will take a look with a demo account
over the next week.  The pricing structure of LotusLive is key, and
easy liscening structures / management will be needed.  

The Lotus brand has a matching look
and feel throughout the product suite, traversing from connections to quickr
to Notes / Sametime / Portal.  Even moving to Filenet in the demo
during the OGS was familiar looking.

8.5 server features got very little
airplay during the OGS, with the exception of xPages.  I do think
IDVault should of had some time on the big screen, as there would of been
dancing in the aisles, but there were many sessions throughout the week
on this feature.  Connections 2.5 looks more established.  Blackberry
got major love from IBM, with

connections

Blackberry

Active Sync support, iPhone, symbian
S60

Citrix

The sessions – I got to one full session,
popped into Eileens,  - Thank Gab, Kathleen, Warren, Bill, Ed, Alan
L, Bob

The people – very little socialising
at the start of the week – making up for it later….

Enjoy!

Courtesy of
Volker Weber

This was the audience reaction during Adminblast
session when I told the attendees this story,
and Mary-Beth’s response.  Hopefully attachment handling will get
fixed now!

BCC at booth 611 are giving you free
tools to change the look of your Notes client.  If you are a Windows
or a Mac user!.  Go down and take a look.

Just blogging points now – will clean up
asap.

Indicate and demonstrate to add activesync
support to Lotus Notes Traveler in a future release.

Planned for release in 2009 (no defined
date released).  No beta schedule released yet.

This was demonstrated on an IPHONE!
 This means that iPhone (and other activesync enabled devices) will
work with Domino this year.  License agreements were not discussed,
but Ed Brill has stated that "we would not be demoing it if we had
not considered licensing".

Device support will include selected
devices to begin with.

Mail, Calendar and compacts will be
supported on the iPhone.   This was using the native calendar/mail/contacts
toolsets on the iPhone.

Public beta – no timeline yet.

What activesync based devices will be
supported – not announced as yet.   From a device perspective, you
configure using the MS Exchange tool (if one is present).