Lotusphere - my review
Category
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!
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!
Comments
Paul, care to expand on this please in public or pm?
Posted by LongLiveLotus At 23:37:40 On 26/01/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Keith Brooks At 22:36:42 On 26/01/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Paul Mooney At 23:40:29 On 26/01/2009 | - Website - |
I'm the admin, and I was dancing in the aisles..., didn't you see me...lol :)
I love it! Same true for DAOS.
BTW. I loved your sessions and humour too. Great job, keep it up.
Posted by Bodek Frak At 05:20:12 On 30/01/2009 | - Website - |
Posted by Tracy L At 23:02:01 On 27/01/2009 | - Website - |
The kids keep looking at me like I am paranoid and they tell me we don't even have a karaoke machine, but I think they're lying.
Posted by francie At 01:07:18 On 27/01/2009 | - Website - |