Lotusphere 2005 updates #3
Tags :Conferences
Tuesday, January 25 continued
When we last left off I had headed to GURUpalooza
(on Thursday) which comes much later in all this reading. (Look for all
the links to be added later after I replicate and get on-line. This
is being posted on a plane you know. I did what I knew real quick)
I headed to the vendor floor for a while
to not only gives the guys working a break but the chance to see what traffic
had been brewing. LotusUserGroup.Org
had really taken off. if you do not know the user group site has
been taken over, redone and under new management. We are hosting
this endeavor. The numbers at the end of the vendor floor time on
Wednesday said that over 1200 of you are interested in being part of the
regeneration efforts for Lotus user Groups. 1200?!?!? That
is more swipes than most vendors will ever see in one week on that
floor. Congrats to all. I can say that the floor was busier
than I recall from the last two years which is a great sign in what is
going on with Lotus.
Next I skipped Domino Domain Monitoring
and opted a last minute dragging, literally by my sleeve, into BP123 for
Improving Collaboration with Blogs and Wikis in Domino, Excellent
presentation by Richard
and Declan.
It opened some eyes to lead to the blogging BOF popularity the next
day.
BOF508 on Lotus
User Group Leadership was next
for a short time. As you saw the numbers above, the interest was
awesome so the BOF had some good conversation. I said a couple words
and jumped out of there skipping the dreaded walk to Y&B for Best Practices
in Deploying Workplace. I imagined by the time I got there it would
be almost over.
Lastly in the evening it was helping CertFX
with their bootcamps for 623 exam and Workplace Messaging. I went
back and forth between the two rooms that had a great crowd showing their
interest in being certified.
Then it was a stop at the E-Pro
Appreciation dinner hosted by Libby.
Tom
Duff was in appearance after
battling some flu like symptoms some of the time he was there.
Yes, the final resting point of the evening
was the Party with the Developers held at Atlantic hall. Music, drinking
and dancing of the Lotus Software developers made for some quick fun. I
spoke for some time with Rob
Novak and Liz after sneaking
up on Wes Morgan.
Wednesday, January 26
Ok, I do not know who thought of this 7am
thing again this year but it gets tiring. As we compete in the Sametime
hosting space (ok we lead it greatly even against IBM), I thought it was
prim and proper of me to go and stop at BOF318 for On Demand Conferencing.
Simply put, IBM has realized most enterprise sin the world have firewalls
and Sametime has it's issues with going across them. Big surprise
there. But the audio integration is quite nice and seems to have
awesome advantages. Can't wait to run it ourselves as a hosted solution.
STR106 How To Sell Lotus and Domino in
Your Organization is always a must see no matter what the schedule looks
like. If you don't see this presentation, you have no idea how to
answer some very basic questions when you face the other software beasts.
Right before lunch we make it into BOF513
for the Lotus Blogging Community. No matter how you slice it, the
experience of having all big the bloggers (ok lets go with a large majority)
in one room is a daunting task. But there we were (see pictures).
Constant chatter, quite a few good questions, much making fun of
each other, and last but not least Rocky
Oliver announcing that Connectria
will start hosting blogs based on the Domino templates for free. Of
course I was busy....umm reviewing...that is the word I am looking for
Ed (as he peeked over my shoulder and shook his head), my slides for that
afternoon when he said it. I simply poked my head out of the aisle
and made sure he really said what I thought I heard my busy brain think
it heard. Yep, you guessed it. After some internal talks, it
is true. Look for the hosting agreement on the right to get amended
with a new one for free services with some simple rules to live by. Sign
and email or fax it back and off you go. We will be supporting a
few things, including Java agent rights support.
Lunch was immediately followed by a conundrum.
STR109 of Ed's The Boss Loves Microsoft went against two others.
Well reason came into play and I had to go with the business decision
on this one. ID301 Planning and Deployment Considerations for IBM
Workplace. As a launch partner, we deal with scaling and deployments
on a constant basis. I was curious what they had to say. Disappointingly
they said what the book says a lot. There were a few gems and tips
in there, but the regurgitation did not help with some deployment and mainly
scaling decisions.
A quick dash over to my room for BP116
Advanced LDAP Infrastructure Design (Updated!!). Good attendance
and incredible reviews when it was all said and done. The 60 minutes
hurts when I present but I gave fair warning that we would run long and
everyone stayed. I apologized to the IBM/Lotus staff coming to present
next but I had to finish. I took LDAP into some interesting fundamentals
and cannot thank Tom Duff enough for letting me borrow his remote USB presenter
as I left mine in the dresser at home. He gave his own review
on his blog posting, go check that out too. Basically I was overwhelmed
with the appreciation on the evaluations and thanks to everyone for attending.
I know you got to laugh a bunch and hopefully things became a lot
clearer the way I presented it.
Now the big fat bummer comes in that with
the questions after my session that kept me in the Ask the Speaker room
for some time, I missed most of ID508 Wes Morgan's Network Design for Collaboration.
I love that session as he and I get to go round and round when I
present the same topics at Admin2003, Admin2004
and coming up at Admin2005.
He really knows his ...umm... stuff. yeah stuff.
The park that night was the same as always.
Good friends, quick food, many rides till you bust and ice cream
on the way out. We had fun, bought some gifts for the family that
were requested via cellphone (hey baby!), and tried to make ourselves sick
riding over and over.
Per the usual we ended at Kimonos, but
only my senior vp and myself as some of the others in my group had enough.
Unfortunately we were starving and sushi was the perfect end.
Thursday, January 27
An 8am marketing meeting with IBM at the
Y&B had me traipsing back across the property. I ended it as
soon as humanly possible to get back to BOF504 on Domino Web Access. As
a large hosting provider in this space, I had a couple concerns I brought
up that they not only took good note of but took and traded cards to see
if we can't work together on one of the key issues. If this works
out, look for reduced disk space for your web only mail users and the ability
to pull in outside mail via account documents. No way this will be
7 , but simple enough for right behind it.
I poked into ID121 to see McGivney
give her all for a last hurrah (hell she even blogged twice in one week,
that woman was on fire I tell you) before heading to the room to dump gear,
change and get ready for GURUpalooza. Now this is the first year
the event has taken place. Talk about a cool idea. The best
and brightest from your BP track together on one stage to answer any question.
They had a little delay getting the room set up so we played around
and took pictures and said hi. Nineteen of us graced the stage as
seen in the pictures. Alan was the moderator of the day, making fun
of his own clothing attire. Watching the people swarm in the doors
when they opened, followed by a lot of you taking pictures made us feel
like stars. Thanks for that! Now that we know what to expect,
look for next year to be better defined and more fun.
I skipped Ask the Developers in turn for
eating some lunch and relaxing the mind. Plus I headed to the CLP
Lounge for a massage and some
snacks. I got a hold of who the guest speaker was at closing ceremony
and dashed my ass off to get close. Well the hint was right on the
money as Steven Wright graced our presence. He is one of my favorites,
and if you recall from last year, we snuck to see him at Hard Rock Live
in Orlando during Lotusphere.
I think everyone's brains melted by the
end of the show as everyone went to pack or take a nap before dinner. Dinner
was quiet, just co-workers and customers before back to Kimonos for a short
time.
Friday, January 28
What you thought I was done? Of course
not. Friday is known for Certified Lotus Instructor Day at the Y&B.
Yes, once again the trek that has killed thousands of men before
me had to be taken. A room of instructors is not very quiet when
given the chance. They announced some new courseware, classes and
ways to get instructor certified in those. But, alas, I had to head
out before the lunch started to make some final packing and then the shuttle.
Tom
and I sat for a few in the hotel before the shuttle arrived and a lunch
at Fox Sports in the airport. The flight here is full of people and
quite a few Lotusphere backpacks. Good to see that return.
Epilogue
The author of this narrative now has hurting
hands from typing too much but not nearly everything. Some topics
will be explored in depth in the coming days. I have plenty to say
in terms of tips, thoughts and rants.
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On Friday, January 28th, 2005 by Chris Miller
