Time for my Lotusphere2007 wrap-up
Tags :Lotusphere2007 Lotusphere Lotus Connections Sametime Quickr
Overall... I think that Lotusphere2007 scores a 9.33 out of 10. Animal Kingdom was a bust from the get go with no animals. But we weight that smaller. Al the main scoring comes from content, presence of Lotus and delivery.
- Content - Lotus hit the mark. No mixed messages. No tongue twists. Workplace, a goner in the total sense and they didn't hide behind that. Lotus Connections, the thing of the future. The new client, the way you should be headed and yes, they will support all your applications. Can we be any clearer? Quickr, while spelled funny and related to Flickr through second cousins (kidding), a killer for Sharepoint contests. Sametime, well take that all other perpetrators of enterprise IM 9.8
- Presence - Lotus made it a point to be in your face while there. From product managers being all around the "Sametime all the time" area to the labs. If you did not schedule a time to take yourself and testdrive one of the new and upcoming releases, you wasted some time down there you shouldn't have. No vaporware here, real products coming out the door to a desk near you. 9.6
- Delivery - Clean, clear, crisp. A refreshing change from some years past. Keep Mike Rhodin short and from using large analogies and show more demos. Done. Put sessions that talk not just about futures but how it all fits together. Done. Use the same darn software online for attendees for the conference that you are talking about, done. No more Workplace Messaging for mail when we are talking DWA. Of course, unlocking some USB ports for Nomad would have helped the score. 8.6
The Notes client....Here I sit, days after Lotusphere2007 wondering if I took away what I think I saw. I am not exactly sure. Do not get that confused with Lotus not having a clear message. They did. Notes is here to stay and grow. Not just grow, but evolve. Mary Beth Raven and the team (sorry I don't know all the names) have transformed what we think of as the normal Notes client that people bash for years on end. Sure the chicklet desktop will still be there in some format, I for one never moved to bookmarks. But the new UI gives so much flexibility with the underlying Eclipse framework, it will shock me to hear anyone complain about it. The tasks have been streamlined, actions that are hardly used have been removed or hidden away into advance areas. The ability to plug-in just about anything astounds me each day I watch someone make a new one on the fly. I know the increased hardware requirements, site updates, and policy management will change, but get with it, it is backwards compatible to all the stuff you have done already.
Sametime, near and dear to me as most of you know, enters a new arena with the point-to-point video integration. The public IM integration was promised and delivered in 2006. I have talked to the AOL Clearinghouse team directly about future plans and if all goes well, you will see some awesome things coming out in the future too. The reworking of the Sametime server has to be done, it has been far too long. Such things as true failover and scaling for meetings needs to be put in place. While the EMS was a valiant attempt, that was years ago and it hasn't gotten any better. The policy controls need to be optional to integrate with the Domino policies, or standalone for those with Sametime and no other Lotus environment. Lotus really needs to get on the ball and get a real Sametime plug-in catalog out there and open for everyone if you want this to continue taking off.
Lotus Connections... candidly I don't see how most enterprises will get any value from it upon deployment for some time. It takes huge effort to start getting enough data where it becomes a valuable asset. I can't imagine IBM turned it on and the first day had people gaining insight into the thinking leaders. it took time to populate bookmarks (Dogears), profiles and communities. This will be a direction that a company has long term plans for. I approached Alan Lepofsky, did a podcast and I fully understand where they are going with this. I just have my concerns on implementation and controls. I know we will be hosting this product for companies, I can see that without the crystal ball. I am even trying to get Lotus to offer a real test of this in action with the bloggers having a community. I registered BloggingConnections.com so we can run Lotus Connections and you can watch how the bloggers Dogear and create communities.
Quickr... A much needed change to Quickplace with the controls of Domino Document Manager. We heard the rumors of this coming, and it appeared, just short of an E apparently. I haven't played enough with it yet to make an honest statement on it, just please place it in the spellcheck for me. The optional backend data stores will be a selling point for everyone, even going head to head with Sharepoint.
Second Life... I have jumped in and out, met some people I know and don't know but see that in order to have this be a fully functional opportunity, you basically have to have people dedicated to the task of being there. While a neat way to reach more people in a pseudo world, it takes more time playing around to be productive. Who wants to look goofy in there so you spend a ton of time making yourself look just right.
SpeedGeeking, Gurupalooza and other things I did... SpeedGeeking was something that caught my eye the moment it was brought up. I have presented plenty at numerous places, and everyone knows how fast I can go. So I decided to push myself and not be outdone by Mr Mooney, Ben and Wild Bill in that room. From stealing Bill's Toblerone midsession to covering about 36 presentations in the hour (3 presentations in 5 minutes) I had no voice left and couldn't get the slides reset fast enough it seems. But what a blast it was. Congrats to Rocky on that and then moving us along to Gurupalooza. I always enjoy that session in that most people don't get the amount of experience on that stage at one time. Across so many disciplines too. While all of you are out there asking questions, we are mumbling to ourselves based on the topic who will be getting the mic. It is as much fun for us. The glowing part? To have all that skillset on the stage look to you for specific answers. I don't know how the others feel about this, but having your peers respect you for certain parts of your knowledgebase is incredible to me when you look to them for the same thing. Then lastly, there was LotusphereLive. If you did not have the chance to check that out you should. Carl Tyler whipped this site of persistent chat rookms and virtual places in about a week. Connectria then hosted it to thousands of visitors that wanted to see the bloggers talk live about the opening and closing general sessions. A great way for partners to use the technology together and show rapid development.
Vendor floor.. As always, Connectria had a presence on the exhibitor floor. This year seemed to be about one or two particular topics like DR and remote management. It is becoming clear that companies want a good disaster plan and we are happy to talk all about how we become part of that. Overall the feedback was a nice constant buzz. Instead of other years where there was large gaps in people down there, this year was almost a constant milling. That means good news for partners and for products being developed. It was nice to see such an array of plug-in partners for Sametime too.
Podcasts... Now this was totally a highlight. I couldn't get them done fast enough and balanced enough to not overflow your iPods and give you time to stream online. I had so many topics to do and people to talk to. Not to mention those that wanted just to get on one. Thanks to the advertisers who helped assemble the t-shirts Bruce, Julian and I totally ran out of, the new equipment we needed and other random items. Special thanks to the wife for coming down to help do intros on the podcasts, edit and hand out t-shirts. Heck, she ended up on the plasma screens as an attendee, lol. She also had a huge part in the vendor floor and book.
Book... Wow!! I can say wow! The first batch in the Lotus Bookstore sold out. The second batch did well enough in there too. Thanks to all that grabbed a copy. It would have been nice for the sessions on the Sametime Gateway to mention it as a reference, but there was not much time between Lotusphere and the book coming out. I signed a few, which was surprising and made me grin so big is was silly.
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On Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 by Chris Miller
