Lotusphere Comes to You, Istanbul

May 8 2008

Over 300 attended today's Lotusphere Comes to You event in Istanbul.  This was the first ever LCTY here -- in previous years, Lotus has participated in a SWG Forum event, but not a stand-alone Lotus event.  Both of the reporters I interviewed with wanted to know, why now for an LCTY?  The answer -- IBM considers Turkey to be an emerging market, in the same broad category as India, China, Brazil, Russia, Romania, Vietnam, etc.  And when 300+ turn up, that seems to be solid validation of the thinking.

I did not get the chance to have too many one-on-one conversations with customers or partners here -- they were too busy!  Check out these crowd shots from the coffee break...

LCTY Istanbul

LCTYIstanbulvendor LCTY Istanbul coffee 2 LCTY Istanbul coffee LCTYIstanbulagendaLCTYIstanbulDouglas

Tomorrow's schedule has some internal meetings, and I'm staying here in Istanbul for the weekend.  Plans include an "Istanbul through the lens" tour as well as, hopefully, a flight reschedule that will allow me to get out to Sunday's Formula1 race.  We shall see.......

Ed Brill | İstanbul, Türkiye Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [3]

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  1. 1  Dvir Reznik http://dvirreznik.blogspot.com | 5/8/2008 10:53:22 AM

    300+ people attending LCTY is (part of) the reason IBM decided to create another region for emerging markets in Europe, and put Turkey in it. The country is showing excellent financial indicators, and growing (GDP) double digits each year.

    And Murat is doing very well with Lotus - kudos !!

    Enjoy Istanbul - there's a great flea market, specializing on leather. Good luck with the F1...

  1. 2  Kevin http://www.theglobalmind.com | 5/8/2008 11:08:45 AM

    Definitely catch the race if you can, Ed. Good stuff. Quals is on Saturday if nothing else.

  1. 3  Murat Tuzum  | 5/12/2008 6:46:02 AM

    Today I got the latest results and 456 people attended including IBMers without press. It was also great event for me and I got several positive feedback, inside and outside IBM. Thanks Ed and other experts to come to Turkey. Everybody came there to listen you.