Lotusphere2007 - Day 1
January 22nd, 2007Today started out with a nice breakfast uniting the faces of the PSC bloggers and some of our staff at Lotusphere. Ed Brill , Alan of Alan Lepofsky's Notes Tips , Adam Gartenberg - Sametime, Jeff Eisen , Rob Ingram ( Domino Server Team ), and Chris Pepin were very gracious to take some time out to say thank you for the web hosting we provide. We chatted about the Sunday night Party, the info that Ed had already posted, Second Life, and some general stuff like how cool the big video board for the OGS is. Oh, and some chatter about our new blogger. :) As 7:45 drew near, we all rushed to the OGS.
The Opening General Session was a good one. Neil Armstrong was amazing. The band was a nice fun addition. We heard a lot about Notes 8, Sametime 7.5 (and 7.5.1), Lotus Connections ("Ventura"), Lotus Quickr ("Geneva") and Websphere Portal. You will be able to watch the OGS in Second Life tomorrow, so I will not go into details.
My reactions are a bit skewed. I have been using Notes and Domino 8 w/ Activities for over 5 months now. I am 100% behind them, so what I saw was not new to me. I am glad everyone else finally is seeing the amazing work that is going on in Westford and around the world. Lotus Connections looks like it might be the first corporate social networking software to stick. I am curious to see what is behind the fancy coverings. Websphere Portal Express and the demonstration of the Google Gadgets being used in portal pages and being available for wiring was extremely neat.
Lotus Quickr is what I am reacting to the most right now. I do a lot of ILDDM work, so this fits into the space I play in many days. I think what they have done is completely revolutionary! A single platform that not only ties all of the document and content repositories together, but also provides numerous access points for users to access and edit that data will rock our industry. Many people say that the day the iPhone was released, they saw a day that people will remember as a day the industry changed for mobile device market. I think today, the day Lotus unveiled Lotus Quickr, will be a day we all remember in the document and content management industry. I know IBM can execute the product well ... I just want it today!
Because of the quote of mine in the Notes 8 press release, I have been asked questions about the project by quite a few people, including some journalists. That has been fun. I also attended the Blogger Press Conference. IBM decided to give the bloggers a chance to ask the Lotus executives questions about the announcements. I thought it went well for the first 28 minutes. It was too short and a bit to high level for the crowd, but I saw value in it. The last 2 minutes .. well, lets just say I hope that part of the recording is lost forever.
I spent the rest of the day in other sessions and helping out a couple folks on the blog server.
The Product Showcase Reception was crowded as ever, and our booth got a lot of traffic. I am happy to say that we have more at our booth than ever. VOIP solutions such as Skype integration with our enTouch.crm product, ActiveGrid integration with Domino and our own WSDL Wizard product, other VOIP solutions, and much more. Major kudos to Alex, Steve, and Jimmy for getting that all done. I was mostly off the hook this year.
In the evening I was invited by Alan Bell, my co-presenter on OpenOffice.org integration with Notes, to the Penumbra HOBNob dinner at the House of Blues. A great dinner, very good conversation, and a C.U.L.T. shirt "I AM ______" competition. I can not write the best entries we had, but the winner of "I AM a unemployed Workplace Designer" was worthy of the win. Thanks to Alan for the invite!
The Opening General Session was a good one. Neil Armstrong was amazing. The band was a nice fun addition. We heard a lot about Notes 8, Sametime 7.5 (and 7.5.1), Lotus Connections ("Ventura"), Lotus Quickr ("Geneva") and Websphere Portal. You will be able to watch the OGS in Second Life tomorrow, so I will not go into details.
My reactions are a bit skewed. I have been using Notes and Domino 8 w/ Activities for over 5 months now. I am 100% behind them, so what I saw was not new to me. I am glad everyone else finally is seeing the amazing work that is going on in Westford and around the world. Lotus Connections looks like it might be the first corporate social networking software to stick. I am curious to see what is behind the fancy coverings. Websphere Portal Express and the demonstration of the Google Gadgets being used in portal pages and being available for wiring was extremely neat.
Lotus Quickr is what I am reacting to the most right now. I do a lot of ILDDM work, so this fits into the space I play in many days. I think what they have done is completely revolutionary! A single platform that not only ties all of the document and content repositories together, but also provides numerous access points for users to access and edit that data will rock our industry. Many people say that the day the iPhone was released, they saw a day that people will remember as a day the industry changed for mobile device market. I think today, the day Lotus unveiled Lotus Quickr, will be a day we all remember in the document and content management industry. I know IBM can execute the product well ... I just want it today!
Because of the quote of mine in the Notes 8 press release, I have been asked questions about the project by quite a few people, including some journalists. That has been fun. I also attended the Blogger Press Conference. IBM decided to give the bloggers a chance to ask the Lotus executives questions about the announcements. I thought it went well for the first 28 minutes. It was too short and a bit to high level for the crowd, but I saw value in it. The last 2 minutes .. well, lets just say I hope that part of the recording is lost forever.
I spent the rest of the day in other sessions and helping out a couple folks on the blog server.
The Product Showcase Reception was crowded as ever, and our booth got a lot of traffic. I am happy to say that we have more at our booth than ever. VOIP solutions such as Skype integration with our enTouch.crm product, ActiveGrid integration with Domino and our own WSDL Wizard product, other VOIP solutions, and much more. Major kudos to Alex, Steve, and Jimmy for getting that all done. I was mostly off the hook this year.
In the evening I was invited by Alan Bell, my co-presenter on OpenOffice.org integration with Notes, to the Penumbra HOBNob dinner at the House of Blues. A great dinner, very good conversation, and a C.U.L.T. shirt "I AM ______" competition. I can not write the best entries we had, but the winner of "I AM a unemployed Workplace Designer" was worthy of the win. Thanks to Alan for the invite!
