I have no idea what’s going on this year but I’m already worn out. The last few days have been great fun catching up with old friends, meeting new faces and generally doing all of the things which have become traditional in the days before Lotusphere proper begins.
Sunday saw Tim and I present the first repeat of our XPages Show ‘n’ Tell session. Apparently we overflowed the room and although we ran out of time (trying to squeeze four hours of content into two really is a challenge) the people that we talked to seemed happy. We’re repeating this morning at 10:30 in the Swan again and then I am done for the week on the presenting front (yay).
The OGS was great fun for us bloggers, we got really comfortable sofas up front, power and ethernet which allowed several of us to live blog the session. I think there were around 600 people involved in the live blog from all around the world, it makes the event even more fun from my point of view.
Before the OGS started, Alistair Rennie came over to say Hi to us all. He had asked if we needed anything and I jokingly said a coffee would be nice, so (and this is ten minutes before his first OGS as General Manager of Lotus) he took Mitch Cohen and I behind the scenes at the main stage, gave us a tour of the (very cool) tech and finally sorted out some drinks for us. A very cool guy and a great replacement for Bob Picciano.
On the stand front things have been going well, we’re not doing a “hard sell” demo approach this year, but instead just chatting with customers, friends and anyone who wants to come along. During the week Mark is writing a Flex app which talks to our IQJam product, so you can come and chat to him about Flex if you like. Ben and Julian are also around for general geeky chats.
Last night was the UKLUG drinks reception at Shula’s. The things we learned from the evening are that apparently there are no fire regulations for room occupancy in Florida as the room was very very busy. It was a great evening all round, so thanks for coming along. Also thanks to Alistair and Bob for both showing up for a drink, they had a huge day and it’s these little things which really make the difference compared to previous GMs.
So onwards to today, more sessions, more Showcase and Bruce is presenting in the App Dev Keynote which is a huge thing.
So Lotusphere has really kicked off with a bang. My plan on the tech side of things is to write later on in the week, there is simply too much going on, and still too much to find out, for me to reliably give an opinion on what has been announced so far. Except to say that it’s all very interesting of course.
