Lotusphere 2005

Reading the May ’05 PC Pro (UK version) I was surprised to see a full page devoted to Lotusphere. A generally positive article, if a little belated, with a couple of good quotes…

For Bruce

The sheer breadth of products at this one show was astonishing… [including] the guys from www.openntf.org who are still reeling from the huge uptake of their alternative public-domain templates.

And one for Ed:

…if I were taking long bets on the comparative futures of Notes and Exchange, I’d be gently backing away from Mr Gates’ offering.

I can’t find the article online so these will have to do for the moment, but if you want a copy then I’ll be happy to scan it and mail it to you.

As a wrap-up to the Lotusphere season, Ed has posted a list of quotes from people in the blog-realm including one from yours truly. Check it out

After such a great week in Florida the real came back in spades. There was a pile of production issues to deal with, a data migration going badly wrong and at least two new projects to deal with. Still at least life isn’t boring!

The weekend is to be spent waiting for a delivery tomorrow and anticipating the start of the Six Nations with relish and then on Sunday I’m meeting Judith and Matt for lunch as the rest of the family have deserted us to go off galavanting around the world (as if I can complain).

I am also in the process of selling my car. I am trying two paths, the traditional – listing on the Autotrader website and magazine for a couple of weeks. And the less traditional – an eBay auction. It’ll be interesting to see what success, if any, I have with either route. Updates to follow as and when.

I have uploaded the few photos I took to my new Flickr Pages. There are already hundreds of Lotusphere photos already put up by a huge range of people. I think I am in a few of those up there as well but haven’t been through them all to check.

Everything went swimmingly getting home. The plane was on time to the minute and the luggage was waiting for us when we got to the carousel. No traffic on the drive home. So from Orlando to home took only 13 hours. Because of the lack of sleep on Thursday night I even managed a few hours on the plane which is more than usual for me. Hopefully it will see me through until this evening to get me over the jet-lag.

The analysis of Lotusphere will crystalise over the next few days from all of the usual sources. But overall I can only imagine it will be positive, I am not aware of any major complaints at all, either about the conference itself, the technology or the strategy which has been presented. An impressive improvement on previous years.

So we planned a quiet night out to play a bit of crazy golf and get some food.

I got to bed at 02:30 this morning after having been at Pleasure Beach in a cheesey 80s nightclub dancing for four hours. The music was so bad it was like five years worth of wedding quotas in one night. But it was fun.

I’ve got to get everything packed and check out now so probably won’t be online again until I get back to the UK tomorrow morning. I hope the rest of you travelling today have an easy journey.

It’s been another great day in what, in my humble opinion, has been the best Lotusphere since 1999. Bill’s session was excellent, I thought I knew most things there were to know about OO LotusScript but he added some new stuff for me. It’s always slightly humbling when you go to these sessions, in our normal lives we are considered experts in Notes and Domino but when you come here you realise quite how much there still is to learn.

The two “beat the panel” sessions (Gurupalooza and Beat the Developers) were as entertaining as ever. And finally the closing session seems to have learnt from previous years, there was almost no “official” talk and they went straight into the entertainment. Steven Wright the deadpan comic managed to get through 50 minutes of one liners non stop. Very very funny and well worth hanging around for.

There now follows the inevitable come-down after a week of such great fun and interesting new information. Hopefully it won’t be too hard, maybe all of the new, cool stuff I’ve seen will provide some comfort.

The party last night was great fun, somewhat warmer than last year and of course the all important turkey legs were present. I managed to have a go at one but didn’t really make an impression, it will live to fight another day no doubt.

I thought I’d pass on a tip – over the week I’ve been trying to find out how to get the Workplace Express Disks which Ambuj mentioned in the opening session. Well as far as I can tell they were only included in the packs for Business Partners, not us mere attendees. But if you go to the conference evaluation gift pickup booth (where you registered) and ask for a BP welcome pack they still have some (not sure how many so get there fast) which include the 3 disk set.

I can’t wait to get a machine which I can install it on now.

Now onwards to Bill’s OO LotusScript session. I wonder how hung over he’ll be?

Today is officially Ed Brill Day with his session this morning on how to sell Notes and Domino internally, followed by the Bloggers BOF and topped off with the annual “The Boss Loves MS, Where Does That Leave Lotus” Evil Empire bashing session.

In reality I don’t need to go to the last session but it’s always fun to get the latest propaganda.

The Bloggers BOF was really good, I put a lot of faces to blogs of people I’ve been reading for a long time. I don’t know if anyone else noticed but the blogging community seems, in general, to be quite short. Is this why people feel the need to unload in public? I don’t know and being tall myself couldn’t possibly comment. Anyway it was certainly good to hear why people do what they do and it has started me thinking about switching from this hand-rolled mess which has evolved over the three years I’ve been doing it towards a slightly better thought out template. I’ll need to have a look at the design to see how complex the migration might get. That is for thought next week, there is still a lot happening here to get through.

Tonight is the party at Islands of Adventure which should be fun. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to do many of the rides but it will mean I can concentrate on the far more important aspects of the free booze and burgers.