Lotusphere2009

This video was played in the Closing session at Lotusphere and it got a great response in the room. I think it’s exactly the sort of thing that Lotus advertising should be doing, specific products are mentioned in a real world context. Also good to see Mr Novak in there.

Bruce has posted our slides for BP105 – Building a World Class Web 2.0 application With XPages:

The download of TaskJam is at taskjam.net. You can also watch the warmup video that we put together here on YouTube.

The slides for my other session, BP109 – Lotus Domino Web Development – How to do the right thing with the wrong design element can be downloaded here:

And the download of the sample app is at 11tmr.com/dotherightthing (just add a .zip” to the file that comes down and the nsf is inside).

Lotusphere 2009 was my tenth, so you’d think I’d be used to it by now, but my view of Lotusphere this year was as a “booth babe” and speaker rather than a session attender, I didn’t get to see any of the great technical content which is hugely disapppointing as there were probably 15 or 20 sessions I would love to have gone to. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with the slideware and session downloads that a lot of people are offering. I also had to take the parties a little easy, so I even got 5 hours sleep one night.

In terms of the announcements we’ve already seen great coverage from the guys who were on the official blogger program. I have to say I’m not a huge fan of spreading the big news out during the week, I’d rather have all of the goodness in the OGS and then tailor what I want to find out about based upon that, but I understand the reasoning from IBM’s point of view. In fact the OGS’ generally were much slicker that previous years, even though they both overran quite significantly. And with The Blue Man Group, Dan Ackroyd and Benjamin Zander the guests were back up to excellent all round.

Gayle and Bruce had warned us that working on the show floor was harder than it looked, they weren’t lying. By Wednesday evening we were all pretty well knackered with very sore feet and legs from all the standing and demo-ing. But both Kitty and Mark really went above and beyond in the amount of effort they put in for us. I can’t tell you how much it is appreciated. Largely due to their work, the traffic to the stand, number of demos, trials and so on were far in excess of what we were expecting, it’s going to be a very busy couple of months now I suspect.

Of course, as always the best thing about the week is the people, catching up with old friends, making new ones (there were a lot of new people attending this year which is great news for everyone). Volker’s photo of the bloggers on the main stage after the closing pretty much sums it all up for me:

The dates for next year were announced, so see you in Florida from the 17th to 21st January.

Blimey, things just get better and better. In the Opening General Session we got some more great news that we won the CTO Award and were finalists in the Best in Show Award, so now we have two enourmous crystal awards on the stand and couldn’t be happier.

I guess I should probably apologise for the lack of posts in the OGS liveblog, the other guys did a great job but Dec and I had serious network issues so couldn’t really do anything.

I also spoke at Lotusphere for the first time, it was a great experience, and the room was pretty much full even though we had some serious competition in the same time slot.

The last couple of days have been absolutely unbelievably great. Best. Lotusphere. Ever.

In the Business Development Day Opening General Session this morning we got the unbelievably great news that we won the Breakout Technology Award for Lotusphere 2009 with IdeaJam. To say we are pleased is a massive understatement, hopefully it bodes well for a really successful week in Florida.

On top of all the catching up with friends, great technology and meeting new people it’s been a pretty good few days so far 🙂

I’ve been over here for a couple of days now and am properly acclimatised, I highly recommend turning up a couple of days early, it lets you chill out before the craziness that is Lotusphere. We’ve done all of the pre and pre-pre parties and everyone is here. Sessions are starting today, but we’re busy setting up the stand, it’s looking pretty cool if I do say so myself. The 24″ iMac really makes a big difference.

At 10 o’clock we’re off to the BDD Opening session where we’ll find out the winners of the breakout technology award. And then this afternoon we’re doing a couple of presentations to the judges of the Best in Show award and the CTO Award. So it’s going to be an exciting day, as is the rest of the week. Come on by stand #227 and say Hi to Bruce, Gayle, Kitty, Mark or myself 🙂

I fly off to Florida tomorrow so thought I’d leave up my general plans for the next week or so. Of course I’ll be online on Twitter and BrightKite (mattwhite on both of them if you’re not already a friend).

Also don’t forget that a group of us will be live blogging the OGS and the LotusphereLive photo stream.

Friday 7pm onwards: PLFNEBGT09, Raglan Road
Saturday 2pm BALD, Big River Brewery
Saturday 6pm onwards: The Turtle Party, ESPN Zone
Sunday: 6pm Welcome Reception at the beach
Monday: 8am OGS Live Blogging
Monday: 10am Pedestal #227 in the Product Showcase
Monday: 1pm Dolphin IV/V Presenting XPages Session (BP105)
Monday: 2pm-8pm Pedestal #227 in the Product Showcase
Tuesday: 9am-4pm Pedestal #227 in the Product Showcase
Tuesday: 4.15pm DL IV/V Presenting Domino Web Development Session (BP109)
Wednesday: 9am-11am Pedestal #227 in the Product Showcase
Wednesday: 11.15am SW Mockingbird Presenting XPages Session (BP105R)
Wednesday: 1pm-6pm Pedestal #227 in the Product Showcase
Thursday: 8.30am SW 1&2 Presenting Domino Web Development Session (BP109R)
Thursday: 11am SW 5&6 On stage at Gurupalooza
Thursday: 5pm Bloggers Open Minigolf
Thursday: 11pm Die quietly somewhere in a corner 😉

If you see me wandering the corridors then stop me and say Hi 🙂

Lotusphere is almost upon us, and not having enough to do already I’ll be involved in a couple of “Live Blogging” efforts over the week.

During the Opening General Session (OGS), Declan Lynch, Stuart McIntyre, Paul Mooney, The Turtle and myself will be live blogging in a joint effort. You’ll be able to go to any of our blogs and watch us spout a load of nonsense for the entire two hour session with photos, opinions and general rambling. I think you’ll be able to join in on the live blog with live commenting. So if you’re in the OGS, chime in with you’re opinions and if you’re not then you’ll at least be able to get a flavour of what’s going on. Just come back to my blog from about 07:30 Eastern Time (that’s 12:30 for the UK folks) next Monday the 19th of January to join in.

Also during the week there’s another group of us (Warren Elsmore, Stuart McIntyre, Paul Mooney, Bill Buchan, Tom Duff and myself) that will be posting photos to Flickr in a more “live” way than normal, ie as we take the photo we’ll post it to Flickr rather than waiting until the end of the day or even the end of the whole week. So you’ll be able to watch those going up, there’s already a couple of photos on the stream and more will be added as we travel to Florida, go to the parties, sessions and right throughout the week.

Well the build up for Lotusphere is well and truly underway, sessions are being practiced, booth prep is almost done and we’re getting to the point of thinking about the parties.

Ah the parties, one of the most important elements of the Lotusphere week.

Declan has posted about the Pre Lotusphere Early Bird Get Together ’09 For the last few ‘pheres a few of us have taken to arriving a day or two early to make the most of the week. So on Friday night (that’ll be the 16th) there will be a group of us at Raglan Road from 7pm or so. Normally if the weather’s anywhere near decent then we’ll be sat outside at the front of the “pub”. Even if this is your first Lotusphere feel free to come along, it’s just a small group of people catching up and relaxing after the day’s travelling.