mattwhite.me

Wednesday was, for me at least, the busiest work day of the conference. I managed to get into see Philippe Riand and Eamonn Muldoon’s XPages futures session. Peter Presnell has a good wrap up of the details announced in the session. Suffice it to say that the future looks bright, the future is XPages. Very very cool things are coming down the road.

Down in the Product Showcase it was the last day and it seemed everyone suddenly realised it as we had by far our busiest day with lots of people coming by to chat about IdeaJam, IQJam and to the rest of the LDC guys.

We shut down the stand and then headed upstairs to see the Oral history of Notes session given by Ed for the 20th anniversary of the release of Notes. It was a fun trip down memory lane with a couple of the R5 adverts that they played (Dennis Leary and “I am” of course) getting huge rounds of applause.

Warren Elsmore and Mike Smith hosted a Lotus User Groups BOF for the last session of the day. Huge turnout and a great chat. I’m not sure how much was learned, but I suppose the fact that people now know of a few more LUGs around the world may well help us all out.

The Wednesday night party was at Hollywood Studios, the one park that I hadn’t yet done, so I’ve finally completed the set. It was actually pretty fun with the Toy Story ride providing particular amusement (we were all in particularly juvenile mood so no more shall be said).

I made the silly mistake of heading up to my room to drop off the badge at around midnight, checked email etc and just crashed. As always happens at Lotusphere, the days (and nights) catch up with you and the first time you stop during the day you really need to force yourself to get going again. On the up side I did get a full six hours sleep for the first time in days so I may make it through to Vegas tonight at 3am without keeling over.

Tuesday, for me at least, was a combination of sessions and show floor. Tim and I repeated our SHOW112 session (you can get the downloads here) and then I headed back down to the showcase.

As we’re working down here, we have to negotiate as to which of the other sessions we get to go to. I ended up getting along to see Declan Lynch and David Leedy‘s XPages CSS and Themes session. It was a really great explanation of the power of themes, I think you can expect to see a lot more of that subject in the future, the look and feel of Web 2.0 apps is all important, so the tools to implement good design really need to be understood.

Of course, Tuesday night is party night. There are all sorts of vendor, business partner, developer and other parties going on all over the campus. The Penumbra group and then GSX were kind enough to invite me along to their gatherings so by the end of the night in Kimonos I was full of very nice ice cream and steak. 

Lotusphere is definitely a little more low key this year, it was just a 1am finish for me. But that’s no bad thing, we had to get downstairs to set up the stand for the last day of the product showcase.

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.

After weeks and weeks of preparation and build up I’m finally heading off to Lotusphere for the eleventh time. We’ve been busy getting sessions ready, making sure we’re all set up for the stand and generally faffingaround.

In the end I decided to head to Gatwick last night even though it’s only thirty miles from home, thanks to the snow the trains were totally screwed up and it took me just under three hours to make the journey so I’m happy I got that over with and then got a decent night’s sleep at the airport hotel.

I am so looking forward to ten hours on the plane resting and getting ready for the insanity that lies in the week ahead. Tomorrow, I have bits and pieces of shopping to get done for the stand, but I suspect the early arrivals will meet up for a few beers and dinner tomorrow evening. No venue as of yet, but the Dolphin bar is always a good starting point.

Then on Saturday we have the BALD gathering. Joe Litton has all of the details on that, but if it’s your first time to Lotusphere then it’s a great way of meeting new people, just come along and say Hi.

Sunday is the first day of the conference and also Tim and I are speaking, hopefully a few of you will come to see our Show ‘n’ Tell session – SHOW112 Building an XPages App from Start to Finish. We have a huge amount of content to get through in two hours so buckle up before we start!

Other than that I’ll be on Stand 622 in the Showcase and trying to get to a few sessions this year, if you see me around say Hi, it’s always good to meet new people.

See you in Florida!