January 25, 2005
Lotusphere - Holy Cow!
Posted by Jess in
Tech Talk
Wow! I finally get a chance to catch up. First off, Matt, I miss you and people here are asking about you. I'm getting a tad homesick, but that's what happens when the longest you've ever been away from your loved one is when they take off for Japan for two weeks. And I've never been away from Reboot by myself (and we spend all week together, her and I), who apparently is having difficulty coping also… Matt reports she's not eating. Though he threw some edamame into her dish and she ate some, so apparently treats DO overcome missing me. There's a surprise. Not!
I've met so many people and have had such a great time so far. I finally get a chance to put "faces to URLs", and scored my first CULT shirt ever.
There's really nothing I could say that no one else in the blogsphere has already said better, so here’s some quick highlights of my week thus far:
1. John Cleese was the guest speaker at the Opening Session, and in addition to being incredibly funny and a truly wonderful speaker, he also made this great point: He could find no more fitting place for Lotusphere than Disney, because the best anagram for "Lotusphere" is "Here's Pluto". He's one of the few people who could remain totally classy while insulting everyone, and STILL manage to elegantly and eloquently tie-in the overall themes of Lotusphere.
2. Lotus people are a really fun bunch of people with really great hearts. But we knew that.
3. I finally get it! IBM Workplace is not a tangible product, it's a concept! Oh wait, there's a Workplace client. Wait a sec, there's also Lotus Workplace?!
4. After the opening session, I don’t care if I still don't know the difference between IBM Workplace Technology and Lotus Workplace Client. I think the drag and drop content is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
5. While I've been to great sessions, the ones I wanted to go to the most didn't happen. Rob Novak was giving some awesome sessions on business development, including how to get press attention, and how to write proposals. Turns out that these were only for Business Partners. In addition, Matt's been telling me for years to figure out the C API in Notes so he can start teaching me some REALLY cool stuff. Finally, there’s a session on it. However, it's postponed until Wednesday when the speaker can get down here. I can't be selfish and complain too much, I can only imagine how he's feeling right now.
6. Rob was kind enough to explain to me that there is no cost to become a Business Partner. I tried signing up when I first went into business, and somehow ended up getting the impression that it was $1300/year to be a business partner. Not so. Seeing as it took me coming to LS to learn this, technically the first year DID cost me that much, but it was worth it. I know what I’m doing when I get home. Sign me up! I also met some great folks at the Penumbra Group, I'll be looking into that when I get home also.
7. I was really, REALLY overwhelmed with Lotusphere until I saw how easy it was to get around by following the Pocket Agenda Lotus gives us in our badges. Ahhhhhhhh. Breathe.
8. I saw Maureen Leland's session on the Workplace Designer. All I have to say is that she's endearingly sweet. And please oh please oh please oh please put some of those features in the Domino Designer!
9. Joe and Duffbert'ssession on Java for the Lotuscript person was great, along with some unintentional phallic moments in the demo. I’ll let him explain that one. The two have a great speaking dynamic, and were fun to watch. Most importantly, they explained it all in a way that was easy to understand. I’m excited to go home and try to do some tasks in Java rather than LotusScript to see what happens. I sat in the front row, along with Greyhawk68, who said "Nice shirt!" Turns out we were both wearing our "I'm blogging this" t-shirts. I knew I was in great company!
10. It's tough to make it to all the sessions I want to go to. When there are multiple sessions I want to go to in the same time slot and no repeats for any of them, it becomes a matter of deciding which one is going to benefit me the most immediately? It became easy to choose once I made a personal policy that I'd go to the session that would help my biggest weakness.
That's it for now, I'm sure I'll have more later!
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Wow... This has been up for a while and still not comments. Guess all the regular readers are down there with you and haven't gone surfing yet today. I even waited to post to see what others had to say (OR Maybe the 'autoroization of posts' has been implimented and I will be the last post once all are authorized... we will have to wait and see *damn spammers*)
Sounds like your having a great time and I wish I could be there with you. However, if I was, it is my opinion that I would be more of a hinderance. To me, it sounds like a lot of the night life is also geared toward people at the convention and badges are required (Badges? I dont need no stinkin badges)
Leave it to John Cleese to find an anagram for lotusphere (or did he??? http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/). Hell, I give him the props that he did it on his own.
Glad you enjoyed 'Mission Space' and I cant wait to pick you up on Friday. I think we should do some sort of surprise for Reboot. Maybe keep you in the car and I will page you when I have her sufficiently distracted so you can sneak into the house. Imagine her surprise.
With Reboot, affection is one of her strong suits. She was out playing in the wood one day and came home limping. We thought we got all the briars and thorns out but a week later, I noticed that occationally, she would still limp. Kinda like that little piece of wood that gets stuck in your sneaker and reminds you its there every few days. Anyhoo, I got the tweezers and went to work. She was aprehensive about me touching her paw but after 10 minutes when I did get it out, she was so happy she tackled me and kissed me for about 5 minutes. Then she behaved like that dog in the cartoons "Gee Spike, wattaya wanna do now spike? We gonna go chase some cars Spike *pant pant pant*"
Well, that is my babble for the day. Been a long time since I even posted on this site so of course it had to be a book. Seems I do more posting here when Jess is not around so if you want to see more from me take my wife away (granted both of us will protest).
Jess,
Glad y'all had a great time at LS2005. Been vicariously following along via the blog. I'm hoping to be there for my first LS in 2006. Let's see :)
BTW, I was also under the impression that it costs a lot to become a BP. And you say it's free? No cost? Where do I sign up? If you get the chance would you post some detail on this or a URL where I could get more details?
Regards,
Dan
Dan,
I hope you make it!! I got my $1375 worth in the first day, I think. Well worth it, I'm kicking myself for not going sooner.
And yes, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that had the misconception about the BP stuff. Rob McDonaugh had to clue me in.
Here's where you can go:
http://www-1.ibm.com/partnerworld/pwhome.nsf/weblook/index.html
We'll keep each other informed!
