January 29, 2006
Lotusphere - Our community is truly amazing
Posted by Jess in
Lotusphere2006
It must be said, we have a truly amazing community of Notes/Domino people. This is not just a learn-fest for all of us, it's also our one week a year where we can see the people that we talk to all day long.
I think we can all say that we know some of these people more than we do some of the ones we see every day.
I've been thinking about the energy, sessions, and fun this week, and I think I've finally figured it out. I think I know why we all truly get along, and are family - we bring out the very best in each other. If you have a huge bunch of people bringing out the best in each other, that's an energy that's just simply unspeakable. And this energy is radiated all year long on the blogs, too.
Some misc. highlights, SO many others:
Greyhawk has dubbed Matt "White Chocolate" after seeing him perform karaoke of Rapper's Delight, Humpty Dance, and Ice, Ice, Baby. Awesome job, honey! The house was loving it as usual, if there is one thing that my husband is good at, it's working the crowd!
I had fun going to the front of the room for sessions and sitting in the first two rows with everyone. It's amazing the strength that's offered to the speakers, who are also our friends. While we all threaten to heckle, it's all good natured fun, and it really is a great source of strength to have people support you while you bare your professional integrity and speak in front of hundreds of people.
In addition to going to sessions to learn content, I also went to see various speaking styles, and learn from my friends. Everyone is such a great presenter, I gathered lots of valuable tips.
Deb Latter, who co-presented with Chris Byrne, is one of my new friends, and a true partner in crime for me! She does the same thing I do, when looking at Karaoke song lists, we both immediately turn to "C" looking for anything from The Commitments (of course then going to 't comma c'). Sadly, there never is, but finally I found someone else like that. So, we both got up there at JamFest to sing Mustang Sally, and in true Commitments backup style, sang "Royde, Sally Royde". I have this weird feeling that if Deb and I lived closer to each other, we'd don our punk rock gear and go sing together more often.
John Roling sang a few Barenaked Ladies songs, and one he co-sang with Ray. And we talked about name brand identity in a BOF session, which was once again called into play when the Karaoke lady said, "Hello, can I please have Greyhawk and The Lion King up on stage?" Awesome! The two rocked, they sang "If I Had a Million Dollars" and truly sung well together.
And then later on Greyhawk sang another BNL song in which again, he sounded just like the lead singer. When he was done, I said, "Man, you've got Barenaked Ladies NAILED! - Wait a minute, let me rephrase that..."
I was singing "Chain of Fools" in karaoke and all of a sudden, who should join me on stage but Debbie Lynd and Carilyn Daniel from
The View, the Notes and Domino technical journal. That was a great surprise, I hadn't seen Carilyn in awhile, and it was SO fun to have a group on stage with me dancing away.
The Wednesday night party at Seaworld was fun, hanging out with everyone. I managed to introduce Don McNally to the group, who I have been friends with since talking to him on Notes.net.
I had fun bouncing around hanging out with everyone, and managed to spend time with my "Notes Chickies" (I really do want that domain for us Notes girls) at dinners and Kimonos.
Finally wrapped it up with dinner at Shula's on Thursday night with about 20 other people...
More to come! I haven't even gone into the technical content of the sessions yet. I will. But it's amazing - there wasn't any sessions that were even just OK. They were all *fantastic*, with the type of information I can come home and use immediately.
Pictures will be up soon, I promise. I'm still recovering from no sleep and LOTS of caffeine to keep going.
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Comments
[emotional tear] ...thanks Jess.
Next year, we have to find somewhere that has more R&B on the play list...or even better, since you mentioned punk, have your heard the "Josie & The Pussycats" soundtrack?
Excellent punk stuff in there.
"Freaky Friday" isn't bad either.
It's funny how we'd turn to a page in the karaoke book and both immediately home in on the same song.
FYI - (although you MUST already know this) your voice totally melts ice.
If you folks reading this haven't ever heard Jess (or Matt, for that matter) sing, you're truly missing out.
