IdoNotes (and sleep)

Registration looked good, plenty of badges.  Awesome room and presentation center I have had the pleasure of being at previously inside of Washington University at the Charles Knight Executive Center.  All the presentation material will be available on LotusLive for attendees which was nice.  I wonder if they will create a new account or use our existing one?

Ed Brill - Keynote

The Collaboration Agenda (I dissected it here back in January at Lotusphere) mentioned at Lotusphere was the opening portion of the slideset.  Ed moved right into the building blocks to help companies work smarter, which is the Lotus Collaboration software.  Partners are a key part of the growth of the strategy.  The Collaboration Agenda (CA in my notes from here one for simplicity) is about translating technological innovation into industry-specific contexts.  It is not about products but about basing solutions around needs.

18,378 new customers have been added since the launch of Lotus Notes and Domino 8 with growth in LotusLive as well.

LotusKnows was the next impact statement from Ed talking about the influence it had had and the advertisement placement everywhere.

The technology roadmap is based on customer evolution as much as the drive to enhance the products themselves.  Desktop productivity was a highlight with Lotus Symphony.  He moved deftly into LotusLive and LotusLive labs talking about such things as the Slide Library.

Ed showed a video on Project Vulcan, hosted by Ron Sebastian.  It was a good demo walk through.  I hope this video is out there for everyone to see.

Smarter Collaboration: Integrated Lotus Portfolio

A huge client demo was part of this.  Widgets, Activities and more.  I did ask a question around sources for best practices on security controls and deployment for all of these widgets.  Yes it might have been a slight set-up but I see IBM sales push widgets constantly with no idea of the complexity of including and deploying 3rd party widgets into your environment.

"Lotus Knows you should stop begging and stealing from people and borrow from them instead" -  yes this was an actual slide.  The idea is learning how to search and find information, leveraging communities of interest.  Lotus Connections is the key here.  Many, many slides and commentary on Connections and social sharing.

The PeoplePod plug-in was cool, wish we had it to play with.  He then moved into live demos and click-to-call technology.

IBM Websphere Portal - the awesome Jon Raslawski

Jon did a bang up job explaining the why to use Portal without making it a huge sales pitch. The partner references were not just a name, but the story and the integration portions and making your day perform better.

Social Collaboration Delivers Real Business Value - Randy Frink, and Americas Business Unit Executive

Social networking is part of our fabric as human beings.  Lotus Connections and Quickr install base grew 34% and millions of users.
Social collaboration helps people work smarter.  We moved through Quickr Connectors, Connections and about how you share and locate not only your data, but co-workers.

He discussed Lotus Connections Next and Quickr Next.  Enhanced mobile support for Andriod.  As well as microblogging and better profile support.

Notes and Domino Strategy - Ed Brill

Ed rapidly moved through 8.5.x, licensing, packaging and more in a nicely paced presentation.  I think this is a core of what poeple wanted to know and what licensing works for them.  Mainly with Travelr, CAl's, free Designer and Mobile Connect.

Notes 8.5.2+ and the naming on iNotes/DWA plus lite mode and ultralite mode.  Ultralite will move to support Andriod and more.  Ed said it, I repeat it.  Learn XPages!!  (I personally might suggest the upcoming developer webcast in Series 3 of ConsultantInYourPocket).

OpenNTF.org was also highlighted which was nice to see.  In 2009 traffic was up 25% to 3.2million page views.  67,000 members and registered.

IBM and SAP managed to get a slide.  Not a lot of hands went up but I know it is important.

Now slides on delivery of Notes showing on-premise, appliance, cloud and hybrid.  LotusLive Notes will be getting a substantial update this year, according to Ed.  Slide had a ton of info:

• Cloud based Domino Mail, Calendar, Contact and Instant Messaging
• Seamless transition to the cloud from business
• Runs Domino
• Per user/per month licensing
• Archiving with Sonian
• Moving to 5gb mailbox with options for mobility and archiving
• lower entry of 50 users
• customers still handle user id management

I know we still currently offer a better deal on this, but I will watch closely.

Lotus Protector was next up.  it is a product line, not just a single product.  IBM has now moved to Protector for internal spam control. It is a per user software license on physical or virtual.  Up to 360k emails per hour filtered.  it is optimized for the appliance model.

Project Concord, or web based collaborative document editing, supports both individual and teams.  It isn't just Symphony on the web.  Web clippings, co-editing and more make you more productive.  Look for this in 2nd quarter in LotusLive Labs.

Collaboration In the Cloud - Ted Brufke, NA Sales Leader

LotusLive is of particular interest to us as we have been doing this model for years.  Keep in mind that LotusLive iNotes is NOT Lotus Domino based.  Their idea is to have you not manage your IT infrastructure.

LotusLive iNotes is~$3/user/month targeting users in factories, overserved or not served at all.

LotusLive Notes and LotusLive Engage with enhancements and partner offerings (Skype, SalesForce, etc).

Sametime Roadmap and Unified Communications

The first portion was talking about who could use the unified technology, such as healthcare.

He moved into plug-ins to jump you from Sametime Connect to Sametime 8.5 meetings and also peeked at audio and video.  Up to six people in the video environment.  They did a nice live demo over the network to another MCTY city.  He preloaded presentations and was able to change and navigate between them quickly.  Markups and the rest of the expected tools were there.  The discussion area was the tiny bottom left box, but could be expanded and also sorted to show only the questions or action items.

Meeting recording was demod next.  With Sametime 8.5 it records in mpg or mov format.  I am waiting for the hardware and software requirement questions to begin.

After the awesome feedback so far on this morning's post, an idea bubbled to the top that some liked.  Others may have had reserves, but I think the idea is sound enough to up the number received.  We will be using Lotusphere as an example (for those coming from other types of conferences).

Lotusphere has an online system that is not as clean and easy as some would like for filling out "on the fly" evaluations of session.  Lotus gives a conference T-shirt when filling out and turning in the final conference evaluation.  That is it.  From there the room monitors attempt to get them as people walk out the door, but many are never done by an overwhelming majority of attendees.  So here is what came up.

Offer a token for each evaluation turned in per session.  The room monitors would hand one back when they got handed the eval.  Attendees are a competitive bunch, as pointed out by one person.  They would go for these if the prizes or rewards were real.  Online evaluations could be verified at the Info Desk.  You walk up, show your id and they see the number you have done.  You are handed XX amount of tokens and then they mark those off.  A simple task since you use your registration number to submit the online on anyway.  The info is there.

Now what are the tokens good for?  Numerous choices are possible.  Discounts in the Lotus Stuff store.  Shirts.  More coffee.  Prizes from vendors.  A bigger giveaway with each token being an entry marker.  Hand in a few for some cool piece of Lotusphere memorabilia.  The possibilities can be mixed and matched with cost versus input.  There is a line there somewhere that could be met by all.

While actually handling tokens sounds crazy, people respond better to the physical side.  This could be done virtually as a bank with a scan of your ID.  But being able to trade, share, group and pool them is just as important.  Think collaboration here people.  You are short 3?  Here I am not using them.  We want the big prize?  Let's pool our tokens.

I would suggest reading the comments from the previous posting as well as they offer some great feedback.  No system would be perfect to gain more evaluations.  But there has to be some movement to make the response better.  Also, using a business partner solution, such as Ben's, for the session database makes perfect sense.  It has grown into such an amazing tool and needs to be recognized.  While IBM needs to and wants to keep you in the little lsonline bubble, that goes away, bridging the collaboration gap they so much promote would be awesome.

Speakers spend varying amounts of time preparing sessions for everyone to consume at Lotusphere.  Some spend weeks (or a month) making demos, perfecting slides, generating code and practicing over and over. The intent is to build the best possible session (length of the session does not matter) for everyone involved.  The end goal is happy attendees that take away tons of new information, fee tools or code and the feeling they learned something.  Some are even entertained along the way.

Now what speakers get back is the difference.  Speakers are normally nervous enough about the impression that was made and how they did.  They sit anxiously by and sometimes run right away to look at evaluations as people leave the room.  Others wait patiently for the evaluations to be entered, manually, into the system for review.  either way it is hard enough to digest.  Every comment, checkbox, compliment and concern are digested.  Some speakers take things to heart, and very serious.  Others glance and shrug.  The next points are very serious and where I am headed.

Evaluations are greatly appreciated and definitely wanted by each and every speaker.  Not just one or two, but in quantity.  If there are 100 or even just 20 people in the room, then I personally expect 95% of that number have an eval.  Even if you only quickly check the boxes and run out.  or go online and fill it out.  Spend the few moments to compensate for the weeks of prep speakers did.  it isn't much to ask and I honestly fore myself to make sure and do it out of respect for the session.  No matter if I liked it or not.

Now what gets placed on the evals has apparently become a game of chance.  From blaming speakers (not the conference producers on final evals) that the room is too hot/cold, that the projector didn't work to something I never anticipated.  From some recent Twitter traffic I submit the following craziness:

1.Oh and ZERO evals for (session removed) - yet people stopped me, emailed me, thanked me for it. Problem is getting feedback to IBM.
2. I did not fill any evals at #ls10 - as a way of saying 'could do better'
3. Didn't look at evals till today, disappointed (+ embarrassed) that people evaluate speaker looks.

Does anyone see a crazy pattern here?  Evaluations are not weapons of choice.  Not filling one out is of no help to anyone at all.  Simply state what more or less you would have wished to see.  If you are contacting the speaker with praise, please let IBM know in performing an evaluation there.  IBM does look at these and helps in getting your favorite speakers back and removing those you did not like.  But the last one?  Stating how a speaker looks is of no concern to anyone.  Heck, there is not even a section that asks you that question or ever would.  I am sure your job performance reviews do not have that type of section, since it would be against any and all companies Human Resource rules.  While we are all human and may notice such topics, evaluations are not the place to include them.

It seems now it is too late to fill out evaluations, we can only hope for better at any event that we all attend or speak at.  I am sure the yellow-verse can do better. Can't we?

I read, with interest, someone asking why the presenters and speakers were not active in their session communities established inside of LotusLive.  From Maria:

In my opinion, it doesn't appear that presenters/speakers are communicating during their sessions on where to locate their Connections public communities (if any). Most of the communities have minimal content, although during the presentation speakers are sharing during their presentation online resources and bookmarks for additional information. Couldn't this information have been uploaded to the speakers/presenters' Connections community before attendees arrived at Lotusphere, which could've spear headed Connections and audience interaction during question and answer portion of session?

It is disappointing that Lotus/IBM is promoting social software but it isn't being used to its' potential.

I think there are a few reasons:

• Many of us run public blogs that contain this exact content
• Lotus created these and also had the pdf files, which could have been linked there I imagine
• We put the resources in the slides themselves, instead of as bookmarks inside the session community
• The community isn't used by many people it seems
• MOST IMPORTANT: Lotus online is not a community since it goes away in a few weeks.  See my posting here

Nathan did a great post on what is needed as a missing ingredient, a Lotus App Store.  It has been in the works for some time and is ready to begin.  Here is the issue:

 Vendors all across the Lotus software world are not ready nor do they sell in this mode.  No one has an a la carte attitude or the means to support it currently.  Everyone thinks in the Lotus model for licensing with great discussion on purchasing, support and other items.  I have found it nearly impossible to even get referral codes form most of the vendors. They are just not built to support them.

User counts matter, number of servers matter, your certifier name you use matters.  The Lotus client and server are not built in consumer mode, so I do see some concerns.  

Don't get me wrong. (I am highlighting this so you all read it). I am not saying any vendor is not right in protecting the code they developed and making sure it isn't sent all over the place without receiving payment.  We aren't talking a phone that has individual coding, we are talking a server that takes any template, so it is harder to write for and protecting intellectual property is tough in that model

But I will say that in order to spread your goods to more places, on demand, requires a change of thinking in how people are allowed to procure the software from you.  So if you think you can step up and want part, let's talk..

During Lotusphere, I dissected the Collaboration Agenda that was re-presented during the Opening General Session and took notes on some sessions.  But, I never gave a good crux of my feeling on Lotusphere2010 in mid stride during the festivities themselves.

Lotus came on strong with the push towards LotusLive and cloud computing on one hand.  There were numerous sessions dedicated to the track itself.  BOF's were organized in support of the unknown number of companies using LotusLive, and labs were built to give users a test bed.  Partners were offered the chance to attend sessions on how to build business using LotusLive and customers were asked in what way it could help.  In all a marketing blitz encapsulated in Lotusphere like no other.  Partners still wonder how to make true revenue around management, integration and services, outside of reselling.  They are pointed to migration services, but you really do not have access into LotusLive to provide a true integration customization experience.  I think looking to Lotus to build this into LotusLive would be prudent to assist companies moving into the cloud solution.

The Best Practices track is as strong as ever, with incredible amounts of knowledge being shared by the speakers.  This became the most technical track years ago and is a destination for many attendees.  The speakers themselves spend inordinate amounts of time to actually create, test and deploy the demos for use in the session.  Then add on presentation creation time and rehearsal.  I heard ranges of long hours they invested to be selected and create the final masterpieces.  Relish these sessions and peek at ones you might have missed.  Some of the presenters actual in person presentation may be a little bit different than what was uploaded for you.

Interestingly, there are some sessions that snuck into the schedule with little fanfare but ones you should have seen.  Lotus Foundations Start had it's own session on Monday afternoon and is something any company with remote servers for smaller offices, or new ones, should investigate more.  Back again was the Nerd Girl panel and some other blogs captured the conversation for you.  This is a second year for this session and BOF and really drives attendance for what is apparently a concern with the women in our field.  Lotusphere Idol makes another return and allows those maybe passed over or that have never spoke at Lotusphere a chance to stand up and be recognized.  You then have a full day to get the real presentation together and actually stand there and do it.  It builds the presenter pool and opens the door to just about any topic.  There was one on attention management futures in the Notes client that was in the ID track and almost missed my eye on Wednesday morning.

BOF's sit at add times, have very focused topics and beg for your attention.  Some are jammed packed and others are lightly attended.  They were picked based on your votes of popularity and topics that are needed.  Make sure you get involved in these next time.  Force yourself awake or indoors in the late afternoon.  Sitting in a non-formal structure simply communicating with others that have the same issues you do really brings out tons of information from the moderator and others in the room.

There was some strange events around numerous people having to leave Lotusphere early, which continued the mysterious aura surrounding the entire week.  I tried to get a grip on what the feeling was and think I have it for the summary posting I am finishing now.

It isn't what you think (I don't think).  When I first heard the term, I immediately thought of a movement of bringing together Lotus products in a more tightly integrated basis, with easier points of entry and packaging.  While Lotus is tops in enterprise mail/calendaring and more, they are now becoming leaders in the enterprise social software space.  I envisioned dreams of installs and products that made this all a simple click and deploy architecture.

Here is what was quoted from IT World Canada:

Alistair Rennie, IBM’s newly minted general manager for Lotus software and Websphere Portal, said the collaboration agenda is a vehicle for encouraging discussion of collaboration technologies in the business. The agenda extends this new way of thinking about collaboration to “your critical line of business priorities,” said Rennie.

So if you read this, you will see that this is a vertical initiative through workshops that are in quite a few countries already, to offer more collaboration tools into specific industries at first, with expansion later.  Through workshops they will hep each vertical industry understand how to get ROI and measure this against collaboration efforts.  I am interested to see this as obtaining ROI numbers from social software is a hot topic and often disputed in the social media space/blogs/conferences.

Finding articles that did not repeat the same exact press release was tough, but I read about 18 to get it all.  From many of the articles I read trying to get my grips around this new initiative, consulting services are a major player coupled with tools and software labs experts.  Then an article on ebizq (never heard of them either) showed a governmental example and case study.  It began to click.  This is about IBM being able to go into a vertical enterprise type organization, offer a review of how they struggle with collaboration and then sell services and make recommendations around it.

Now here was the kicker.  This was talked about in 2008 at Interop by Bob P himself in a keynote.  And finally and IBM employee that is actually working the pedestal at Lotusphere made a blog posting on what it means, which leads to the most simple answer:

Collaboration Agenda is a philosophy, a way of doing things, a metamethodology that brings together well-known best practices to help customers address pain points with solutions that will save them money and help them make money.

This is my second year attending this roundtable on social software at Lotusphere.  It seems some headway was made on certain areas raised as a concern last year and is still on hold in others.  Here are my quick thoughts and notes.  Keep in mind that social software is both Connections and Quickr.

What was on the concern last last year and how they did

• Common branding for social services - started and will be doing more this year
• Competitive information - they have it and have sone great studies.  The push is to get that information in the hands of partners so it can be utilized in informing customers.  Partners requested access to internal competitive information.  We were told we will look at finding a way and apparently if they can substantiate the source and testing it can be shared.  Should prove helpful if they can make this happen
• Positioning in the marketplace - they say it is done.  I agree that Lotus is being seen as a leader in the enterprise social space.  But you cannot sit back at any point as there are so many new ones popping up constantly.
• Air cover through a social media manager/community leader across blogs, wikis and more - they state they have really moved into this.  I am really struggling to see it pop up anywhere.  They did found the "Collaboration Soapbox" but unless you knew that name I don't see how they are promoting it in other networks.
• Lastly was a licensing model for hosted environments to get Connections and Quickr up faster for SMB with a better licensing model to meet the SAAS needs - this has not been done

Technical and sales enablement was next.  A concern was the missing sales kit enablement parts that are needed to present to customers when engaging them in IBM Social Software initiatives.  Greenhouse is becoming a resource for some partners to store, share and get information.  But it is partner driven, not IBM and they asked for IBM help.

A big topic was SMB entry pricing models for Lotus Connections.  The current minimum of 45k is way above what a small company would invest.  That was agreed so options were discussed.  It was suggested a 6-10k model with a limited amount of users would be helpful in reaching the smaller new customers.  They cannot use the word "Express" without some process inside of IBM, but the seed has now been planted.  This goes back to the above point of hosted license model options which would give quick startup and easy entry costs for SMB.

Lastly a topic was on the current competition reaching beyond Sharepoint and into other products like Jive and BlueKiwi.  Jive also acquired Filtrbox which I mentioned as a tool in my BOF507 last night on using social media to consume Lotus information.  More higher level marketing materials on why IBM Social Software and the Collaboration Agenda was requested so it could be used when talking to customers.

As last year, there are some partners deeply involved in selling the tools, while others are finding it tougher with some of the concerns they raised.  It depends highly on area, need and how it is presented.  There was mention of a 6 month follow-up call to see where we stand mid-year instead of waiting till next Lotusphere.  I will have updates then.

Here are the basic slides as resources.  I know we covered a ton of information in the BOF, so feel free to reach out to me to get more information.

BOF507 - Social Networks.pdf

You can watch the stream right here in this posting built on Domino technology or click this URL to set your own refresh preferences.  You may also utilize the iPhone interface here.  

Please join us for this 4th annual venture into bringing you live commentary, Flickr photos and Tweets about the event itself

I will also try and get another stream going at http://www.IdoNotes.com/live like last year depending on bandwidth

The idea was simple as you can see in my constantly updating Flickr stream.  Everything was a throwback.  PacMan, Jetsons, 80's music, 80's ads and surprisingly in the middle of the fray...  an oxygen bar!

I did Episode 69 of the IdoNotes podcast when I attempted to install on the Mac not reading ahead or knowing it was PC only.  I went ahead and had it installed on me PC and was surprised to see a cd from FewClix in the Lotusphere bag with a free license code.  Make sure you jump on it.

When I checked in yesterday (Saturday) I think I got our first hint that something was amiss in Disney compared to years past.  I was handed a badge and one thing was not quite like the other. (picture)

Your honor, I submit to you the following cutbacks have taken place so far at Lotusphere this year:

• The badges have a thin velcrostrap for your neck, no thick cord.  Already saw one pull off and drop
• The badges are not plastic name inserts.  They are paper
• The badges have no RFID tags this year, which in turn means no tracking equipment
• The badges have NO booklet inside as all years past.  I know printing costs and going green stuff, so I applaud that.  Just this little map foldouts with schedules.  Now the layout is very nice showing each day on a side.  So two days to a foldout.  Then the rooms are listed.  However, folding these buggers is like grandpa driving on a windy day.  Plus, there is no map of the layout of the hotels.  There are blank pages on them to take notes, but maps for newbies would have been better.
• The Business Development Day had no guest thingy, like the painter last year. Just speakers from IBM   UPDATE: Ed reports there was a guest speaker/host of the event.  (I was just reporting comments)
• Not a sign of water bottles yet.  They may not appear till Monday anyway but I cant recall   UPDATE: someone says they saw one
• Holy freakin cow, there is no giant tent outside for the opening reception that happens in a short amount of time.  I saw tables lined out, but if the weather turns bad or the cold had hit..what is that song..  "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide".   UPDATE: I was reminded that last year since there was no Swan dining the tent was MIA.  I thought they had something small still, but the years are blurring.  UPDATE: I was told the tent possibly ripped due to winds/weather which then takes it out of the equation.

UPDATE at 11:45PM :  List updated some..  This was more of a parody than anything but apparently it was taken a little more.  Even with people asking for speaker names on the agenda, my point was just the map.  I think even Turtle ended up pointing out the foldout in his TURT101 session, big changes just draw attention, even if it was after people asking for year.

This is the current list of evidence we have.  I am sure this will be update later.

Here is a quick video clip of Yancy Lent announcing this years voting winner in a close race.  Visit the winner's PlanetLotus profile here.

FewClix opened their website today for you to get in and start viewing and testing this email productivity application.  You have a time limited, fully-functional beta available to grab in a solo installer, nsf or enterprise nsf version.

I had the pleasure of talking to Madan Kumar, CEO of FewClix, the other day and he answered many of the nagging technical questions.  Look for the podcast coming out shortly.  With the sleekness of their website, the time they put into building the demos and actually offering a downloadable test right away, they score some major points in understanding how to do business.

You will find them at Lotusphere on the vendor floor at pedestal #629 as well.

After a flurry of emails, press releases and announcements, I think 2010 will be the year of the useable and functional plug-ins for the Notes clients.  It seems vendors are deploying real value additions for the client.  Couple that with the recent additions that are going open source through OpenNTF and the client will become overly busy with sidebar applications.  Look for some cool ones that I have had the pleasure of seeing being announced over the next week and changes to some existing ones that were only tiny web browser interfaces becoming a real tool that actually integrates with the client itself.

This also leads to another theory in how many apps can the client function with before it becomes bogged down?  The Firefox browser extensions and new Chrome extensions can slowly eat away at resources and cause slowdowns in function.  Not to mention the UI challenges with the sidebar itself.  Mary Beth and I have had some conversations around this and I can't wait to see what they come up with.  Is there  a point where the sidebar could be overgrowing with widget and plus-in icons and become a distrction?

I mentioned a landing page I had made to watch appearance of the LotusKnows marketing name when they launched it.  Since then Lotus has made it the focus point of Lotusphere 2010 so you can bet there will be tons of information around it.  So here is what I use and offer to you to grab as simple landing pages.

LotusKnows page on IdoNotes - finds Twitter, FriendFeed, blog searches, delicious and more

LotusKnows newspaper on NewsCred - find Twitter, news articles, ls10 searches, Flickr and more.  

Xpages newspaper on Newscred - follows all the xpages blogs and Twitter searches


There are a few more tricks I have for you, but you will need to attend my BOF on Monday night in Swan Parrot 1
BOF507  Using social networks to consume Lotus information

I held on from making any fuss around this until it was moved twice and then confirmed.  The night before Lotusphere, IBM will officially take their Sametime Gateway to a new address on the Internet.  This DOES NOT affect extst.ibm.com that some of you connect to.  It only affects those that communicate with IBM from gateway to gateway (SIP to SIP).

This was supposed to take place at the end of December, but due to various reasons (read as it seems some larger customers had issues) with the timing so they moved it.  The date, the day before Lotusphere.  So if anything goes wrong, the connectivity and awareness to IBM will go away for those affected right before communication might be very important.

If you are currently pointing to IP address 207.25.251.165, please change it to IP address 170.225.31.215.
If you are currently pointing to IP address 207.25.251.166, please change it to IP address 170.225.31.216.
If you are currently pointing to IP address 207.25.251.167, please change it to IP address 170.225.31.217.
If you are currently pointing to IP address 207.25.251.168, please change it to IP address 170.225.31.218.

From the entire IdoNotes and Spiked Studio Productions family, I am happy to co-sponsor this year's Blogger Open.  With the hard work of Mitch and Warren, an amazing number of people gathered at Fantasia Gardens Miniature Golf Course for an evening of team building, drinks and attempts to play a hard course of miniature golf.

Jump over and register for this event that takes places after the Closing General Session on Thursday January 21st.  Spaces are very limited as Northern Collaborative Technologies and myself decided that they really needed a budget to go by :-)

I had the pleasure to have Stuart give me a call on Skype and talk briefly about all things social going on for Lotusphere.  Listen in to the LotusphereBlog podcast episode 9.

Thanks to Brightkite, there are amazing amounts of privacy controls and ways to connect to your existing friends while at Lotusphere through the IdoCheckin points.  If you don't get it yet, the ability to see where your friends are, or who has checked in at particular places, adds tons of value to your experience.

Privacy
This is something everyone takes seriously, and you should.  The idea of sharing your location throughout the day is to build in person connectivity with the Lotus community.  There are no checkpoints established anywhere outside of public spaces and checking in is totally up to you.  Meaning, you control when and where and to whom (see below)

As for privacy controls, there are a couple levels and sharing types.  Here are the types first

• Fans -  these are people that want to hear from you.  You do not have to make them a friend or see their information.  They just want to keep up with where you are
• Friends -  these are people you wish to follow yourself.  You have levels of alerts and controls of what is shared to them.  You can receive alerts by email or SMS if you really have to know where this person is without using the applications.

Levels of sharing -
They have simplified sharing when you check in.  You can share to just friends (not everyone/fans) and toggle on and off Twitter/Facebook.  It makes sharing to who you want and when you want a simple click.  So I could share with everyone most of the time and even cross post to Twitter, and then restrict others to just friends.

Friendship is a one way street with the service.  Anyone can become a fan of anyone else, nothing more is needed  It is up to you to post for just friends or everyone.

Posting
You can also post to Twitter, Facebook and Flickr when you do your check in itself, making life simple.  Adding notes, pictures and other items can then be assigned to the place itself as well as your Flickr stream.

Connecting

• Facebook - the largest grouping of who you know and trust.  Are we connected on Facebook?
• Twitter - if you follow them already, then you should be seeing them in location services.  You can find me on Twitter and do not forgot about the @Lotusphere account for reaching everyone while down there.
• Gmail - use your Google mail or even Google apps account to find those you communicate with
• Yahoo - many of you still live and breathe Yahoo services, here is your connection point.

Oh if it was only possible..

Now that many of you are downloading the clients and preparing to get involved in location services while at Lotusphere, I wanted to let you know the fastest way to add contacts/friends.

Simply login to BrightKite, head to the page for Discovering Friends, and choose between Twitter, Facebook, gMail, Google Apps and Yahoo to quickly connect to and see who uses the service already.

If you follow me on Twitter, connect on Facebook or have ever emailed me, then you should be able to connect right away!

More on privacy and sharing later.

After a great conversation with the Brightkite team yesterday, we started pulling statistics and ideas for more places to list as check-in locations.  Amazingly, people checked in hundreds and hundreds of times across Lotusphere.  Couple this with the expansion of listings Brightkite has gained since last year as they expanded, pretty much every major restaurant around is covered and merged with the listings we had last year.  Here is the base list from last year when IdoCheckin launched for just the hotel spaces.

Clarification - every major restaurant in the hotels and around the Boardwalk have their own listings in place and are ready.  From BlueZoo, Kimonos, Big river, Spoodles..  they are all there!!

See yesterday's relaunch announcement for more information.
 

• DolphinBar
• DolphinDining
• DolphinHemispheres
• DolphinRotunda
• LSVendorFloor
• SwanEntrance
• Y&BConferenceCenter
• Y&BLobby

So what other locations do you want to see established?  Each meeting room is possible, but might be overkill.

After breaking another record in number of viewers in 2009, Carl Tyler and myself are ready for year #4 of giving you LotusphereLive.  Carl has once again stunned us with his amazing design work against a Domino 8.5.1 server with Sametime 8 loaded.  He made a great video and posting about it right here for Lotusphere2009.  If you want live content from the OGS, this is the place to get it in real-time.  Even on your iPhone and Blackberry , Droid and more with the mobile web interface!

If you missed the previous years, feel free to go back and visit to see all the chatter, pictures and commentary.  Yes, there is archives!

Last year was the launch of IdoCheckin, providing all attendees at Lotusphere with geo-location services.  This year the experience has been expanded with more functionality, check-in points and remote viewing.  For the new attendees and participants, here is an excerpt refresher:

Remember the first time you went to a conference when you did not know anyone or could not find anyone?  Imagine you are one of those new people this year.  You wander around with no way to easily be in touch or locate another attendee.  You will be able to communicate and locate anyone that participates, even total strangers through IdoCheckin.

The important thing to know is you decide when you check-in and to where.  You can go "off the grid" at any time and only the public Lotusphere locations are established as public points.  This was a great way to find your friends, see where the crowds are and join in and meet new faces.  Couple this with the Lotusphere Twitter account that let's you reach everyone, there is no reason we aren't a better community while there.

So what is new and has changed?  Mobile clients and more integration!!

• iPhone client
• Blackberry client
• Android client
• the mobile web interface still exists as well as the SMS and email ability
• Facebook Connect and Twitter integration, Flickr, FireEagle and more

For those of you not attending Lotusphere in person, you can also launch and view the entire wall (live now) that pulls all pictures, notes and checkins across the Lotusphere area.  Hopefully Lotus will have some of these running at Lotusphere for the enjoyment of all.

More checkin locations coming with the announcement made right here!

Over the years, Lotusphere has taken the path of building an entire infrastructure to support the conference, most of the previous time with the servers onsite in the Dolphin.  The capabilities do grow annually, but we lost the past knowledge and contacts from the previous years.   The technology has changed in what seems like eras of time over the short years.   I know this brief outline is not perfect, but the path has looked somewhat like the following:

• the annual website is always in place
• while at Lotusphere we get a new email address we could use, (but never do anymore)
• Early Lotusphere days had us using full Notes clients, we hacked and found ways to use our ID's and make connection docs home
• Soon they had worked out a good roaming system
• They launch Nomad to allow us to carry Notes on a stick.  We rejoice!  They block USB ports on machines there.  We shrug
• Online awareness enters the picture into the kiosks; yet we are never at the kiosks
• the Domino Web Access era (accounts we never use)
• the Lotus Connections era
• LotusLive and the cloud era
• back to Lotus Connections and Domino for 2010

Lotus has made a decision here that could have changed some of the communication landscape between tens of thousands of customers, partners, employees, vendors and press.  A living breathing system that grew over the years and integrated more technology, connecting more people together.

In perfect timing Lotus sent an email this weekend opening Lotusphere and promptly closing it at 4pm EST on February 5th 2010.  So you get one whole month total and exactly fifteen (15) days to grab, save, download or whatever anything from the conference

One of the recent concerns has been access to the files from Lotusphere and the length of time it stays available.  People end up writing scripts and other tools to grab everything they can from the site like an after holiday sale.  Collaboration and sharing is not about making it a local resource and becoming a hermit for another 11 months.

My Proposal
Lotusphere should be a constant community with security wrapped around the resources by the the year I attend.  I would maintain an account that allowed me to chat, communicate and look up people.  Lotus would integrate new technologies of social networking tools (outside of Lotus Connections as we went along).  I would be able to access past files from all the years of content that was afforded to me for the years I attended.

Imagine I only go every other year.  Well I would never lose contact, I would jump right into the mix, have access to past slides, audio and more and be able reconnect.  Remember that not every presentation is given each year and not every new one is better than the previous.  Some of the best info on a topic might be three years ago.  A development session may cover some piece of technology that does not appear in this year's schedule.

Lotusphere should be a Sametime chat community that never closes, now with the zero download client found in Sametime 8.5.  Socialbookmarks should have kept growing.  Throw out Activities since I can only use one such plug-in in my client at work and use it already.  Streamline what communities are there.  

Keep the accounts active and make use of the population that wants to be part of Lotusphere and comes each year instead of making us go through a rebirth of connections, technology and sharing. I know I have talked about the number of silo and fragmented communities that pop up, but this would have been the oldest external one in existence (outside of forums on Notes Net)

It's only a thought.

Once again the Lotusphere Twitter id is alive and well for communication with anyone and everyone!  Just read the following rules and How-To document.  The idea is to be able to communicate in mass without having to follow each person.  If you are looking for the perfect Twitter client for your device, then head over to EverythingTwitter and browse by category or do a search.

The hashtag we all decided on back in November was #ls10 for you to use in tweets, photo postings and more.  (It seems Lotus like the very long LotusKnows as a tag but the trend has been ls and the year it seems.  Also, LotusKnows is the new Twitter id IBM will tweet under this year for their marketing plan as this has been a community resource)

First, the Rules:

• I am not turning on auto-follow to prevent spammers.  So it might be a minute before you are allowed to post,  But you can follow right away
• Anyone that sends explicit content or becomes a nuisance (as voted by many not just one of us) gets removed from being followed, which removes the ability to send to everyone
• Anything you send will be read by MANY, keep that in mind.  Typos can hurt
• I personally don't mind a small one time shot to promote your booth or giveaway, but I will let the people decide that one

If you do not agree with a rule let me know, we may very well change it.  If you just don't agree, don't participate but you miss out having 'instant' communication with as many people as sign up while there.  Lotusphere Online does not offer this, Lotus does not offer this and we couldn't think of a way to let everyone have their own identity and use multiple devices. (ie: SMS, web browser, instant messaging, handhelds).

The How-To portion

• Get over to http://Twitter.com and register if you do not have an account now
• add Lotusphere as someone to follow
• choose a client for your device type.  There are so many for every phone and operating system.  I have my own favorites and don't want to sway your choice
• To send a message that everyone would get, you simply type  "@lotusphere  "   up to 140 characters.  Make it to the point as it will go to everyone with your name on it.
• If you see someone you wish to talk to directly, replace "@lotusphere " with their username or simply type @username to send a public , but directed at them message.
• Lastly, if you need help with this, ask!

The idea is to communicate, collaborate and have fun.  If you see an awesome giveaway, let us know.  If you find the best hidden snack area, let us know.  If there is an open vendor party, lets us know.  If you are headed to lunch and want someone new to eat with, ask!

Also new for Lotusphere 2010 is the ability to follow the list of speakers that use Twitter.  In order to make it easy to see #ls10 updates from all the Lotusphere 2010 speakers, you can now follow the speaker list via email or Twitter and see when any speaker uses the tag #ls10 in a tweet to keep up with the flow of information without being totally overloaded.

Just use the above subscription or follow along in your favorite Twitter client (like Mixero, TweetDeck or others).  If you do not know what to use on your desktop or mobile device and want suggestions, ping me

Apparently a new trend is not to take your time and enjoy speaking one on one with the actual folks who make Lotus products and the business partners that can make it work for you, but to rush quickly along.  No time to banter.  Say what you want quickly and get out of the way.  I present to you the speed sessions for Lotusphere

• SpeedGeeking - an annual event where the Best Practices speakers get together in a very loud and rapid spit in your face version of some tip or tool.  You grab a free drink and run quickly to the next pedestal at the buzzer where you are hit yet again.  Tons of fun and a must see.  I have done a couple of these and you really do wear the speakers out as they present the same topic 12 times in quick fashion, resetting their demo between drinks, I mean breaths.
• SpeedPartnering - This is a new event on Business Development Day (BDD) where business partners get together to see some marketing sessions and topics around better partnering.  The event will be Sunday evening right before the party.  The idea is to move around in six-minute conversations to find the perfect mate for your product.  Yes free drinks will be here also.
• Speed Networking - This title was under the above also, but it slightly different in my eyes.  You are not only trying to see who you can work with for ISV and other business needs, but to make more contacts socially in the business partner community.  Did I mention the free drinks?

There are some regular sessions that will also show you quick and easy ways to get things done or how to make your server and application faster.  DO a quick search and highlight those on your schedule.

While filling out the form for registration I noticed the question on if you use Domino currently, and then when selecting 'yes' it opened another list of choices:


Hopefully there is not many 5.x or lower versions alive out there.   But how come there was no choice for 8.0 and higher or even 8.5 to get a true idea of how many attending have upgraded?

While creating a new little project (separate blog posting coming) for Lotusphere, I ran across this article on the Ars Technica blog.  Apparently they are building a better mobile browsing experience and somehow had the support of LotusKnows by IBM.  I could find no other reference to this anywhere, ye they state they hoped to have version 1.0 out this first week in December (as in right now).

Does anyone out there in the crowdsource have more information on this?  Does Lotus Know?

I waited to post to get the assigned session number.  While the data/time/location is not yet available, the listing is:

• The Advanced Low-Down on LDAP Infrastructure (BP109) - Join myself and Warren Elsmore on Wednesday at 11:15-12:15pm in Swan 7-10 as we bring together the best of four years of LDAP session at Lotusphere into one giant session around Domino as a core LDAP source.  This will be a combination of what a 100 level class and a 400 level class would like like, wrapped into a blazing hour.
  
   Integrate all of your Lotus software with LDAP, a widely-deployed, key directory technology. Implementing Lotus Sametime, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, WebSphere Portal or even remote directories? Believe it or not, LDAP is the mortar that holds it all together. Explore schema management, federation and integration with other directories through Directory Assistance and IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator.  Whew!
• IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway: The Business Case, Best Practices and Implementation (BP117) - Join me  on Wednesday at 01:30 - 2:30pm in Swan 7-10.      .   I'll help you understand the various business case scenarios in deploying the Lotus Sametime Gateway and walk through the architecture and implementation. You'll learn how it integrates with your existing Lotus Sametime architecture and the Sametime user policy changes required. We'll cover the basics of troubleshooting, configuration and controls, and discuss network placement, firewall rules, SSL and growth scenarios
  

In order to make it easy to see #ls10 updates from all the Lotusphere 2010 speakers, you can now follow the speaker list via email or Twitter and see when any speaker uses the tag #ls10 in a tweet to keep up with the flow of information without being totally overloaded.

Just use the above subscription or follow along in your favorite Twitter client (like Mixero, TweetDeck or others).  If you do not know what to use on your desktop or mobile device and want suggestions, ping me

In an amass of links, emails and leftovers from Lotusphere, the whole Work Smarter thing generated a bunch of information for a very short time.  Including a long list of videos.  The above video was one of them on Lotus Software.  It seems Lotus Knew.

If you have not signed up for the LCTY events on LotusUserGroup.org then head on over.  The next one in the series is today in one hour (that is 12pm EST).

We were told last week (or so) that the Lotusphere2009 site would be going down.  It is down as far as I can tell.  All the materials were to be moved to LotusLive Engage (that is my profile link so we can connect).  Well a search today only turns up a test account for clothing?  Anyone know how to find anything related to Lotusphere in there?  Does it even exist yet?

There is no groups, one profile and one for the Lotusphere Event team.  I am terribly confused..

Umm, why is this blog of A Smarter Planet, a major push by IBM we were told and shown through the sesisons, sitting on Typepad and not some IBM software like Domino or Connections.  heck even the Roller one they use for Developerworks would be ok.

The January edition came out right before everyone headed down and got lost in the mix.  You can read it online here if not subscribed to the monthly email.

THIS IS LIVE CHECK FOR UPDATES:
Way too much info on these slides to begin with.  Charts, tiny words, bullets everywhere.  More charts came and then by slide 5 we are getting a sales pitch for "Business Value Assessment" by IBM.  In the Best Practices track?!?!  They have:

• Business Value Alignment Workshop
• Process Modeling Review
• Architecture Assessment Review
• Day in the Life demo
• Business Value/ROI case
• then the presentation on all the data

We finally break away and get back into the listed best practices:
2 - business value assessment
3 - phased "soft launch" which includes early assessments and small microcosm groups
4 - having a measurement scheme that apparently involves huge amounts of small charts and # signs
5 - develop a center of excellence (COE) to build competencies and link to business strategies.  Have a bunch of people that run reports and look at the growth by doing Social Network Analysis and gathering metrics.
6 - develop an approach to governance.  Basically policies that should be in place but most sites don't have them yet.  email, IM, blogging policies.  Then on to items like proper etiquette which is normally under Internet Usage and Conduct Guidelines.
7 - locating your subject matter experts and advocates using Social Network Analysis (SNA).  How can you find these people if you don't have a social network yet?  They want Mavens, Salespeople, Connectors.  You measure and graph based on density, distance and centrality.  But what does that have to do with adoption?  They showed a sample questionnaire but it seems to be huge work to perform as an employee and also correlate the data.

Change in speakers---  new speaker reads the slides and pages and pages of notes that are printed out

8 - Communications should employ "big seed" viral marketing tactics.  t-shirts, email, lunches, contests and whatever to get people informed and involved.  Lunch and learn results also.  You can do this top down or bottom up techniques.  Have leaders makes blogs and lead by example.
9 - formal training program to teach users how to use the technology.  Provide relevant education, why blogs make me productive versus how to blog.  Teach why this is a business tool.

change back in speaker
10 - Address culture change by "living" the vision.  Basically help people change their basic assumptions coupled with the external factors that drive them.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) apparently has a cousin called Personal Network Analysis (PNA).  Users have their own analysis done as well as the network.  Their model they are proposing for building the SNA is broken.  They naturally assume you follow the prime source and that builds the model.  That doesn't count the person with the 100 followers whose content is reshared to thousands.  make sense?  I might reword that later.

Final slide is ISSL consulting, training and support options.  A partner session in this track with that content would be pulled.

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Lotusphere2009 photoset

After finishing all my sessions with a bang, and nerf ball shot to the back of the head from Gabriella, my eyes opened wider and I started seeing clearly again.  I don't need to run you through my day and all the session to express that the passion the business partners that speak have is only overcome by the amount of fun we have in getting together throughout the week at all times of day and late into the night.  One other speaker/blogger/friend even apologized this evening if they came off too strong or argumentative sometime during the day while we were attending something or another (I don't even know what).  I quickly pointed out that A - I had no clue what they were talking about and B - that is what we do since we all have agendas while here and thoughts on where Lotus should focus attention.

If we spent time arguing with another, nothing would get accomplished and Lotusphere would suffer.  What other major, large scale conferences do you know that have deep technical sessions, allow you to directly interact with product developers, hunt down Lotus executives (via IdoCheckin I might add) and then party into the night like nothing happened to start over again tomorrow?  None I say.

We are a rare breed here at Lotusphere that bleed much yellow while fighting to keep it as pure as possible and the coolest software you have used.  I think the eye opener for me was what you are about to see at Lotusphere Idol from one of the winner's on Thursday.  I got the chance to talk to them this evening.  They actually wanted to meet and talk to me, but when I heard what they were doing, I wanted to hear more about them.  Two college kids, sponsored by IBM in ticket only to be here, making some of the best plug-in work for Symphony I have seen/heard.  Wait till you see their energy and what they are doing.  Watching the new generation we are fighting to get by deploying corporate social software (whatever that is, a different posting) and learning they are working on our core products instead revitalizes some thoughts we had that Lotus was the 20 year old man in software.

• Ed Brill: Twitter already covered the ActiveSync support in Lotus Traveler, but they are putting it in there.  Looking to ship in 2009.  License agreements were not available for comment.  A public beta date is not set yet.  They have to decide which active based devices will be supported.  The session today that introduced it used the native mail application on the iPhone for example.  Android testing has not been done yet.

• David Marshak: Sametime 8.5 is second half of year, enhancing the meeting server.  It will be Websphere driven for the expanded meeting services.  Meetings are persistent, so presentation materials may be stored.  The new meeting services will be faster and richer with zero footprint, all Ajax and HTML.  Java and JVM issues go away.  Improved audio and video.  Websphere versions will finally be the same across Sametime 8.5 meetings, Advanced and Gateway.
  
  The new Sametime web client is also announced.  Zero footprint with functionality the same as the client. Still no Skype due to their lack of integration.

• Caleb Barlow: Lotus Foundations news..  IBM branded appliance worldwide.  The first announcement on Foundations is version 1.1 with suport for VM Hypervisor on top of Foundations.  This will allow any image to run on the server.  Single click deployment from an image you drop on the server.
  
  The second announcement is Lotus Foundations Branch Office running Domino version 8.5.  Basically a Domino server in the domain.  News on running native Domino HTTP and also migrating in an existing domain is not sure yet.

Over to live demos from Xerox Corp for Foundations

I am recording this as usual for a later podcast.  Excuse the typing noises you will hear.  But here we go.

• Ads will continue globally with more marketing push.  A past weakness Lotus had.  Expect to see more online and tv soon
• Jack Dausman asks:  we are seeing growth in Microsoft customers moving over to Lotus, Bruce Morse from UC says
• Nathan Freeman asks:  Alister joked about legal and lawyers that had interfered with releases due to processes.
• John Head asks:  Small 1000 person shops putting up items like Sharepoint/Office and doing it cheap (not well necessarily).  But where is the rapid development and document management moves from Lotus.  Jeff Schick brings up ECM integration and Quickr movements.  John reminds that the competitor has s single solution where you build your website, host your documents all in one.  Kevin Cavanaugh brings up Domino does well under 1000 employees, even with Foundations.  Plus xPages and extending Quickr further. Alister brings up Sharepoint is inadequate in many scenarios, past just a website.  Using social software and more.
• Mitch Cohen asks:  What about the disparity in versions of backend systems required , like WAS.  Alister responds this is in discussion in the next iteration of Quickr and Connections.  This will grow over time to run across the products including WAS, DB2 and more.
• Tom Duff questions: His company politics wants Sharepoint and he finds it frustrating he is fighting the battle and lost.  Lotus wasn't fighting it.  Kevin Cavanaugh brings up the attempt to have more coverage in the practice.  The coverage is about a pace now, now just around events.  it isn't just press releases and being on CNN as an ad at the bottom.
• Jess Stratton asks: For LotusLive, as a small business owner, it might almost like a local chamber of commerce.  How do you plan on reaching this market?  The SBA has talked to Lotus about this type of offering and capability with small businesses.
• Bob P joins us to cover the question that Notes 8 is not just an email client.  It is a major jump into enabling productivity.
• Alister feels that xPages is a game changer in the future of building modern web apps on top of Domino.
• It was brought up that Lotus should not just evolve and make a better product, but invent something new.  Bob P makes an interesting joke I will leave to the podcast.
• Nathan continues to have his hand up and might be reaching explosion. He brings up how Lotusphere has been a case study in cloud computing.  How will Lotus evolve with non persistent connection?  Shawn makes some good points about lack of connection.  Alister brings up appliance/cloud integration.
• I asked about Saas and Foundations and clouds.  I will type long answer later from Shawn, Alister and Kevin.
• Alan Lepofsky brings up phenomenal to hear about Linkedin, Skype and etc.  No more purple icons for Portal.

Here is the PDF from last years hands on session!

You can watch the stream right here in this posting built on Domino and Sametime technology or click this URL to set your own refresh preferences.  You may also utilize the iPhone interface here.

While reading feeds in Google Reader, this popped up a bit early I think.  I cut the highlights to here..

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp., the world's third-biggest software maker, will release an online version of its Lotus programs, a bid to attract new customers by tapping into so-called cloud computing.

The company said last week it would buy e-mail software assets from Hong Kong-based Outblaze Ltd.  That will let LotusLive users access their e-mail from any computer via the Web, similar to the way Google Inc.'s Gmail works.

LotusLive ties into software from Salesforce.com Inc., the maker of customer-management program, and LinkedIn Corp., a social-networking site for professionals.  It also works with Research In Motions Ltd.'s Blackberry phones and software from SAP AG, the world's largest maker of business-management programs.

The test version of LotusLive, called Bluehouse...

Some say this is day zero, well with all of the events it is day 1.  Jam packed with jumpstarts, preliminary customer meetings, people close to scuffles with the law, business development day and then a long evening of seeing everyone and parties.  Why else is this being written so late.

So the summary of news.  Nothing we can say.  While I was not at the entire keynote for BDD, the message was clear.  There will be some mesage this week as it resonates a lot like last year with some more flair added in.

We are sitting live on the vendor floor as part of the blogger program, able to follow the judges as they visit each booth to judge these onsite and highly coveted awards.  While the wifi is not up, pictures will be a few minutes to enter the stream.  It is interesting to see the nerves that the partners have as the unknown general public is not browsing their products, but a select few of judges are in your face asking questions and viewing live demos that better work.

www.flickr.com IdoNotes' Lotusphere2009 photoset

With a prompt arrival and easily checking in the buzz was apparent.

• New attendees running around with badges on and bags on shoulders, even before the conference began.
• Bob Balaban handing out the new annual button showing off how long you have been making the trip to Lotusphere
• After retrieving the badge and bag I immediately strip the fluff content from the inside.  Does anyone really read the ads the cram in with the notebook and conference guide?  We should option paperless on checkin to save on all that stuff with all the agendas online in iPhone and Blackberry format.
• Bill Buchan sunburned from his Harley ride around Florida.
• The smart ones getting into Kimonos tonight for food since the next nights will be totally packed
• Everyone crammed into BALD and then ESPN

IdoCheckin started taking off.  I spent more time explaining features and functions that anything else I think.  And I am damn happy to see it..

Carl and I have put LotusphereLive together again with his amazing design work against a Domino 8 server with Sametime 8 loaded.  He made a great video and posting about it right here.  If you want content from the OGS, this is the only place to get it in real-time.  Even on your iPhone and Blackberry

The Rules:

• I am not turning on auto-follow to prevent spammers.  So it might be a minute before you are allowed to post,  But you can follow right away
• Anyone that sends explicit content or becomes a nuisance (as voted by many not just one of us) gets removed from being followed
• Anything you send will be read by MANY, keep that in mind.  Typos can hurt
• I personally don't mind a small one time shot to promote your booth or giveaway, but I will let the people decide that one

If you do not agree with a rule let me know, we may very well change it.  If you just don't agree, don't participate but you miss out having 'instant' communication with as many people as sign up while there.  Lotusphere Online does not offer this, Lotus does not offer this and we couldn't think of a way to let everyone have their own identity and use multiple devices. (ie: SMS, web browser, instant messaging, handhelds).

This is in additon to IdoCheckin, of course.

• Get over to http://Twitter.com and register if you have not
• add Lotusphere as someone to follow and turn notifications ON for it
• go to notification settings and choose your poison.  I suggest your SMS (check your provider for charges or unlimited texting options), an IM alias of some type or even email notifications.  You can always use a browser from laptop or handheld.  I mix the way mine are done.
• To send a message to everyone you simply type  "@lotusphere  "   up to 140 characters.  Make it to the point
• If you see someone you wish to talk to directly, replace "@lotusphere " with their username or simply type @username to send a public , but directed at them message.
• You can turn off following for a while if you need some silence or whatever by following this Twitter help page.  It will stop notifications but still leave it in your web browser views.  http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=5
• Alternately you can simply text 'off lotusphere' to Twitter to do it temporarily and then 'on lotusphere' to turn notifications back on!  We are making life simple here folks.
• Lastly, if you need help with this, ask!

The idea is to communicate, collaborate and have fun.  If you see an awesome giveaway, let us know.  If you find the best hidden snack area, let us know.  If there is an open vendor party, lets us know.  If you are headed to lunch and want someone new to eat with, ask!

Please see the older posting for further info or go to Twitter help for short phone command and such.  And here is the whole Twitter helpfiles

I jumped in for a quick LotusUserGroup podcast the other day and it is posted and ready to stream or download from here

Gabriella Davis and myself are putting this session on but needed some viral video effect to get everyone excited.  Here is what it is like to be a Websphere admin compared to a Domino admin.  We decided instead of standing in front of cameras we wanted some virtual people to stand in.

Thanks to Rob McDonagh of CaptainOblivious, he came up with an easy way for the iPhone users to keep checkpoints ready to go:

At least for iPhone users, by far the easiest way to checkin to a place at Lotusphere is to placemark those spots you pre-defined for us.  Just search for them on the website and when they come up, hit the Placemark link and give them a name.  If they're placemarked, they show up in a list on the iPhone, which makes it pathetically easy to use them (you have to touch More first, which I wish they would change, then Placemarks, then pick the right checkin button from the list).  The only annoyance (other than the extra "More" touch) is that the locations are listed in reverse order from when they were added.  That probably makes a ton of sense in most scenarios, but in this case it winds up being reverse alphabetical if people use the list you posted on the blog.

OK, so we have covered SMS, email based, the iPhone app and now you need to see the mobile browser interface.

I originally posted this almost a month ago and so many of you were generous.  But if we want Carl to continue to dress up as part of the Blueman Group at Lotusphere, then I need some more help this week!

Many of you have asked how will I know what places to log into.  Well I am working with Lotus to get signs placed in the checkpoint locations.  But no matter what, look for this logo and you know a Checkpoint is nearby.  Or ask anyone wearing a shirt with this how it all works:

Need I say more than this image?

I know many of you have iPhones and want a native app for it instead of just SMS, email or browser based, which all rock.  So Brightkite has an iPhone app ready to go from the iTunes store.  The link is right here

Some people do not like to use SMS or maybe do not have that ability but do have email.  Guess what? You can still do this over email too:

• You will be assigned a personal address to email in for check-ins
• You can then do all your updates that way!

to: your_code@bkite.com (your personalized Brightkite email)
subject: 
body: @2911 Walnut St, Denver CO (or what ever placemark you've defined)

See the email guide right here for those that need it

Many have asked, ok what can I do besides check myself into an IdoCheckin checkpoint at Lotusphere.  What benefit does using a Checkpoint give me?  Let me start with the easy things.  If IBM approves the signs, checkpoints will be identified with the name of the checkpoint and the commands to always get help if you get stuck.  But I wanted you to understand some of the cool things you can do at any of the checkpoints (previous blog post listing checkpoints):

• Where username - sending this command gets you the last checked in location for the person's name entered
• Who place name - using this command gets you everyone currently checked into a specific place, like DolphinDining
• Join username - This checks you in at the same place as someone else, let the gathering begin
• Leave - this is what it says, you are leaving the checked in place
• ! - this lets you post a comment or note to the place you are checked in
• POSTPHOTO - you can upload a photo from your phone for that place

Without going through them all I wanted to get the key ones out there.  For the complete listing or SMS based ones (you can always use the web people!), just visit this reference page.

Since this is the first year, we built checkpoints for all of the main areas around Lotusphere.  If something is missing I apologize and might be able to get one or two more done, if the need is there.  But here is the list:

• BigRiverGrille
• DolphinBar
• DolphinDining
• DolphinHemispheres
• DolphinRotunda
• ESPNOrlando
• FlyingFishCafe
• JellyRollsDisney
• LSVendorFloor
• Spoodles
• SwanEntrance
• SwanKimonos
• Y&BConferenceCenter
• Y&BLobby

I tried to keep them all as one word for consistency.  I am working with Lotus to get signs placed around Lotusphere, but I bet the bars/restaurants will be off limits for signage.

Look for a bunch of commands you can use in the next posting.  Such as the ability to look someone up and get their last location they checked in

I apologize the last posting locked discussion.  I wrote the posting over weeks and the open discussion expired.  So this thread will allow a full Q&A until Lotusphere time for everyone with questions like I saw on Twitter today.

Q. Stuart McIntyre - you can't leave comments on that post - seems a great idea. Will the usual BrightKite interfaces work - I assume so...
A. All the usual Brightkite interfaces will work.

Q. Olufsphere - Looks exciting. Will it work for us 'foreigners' as well? (Unlike twitter, where we are bound to PC-clients)
A. Yes there is an international code for sending text but while in the US the code for here should work unless I am wrong.  I am checking this

Q. MattWhite - Very cool, hopefully it will cut down on lots of shouted "I'm by the rotunda" phone conversations :-)
A. That is the goal for sure and to be able to quickly scan for large groups as well as find those people you only known names and not faces or how to find them

This year over 8,000 Notes professionals are attending Lotusphere2009.  With all the social networking technology, from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn, you are still in the dark on the location of people and finding new contacts.

IdoCheckin (website launch this week) will allow everyone to better communicate and locate each other around Lotusphere and other events.

Remember the first time you went to a conference when you did not know anyone or could not find anyone?  Imagine you are one of those new people this year.  You wander around with no way to easily be in touch or locate another attendee.  You will be able to communicate and locate anyone that participates, even total strangers through IdoCheckin.

IdoCheckin allows you to broadcast your location via SMS or web browser where you are around Lotusphere and be able to see everyone that checks in at different areas.

I partnered with Martin at Brightkite (an incredible location service) to make this happen.  We knocked out a nice listing of key areas for this first year launch.  While I realize there are even more locations we can list, I created the majority of prime places, even ones like Jellyrolls.  I will blog the full listing of locations and more detailed instructions tomorrow.

So here is how it works:

• you do NOT have to register with Brightite if you do not want to, but I would strongly suggest it
• your phone number is NEVER exposed at any time.  You could always just use the web interfaces
• if you choose not to register an account, you get almost all functions and assigned a jdoeXXX name until you set one
• you will simply send a simply formatted SMS to their service and it "checks you in" at that location
• you are able to see who is at locations through notifications (if registered) or on the public 'wall' through a browser.  I will cover the wall this week
• if registered, it can also link your location to Twitter for your followers, as many of you often see me do.
• standard text messaging (SMS) rates will apply based on your carrier and phone plan if using the SMS interface.  IdoCheckin has NO fees associated with it.

Look for more postings starting tomorrow outlining all the spots established around Lotusphere, more instructions and videos.

One of the things  currently wrong in how we handle discussions in the Lotus community is the tiny islands we seem to create on a regular basis.  Before we go further, I am not saying any implementation is bad, wrong or whatever.  It is how it all fits together.  I have learned a lot the past year from some of the top social media people out there, and fragmentation is a key issue we face.

Lotusphere has brought that out even more with the beginning of support from IBM on the Twitter account I created last year (that was brushed aside as a communication channel) a new LinkedIn group and another blog for Lotusphere itself.  Yet none of the blogs (myself temporarily included) uses some of the commenting systems like IntenseDebate or Disqus (that then integrates with things like FriendFeed and Plaxo and Seesmic for video comments).  Your RSS feeds can even utilize flares inside of Feedburner to show numbers of comments dynamically and aggregated.  
Just today there were new conversations started on LinkedIn that are good Lotusphere information.  But if you have not joined that group or go back and watch it, you would never know. Even the LotusUserGroup site has weekly forums that fragment the discussions on Notes.Net.  Not to mention the ones that take place inside isolated business partner and company forums.  So where do you go to keep up?

Then we get into the multiple Lotus Connections sites popping up.  From Greenhouse to Paxos (for partners) to BleedYellow, yet more links, blogs and other information is fragmented once again.  Of course, none of these interact with each other and RSS is not a fully acceptable answer since we would have to still log in and out everywhere to actually participate and not just read.

We won't even get into how all of us bookmark.  With LinkJam, Dogear, Diigo (my favorite), Delicious, Magnolia and the 250 other ones.  How to we all get aligned?  We start be trimming down the sites we utilize.  From bookmarks, to shared RSS feeds, to communication channels to comments and conversations.  We begin to include and mix technologies instead of isolating.  We ask what people think of sites and items and if no one has an idea, we go test.  From there we might begin to bring a lot of this together.  I run into Lotus people all over the world that have no clue about the blogs, PlanetLotus or anything else but Notes.Net (LDD).  How do we start including these people in the conversations?

Winners in bold and link to last years winners at the bottom.

Category	Business Partner	GEO
Best Industry Solution	e-On Integration S.A
	iEnterprises
	Ascendant Technology
Best Lotus Energy and Environment	KLG Systel, Ltd
	Alphalogix
	Enterprise Information Management
Best Mid-Market Solution	iEnterprises
	Pavone AG
	Nortel
Best Philanthropy	PSC Group, LLC
	Teamcentric Technologies
	ITM Associates
Best Portal or IBM Mashup Award	Ascendant Technology
	Alacrinet
	Edifixio
Best Tool and Utility Solution Award	Permessa Software
	Sherpa Software
	iEnterprises
Best Total Lotus Solution Award	Trilog Group
	Ascendant Technology
	Brookstone Technologies Pty Limited
Best Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution Award	Avistar Communications Group
	Polymorph
	Permessa Corporation

Here is the link to the 2008 winners.

Carl called himself out by shaving his head and going as a member of Blueman Group to his niece's birthday.  He then stated in his comments he could do it for Gurupalooza at Lotusphere 2009 if we raised enough.  So I went ahead and started a fundraiser project for a great cause I work with here in town.  So I know it goes to a great cause, autism treatment and services.    The organization is called MO FEAT and provides the following:

An organization of parents and professionals throughout Missouri with headquarters in St. Louis. Our mission is to provide advocacy, education, and support for families and the autism community and to support early diagnosis and effective autism treatment.

So jump in and spread the word!

In case some of you don't follow my Twitter stream, where I post most everything short during the day, there is a new Twitter tool I plan on using during Lotusphere.

LiveTwitting allows you to set streams by session at a conference.  You can even hide them from your public stream.  Almost like taking notes in real time as well as providing that data to others.  If I am successful in getting a session at Lotusphere, I would hope people in the audience do the same.

Take a look at the entry on EverythingTwitter to get more info on how it works.  We will probably talk about this some more as we get closer to Lotusphere.

The powers that be have done an excellent job at enhancing the previous "Hands-on Lab" track.  It is now reads as follows:

Audience: Developers and administrators of all levels
Due to the enormous popularity of the Lotusphere Hands-on track, we've reworked it to expand the audience far beyond what we were able to accommodate in previous years. The new Show 'n Tell track is designed to bring you classroom-style technical presentations, complemented by a hands-on sandbox where you can run through the exercises after the session at your own pace using virtual machine environments supplied by the presenters. Simply put, the Show 'n Tell track will be a fast track to your education on a single topic. From start to finish, with picture by picture screenshots that you can take home with you and use to set up your own environment. All sessions will adopt a teaching approach with heavy emphasis on documentation and the supporting hands-on labs

So here is the poll, do you think that people would expect to not only work on these sandboxes in the lab area at Lotusphere, but to also have access to download and play with these sandbox session when they get home?

Hi, I sent this posting over via email so it cold be pasted in.  I went to the Lotusphere Comes to You in St Louis last week for my first time.  I knew it was only a day review of what was explained to me a week long event.  I knew it would be consolidated.  I was not ready, however, for the way it was presented.  The speakers showed a lot of videos and hardly anything live.  One person actually showed his inbox, but everyone else had these pre-planned videos and stuff.  It turned out to be like a sales meeting in a way, where they talk about the products but only show slides.  I thought half of this was shipping? Could they not show it?  Are the demos too hard?  How can I make this work for my users then?

Also some of the speakers didn't seem to know fully the material or topic they presented.  Questions went unanswered.  That was a bit disconcerting for those that couldn't got to Lotusphere and needed more information.  I didn't plan on speeding a day there to get more questions that I came in with (meaning others asked some good ones too).  I know we only had a day to get this completed, but it seemed a bunch of product announcements from Lotusphere didn't even make it into the program in any way.  I know I stepped out once for a phone call, but in 20 minutes they could not have done them all as the session I stepped out from was still going strong when I reentered.

So my last thought was the actual other attendees.  From talking to people, there was like 3-4 times as many people last year.  With about 20-25 there this year, what happened?  I am sure it was not the change in venue as I got the email weeks before.  Where the heck was everyone?

IdoNotes note: I found the same thing from LCTY in Minneapolis per this blog posting.  I couldn't comment on that blog posting as it required a Wordpress account.  I suspect we are seeing this at cities that partners do not do a majority or any of the presentations?

Lotusphere2008 photo show set across music from Drop Trio via Magnatune

This is a test of some things I am playing with, let's get some feedback on how it turned out

LotusUserGroup.org is hosting Lotusphere Comes to You Online. This is an
online event series featuring updated presentations from Lotusphere 2008
and even one or two new sessions. Designed to bring anyone who couldn't get
to Orlando the critical information and the excitement they missed, this
series will help you get more from your existing IT investment and boost
collaboration across your enterprise.

The first of the series is:
April 14, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
Lotus Notes and Domino — The Road Ahead
Presenter: Ed Brill, Business Unit Executive, WW Lotus Notes/Domino Sales
Leader

How do we top Lotus Notes and Domino 8? Learn about the roadmap for 2008
and beyond, giving you a glimpse into planned innovations for upcoming
releases, intended to reduce the cost of managing and storing your email,
offer additional deployment options, and drive continued optimization of
employee productivity. We'll describe important initiatives designed to
reduce the costs of running Lotus Domino in many areas including security,
identity management, directory openness, storage reduction, administration,
quality of service, 64 bit support and web application server. You should
leave this session with a clear understanding of the Lotus Notes and Domino
strategy and future roadmap, to help you plan future deployments.


April 28, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Sametime Strategy and Roadmap: The Future of Unified
Communications and Collaboration
Presented by: Dave Marshak

May 12, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
The Business Value of Web 2.0 and Enterprise Portal Solutions
Presented by: Jon Raslawski

May 19, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Connections and Mashups
Presented by: Suzanne Minassian and Nicole Carrier

May 26, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
IBM Lotus Domino Designer
Presented by: Maureen Leland

June 23, 2008
12:00 – 1:00 pm Eastern (GMT -5)
Desktop of the Future
Presented by: Ed Brill and/or Alan Lepofsky

All the Lotusphere Comes to You Online sessions are free but require
pre-registration. Sign up for as many as you like. You have to be a
LotusUserGroup.org member, but membership is free.

I think this could be a big hit at Lotusphere as we all crowd around Ed and Alan to keep our scores up on our devices. However, you should also lose points for bad signing at Kimonos.

Well there is not much surprise I hope.  Using a little hobby of mine with some RFID books and kits, I was able to pull apart the RFID tags from Lotusphere and see what they stored.  You know most of the stuff as you supplied it right to them.  Anything you put on the registration was on the tag:

• badge id number
• name
• address
• title
• phone number
• email address
• primary industry
• job level
• number of employees
• company need
• attendee type

So then it all gets put into a database when we walk through the scanner.  If you poked in and out of a session, it grabbed you both times.  I can't quite see how Lotus could tell when someone was leaving versus coming in during that time of change between sessions, so there must be some form of cutoff.  So have no fear, I am watching you  :-)

I managed to get a couple more in to the podcast stream from the unauthenticated Lotusphere podcasts.  I am trying to add one or two a day until done, but there is a lot.  See yesterday's posting for the iTunes link or the widgets

UPDATE: I added a few more (so they might all get there eventually with help)
Had Lotus done this right, then this is how it would have looked and worked. I don't have the time to finish the whole thing, but read and see the following:


You simply click this link if you have iTunes --->   click me

you click this link if you don't - -->  click me

Here it is in all it's glory.. now to see what they recorded, quick before this goes away!

Peeking at Flickr stats shows that Ed linking to the picture of the electric violinist during Lotusphere2008 week made things get hopping that week.

Go and check out and register for the first batch of cities right here.

thanks Henrik of IBM

Why did I choose do to my recap posting so fast?  Because due to what I have seen, experienced and learned at Lotusphere this year, I have much work to do.  While this was not a year of amazing announcement after amazing announcement (sorry), it was a year of watching Lotus move beyond "Big Blue" syndrome and into the wild world of Web 2.0.  If they understand the leap they are taking and embrace the speed it happens, then they should come prepared for Web 3.0 in 2009.  So let's peek into my head and I will summarize as best I can and try and focus on what I am trying to say.  I have a habit of trying to portray all my ideas as they stream through.  After I typed most of this I found that I had even more to say but trimmed some to get key points out.

Domino 8.5
Let me start with Domino 8.5 as shown at Lotusphere. (as I said, as shown at Lotusphere).  Imagine we began with single copy template (SCT) to reduce disk needs back in version 6.  Administrators rejoiced.  Domino then comes along and announces design note compression.  Saving tens of MB per mailfile and database.  Administrators rejoice.  Next is the consolidating of non-summary data.  Administrators rejoice.  Finally, we hear of the new attachment service to combine those pesky attachments down to save even more.  We don't need numbers and percentages, we understand there is hug savings to be had.  Administrators rejoice.  Lotus understands the needs of disk savings in an ever growing environment.  This is a huge change since the says of shared mail (did I say that?).

Further work in security and directory changes.  ID Vault is officially put out to the public.  The ability to let users obtain their own lost passwords and even id files without helpdesk calls or human intervention outside their own struggles.  Administrators rejoice.  I am incredibly over simplifying the work that Peter and his team have done here.  There is much more to the ID Vault that I may talk about independently from the public information.  Sit and watch this space as more information is shared.

Directory independence.  This will soon be a global holiday.  The ability to walk away from most of your Domino directory to invest in LDAP sources to be the primary point of authentication for your enterprise.  I have been preaching this to you for years and telling you it was coming.  It was not a premonition on my part, it was the way Lotus had to go to stay alive in the increasing world of single directory infrastructures with software independence.  Do not get me wrong, I strongly believe that the Domino directory can be that single directory for enterprise needs, but not everyone took that path and Lotus will now support it. Administrators rejoice once again.

Lotus Foundations (Connectria will be supporting deployment and hosting of this) and the security device
A device is pulled from a DHL package (a la Steve Jobs) by Mike Rhodin.  It looks unusually like a laptop or small tablet device.  Yet it turns out to be a fully functional collaborative environment that will be duct taped to the wall of some SMB and fires us anything from email, instant messaging, document management and others.  All wrapped in what you would expect, a call home function and get help ability to update, add functions and patch.  (ET phone home?)  This could prove to be a major shift in IBM/Lotus' push into the SMB market if they can successfully market the device.  Microsoft has no such offering of a self maintained and loaded device you just plug in.  Unless you have a handful of plugs and know how to stack servers like pizza boxes.  If your SMB target market complained about any resources needed to deploy, manage or obtain all the tools they need, then point them to us as a reseller and they get it all.  No hype, we are ready for this one.  A humorous tidbit I learned today, the device is not yellow, that was construction paper (or similar) on it to give the Lotus yellow.  Darn!

The security device was a bit raw.  Even the one they had over in the IBM Village area.  I talked to the product manager and the developers to get a good feeling for what it offers.  I walked away with a nice list of what it did, soon.  The device laying there had some nice features, but IBM is taking the purchase of ISS a while ago and coming out swinging.  There are lots of choices in the space from numerous providers, lets see what the official box looks like.  Note that I am not telling you all it offers, mainly since it wasn't clear to me.  Can we get a list?

Lotus Bluehouse
I have mixed emotions here, lets just say another attempt for SAAS or AOD or whatever acronym you wish to give it this week.  Lotus' attempt at being the supplier of applications on demand or also known as software as a service.  Lotus needs to step back and see itself for what it is.  A software platform, yes a whole platform, but not a hosting company.  Passing this off to a newly formed group (I spoke to the new sales or marketing dude at the partner reception) that isn't ready to implement (his words not mine) is not their core strength.  Lotus' strength is bringing cutting edge, enterprise software to light through development.  Then letting customers implement or even us host.  This is not me talking as a hosting company, but as a company that sees that we ourselves only focus on what we do best.  We dropped support of Groupcast development for that very reason and are the largest referrer of Lotus licenses to a license reseller.  Licenses are not our core business in our eyes and we grew by not doing it.

Did anyone notice also that they are not using the new Sametime logos but the older, well known and branded blue icons for Sametime?  Maybe just me.


Lotus Mashups
This should have been coming some time ago.  Here is the Lotus page describing the offering.  I am not understanding if this is a purchasable product yet, or an entitlement, but the offering will bring more Web 2.0 into Lotus software.  While this will not be available until Mid 2008, some sneak peeks at the widgets was shown for the Notes client in the OGS.  The catalog ability for sharing and rating the components is a requirement if the catalog is well categorized to show business and for fun components.  The Mashup Server was not well defined outside of supporting a variety of platforms and add controls.

I will say that there are public sites that do this already, I was making lists until I noticed there are too many.  Lotus is playing catch up quick though and should visit and learn from them.

The Unified Communications scenarios
I am so happy to see these movements and advances.  From the Lotus Sametime Advanced Server, to the telephony integrations to the future of the new web based client with no java behind it (see Innovation lab posting later).  Sametime is finally getting the focus is needs.  I have mentioned it before.  We told Lotus almost 7 years ago now that chat should be a commodity and the client interface should be changed to catch up.  They did it.  Now they show integration with Microsoft, Portal, phone systems and presence across the board.  The Sametime Gateway has grown into a mature product connecting you to the public IM networks.  If you missed the demos in the keynote for UC², then you missed the future of enterprise collaboration.  Visit Adam G's blog for a summary of the keynote.  I cant force this down you anymore than to say look at how much of my time and blog postings are on Lotus Sametime.  From praising them to showing you what mistakes they made along the way, all is fair play and open season.  Adam will vouch for that.  He knows once the products are GA I let you know what I think.  And I think Lotus is on the right path in this space.  The strength in the partnerships they formed with the telephony product providers will grow them far beyond Microsoft in this space (sorry Peter).

Sametime Unyte.  I had a great 30 minute conversation with the product manager.  Interesting choice for an enterprise with skinning and branding abilities in a hosted solution.  The solution is only available through IBM hosting, so a no go for companies wanting that in house.  Resellers must pay enormous fees to get in the program in my eyes, but some will jump.  There are quite a few options for billing that you should investigate before choosing one to make sure you get the best deal.  I won't even list them all.

Social Networking (a la Lotus Connections)
Ok, this deserves it own posting (and the one I do on the Innovations lab will go further).  But I will sum it up.  Lotus Connections 1.0 was not what the enterprises needed.  They did need someone large (IBM) to stand up and say we have an enterprise product for you, but Connections missed the first mark.  Now saying that, they have listened and are making good strides.  The next hurdle is getting companies to see why they need it.  I overheard Connections was the fastest selling out of the gates over even Quickr.  Impressive, but are the companies really seeing what else is out there?  Not as in there is better for the enterprise, but there is better in the open world that Connections should be emulating.  I have strong opinions on social networking and I am happy Lotus has listened to some of my ideas and thoughts.  We proudly support and host Lotus Connections and will continue to do so assisting Lotus in growing the product with any input they will take from me.  My point here is not bashing, but letting you know the world of 2.0 is huge and we are entering a new path.  The Innovations lab has much of that path to offer, we just need to have Lotus give them the development cycles to bring it to the front.  Great sessions and talks on social networking took place at Lotusphere, I applaud Suzanne, Ted, Joe, Ronnie and everyone else on the Lotus Connections teams.  This is new I know and you have done great work bringing pieces of products together.  Take this as someone passionate about Web 2.0 and want to see Lotus stand as a leader in 3.0.

Hmm, I am not sure what the user would do with a search of the technotes, unless it is your internal helpdesk it searches first.  If this is configurable then I am incredibly excited.

  I like Paul Mooney's work on this one to customize the error messages across the client.  I will find the link to his blog posting on performing this awesome gask for users.

First, I appreciate each of every person who took the time to deal with this system to submit an evaluation for one of my sessions. You have shown much bravery and effort and should be commended.

Now then, let's begin. I love the approach and initiative the Lotusphere team took in making us more green. However, this was a huge failure in my eyes. Yes you had the choice to still do paper, so no complaints, you just had to go get the forms. But this new system was to revolutionize the way we did evals. From laptops, to Lotusphere kiosks to your handheld devices.

Handhelds are first. We could never get any device or browser type on the device to get past the splash screen. No not just mine, but four of us, that are reasonably skilled in these areas tried 4 different browsers on our Blackberrys including the standard and as far as Opera mini. All would let you type in your badge number and then immediately take you back to the splash screen. I finally tracked down where the link went and we got this first image.

The webpage, ugh. Why in the heck are we using a site that is handled by no-ip.com redirects and then has an incredibly awful interface for having a user do an eval. A nice tabbed interface lets you find the day and then the time of the session. Great start! But when I open the session I wanted, it does not populate the speakers names. I now have to go back to the guide to gather the speaker name. The type is also not filled in, yet it is known by the listing itself and is already categorized in the book.

Playing around we fincd out it is Domino all the way, including authentication.

No BOF's seemed to be listed for 7am, yet there was a category for them in the online form. When selecting a time slot it didn't highlight it so I forgot what time I just filled out a form for and had to go back to the book again.

Filling out an eval seems to be as easy as hitting this form.. without the session specified.
http://www3.channel1corp.com/na/ibm/ls2008b/rdtdb.nsf/usr.responseSet?openagent&m=read
So if you haven;'t guessed, all the work is being done by Channel1Corp, a real-time results company hosted in Rackspace.com's racks. Then, humorously, it was down today for a while for system maintenance. Not the best timing in the world.

So let's get this thing tested and flying for next year with a bunch of changes to make it work everywhere all the time in a better fashion.

I was shocked myself, but Carl went in and verified that we both were not crazy.  The Domino 8 server running Sametime 8 with the persistent chat rooms had over 1200 people in it for LotusphereLive.  This not only shows the scaling of the room Carl built (and remodified when 8.0 broke it from last years 7.5.x), but also the ability of Sametime.  All was hosted, built and managed by us (Connectria) and will remain up for a bit until we archive it off again for next year.

We debated having persistent chat rooms for each of our sessions, but blogging, pictures, presenting sessions and trying to get to some myself made it slip by.  If you have ideas let us know, but watch to make sure we dont change our minds, like for Gurupalooza or something silly.

For all of my international readers you can go look at this television ad after you watch this Lotusphere one below:

Who knew this was the answer to this trivia picture?

• Akiba and Bruce took the stage to start the path of what the future strategy of UC² is.
• Sametime customers grew of 30% with 1/3 being Exchange shops
• New partners were added, with new ones.  Ericsson being first with their voice platform being integrated.  NEC is the second with their IP telephony server Univerge.
• CIsco has signed to sell Sametime as part of their Unified Communications package.  Nortel will also sell as part of their unified solution.
  
  On to demos with Jeremy and Konrad.  Using Radvision, quick text and live text they did demos on stage.  They then showed buddy map that grabs contact location and mashes a Google Map.  I wonder if Lotus saw RadiusIM before?  Some more plug-ins that no one has and it was a great show.
  
  A customer case video from Bank of New York Mellon and also Colgate-Palmolive.  It looked a little like Mitch in that video, hmmm.  A nice change where after the videos, the actual video people came onto the stage to talk and be interviewed by Bruce.
  Mitch had the quote of the day:
  

  Sametime is like crack, you give it to people and they just want more

  
  
  Ok, people are getting restless to get more product demos and announcements.  On stage is good but analyst is talking long.
  
  Ok, new stuff!!!
  • Sametime Advanced (we knew) is due in the first half of this year
  • Konrad is up on stage again.  Persistent chat was first.  There is screenshots inside, files dropped and rich text.  All this is stored in a database on the backend.
  • Broadcast Communities are communities users are interested in that will send alerts.  Hmm, cool if it worked with Communities in Connections.  Too many things with the same name that don't connect yet.
  • Instant share was very cool, no more launching meetings
  • Instant polls for voting
  
  Unified Telephony is about simplifying communication being delivered in second half of 2008
  • Being on the phone is now a status.
  • You can now set rules for call routing.
  • Rules will follow not only status but who is calling.  Sounds like GrandCentral to me too.  Nice.
  
  Now we look at what's coming beyond the above 2
  • A whole new call manager showing who is in, when they came in, are chats going on.  The ability to mute lines
  • Konrad in the IBM Metaverse (Second Life idea).  He steps up to a presentation board in a virtual room and it loads his slides.  He then takes over the room audio
  
  The scary part was the closing that showed our Sametime video over and over like 3 times.  Video coming, I taped it.  Ha

Read it right here

Here is the good news, many people are blogging it, I will podcast it once again. Look for it shortly.  Flickr pics are up of the room.

If you want the whole stream in full size hit my Flickr stream..

Head on over  http://www.LotusphereLive.com

The theme of this year of Lotusphere2008 is Emergence.  So here is what I think of that term before Lotusphere2008.  All this came about after a pleasant dinner with Penumbra (big thanks to them for an excellent event).

Lotus will combine the announcements of new products (say Notes and iPhone for example) and the growth of existing products in ways not yet imagined as we prepare to leave Web 2.0 and enter (gasp) Web 3.0 land.  If Lotus plans to stay ahead in the enterprise space, it has to reach deeper into it's development efforts and theory practice to start fighting for what enterprises need in the future.  Keeping up with what enterprises need today is not fast enough.

Lotus will emerge with some amazing announcements come Monday, but the real gems will be hidden away in the labs and halls of Lotusphere.  It is where demo-ware vanishes and real test code can be put in your hands to see and play with.  Find those gems.  Get into the labs and don't be afraid to talk to anybody that passes.  They might hold one of those magic EMERGENCE gems in their heads, or even backback.

Everyone has been reading about Ben's sessions database and it allows you to post questions in advance for sessions.  A great way that acts much like a discussion board.  However, during the session I might not replicate in time to get them all, mainly if you ask during.  But let me know now if you wish

• HND302 - Hands on Sametime Gateway Installation and Administration (and networking) - ask a question here
• BP105 - Best Practices Installing and Administrating the Sametime Gateway - ask a question here
• HND302 - Hands on Sametime Gateway Installation and Administration (and networking) R2 - ask a question here

So your other option is that Carl and I will also fire up persistent chat rooms for our sessions through LotusphereLive to have a streaming ability of live Q&A as well.  Look for the direct room links shortly here and on Carl's blog.  We will be able to see that live in the session.

Carl Tyler and I went nuts last year and provided a live persistent chat site for 2007 at LotusphereLive where people such as ourselves, Ed Brill, Bruce, Julian, Volker, Chris B and others blogged the Opening General Session.  Well we will be doing it again for all of you not able to be there with us.
A quote from someone that visited the site last year:

And it worked without a hitch! A fantastic demo of what can be done quickly with the technology. It was great to be able to feel involved, and with photos flying up on Flickr, you get a real feel for the buzz.

Followed by a link to a snapshot of what we did from another person watching on the Internet.

The site this year is based on Sametime 8 on a Domino 8 server.  Yes, persistent chat without having a Sametime Advanced server you say?  Of course Carl and his magic.  Tell your friends and neighbors.  If you can't come to Lotusphere, well sit through the Opening General Session with us.

The Rules:

• I am not turning on auto-follow to prevent spammers.  So it might be a minute before you are allowed to post,  But you can follow right away
• Anyone that sends explicit content or becomes a nuisance (as voted by many not just one of us) gets removed from being followed
• Anything you send will be read by MANY, keep that in mind.  Typos can hurt
• I personally don't mind a small one time shot to promote your booth or giveaway, but I will let the people decide that one

If you do not agree with a rule let me know, we may very well change it.  If you just don't agree, don't participate but you miss out having 'instant' communication with as many people as sign up while there.  Lotusphere Online does not offer this, Lotus does not offer this and we couldn't think of a way to let everyone have their own identity and use multiple devices. (ie: SMS, web browser, instant messaging, handhelds).

The How-To portion (modified Thusday Jan 17th 9pm CST, see the 4th bullet changing 'd lotusphere' to '@lotusphere')

• Get over to http://Twitter.com and register if you have not
• add Lotusphere as someone to follow and turn notifications ON for it
• go to notification settings and choose your poison.  I suggest your SMS (check your provider for charges or unlimited texting options), an IM alias of some type or even email notifications.  You can always use a browser from laptop or handheld.  I mix the way mine are done.
• To send a message to everyone you simply type  "@lotusphere  "   up to 160 characters.  Make it to the point
• If you see someone you wish to talk to directly, replace "@lotusphere " with their username or simply type @username to send a public , but directed at them message.
• You can turn off following for a while if you need some silence or whatever by following this Twitter help page.  It will stop notifications but still leave it in your web browser views.  http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=5
• Alternately you can simply text 'off lotusphere' to Twitter to do it temporarily and then 'on lotusphere' to turn notifications back on!  We are making life simple here folks.
• Lastly, if you need help with this, ask!

The idea is to communicate, collaborate and have fun.  If you see an awesome giveaway, let us know.  If you find the best hidden snack area, let us know.  If there is an open vendor party, lets us know.  If you are headed to lunch and want someone new to eat with, ask!

Please see the older posting for further info or go to Twitter help for short phone command and such.  And here is the whole Twitter helpfiles

I am getting asked when things will show live from Lotusphere.  Well let's start with the basics.  You can can access IdoNotes TV either by the URL

• http://tv.IdoNotes.com
• http://www.IdoNotes.com/live

Both go to the same page so no worries there.  The loop will always be running, we just have to deal with live escapades.  So outside of stating to follow me or Lotusphere on Twitter, the blog will update too.

8:00PM EST	Monday Jan 21st	opening of the Exhibitor Showcase
5:45pm EST	Wednesday Jan 23rd	Bloggers BOF  (Pending Lotus ok)
1:00pm EST  (somewhere in there	Thursday Jan 24th	The Boat Race Finals !!

From there I am still planning and if you have ideas let me know.  I am curious about Jamfest and many others but only what time I have or someone helping me can do!

It seems that I cannot get access to Lotusphere Online until after I Get there.  I won't have time to get in, build any profile, look around the communities or anything else at that point.  I know they did a bulk input of people around Jan 1 or 2, and it seems in the whole thing I got tossed around like the last kernel of popcorn in the popper.  I actually registered in December but it appears to have sat through the holiday season  looking at the dates of submission to the date of the final okie dokie letter.  So they are not doing another import until right at Lotusphere which explains my lack of email or ability to get in.

So anyone want to do a site review of it for me?

Please head over and select who you wish, everyone on that list does an amazing job.   I would say close your eyes and click a name.  The winner gets announced at Lotusphere

Apparently an email went out last night to many of you letting you pre-register for hands-on sessions.  Oddly, I am one of many who did not get it and when I finally got the URL forwarded, it said I was not even allowed to reserve a slot in any hands-on session.

I saw this idea floating around weeks ago and had mixed emotion.  While I like the idea of not having the mad scramble, what happens to those that would have waited hours at a door and did not get this email in time?  What happens when someone does not show so the Southwest Airlines stand-by lines begin?  How disappointing to be the 10th stand-by and 9 make it in.  I think the most disturbing was that it was a late at night email in batches (some got it as early as 9pm PST apparently).  How does everyone get a fair shot at sessions and are speakers not eligible?  Is everyone pleased with how they got the chance to attend a hands-on session?  Did you make it in?  Did you make all the ones you wanted?

NEW this year
Session Evaluations
Session evaluations will be completed electronically this year - no more paper forms in the conference notebooks!  Attendees will be able to access all evaluations forms by selecting the evaluation icon on any Lotusphere Online laptop, their own laptop or handheld device through a special URL.

Join Carl Tyler and myself for a pre-Lotusphere call-in.  We'll be using modern technical marvels like the telephone and websites, to host an interactive call-in where you can ask us questions, Sametime questions, relationship questions it makes no difference to us we're happy to try and answer them.

Unable to attend Lotusphere but have questions you want to try and get answered? no worries, share them with us and we'll try and get them answered in followup Lotusphere podcasts.

So put it in your diary, 10am EST Jan 10th, http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/31241

Episode: The Pre-Lotusphere call
Not going to Lotusphere? Ask us to get answers for you. Having issues with your relationship? I am sure Carl can help!
Talkcast ID: 31241

Scheduled Time:

Date: Thu, January 10, 2008
Time: 10:00 AM EST

How to participate:

Call in:
1.        Dial: (724) 444-7444
2.        Enter: 31241 # (Talkcast ID)
3.        Enter: 1 # or your PIN

Join from your computer:
1.        Become a TalkShoe member
2.        Download and install TalkShoe Live client
3.        Click here to join the Talkcast

So as people are slowly learning, Lotusphere on Twitter is out there and could be huge if we get a strong push from everyone. Yancy already has it feeding the main feed page for PlanetLotus and then pulls all Tweets to another page. Let us know your thoughts on how you want to best utilize Twitter down there? Open season tweets everywhere or following a main Lotusphere tweet? Or a mixture. Let us know. We also talked about grabbing the RSS feed from the Lotusphere pictures so we need to set a tagging standard.

Also, the normal string of IdoNotes podcasts will be running but the added benefit of IdoNotes.TV will be present. You will be able to reach it at any time at
http://www.IdoNotes.com/live
or you can find it on the PlanetLotus page. I will be grabbing any and all video I can from Lotusphere into a long loop plus live broadcasts from down there. Anyone that wants to assist in the live ones let me know. I see us being able to reach a large audience of people not there to give them the feel of what is going on. Even broadcasting JamFest or the scene of Speedgeeking could be cool.

Give me some thoughts here people and pass this posting out so we can get all the ideas finalized

go to the IdoNotes TV page to watch it now!

Join Carl Tyler and myself for a pre-Lotusphere call-in.  We'll be using modern technical marvels like the telephone and websites, to host an interactive call-in where you can ask us questions, Sametime questions, relationship questions it makes no difference to us we're happy to try and answer them.

Unable to attend Lotusphere but have questions you want to try and get answered? no worries, share them with us and we'll try and get them answered in followup Lotusphere podcasts.

So put it in your diary, 10am EST Jan 10th, http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/31241

Episode: The Pre-Lotusphere call
Not going to Lotusphere? Ask us to get answers for you. Having issues with your relationship? I am sure Carl can help!
Talkcast ID: 31241

Scheduled Time:

Date: Thu, January 10, 2008
Time: 10:00 AM EST

How to participate:

Call in:
1.        Dial: (724) 444-7444
2.        Enter: 31241 # (Talkcast ID)
3.        Enter: 1 # or your PIN

Join from your computer:
1.        Become a TalkShoe member
2.        Download and install TalkShoe Live client
3.        Click here to join the Talkcast

Winners in bold.

Interestingly Rob Novak issued a nice blog posting on how Quickr will be fitting in to BDD at Lotusphere and then Tim came on the call today mentioning there will be 19 sessions with pre-sessions utilizing Sametime Unyte to get everyone primed for press releases, interactions and validation through a "Making News @ the Sphere on December 19.

But wait, there is more..


The Business Partner cafe is the place to not only get coffee but sit with experts across product areas.  I know we saw something like this last year and by the end of the week it was quite empty.

Lotusphere Comes to You starts in February

Sun January 20, 2008	9:00-10:45am EST	Y&B Grand Harbor Salon IV	HND302: IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway - Setup and Administration
Tues January 22, 2008	4:15-5:15pm EST	Dolphin S Hemisphere IV-V	BP105: Installing and Administrating the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway
Wed January 23 2008	12:30-2:15pm EST	Y&B Grand Harbor Salon IV	HND302: IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway - Setup and Administration

Bob Balaban starts off the Lotusphere2008 track manager interviews with Jumpstart information

Music today is Beat Under Control from Stockholm, Sweden via Magnatune

Thanks Mac for noticing how tired I was and linking the wrong podcast the first time

In order to foster faster communication with everyone at Lotusphere, or even if you just wish to sit back and watch, there will be a Lotusphere channel you can follow and post to.  Twitter is setting it up so if you set yourself to follow all the tweets, you can also post to it so everyone gets them.  Talk about instant communication when not everyone can be on Sametime and there is breaking news, a vendor giving away cool stuff, when you want to find people or when a vendor has an open party.  The possibilities are endless.  I talked to some Loti in and around the social networking area to see if they had anything built for this, the immediate answer was they didn't think so.

I would suggest you follow me also as I have some other surprises as we take Lotusphere into a social networking exploration.

So here are the basics for all of you that are new to Twitter.

you can find me at http://twitter.com/IdoNotes

http://twitter.com/lotusphere

everyone should set Twitter to FOLLOW. You can follow any profile on Twitter by sending follow+username.  For example, people would send:

follow Lotusphere

to Twitter from IM or phone.  People can also go right to the profile page, where you can click the  "follow" button located under the profile name.

 

People who follow the profile will be added to the list of followers; if they decide to Twitter back about the event, their updates will show in the "Lotusphere" timeline.

Via phone or chat, instruct people to send FOLLOW Lotusphere to Twitter at:

• 40404 for US followers
• 21212 for Canadian followers
• +44 762 4801423 for all other international followers

You can even add Twitter to your instant messenger buddylists while there.

The final session numbers have been assigned and I waited to get those to make life easy for you to say you will be attending them!

HND302 - Setup and Administration for the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway.   (yes this is hands-on folks)
BP105 - Installing and Administrating the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway        (myself and Kyungae Lim of IBM)

So there you have it..  fun filled sessions all about the Sametime Gateway.

Since Lotusphere seems to be coming at light speed, (the Dolphin, Swan and Yacht are all sold out already),  Carl and I are planning on Lotusphere Live once again.  For those that don't know and are new readers, there was a persistent chat site where certain bloggers and IBM'ers got into the rooms and sent you live feeds, images and anything else about what was going on in the Opening and closing General Sessions.

We are also pondering adding something new to the mix, so give us your feedback!

Details are sketchy at this moment and time is running out to organize it if you ask me (from someone that has been doing a bunch of conferences).  But here is what we were told

Marjorie Tenzer stated that Lotus has not had a fall event in a long time, so outside of Lotusphere Comes To You events that are going on now, there will be a roadshow starting in the 3rd quarter titled

Lotusphere Collaboration Summit

No cities nor firm dates were mentioned yet, but it is an interesting twist..  no hints online yet that I could find in some quick searches.

From the very opening breakfast the attendees were discussing the lack of heavy technical and directional content.  Two rooms of sessions to cover a bit more content would have been great.   With only 3 session and the keynote it left holes.  But saying that..   attendance looked towards 70 on a quick count.  Great for St Louis.

Keynote: John Dunderdale, VP of Worldwide Sales in Lotus SW (who we had lunch with yesterday as Business Partners), was the keynote speaker.

• He covered the resurgence in attendance at Lotusphere and the solid double digit growth of Notes.
• Market share is solid and growing.
• Kids today don't email, they use social software
• The agile business embraces change (me: how many companies are still fighting not to upgrade?)
• We then jumped into the Domino 8 announcements - all you have seen online already
• Sametime 7.5 was up next..  Point-to-point video, tabbed chat, Office Integration and Outlook, Mac client, Linux server and the list goes on
• Kraig Vanderbeek jumped up to continue Sametime 7.5.1 demonstrations.  Overall he had about 15 plug-in loaded. (me: this leads me back to my March LotusUserGroup.org newsletter's editor section on making these available with no support to give us wow factor for demos).
• He demonstrated all the pieces you would expect to see in all the new areas.
• Portal was next on the list..
• Lotus Quickr discussion came up to talk about Lotus' document management space.  80 sites are testing this product now
• Lotus Connections came to close the keynote (the restlessness of slideware was starting to show).  Dogear got it's do mention and then Activities.  No one seemed to notice that Activities is Lotus Connections and not Domino 8.  475,000 profiles exist with 6 million hits per day on their internal BluePages.  IBM Community Map has over 700 communities now.

You need to read on for the Quickr comments.....

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