I have jokingly said this day would come, but now it has.  With all of the vendors, partners and just fun people making useful sidebar plug-ins and widgets, it is becoming too crowded.  Collapsing the area down now brings a row (not easily sortable) that includes a drop-down arrow (not sortable) to select from.



This screenshot is the minimalist one.  If I open a ton of widgets, then I have these things everywhere.  I cannot sort alphabetically, most used, recently used, or anything else.  I need a way to manage the sidebar area more effectively as the client continues to grow with features.

With the Notes client Eclipse portion simply being a frame around Notes basic, the drive to force as much into the frame as possible is the only action.  Without delving into Vulcan in this posting, a change will be needed to get the most use out of the panels themselves and make functioning with numerous ones open as well as finding ones easier.

Is anyone else seeing this yet?

I was just as surprised to see PL down with the awesome service record this free service to us has.  But then the few emails and tweets trickled in to me asking about RSS readers, OPML and more.  Some of this followed along behind my BOF at Lotusphere that included references to both PL and RSS.

I do visit both but live in RSS heaven with Feedly (which is a great UI interface extension in Firefox for Google Reader).  By importing the OPML file a while ago of all the bloggers, I kept right up with everyone and was able to whip through quickly.

For a crash course, I might do a screencam to make it faster to understand how the sharing, importing of OPML and more works.  Here is the original posting I had with the OPML files to keep all of you moving along.

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

Back in early December, I put the company BitWeld on blast for their marketing tactic.  I was sure that would be the end.  Well they are back again with the exact same thing, just in a smaller envelope.

While the service itself looks to have opportunity, the way they keep sending these private and confidential letters to offices leads me to believe they have shady business practices.  I sat back and thought, well they are selling secure file transfer and message services.  However, there is always an air of mystery receiving something marker personal at work with no corporate sender on the envelope either.   Just the persons individual name and address.

So maybe I was not clear before and will make sure to send them the link to this shortly.

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.

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..

In this January 2010 issue I talk about the start of Lotusphere 2010 and the following:

IN THIS ISSUE
* From the Editor: Chris' 1.2010 MMD
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Business Card Photos in the Domino Directory
* Quick Tip: Disabling Remote Images in Lotus Notes Mail For Security
* From the IdoNotes Mailbox: Large File Uploads in Quickr

Don't forget to visit CertFX from the banner above and use the coupon code "IdoNotes" to get up to 25% OFF YOUR EXAMS

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.

In an exclusive interview (see below), I sit with Marc Gingras, CEO of Tungle, right after the Opening General Session of Lotusphere 2010 to discuss everything Tungle and Notes integration.  You can visit my Tungle right here. I would suggest listening to the entire podcast ot pick up on a ton of tips and tricks Marc let's loose as well as a few other exclusives and surprises.

EXCLUSIVE FOR LISTENERS!
As a listener of the IdoNotes podcast, we have a URL all set for you to get in on the beta quick!!  So head over, sign up and get ready to install.
(For those that want to see the URL ---> http://bit.ly/IdoTungle

The IdoNotes podcast is a Spiked Studio Production and this runs 15 minutes long

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

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

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.

Vendors normally have some schwag to give out, but there is always the big prizes.  Here is what we know so far, do not be scared to win them all for yourself.

• Point Alliance at booth 619 is giving out a Wii and $1000
• TLCC is at booth 626 and is giving out 500 t-shirts and a 42" flat panel tv
• Pavone is at booth 727 and is giving away a La Pavoni Expresso Machine
• Extracomm at booth 531 (and MartinScott) are giving away a 160GB Apple TV
• Sherpa Software, booth 519 is giving away a  handheld tv each day and having a virtual scavenger hunt that will give 500.00 cash to the winner.
• There is also a trip to the winter Olympics up for grabs..
• The Knowledge, Vision and Solution sponsors come together for a sweepstakes form to get a Toshiba 47" LCD HDTV

I praised FewClix earlier today, and still think it is good, if you don't run a Mac client.  Oops.  Here is what happened.

You can download the ~6MB and 3 minute episode right here

This episode is brought to you by CertFX.  Use that link and the secret code "IdoNotes" for up to 25% off your purchase

The IdoNotes podcast is a Spiked Studio Production

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.

I previously mentioned my Lotusphere sessions.  Well it has expanded and I need to include my BOF's.  The new schedule looks like this:

Place	Date/Time	Session
Parrot 1	Mon Jan 18 at 6:15-7:15pm	BOF 507 Using Social networks to consume Lotus Information - With the explosion of social network participation, discuss how to use social networks to find, consume and participate in the information flow on Lotus products. Start with Lotus-related blogs and forums and move through RSS feeds, wikis, social bookmarking, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more where IBM and Lotus partners have a presence and provide information
Swan 7-10	Wed Jan 20 at 11:15-12:15pm	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!
Swan 7-10	Wed Jan 20 at 1:30-2:30pm	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
Swan 5-6	Wed Jan 20th at 4:15-5:15pm	How Top Companies are Getting "Out of the Box" with Lotus Connections 2.5 (BP301) - Join Workflow Studios, Stuart McIntyr, Luis and myself.  Your Lotus Connections 2.5 deployment doesn't have to be an island! You can mix Lotus Connections with other social software components and create a solution that feels right for your company. Believe it or not, there are ways to theme and brand your site without breaking your install! Do you have in-house productivity tools? Integrate them! We'll explore some best practices for managing your customizations and deploying them, and with these you can be more innovative in how you use the tool. See how a variety of customers, from different markets and backgrounds, have created unique approaches to managing profile information, status updates and external network integration. You'll leave this session armed with the knowledge needed to use Lotus Connections "outside the box"!
Swan Mockingbird	Wed Jan 20th at 5:45-6:45pm	BOF 319 The Sametime Gateway 8.5 everything - The IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway server is a mature product deployed in dozens of organizations. Come and hear the about what’s new for the Lotus Sametime Gateway 8.5, plus all the best deployment best practices -- and any other questions you might have!

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.

Sametime 8.5 as as have all hopefully learned, includes quite a bit of Websphere for the meeting services.  Yet, it does still have the chat and presence on Domino.  The portion of Sametime 8.5 that runs only on Domino, and does include meeting services as we know them today will be called, wait for it....wait for it...

Sametime Classic

That is right.  Like an old car, you now run a Classic infrastructure (link to naming and technotes).  Time to think about trading up for the new model.  Then again that requires more insurance and a new loan, oil changes, tires and brakes.

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.

Instead of going back into my own posts (there was 155 for those counting in just this blog), I decided to see what the hot topics were for 2009 on PlanetLotus from the listing of top hit blogs total.  I did not see a view for the overall top postings, so I wanted to see the top from each of the below.  Also, it seems it did not go all the way back in 2009 for each blogger based on how much they post, not sure oh what the history retention is.

Blogger	Post
Ed Brill	Notes/Domino 8.5.1 available: So what do you think?
Volker Weber	Collaboration for Dummies
Chris Toohey	Project Abbr - TinyURL-like solution for Lotus Notes Domino!
Peter Presnell	Notes 8.5.1 Helps Break Box Office Record
OpenNTF blog	Four new Widgets available on OpenNTF
Declan Sciolla-Lynch	Learning XPages Part 1 : Application Objectives
Carl Tyler	IBM is slowly phasing out Domino in favor of newer platforms
Gregg Eldred	Memory Leaks in Domino 8.5.x
Bruce Elgort	Our biggest competitor. It's not who you think.
Keith Brooks	"We are going to use Google Apps"
Notes Design Blog	Notes 8.5.1 is generally available today! Here is a presentation that covers most of what is new
Arne Nielsen	Lotus knows where to find a good screensaver for you!
Xpages Blog	What's New For XPages in 8.5.1
Jake Howlett	HTML Emails With LotusScript Just Got a Whole Lot Easier | Blog
Paul Mooney	What mobile device do I choose?
Mikkel Heisterberg	Open Office / Lotus Symphony will be in trouble
Graham Dodge	IBM prefers MS Word ...
Chris Miller	IdoNotes Episode 66 - Quickr on the iPhone launch with project Jonathan
Vaughan Rivett	Is IBM secretly planning “Lotus Notes 8.5.1 – Home Edition”?
John Head	Notes 8.5.1 bring us a true Lotus Symphony API!

*** as a side note I did remove the LinkJam entry since it was a link to another place and not an individual or team blog posting

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