You get what you pay for!!!

Besides paying for the gas to make the trip what did the venue cost? I have been to Lotusphere (many times) and Lotusphere comes to you (many times) and it is like comparing apples to oranges. The only thing you get from a Lotuspher come to you is a flavor of what is out there and what's to come.

AC

I attended the 'Lotusphere Comes to Houston' and felt the hands-on labs to get into the technologies was very successful. Michael Dudding presented great with both the presentation and live demo on a MAC!

I vote two thumbs up for the seminar.

I, too, was surprised at the small attendance numbers at the Cleveland LCTY. However, I thought that the presenters (all Lotus/IBM) were very good. They knew the subject matter and were able to answer all of the questions posed by the audience.

I suppose that with limited time to get through a presentation, the ability to demo the software is difficult. And if there are technological issues, it is simply easier to show a video or a "ScreenCam."

We did not have any hands-on of any of the products, which is an excellent idea.

Other than my perception of a lack of attendance, I thought that the Cleveland LCTY was an excellent event.

I Denmark, the partner hosting the LCTY cleverly incorporated Lotus Greenhouse into the presentations, not only using Greenhouse for demoing, but also giving every attendee the option to be registered with Greenhouse and that way gain access to hands-on experience with all the new stuff.

ScreenCam just doesn't do it.

I also attended the Saint Louis event and left pleased that in comparison to previous LCTY events a few years ago there was very little video this year. There were two or three videos that I recall (SAP "Atlantic" being one, I don't recall the others) but there was a lot of live demo, especially with Quickr, Sametime, and the Notes client. I got the sense in previous years they had to rely on video a lot more because the latest version of products weren't yet shipping which is probably why we saw a video instead of a live demo of "Atlantic."

I was given the task of presenting the demos at LCTY London and Manchester. Indeed there were a number of videos to be presented.

Due to time pressures that's exactly what was delivered at the first event, however at the following event everything was delivered live (with one exception due to issues accessing a server). The results were appreciated - and were much better than the simple videos.

There is no substitute for a live demo - and the new stuff looks good and deserves to be seen.

thanks

John (no more videos here!).

One room and no hands on is correct.

sorry, had a bad day and really "typed thought" how I felt........

I've always had a great experience at both the LCTY and Orlando events…..

As for LCTY- kudos go to Optimussolutions and IBM for putting together such a well planned and thought out events.. Having speakers like Rocky Oliver really help and having great Notes Admins like Rajiv Thomas.

I presented part of the LCTY MIami and blogged about it too a little bit. I wanted to have handson sessions but as I was not running the event nor paying for it, not my decision.

IBM did a handful of events on their own and a group of BPs did teh rest, you can see from the list on lotus.com which is which as it tells you.

For those that did not get answers to questions, sorry as the presenters shoudl know their stuff. We had a quite conversive group(about 20-30) and many questions and thoughts got pursued.

I had planned a whole live demo and did show, when applicable active examples of Quickr, ST, COnnections, and R8 client of course.