Lotusphere 2010 – Knowledge from Concentrate!

I just got back from this year’s Lotusphere held in Orlando, Florida. As usual, it is a great opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Lotus Notes / Domino.

There is always so much available to do that you have to pick and choose what’s most important to you and some stuff you just won’t get to see. In my case, I focus on the presentations rather than the product showcase primarily since I’m not in a position to get any of those products into my organization and secondarily I develop most of my own utilities and applications anyway. I spread my attention between the developer and the Admin tracks.

Hits and Misses

As with any event there are good and bad things. In my opinion:

The Hits:

– an unexpected highlight of the conference was having Dr. Brian Cox speak at the closing session. Absolutely brilliant!

– The JumpStart sessions held on Sunday (January 17) every one of these 2 hour sessions that I attended was great. Well prepared presenters disseminating highly relevant information.

– The Show-‘n-tell sessions. A deep dive involving some end-to-end process that was like one long (1 hr 45 min) demo. I loved experiencing all the gory details of installs that I’ll implementing myself later this year first hand like this.

– The Swan and Dolphin hotel. These folks know how to manage people flow. Meals had legions of staff directing people and ensuring that food stations were kept stocked. Cleanup of tables was unobtrusive and thorough and staff were always pleasant.

– The Audio visual folks. Not sure if they are Disney or were brought in by Lotusphere but there were no glitches at any of the sessions that I could detect. When there was a question or a presenter made a comment about something that they couldn’t figure out, someone would unobtrusively show up and do what was needed.

– On Time. Sessions started on time and ended on time. Period. This is a consistent theme and one that respects both attendees and presenter’s commitments alike.

The Misses:

– The Information and assistance folks were particularly impotent. They had no idea how to escalate questions and seemed intent on just getting rid of you. My biggest peeve was that my registration never came off pending status and so my Lotus Online account was never activated. Three trips to those yahoos failed to resolve the issue.

– The BOF (Birds of a Feather) sessions were a big disappointment for me this year. The first one I tried to attend, the facilitator was detained (but sent word so we could perhaps try to find another session of interest) and the session was rescheduled for some time in the future. The second one the facilitator didn’t bother to show or send word. This was vexing as it was an early morning session that I’d dragged my not-a-morning-person butt out of bed for at 5:30 am to be there on time.  Also, the sessions exactly overlapped with breakfast – well if you were serious about attending the following normal morning sessions. I think it’s time these ceased being an afterthought and perhaps gained some more prominence in both the schedule and maybe in the minds of the hosts? Last time I was here I attended one or two of these and found them pretty valuable.

– No use of mobile device access to session evaluation. Having attended WES 2009 and seen what can be done in terms of integrating the nearly ubiquitous smartphones into the scheduling and evaluation process, it was kind of a let down to see that these technologies were not being exploited (indeed *showcased*) as part of this event.

My Sessions

Sunday:

BOOT103 Running with Scissors: Sharpen Your Skills for a Pain-free IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 Upgrade

Boot 101 8.5 dom admin

BOOT104 IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5 Deployment Workshop

SHOW102 Using IBM Lotus Domino 8.5 Policies to Manage Your Clients

Monday:

BP108 Worst Practices

AD206 Filthy Rich User Interfaces

SHOW113 Integrating IBM Lotus Domino Data and Applications on Smartphones, Blackberry

BP306 How to Sell IBM Lotus Notes

BOF316 Managing your IBM Lotus Domino Environment with Lotus Domino (Facilitator no show)

Tuesday:

BOF314 How to Tune Your IBM Lotus Domino Server for Maximum Performance (Facilitator no show)

AD102 Extreme Makeover — LotusScript and Java Editor Edition

AD107 Enhance Your Existing Applications with XPages

BP106 The Top 11 Tips for Keeping Your Servers Healthy

ID102 Enterprise IBM Lotus Notes Client Deployments

BP212 Delivering IBM Lotus Domino to Mobile Devices: Top 10 Mobile Browser Dev Tricks – and More!

ID615 Best Practices for Upgrading to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5x

Wednesday:

BP107 Real World Examples: Upgrading to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

SHOW201 Installation and Setup of IBM Lotus Sametime 8.5: From “Zero to Hero” in Just Two Hours

BP206 Let’s Give Your LotusScript a Tune-Up

ID604 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino in the Cloud – IBM LotusLive Notes

Thursday:

SHOW103 Roaming in IBM Lotus Domino 8.5: Configure the Best Choice for You

ID611 The Best-Laid Plans: Networking That Can Hurt Your Applications

GURU101 GURUpalooza!

ASK101 Ask the Developers