Scoot’s thoughts on all things technology, design, photography and life in general !
Today I had some conference calls to sort out after last nights party at Universal, the first one at 8.30am so had to miss the first session. The call was finished in about 20mins so I was able to jump on a bus to catch the next session after some coffee.
I went to the xPages Theme session which had some neat stuff and it also gave me a chance to catch-up with Richard M as he was in the same session. Once the session finished met David P in the corridor as he was preparing with Leah to do his presentation on Symphony. I had a second concall to attend and then it was lunch. I had lunch with a group of the UK Tech Sales folks before we headed into the Closing General Session.
At the CGS there was a very quick recap of the week including a number of photos plus a new video which included custom snippets.
The final guest of the week was Benjamin Zander http://www.benjaminzander.com/ who the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and author of “The Art of Possibilities”. The session was excellent if a little strange, from being taught how to sing happy birthday correctly to some very interesting stories.
Once this was all completed it was time to work out what to do this evening, as ever Lewis had a plan so we all met in the Port Orleans bar at 7.30pm and then headed to House of Blues in Downtown Disney for dinner.
Finally retired ar about 11pm after a post dinner beer.
Cool Keynote session on social networking with HSBCs Ian Haynes on stage talking about how they use connections. There was PLI and SuccessFactory on stage talkling about there experiences with Connections
Mac to the Future session
Overview of what Lotus is doing in this space..
Lotus Notes 8.5
- Feedreader, Sametime, Widgets, CAE
- Spotlight support for searching
- Unicode
- Cross-platform support migrate Window to Mac
- Multi-user support, run from any user account
- MAC keystrokes supported in RTE
- Mighty Mouse support
- Java agent support
- PErformance
- Applescript
- NSD crash protection
Lotus Notes 8.5.1
- Symphony support directly in client and support for activities plugin
- Improvements UI in conjunction in Apple UI team
- Use iWork bundles seamlessly as attachments (Round trip, fidelity)
- FTI for attachements
- Quality improvements
Dragging objects such as graphic in safari into an email demoed, drag contacts from ST embedded to email to, cc, bcc, body fields, neat features. Support for bundles is cool, support for spotlight looking good.
Symphony on MAC
Sametime Meetings on MACs cool and about time… Adding livescreen share from 1 mac to any other platform. Lotus Connections Firelox support 2 on Tiger and Leopard, Investigating support for FF3 and Safari 3.1 for 2.5 of connections.
iNotes back instead of DWA fully supports safari on the MAC working with Apple and of course ultralite support for iPhone.
In symphony, can do Open send to mail….auto attaches the presentaion/doc or spreadsheet, Offline activities will work and all looking cool. Nice support for ST Unyte.
iPhone Applications support coming soon
- Connections Application on iPhone
- Sametime support on iPhone
More to come in 2009
Today up at 6ish dressed and email checked off to get breakie meeting up with Karen and Rob. I bumped into Brian Campbell and Dan Kikuchi and chatted about our time working on the Portal 6.0 beta programmes and how the economy is in both the US and UK.
After breakfast off to INV105 Glimpsing the Future: Report from IBM Research & The Center for Social Software with Brendan Buckingham. Irene Greif and team went through the what research are doing in the Social Software space. This session was an excellent insight into some of the project on going within IBM especially the Social Accessibility tools demo’d by the team from Tokyo Labs. The tool was an excellent example of social networking and the crowdsourcing of getting content accessible.
The other neat research project explained was related to travel and this was entitled Sojourn/ Voyager The tool will basically allows you to interact with fellow travelers and start to manage trips, with co-workers to allow you to benefit from sharing cars/taxi and meeting for dinner etc. The tool will also allow you to to see recommendations on things like hotels and airlines similar to content that is available in tripadvisor.
Coffee with Brendan Tutt checked in at home and then went to AD401 IBM Lotus Connections Customizations with Karl Brooks and Mike Roach. The session looked at CSS customisations, header and footers and finally widgets.
INV101R From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration, Productivity, and Adoption in the Enterprise. Reckling and Kogan providing more information on Web 2.0 to E2.0. Lots of references to books on mass collaboration including Clay Shirky Here comes everybody. Walked through three scenarios on using E2.0 in business.
AD405 Are you REALLY taking advantage of an integrated Lotus Collaboration experience – Thomas Schaeck and Derek Carr gave an informative overview of the services available to consume and produce with REST APIs within the Lotus product suite including demos of Quickr, Connections integration with Portal with improvements coming with an iWidget for Quickr libraries
Caught up with Jon and had a look around the showcase, store and bookshop. Spoke with MainSoft team on MOSS and WSS integration with Lotus products.
ID217 IBM Lotus iNotes for the Apple iPhone and iPod with Will Williams and Eric Portner with some really good demo on a simulator for the iPhone. I have used the Lotus Greenhouse Ultralite mode in iNotes (see greenhouse.lotus.com to get access to the service). It is really good and we are waiting for access to the internal pilot for this service at IBM.
Day started with Breakfast at the hotel after a short bus ride with a bunch of the team including Rob T, Karen B and Dougie.
OGS started with the Blue Man Group and it started with the same routine that I had seen on Space Pirates (UK Children’s TV show). Then it was over to Bob P to start proceedings followed by special guest speaker Dan Aykroyd which was entertaining. Then on to the details including three customers, Coke Cola, NetJets and HSBC. Surprising thing was the man Ian Haynes from HSBC was the only one not wearing a tie, good job.
So on to some more details including Project Atlantic now named Alloy and due Q1, Bluehouse now Lotus Live www.lotuslive.com this really makes an interesting prop for our customers with the ability to have a mechanism to integrate this service with the traditional collaboration environment. So we have LotusLive Engage is the Bluehouse offering but also LotusLive Connections, LotusLive Events, LotusLive Meetings, LotusLive Notes and LotusLive iNotes.
Bruce Morse on stage, dressed very Steve Jobs, is he the new Steve Jobs but from IBM. From here we had Sametime Unified Telephony and Sametime 8.5 which are looking good and start to bridge some of the gaps between traditional collab and telephony. ST 8.5 now being talked about including using on iphone also we have the web 2.0 client on the way with zero footprint.
On to Social Software so updates to Lotus Connections with 2.5 and loads of details in Luis Blog here http://www.lbenitez.com/2009/01/what-new-in-lotus-connections-v25.html
Basic highlights are looking good with browser version like ultra lite inotes for connections, Linkedin intergation with connections and new wiki for both connections and quickr.
New Portal Logo in use now yellow instead of purple 
sorry websphere. Nice integrations shown in demo, updated ui for portlets. Mashup and mobile accelerators announced and content accelerator update to include Ephox Editlive added to WCM. Web analytics from three partners will allow customers to understand what is happening on their portal.
Went to loads of sessions today and kept seeing the MS Director of Sharepoint in the Connections session so I sure we will see stuff arriving in Sharepoint 2009 potentially based on some of the social software capabilities. Finished the day with BOF for Connections and it was good to finally meet in person the two Luis’ and Stuart M.
NV103 Bringing the Best Together morphed into Web 2.0 deep dive for social software with Chris Lamb and Peter Van de Graaf. Good covering on the connections side and different business aspects of social software.
ID503 Innovation with Integration: IBM’s “Next Generation” Intranet Portal. Brian did a great job of showing the IBM Intranet (On Demand Workspace) especially how testing of new portlets and themes and content can be achieved without impacting BAU on the intranet. Interesting skeleton portlet has been created to allow users to easily create new portlets, this is aimed at end users.
ID304 What’s Next with IBM Lotus Connections: Great session by Suzanne Minassian and Scott Prager. Great session highlighting the new stuff in Connections 2.5 especially in File sharing, Wiki etc.
INV107 The Future of Enterprise Collaboration – Guy Creese was a general session covering collaboration in the enterprise that covered some of the ground from many other presentations in the past.
Dinner with Rob, Karen and Stu tonight in the hotel and then finished for the day..
Eventually crawled out of bed at 8am and dragged myself into the shower to try and shake off the headache and jet lag. Rang CJ and checked out what was going on at home another disturbed night for her and LCJ. But they were on the bus to go to an indoor play pen in Brighton. Jumped on the shuttle bus to the Dolphin and bumped into Jamie and chatted during the journey. Wandered into the hotel and registered for the conference and wandered around to get coffee and food to keep me going for the first session of the day on SaaS, more to follow over the next couple of days. Bumped into Simon, Cali, Chris F, Chris M, Paula and Stu so wandered into the SaaS session.
There were lots of familiar faces from the US teams in the room must catch up with them over the coming days to see how things are going. This included Brian C, Ray S, Anne-Maire, Gene L and Mark H.
Getting to lunch was delayed so second marathon 4hour session was put back to 12.45, so had a chance to digest my food. Session started a little bit late started off with Jeri Allen
Unified Communication & Collaboration - Bruce Morse
This session talked around the UC space and what to expect over the coming week, so more details to follow in my blog.
Development – Alistair Rennie
Overview of the huge number of products released during 2008 plus a taster for whats to come, more information will be released during the OGS tomorrow.
Messaging & Collaboration – Kevin Cavenaugh
Summary of where we are in Collaboration in Lotus and of course some tasters for tomorrow.
Social Software – Jeff Schick
Looked at how successful 2008 was for Social Software plus some indications of the new capabilities being released in the next versions.
Portal – Larry Bowden
New Portal Logo and a summary of Portal and the accelerators during 2008 plus stuff to come 2009
Software as a Service – Sean Poulley
Special guests was John Dunderdale
Tonight is the opening party so food and drinks by the lake between the two hotels so should be fun if I can keep awake.
Got to the Gatwick around 9.20am and parked up wandering into the South Terminal to drop my bags off. The place was pretty empty and didn’t have wait to drop the bags off, it must be a record cos my hold luggage only weighed 11Kgs and my hand luggage tipped the scales at 6Kgs. This makes me think that I have forgotten something, oh well will just have to go shopping at some point.
Met up with Cali, Stu and Jon C after security. Grabbed a sandwich from Pret and munched these before wanderimg around the shops. Bumped into Karen as well milling around in Dixons and chatted for a while before wandering around a it more and then heading to the gate. Again not for the first time I didn’t buy anything in duty free or whatever it is called these days.
Flight was very full and not a spare seat in the house with a mixture of holiday makers and Lotusphere attendees, I suspect more holiday makers as I am sure tomorrows flight will be full with conference attendees. Took off on time and a little bumpy until over the sea and clear of Ireland. It is actually one of the choppiest flights I have taken across the Atlantic, but hey ho it could have been much worse. Stuck towards the back of the plane in 59C but got an aisle seat Read through Wallpaper and also the T3 I picked up at the gate.
Started with a glass of tomato juice and red wine, sorry should I say in different glasses before lunch was served. Barbecued chicken with sundries was very edible and filled a gap. Watched Eagle Eye, followed by Death Race and then Mummy 3 which filled the time in between listening to my iPod and messing on the MB. Spent some time importing some of Australia phones from 2004 into Aperture as an experiment and played around in general, def need more horsepower as it was utilising a lot of resources processing the thumbnails and previews on completion of the import. All of the images are from 6 megapixel Canon EOS 10D in JPG format so they are about 2MB each in size and there were around 850 photos in the project. I must admit I am on battery power and it is a bit faster than when importing RAW images from my 40D which tyically run around 10-12MB in size.
Landed on time at 17.40 EST and filed off the plane from the back of the jumbo and eventually made it through immigration and customs to jump in a cab to the hotel. Arrived at Port Orleans Riverside checked in and then off to my room to to dump my stuff off and hen to get some food.
Met up with Chris T and Stuart Mc in the bar and grabbed a beer and chatted about Lotusphere the journeys and the plans for the week, plus what people had been up to over Xmas and New Year. Once everyone was about grabbed some food and tehn retired for the night around midnight. Went back to my room and was unable to get in, so great couldn’t find a house phone so had o walk back to reception to find out if I can get a new key. Was told that I had been moved, but no explanation given so wandered off to the new room and waiting for the bell boy to bring my luggage over. After about 15mins the phone rang which woke me as I had dozed off for a few minutes, once I had worked out it was the phone and it was reception telling me that not to worry there was a mix up with the room and I will be going back to my original room. The bell boy gave me a lift through the sprinklers back to my original room where a young lady called Eve was waiting to move to her own room. Everyone was apologetic and I finally got to finish unpacking and too bed by which time it was 1.30am, damn which was 6.30am UK time. A disturbed sleep and a stinking headache followed….
Today started early, up at 5am after not being able to sleep so did some bits and pieces whilst everyone else slept. Cameron was awake at 5.45am and decided he was hungry so sorted out his milk and tea for CJ. Cameron later managed to knock the tea over, good job the carpet in the bedroom is beige in colour. So glad today was a holiday
Spent the morning playing with Cameron mixed with finishing my packing for Lotusphere 09 which nearly completed apart from a few power cords and electronics such as my phone and mac.
Registered on Brightkite today to see what it gives apart from location based information so will report back over coming weeks on how I am finding it. Spent some time on LinkedIn updating content and connecting some of my colleagues past and present.
Checked in for my Virgin flight to Orlando tomorrow so that just need to join the long queue doing just baggage drops. I will be interested to see if this queue is bigger than the normal I am checkin in queue. This has been my experience in the past so let wait and see.
Parking all sorted and just need to go
Next entries will be related to trip to Lotusphere and all the announcement and my views on what happening.
What a night, up at 1.30am with Cameron who was coughing so put him on the spare room with me so Chacasta could try and get a good nights sleep. Needless to say that it was a very disturbed night with Cameron not sleeping very well.
Finally up at 6.30am very tired and now in need of serious sleep, looks like Orlando and LS09 will be a chance to get some sleep, or should I say undisturbed sleep.
Sorted out the work bag for LS09 except for putting any electronic away yet as I need them tomorrow, so bag pretty empty at this stage
Day started slowly as I was trying to sort out all my admin etc before my trip and work out how to make my large bag smaller, but thats another story. Partially packed this evening so finishing up tomorrow.
Today was full of calls of one type or another and the year is slowly moving but really need the sales team to settle down and get down to it, but account planning underway and should be better once LS 09 has finished.
Schedule is looking very good and a couple eveing things may be sorted, but will have to see.
Rock on LS09
Clock is ticking to LS09 and I have started to form my agenda items for the weeks proceeding and only a few clashes. If it follows previous trips to Orlando my planned scheduled will go out of the window as I change my mind once I revisit the descriptions etc of the sessions, plus sometimes I just lose the will to walk back to the other hotel.
So some topics I will be looking into will be Portal, Connections and general collaboration updates announced. Must do’s are visiting all my remote colleagues and friends from the development, technical and services teams that will be in Orlando including visiting booths/Peds for ID/Redbooks, ISSL and Products, plus all of our BPs.
I will most definitely be visiting the Labs to see what going on and what research etc are up to in the coming months. Hopefully I will get the chance to get some decent info for my customers and of course myself.
In addition to the fun and games of Lotusphere there will be the compulsory shopping during the week, it just a pity the exchange rate is so poor at the moment. I will be going to the apple store at some point as it is compulsory to double check to see if there is anything worth buying. Sorry I should rephrase that to see what I can justify buying, maybe one day the IBM powers will furnish me with a MacBook for work so I can get rid of the stinkpads. Or they should just give me some money and I will buy my own 
well more about Lotusphere over the coming week and whilst I am there I will blog about it when I can
