Category Announcements Family
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My youngest daughter Robin, whom we affectionately call "Mouse", is a member of an all-star competition cheerleading team called the Atlanta Jayhawks. The Jayhawks are from a gym called Cheer and Dance Atlanta, and I have to say that it is an amazing organization. While other gyms divide their focus between gymnastics, dance, cheer, and other sports, this gym is laser-focused on cheer and dance/hip-hop. The entire facility is designed for properly training young athletes to be the best they can be at their sport. I also find it amazingly impressive that every coach there, from the owner down to the part-timers, is an accomplished tumbler, dancer, or cheerleader. It's very impressive, and I know the kids respond so well to them because they know that their coaches can do whatever is asked of them.

Throughout the season, which runs from November to April, these teams compete against other teams in their age group and skill level. There are multiple organizations that host events, so there's usually a competition every other weekend throughout the season. Some of the more notable cheer/dance organizations include Jamfest, Cheersport, NCA/NDA, and so on.

This is Mouse's second season with the Jayhawks; she's a member of the "Youth-White" team, or Youth age group/Level 2 skill level (there are five or six skill levels, and five age groups - Tiny, Mini, Youth, Junior, Senior). At Level 2 Mouse is able to do front/back walkovers, roundoffs, roundoff/back handsprings, etc. They also do some pretty impressive stunts and pyramids, and I have to admit that it is amazing to watch. So even at the second level their skillset and abilities are pretty impressive.

Last year Mouse's team were crowned the Cheersport National Champions for their agegroup/skill level. During the offseason her team lost about 1/3 of their members for various reasons - usually because they advanced in age or skill level. So they started with a bunch of new members, which means that everyone has to learn how to work as a team again - no small feat.

This year's team started well, and have done very well overall. Their last competition was held this past weekend here in Atlanta. The competition is called the "All-Levels Championship", and from what I have learned it is actually a combination of many of the aforementioned organizations who come together to try to establish the overall best teams. There are five main competitions held - Atlanta, Dallas, Atlantic City, Cincinnati, and Long Beach. Each performance at these locations are filmed, and then the top three performers from each age group/skill level, from each city, are reviewed in a "virtual" competiton on 17 May. From this virtual competition there will be overall international champions named for each level - what a great way to end a season!

Mouse's team (Youth Level 2) earned First Place at the Atlanta event this last weekend! It was their best performance of the season, and everyone is so proud! In addition to Youth Level 2 winning, Youth Level 4 and Senior Level 5 ALSO won their respective divisions! This level of excellence is a testament to the dedication and commitment from each team member, coach, and parent involved with the Jayhawks.

Debbie and I are also personally thrilled with Mouse's performance and commitment to her team. She loves this sport and her team, and she beams when she's performing. We hope that her team also wins the virtual competition on 17 May - but even if they don't they can all still be very, very proud of the way they carried themselves throughout this season.

This is Mouse's last year as a member of Youth Level 2; next year she moves up to the Junior age level, and she also will become a "flyer" (i.e. the girls you see at the top of pyramids, getting thrown all over the place, etc.) because she's petite. Mouse should be very proud of her performance as a member of Youth Level 2, and I know she will continue to make us proud as well.

We love you, Mouse! Congratulations!

Rock (Mouse's Dad)

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 12:07 PM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (3)

   
Category Family
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NOTE: I have been taking a hiatus from blogging, since my life has been amazingly hectic lately. I have been laid off - again - and my beautiful eldest daughter, Kristi, has been planning a wedding with my wife for the last two months. I decided that I would remain on hiatus until after the wedding day had past, and then I would come back to blogging with the posting of my "Father of the Bride" speech. Well, the time has come, and here's my first post back. I hope you enjoy it... **Rock

** The picture is of Kristi, Jake, and my other four kids - Kelsey, Rocky Jr, Robin, Tommy **

Kristina Ashley Oliver and Jacob Michael Thornton were married on 10 April 2010 in Dahlonega, GA. It was an outdoor wedding, and I have to say that it was amazingly beautiful. The day was PERFECT - I mean one of those days that you only get a handful of each year. We had close family and friends, and overall the day could not have been more perfect. Now I plan on posting many more posts, and pictures, from that day - everything from my thoughts on the day, to how my wife pulled off such an exceptional day with limited time and money, to the "where do we go from here" thoughts that follow a day like this. But today I would like to begin my series on Kris and Jake's wedding with my Father of the Bride speech.

I know it is traditional for the father of the bride to begin the reception with a speech - a speech that is part anecdote, part advice, part toast, and part welcome. Well, those of you who know me know that a) I tend to be longwinded, and b) tend to be emotional. So, with this in mind, here is my speech. I hope you enjoy it.

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Posted by Rocky Oliver At 9:48 AM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (7)

   
Category Entertainment Fun
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As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have always loved the friendly rivalry between my Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints - we've always had a great time traveling to each other's cities and giving each other some good-natured ribbing when one would beat the other.

Well, now the Saints have the ultimate bragging rights - they are the Super Bowl Champions. It doesn't get bigger than that.

Congratulations, New Orleans Saints - and I don't imagine you're going to quit smiling for quite some time.

(Now I just need my Falcons to win a Super Bowl so I can quit being so jealous!)

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 10:19 AM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (1)

   
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Just wanted to drop a quick note to say CONGRATULATIONS SAINTS. Normally the "Aints" are the division rival of my favorite team, the Atlanta Falcons. The Saints joined the National Football League (NFL) the year after my Falcons, in 1967 - and they have been "fightin' like brothers" ever since. We started out together in the NFC West divison, and then we both moved to the NFC South when it was formed because our rivalry is so strong. Usually the Saints and Falcons have "up" and "down" years together, but we always manage to make our 2 games/year against each other a lot of fun.

But the similarities don't end there. Today the Saints beat the Minnesota Vikings to advance to the Super Bowl with a game-winning field goal (in overtime) - their first. When my Atlanta Falcons advanced to their first (and only, but not for long ) Super Bowl, we also beat the Minnesota Vikings with a last-minute field goal.

Pretty kewl, huh?

So, congratulations, Saints fans. You won't hear my say that often, but in this case I think it is richly deserved.

Good luck against Peyton Manning and the Colts - you're gonna need it

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 5:31 PM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (2)

   
Category Announcements What do you think?
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I forgot to mention earlier this week that I have unveiled my "new look" while here at Lotusphere 2010. As I mentioned last month I have believed for some time that my hair had receded enough to warrant a change in my look, because I am not one of those who would try to hide the balding head I have so richly earned. I took the suggestions made by you to heart, along with my family, and decided on what had humorously become known as "Malkovich #2" (from the earlier post) - a short crop along with a beard. Well, without further delay, here is my new look as unveiled this week:

I must say that the response to my new look has been one of shock and surprise (and a lack of recognition!), but overall it has been overwhelmingly positive. The sentence I have heard most often this week is "Geesh, I hardly recognize you!!" Pretty much everyone has told me that they really, really like the new look; in fact the only negative comment (although I don't view it as negative) is that I now "look my age" or I "look older". That's ok - I am older. The response has been such that I truly believe that if I were taller people would not have recognized me at all. What do I mean by that? Well, when people see me that have told me that thought, "that looks kinda like Rocky...", so they've been iffy on if it is me or not. BUT, when you add in my height, then it tips the scales towards "OK, it must be Rocky" because there just aren't that many people my height. So, if I were average height - say 5'9" (1.75m) - then people would error on the side of caution and would not approach me; but since I'm a short guy, it must be me, and they approach me to find out.

Overall it has been great fun watching people's reactions this week to my new look. I think that people truly like it, and more importantly, I really do as well. So, get used to it, folks - this is the way I'll be looking from now on (except I'll continue to trend towards older and uglier ). And if you're here at Lotusphere, please come up to me and let me know what you honestly think of the new look; and if you're not here, let me know here what you think via a comment. Either way, your opinion is greatly appreciated.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 3:14 PM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (7)

   
Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2010 LS10
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Let's pick up where our story left off last. I had begun my Tuesday, and was looking forward to the rest of the day...

TUESDAY (AFTERNOON/EVENING)
The lab on building Symphony plugins that I attended yesterday was pretty good, and Paul Bastide and his crew have done a good job with these labs. I really like the idea of bulding plugins for Symphony products, and that surprises me. I have always done integration between Notes and productivity suites (read: Lotus SmartSuite and MS Office) with a "Notes-centric" point-of-view. However as I saw the power of plugins in Symphony, it made me realize that there may be some merit to having a productivity suite-centric viewpoint for getting work done. For instance, it may be interesting to have some type of plugin in your document editor that allows you to pull some type of information over to your document. Or, it may be interesting to have a nice spreadsheet app that allows you to find and load data from document sets in Notes that you select from a plugin. Just some food for thought. I'm going to go through the plugin lab more thoroughly when I get home, and I have time to explore, digest, and experiment this information more deeply.

Later in the afternoon I was honored to be a judge for the 2010 edition of Lotusphere Idol. We had five exceptional contestants who all had varying styles and expertise, yet they all were very competent, informative, and entertaining. The five contestants were:

• Wayne Smith with Karen Keeter - Virtual Collaboration using Sametime 3D
• Jim Casale - DAOS: What are the 'other' things to consider
• Martin Meijer - The power of XPages in the real world
• Jo Ann Card - Users: 10 things I hate about you
• Victor Toal - Lotus Connections: The Successful Journey from Pilot to Production

Ed Brill was our host (as in years' past) and once again he did an outstanding job. The other judges ( Paul Mooney , Bob Balaban , and Gabriella Davis ) and I had a tough time picking a winner because the contestants were so good, and unlike years' past there was no clearcut frontrunner. After careful deliberation we wound up choosing Martin Meijer. He did an oustanding job of delivering great content along with infusing the topic with his dry sense of humor. He kept the audience engaged, and imparted good information along the way. At one point he even faked out the crowd (and the judges) by displaying a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death for the uninitiated), and then saying "just kidding" (it was doubly funny because he was presenting on Ed's Mac ). I would strongly encourage everyone to come support Martin as he makes his full session debut on Thursday morning, 10AM, in the Dolphin Southern Hemisphere III ballroom. Good luck Martin!

I spent quite a bit of time exploring the Product Showcase yesterday as well. There are some interesting product offerings down there, and I enjoyed taking my time and getting to know some of the products better. Lance and I have also been discussing a possible product idea, so I was doing some research to see if there were already competitors in the space we're considering (luckily, there isn't ). As he and I begin fleshing the idea out, I'll let you know what we're up to.

Early in the evening I hosted SpeedGeeking, which is like speed dating, but with geeks sharing some kewl topic in five minutes. We had about 80 attendees, and after they were softened up a bit with free booze (along with the SpeedGeeks ) everyone had a great time. The SpeedGeeks themselves did an outstanding job, and I got many good reviews and praises for these guys. Overall everyone had a great time.

Later in the evening I attended the Engineering Party (i.e. the party held for the Lotus engineers; formerly known as the "Iris Party"), along with Lance Spellman (President - Workflow Studios ), Newbs, and Tom Truitt (another Workflow Studios associate). It had a Mediterranian feel, and the food was excellent. The decorations were very classy, and the company was good. However my knees started giving me trouble again, so I left early.

Later that evening Andrew Kelly and Bob Balaban stopped by Newbs and my room to sample some of Newbs' family bourbon, which is most excellent. We had fun just talking and hanging out, and once those guys left Newbs and I went straight to bed - we were both beat.

WEDNESDAY (MORNING)
This morning I got up bright and early to attend and support Bob Balaban and Paul Mooney as they delivered their session, BP201: Meet the Grumpies - Eschew Obfuscation!. The session was excellent, and the crowd had almost as much fun as Bob and Paul did. After that I started to sit in on another Symphony lab - this time on programming in Symphony using the new LotusScript API, but to be honest I just wasn't in the mood to do another two-plus-hour lab so I left early. Paul told me that I can get the slides and materials from him later, so I'll do that and dive into it at my leisure.

Well, that's it for now. I'll post more either late today or early tomorrow.

Until then...

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 10:44 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0)

   
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MONDAY
Monday was a good, but hectic, day. I actually got to do what I wanted to do this year - attend some sessions, and spend a bit of time in the Product Showcase. Many of the same players are there, but there are some new ones too. I stopped by Teamstudio's booth to say hi, and I love their tie-died shirts they're wearing (and giving away) this year. They also have a new product out, called Voyager, which is an app that allows you to surface any Notes/Domino app on a Blackberry (and I think any smartphone) with only a bit of code. I like it.

The Lotus Store is in the back of the Product Showcase this year, and they have some pretty good swag there. I bought a bunch of stuff for my kids and my wife there (over $100 worth!), and I think they'll like it. They have enough Mickey Mouse crap, time to get some more IBM/Lotus crap.

In the evening the Product Showcase Reception kicked off. The food was pretty good, the libations flowed, and a great deal of schmoozing took place. It is obvious that this year Lotus had to cut back on expenses in certain areas - and that's understandable, given the state of the economy. One of the more noticable areas of cutbacks is that there was no real Jamfest this year. I honestly thought that they were going to do the traditional Jamfest (i.e. rent instruments, have a sound guy, let everyone get up there and play or sing, etc.) in the back of the Product Showcase.

Well, I was wrong.

This year they hired a crew that held a Rockband band competition, along with playing music via a DJ. The setup was really kewl, I must admit; and the DJ was entertaining, if not a bit cliche' (which I think is what he was shooting for. I hope.). I watched a couple of people play, but it appeared there was a few technical difficulties at the beginning, which is all I saw.

Unfortunately I didn't stay to the end, because my knees had started swelling up. Bad. I had already screwed up my left knee a before (as I mentioned previously), and all the standing/walking of the day were beginning to take their toll. I had promised myself that I would avoid staying out too late and pushing myself and my legs too far, so I went ahead and went to my room to get off my legs and ice my knee.

Since I did leave early, I would love to get feedback - both good and bad - of the Rockband/Jamfest event. We have a debriefing meeting for the Content Team after Lotusphere, and I would love to be able to let Lotus know what you thought of this event, and if you enjoyed it or not.

TUESDAY (MORNING)
I got up bright and early to my alarm (I remembered to set it today - yay!), and I am currently attending Rob and Viktor's EXCEPTIONAL presentation - BP210: Great Code Giveaway 9 - Never Gonna Let You Down. Rob tells me that there is over 600 hours invested in this presentation for this year, and I must tell you that all that works is readily evident. Rob and Viktor are polished and accomplished speakers, and as they say in the title (and as "Rick" would say) they "never let you [the Lotusphere attendees] down". This session is almost always rated the highest at Lotusphere, and is exceptional. If you have missed this session so far (this was the second time it was presented), then you have have one more chance - they are presenting this session once more, tomorrow at the same time (8:30AM), in the Dolphin Hemisphere D-E. You will NOT regret it.

My next stop is a lab - "Developing Lotus Symphony Plug-ins and Widgets". I really want to learn how to do clean, tight integration between Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony, and so I am giving myself a crash course on Symphony over the next two days. A large (and profitable) portion of my early career was spent doing Notes/MS Office integration (along with John Head). As MS Office evolved into .NET, I moved on to doing other stuff - so I have been out of Notes/Productivity App integration for awhile. These labs should give me a good foundation for jumping back into integration - and I think the integration story between Notes and Symphony is very compelling, especially considering that Symphony is available as a part of the Notes install. Today's session also helps me along another path learning how to build plugins and otherwise integrate with the Eclipse framework. So, overall I am excited to see what I can glean and use from these workshops. If I learn something kewl, I'll be sure to share it with you

Well, that's it for now. Class is about to start, and I need to get my head into the game. I'll let you know how the rest of the day goes later on. Don't forget to let me know what you thought of the Rockband/Jamfest event last night.

Cheers, and have a great Lotusphere 2010!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:44 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (1)

   
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Partner panel onstage now. Includes John Carini (iEnterprises). I've known him awhile now. The panel also includes Xerox; they point out that this is unusual, as they have been a competitor. But now there is integration points between them and us.

OfficeNow - Foundation server, Notes, and Xerox's stuff such as their multifunction device. Uses Web 2.0/web services for communication. This makes sense, because the Xerox multifunction devices are often an integral part of a corporation's productivity environment, and being able to seamlessly integrate Lotus stuff with that Xerox platform is nice. Targeting towards SMB it appears.

Allistair - "these printer people are really feisty". LOL

John C. is now talking about what iEnterprises offers (CRM). They have both installed offerings and cloud offerings, and includes mobile interfaces. John has done a very nice job keeping his offering portfolio relevant. Since I've worked for a CRM app company - Synergistics (Prevail was the app) - I understand how tough that business is. John has survived in this space, where others have come and gone - Synergistics and MFJ International/Relavis to name a couple. Glad to see him being successful, he's a nice guy.

After the panel, some awards were announced. Can't type that fast. Someone else will catch it.

Mike Rhodin is now Senior VP for Software Group. He's here live.

What if? What if they build on stuff. Announcing IBM Project Vulcan. It is a sneak peek at the evolution of collaboration. Extends the products we have now, focuses on continuity, convergency, innovations, new opportunities. It is a vision for the evolution of the Lotus business products. Loosely-coupled architecture. Consistent interface across all client form factors, including mobile and browser. Sets the stage for next generation of apps. Embraces open programming model, REST apis, widgets, mashups, and HTML5. Supports SSO, search, etc. Now a demo (Ron and Suzanne)....

New inbox, very slick. Seems to seamlessly integrate with LotusLive without the need to feel like you're bouncing from app to app. Calendar is clean, and is able to seamlessly integrate peer and group calendars, ad-hoc. Can use older apps, and modernize them. Home page will aggregate info from a variety of sources, including external (twitter, etc.). Designed for fast processing, less context-switching. Search filtering happens character by character. Searches can be saved as a collection (that could prove to be handy). The dialog boxes are VERY elegant and pretty; preview is a nice touch. I like the way metadata is integrated and displayed for a resource such as a file. This will make collaboration more content-rich as well as contextual. It is even GPS-integrated for mobile devices - that is great for location-based collaboration, and I find that I like this ability in all of my mobile apps (re: GPS integration). Me likey. So far, it is slick. I'd like to play with it. It got some nice applause too.

Vulcan will be available via LotusLive Labs this year sometime.

I think Allistair is wrapping up. That's about on-time, not bad. Hope you found this useful/interesting!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 9:45 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (3)

   
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LotusLive now. Offered as little as $3/user/month (wonder what that gets you, or how many users it requires to get that price?). A file is uploaded from Notes client, then others can see it via other client types, can edit (with appropriate permissions), has notifications - all managed by LotusLive. LotusLive provides profiles, meetings, charts, activities, different classes of users (which is used to control what you can do - like roles, maybe?), and more.

Connections Communities coming onboard second half of year (Connection integration with LotusLive) - allow you to have symmetry between corporate and cloud.

LotusLive - full Notes mail/calendar/contacts support coming online this year. Also going to offer Traveler, BES server, data migration services. BETA in spring. Wonder if they're considering any hosted apps on LotusLive?

New member: LotusLive Labs, available today. Makes available Lotus Research stuff such as EventMaps and CollaborativeRecordedMeetings. Demoed downloading from LotusLive Labs, editing via Symphony. Plugin analyzes metadata in Symphony document, then tells you if any of these people (found during discovery) are online for collaborating. LotusLive Labs available to partners in Q2 2010.

A BP is integrating the ability to do digital signatures via LotusLive (Labs?). You add a signer in the location where the person would sign the physical doc, then you click "start signing". The signor opens the document, navigates to the area for signing, you click it, then it signs it and protects it to ensure no changes happen after the signature. This could be useful, especially for legal stuff (contracts, agreements, etc.)

Demos must be over now, Jeff and Kevin are doing HORRIBLE puns - so bad it makes you squirm in your seat. Man, it is so sad it's funny (which I think - I hope - is the point).

Moving on to partners...

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:52 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0)

   
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Time for demos. Kevin Cavanaugh and Jeff Schick, along with Ron Sebastian and Suzanne Livingston.

Demos are starting with Lotus Quickr. As an aside, if I want to know something about Quickr, I'll talk to Rob Novak or Julian Robichaux, who are sitting next to me on the couch.

Announcing much closer alignment with Domino, improved document versioning, using quickr services in xpages apps, and more. The Quickr for J2EE is getting a new user interface, among other things.

Another aside: maybe it is because I've had to interact with Ron concerning the OGS in the past, but he still rubs me the wrong way. He's probably a great guy, so the issue is with me, I'm sure - but he still does, nevertheless. Ron seems less polished this year - maybe more nervous? That usually happens when the demos were dodgy in rehearsals.

Notes Multimedia Library. Tutorials on how to use and access capabilities and features in the Notes client, Quickr, and Connections. The rest of the Quickr demo was slick, but nothing earth-shattering - basically better integration with the Notes client, calendar support (including integrating team calendar from Quickr with personal calendar), and more. If you want the details, check out Rob Novak's stuff - you know those SNAPPS guys no more about Quickr than anyone.

Talking about CMIS integration/support, used for accessing and moving content across infrastructures such as Documentum, Sharepoint, and so on. Also includes integration with Alfresco, an open source content management system.

Announcing plans to release Lotus Traveler for ANDROID, later this year. Providing mail and calendar client for Android devices, this gets around the wide variety of Android flavors. Encrypted mail plugin app available in the Android app store.

The setup of push email using the encrypted app for iPhones and iTouches is now virtually one-click. That's nice for those users.

Kevin C. made a cheesy reference to the customers that have moved FROM Exchange TO Domino. That is something to get excited about.

You can now run xpages apps locally in the Notes client in 8.5.1. I wonder if they're going to show anything from the NEXT version of the Notes client?

Discussing the new relationship with openNTF. Talking about the StatusUpdater app, which is a sidebar app from OpenNTF for the Notes client. It allows you to update your ST and Twitter status from the same client, inside Notes. It can also show a combined view from the same, for those who like the combined interfaces.

OK, moving on to Connections demo. Looks like Suzanne is presenting that demo. Next version of Connections planned for second half of this year.

Suzanne begins by demoing the new mobile Connections client, which looks fairly robust. Work with activities and file resources - I didn't think that was going to be in this version of the mobile client. The Connections profile has been enhanced to make it easier to find common communities for ease of building networks and new communities. It uses tags, bookmarks, etc. to help heuristically figure out what you may be interested in. The new recommendations widget shows suggested activities, bookmarks, and more.

Social analytics will change the way things get done. It will changes employer to employee, customer to business, government to contractor, and more.

Now talking about and demoing Websphere Portal (I always forget that Websphere Portal is actually under the LOTUS brand, and not the Websphere brand. Weird.). She's demoing Portal using a hospital vertical portal. The scenario is managing all H1N1 cases in her hospital. Includes integration with CDC. She adds a portlet to the page - for a blog - and it is easy to do and move. This has been around awhile, but it is getting slicker and slicker. She also is showing COGNOS integration. I can't believe they're still around. I did Cognos PowerPlay work years and years ago, using a stone tablet and chisel.

Rob is still stuttering, fidgety - and is still bugging me. Is it time to move on and get a new demo monkey?

Mashups can now run directly inside a portal. Hmmm, not sure that the call integration portion of the demo worked. Suzanne smoothly moved on - good job.

Next version of Portal will be released the first half of 2011. That seems like a long way away. Some target enhancements were mentioned, but let's be real - this far out means that probably none of that will look as described today.

Talking about Sametime 8.5. Includes new meeting capabilities, no-download browser client, using REST apis, and has a very healthy community. Sametime "on-premesis" is able to be seamlessly integrated with cloud offerings (read: LotusLive). There's a plugin that can integrate your client's calendar with your Sametime meeting space. The Web interface and the client interface are virtually identical. They also demo'ed people working on the same document. You can record meetings, including visual. ST Meetings comes with it's own audio/video services, or you can integrate with third-party conferencing systems. The demo of the hi-def video conferencing was funny.

More to come...

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:31 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0)

   
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More with Bob P....

"Lotus knows why, Lotus knows how... Lotus knows when you're sleeping, knows when you're awake..."

Bob is about to introduce Allistair Rennie, I believe. OK, now it's Allistair's turn...

David Yach of RIM is coming onstage.

Every employ at RIM has a Blackberry (duh). "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail; at RIM it was an email instead of a nail." Clever man. OK, David Yach isn't that good a speaker. He sounds like one of my kids reading a book report in front of the class - and likewise he's trying to read as fast as he can to get through it so he can go back to his desk. Also, he's fixated with the lower teleprompter, instead of looking at the ones that are "up" at eye-level, so he would look more natural.

IBM is going to resell the RIM Connection and Quickr clients.

Sylvia Steinmann, Zurich Insurance Company, is now onstage. So far, Sylvia is a much better speaker than David Yach. She's still not polished, but she's obviously more comfortable. She is mentioning that she was faced with the decision to either migrate to Exchange, or stick with Notes/Domino. They are moving from 6.5 to 8.5.1. They are using Notes as the entrypoint to their collaboration system, which is the first thing their employees log into each morning. Now they want to bring in social software such as blogs - sounds like they're using Connections, but she didn't mention it by name. She's been able to change her architect team's attitude towards Notes/Domino so that it is more positive. She also mentions that she wanted a platform that molded to her needs, instead of molding her corporation to the platform's quirks - and Notes/Domino has worked quite well, and IBM/Lotus has collaborated with them to make this a reality. Lotus also knows it is Sylvia's birthday - and the Lotusphere crowd wished her a happy birthday.

Lotus penned the largest cloud agreement in history, with Panasonic. The cloud platform is, of course, LotusLive. They participated in Lotusphere via video.

Dr. Oliver Frohlich, Continental AG ia next. Wow, I feel sorry for him - his voice sounds like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. The bloggers are doing everything they can to keep from laughing out loud...

Dr. Frohlich basically told his story about migrating 40,000 users from Microsoft to Lotus.

Next speaker is Kirk Gutmann, General Motors. He drove a yellow Corvette in front of the stage as a part of his entrance! VERY KEWL. GM is using "desktop virtualization". The next generation of employees expects people to extend this to their mobile devices. Lotus is providing the ability to integrate their platforms to their mobile devices seamlessly. They have also released a new app, the OnStar mobile app. He implied that Lotus had something to do with that, but didn't say it outright, so I'm not sure.

More to come.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:21 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0)

   
Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2010 LS10
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Bob is back now, and is talking about partners, and "beating the competition".

He's mentioning the "Lotus Knows...." marketing campaign. I have to say that, for me personally, this is one of the most successful marketing efforts that Lotus has embarked upon in a long, long time. I hope they keep it up, and I'd love to see a "bigger footprint" in the marketing effort, such as TV.

Bob has become a good speaker as well - a lot better than some of his predecessors (Zollar, anyone? Or Jeanette?)

Gained 18,378 new customers last year, according to Bob. But what does that really mean?

He's mentioning Symphony, and the productivity it gives to people for free. BETA for newest version of Symphony will be available next month. That's good, I've heard good things about the newest version. I mean, it won't be WordPro, or even AmiPro (man, I miss them ), but it is still a helluva lot better than MS Office.

"Collaboration Agenda" - get greater productivity from people and partners. Disruptive technology can be used for a competitive advantage, starting today. Used to identify gaps, and then you can better empower people to overcome and "fill those gaps". It can even help with company-to-company collaboration, a sorely underserved space.

Now he's talking about their vertical marketing push in a way where you can get solutions that are more focused on your specific industry. Duh, that's vertical markets. I like working vertical markets - it tends to be very profitable. However I'm not sure about having my platform vendor being the vertical vendor, as that space should be left to the platform vendor's partners. Now, if they are about enabling the partners to better serve the verticals, then fine; but if they're there to compete against their own customers, then that would be a problem. I know it may appear that this isn't likely, but hey - it's happened before...

More to come...

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:17 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0)