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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) | TrackBacks (0)

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) | TrackBacks (0)

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) | TrackBacks (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) | TrackBacks (0)

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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) | TrackBacks (0)

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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) | TrackBacks (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) | TrackBacks (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) | TrackBacks (0)

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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) | TrackBacks (0)

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Shatner is making some good jokes, riffing off both his Priceline commercials, and also Star Trek. He is doing a good job of working his stories and anectdotes into the collaboration story, which is better than another Star Trek captain we've had onstage before, Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart). Stewart did a generic speech with a minimal amount of tie-in to our story at the end; Shatner is doing a much better job of working that story in along the way.

He tells a story of wanting to do a Star Trek movie about going in search of god; Roddenberry fought back, wondering who's god they were going to search for. They settled on going after an alien who thought he was god. He told some great jokes (and of course I can't remember any of them). He's even tying in James Cameron's "Avatar".

I have to say, Shatner is very smooth. He's really good at appearing that he's not reading from teleprompters (the only thing that gives him away is where his eyes are looking most of the time). He's even working in themes such as group collaboration, working with people for a greater success, learning from others from within and outside your organization, creating a collaborative endeavour, and so on. He also points out that collaborationa is different from cooperation. Pretty good.

Wow, pretty short message. He's off stage, Bob is coming back.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 8:08 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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OK, the opening musicians were awesome - and I recognize the two guys who were the violinists (and the center of the band). I am pretty sure they were two of the finalists from last year's America's Got Talent. Yeah, I'm positive of it. They are FANTASTIC, and I could watch a whole concert of them. I'll have to find out their names, or at least the name of their band. Oh, and the music is nice and LOUD, like this old rocker likes

OK, here we go.

Bob Picciano is kicking things off. He says that there will be some partners onstage, so we can hear their stories. That explains what I've heard here and there over the last couple of days. I have heard from John Carini (iEnterprises) and I saw on a tweet from Nigel Cheshire (Teamstudio) that they are involved in the OGS, so it will be interesting to see how they are used and what they have to say.

OK, here comes the special guest. Yes, he's hinting towards THE SHAT.

I'll be damn IT IS THE SHAT.

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 7:57 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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I am attending Lotusphere this year as a blogger/press/analyst, and as such I get to sit in the "comfy couch" - to wit:

So far, so good!

Of course the rumours of whom is the special guest speaker have started again - and as in years' past the rumour always comes back to "The Shat" (aka William Shatner). However this year there are many swearing that there have been "Shat Sightings".

Suuuure. I've heard that before.

This year I think I'm going to live blog this. There are many, many people who will be "live tweeting" it, but I'm not sure how many are doing live blogging - so I'll do it. I'll do them in sections, at regular intervals. Hopefully my blog entries will have a bit more continuity than is available in a series of 140 character bursts.

Stay tuned!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 7:42 AM Location - Lotusphere 2010, FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2010 LS10
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Andrew and I have finally unveiled the Certified Unofficial Lotusphere Tee (C.U.L.T.) shirts for this year, and so far they have been very popular. We were fortunate to pick up on the Lotusphere 2010 theme for this year, "Lotus Knows...", fairly early and Andrew and I both decided that a play off of this theme - "Lotus Nose..." - could be a lot of fun. I asked you, gentle readers, for some suggestions of what Lotus Knows - and you responded quite enthusiastically. Andrew and I took these suggestions, added a few of our own, and picked a top 10 list to add to the back of the shirt. The results are below.

Here's the front of the shirt. I think the nose turned out quite well. Andrew does all of the artwork for our shirts, and he's gotten pretty good.

The back of the shirt contains the Top 10 list, as well as the sponsor logos.

A great testament to the popularity and success of the shirt is that even the Lotusphere Blog picked up on the shirt, and let us know that they approved. One of the things that I mentioned in my comment over there is that we have moved the prize giveaway to Thursday, at the Closing General Session. In years past we have had a giveaway to one lucky winner who happened to be wearing that year's C.U.L.T. shirt at the Wednesday night party. This year we decided to move this to the Closing General Session for a couple of reasons:

1. If there is inclement weather (e.g. cold or rainy) then the shirts are covered up by jackets - and it makes it hard to pick someone if you can't see the shirt!
2. We have found out that imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. Since we've become very successful in inducing a bunch of people to wear our shirts on Wednesday night, we've had quite a few copycats. We don't want to make it difficult for our "CULT" to choose what shir to wear, so moving the giveaway removes this conflict..

Another secondary reason why we moved to the Closing General Session is that we really want to encourage the attendees, and especially the "CULT followers", to stay for it. The Closing General Session is truly one of the highlights of the week, and is a great way to end the conference on a light note and feeling good. Every year the Closing General Session is a blast, and is very enjoyable, so we strongly encourage you to change your travel arrangements if you can so that you can attend this wonderful event - and possibly win a great prize!

What is that prize, you ask? We are giving away an iPod Touch - 8GB!! It is a fantastic prize - but it will only be given to someone who is wearing a C.U.L.T. 2010 shirt AT the Closing General Session. So if you want to leave Lotusphere with a kewl toy, we'll see you there!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 11:58 AM Location - WDW Dolphin Hotel, Lake Buena Vista FL | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2010 LS10
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I arrived in Orlando yesterday (Friday) evening, and was lucky enough to run into my roommate for this week, Henry "Newbs" Newberry at the airport. Newbs and I have known each other for YEARS - I've known Newbs since the mid-90's, and he's been one of my closest friends and confidants ever since. Hell, we've even worked together a few times - from his old company (Synergistics) installing some stuff at my company (The Future Now), to me working with Newbs at Synergistics, to us working together when we were on our own - it has been a long and fruitful relationship. So, with this history, it was an easy decision to split the (expensive) costs of staying onsite at the WDW Swan by sharing a room.

Last night was quiet - Newbs had dinner with some friends, and I had dinner with another very close friend of mine, Andrew Pollack, at a seafood buffet that is conveniently here in the Swan. Dinner was very good, and after that I retired to my room to get some much needed rest in preparation for the week.

One thing that's bugging the hell out of me is that my left knee is hurting like crazy on the outside. Now I don't have any cartilage in my knees - they're both bone-on-bone - and I'm used to that normal amount of discomfort (with the help of pain meds). However this is different - it is on the outside of my knee, and appears to be the Lateral Collateral Ligament sprain. There's definitely nothing serious, but it is a real pain in the ass, especially right before a week of serious walking. Therefore to try to minimize the amount of discomfort and inconvenience I could potentially experience from this injury, I'm simply attempting to stay off of it as much as possible and I'm icing it every chance I get; and if the pain gets too great I'll medicate and attempt to end my evening to take care of it. Overall it should be fine, it's just very invconvenient.

I just got back from the BALD get-together, and it was a lot of fun. I was given some very nice chocolate from my friends Kitty and Warren Elsmore, including a nice bar of dark chocolate with mint - my wife will love that. I also got to see some of Warren's latest Lego creations, including this absolutely AMAZING scale model of a British train station. It was simply breathtaking, and Warren's abilities with simple Lego bricks is astounding. I have encouraged him to turn that into a side business (i.e. building Lego models for companies for special events, etc.), as I really think there could be a market for something like that. I don't think he'd make a living at it or anything, but he could get some really nice side income off of the commisssioning of these types of projects.

Newbs and I are now resting up and getting ready to attend the annual Penumbra Dinner. Penumbra is a business group in which our company, Workflow Studios, is a member; every year Penumbra hosts a very nice dinner where IBM/Lotus bigwigs and notable members of the community are invited, and a great deal of schmoozing takes place. The dinner is held at Fulton's Crab House, which is this kewl restaurant built in a (stationary) riverboat. The food is always good, and the dinner is usually a pretty good time. After that I may head over to The Turtle's annual event at the ESPN Sportszone, but it will depend upon how my knee is holding up.

That's it for now - tomorrow this event begins in earnest, and I'll be back on here letting you know how things are going and sharing my observations.

Talk to you then!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 5:06 PM Location - WDW Swan, Lake Buena Vista FL | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Kewl Stuff Lotusphere
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One of the essential items for the traveling geek is a "mini power strip" - usually a 3-plug, compact power strip that gives you a couple of extra plugs for the rest of your kit - cell phone, MP3 player, etc. Another recommended item, but one that is usually not carried for space/weight reasons, is a surge protector. But what if you could combine these two items into a single, compact unit - and also gain the added benefit of being able to charge your USB-enabled goodies WITHOUT needing to lug around each item's charger or plugging it into your computer? Too good to be true?

Nope. Enter the Belkin Mini Surge Protector.

Background
NOTE: Before I begin let me state that while finding out more about this product I discovered that it came out in late 2008; however I didn't find it until recently, and I didn't see it at Lotusphere last year so I'm not sure that many in our community know about this product - and you should. So, for some of you this will be an introduction - and for those of you who have used one of these, I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

I was recently shopping for various items for Lotusphere 2010, at one of my favorite stores - Home Depot. I was actually looking for a small 3-plug power strip/block, since I had lost mine some time ago. As I was walking down the ailse where electrical cords and power strips were kept, I saw a small portable mini power strip by Belkin, and it caught my eye. I picked it up, and immediately realized that I had to have it, and that it was going to save me quite a few headaches for future travels. The Belkin item I am talking about is the Belkin Mini Surge Protector.

Design-Simple, Feature-Rich
As you can tell from the professional picture above (not many of those in this post, so enjoy it while you can!), it appears as a simple power plug block that gives you a "net" 2 additional outlets - but looks can be deceiving. Contained within this simple package are the following features (from the Belkin product page):

• 360-degree rotating plug with 4 locking positions
• Provides complete surge protection through all outlets
• Offers compact, lightweight, efficient design
• Features mini-USB cable to charge virtually any USB device
• Comes with a Lifetime Product Warranty, and a $75,000 Connected Equipment Warranty

Here are my experiences and thoughts about this product; I'll break down my impressions based upon the features listed above - not necessarily in the same order though...

Talks the Talk, Walks the Walk - in Style
Offers compact, lightweight, efficient design
Here are some basic pics of the Belkin Mini Surge Protector. I apologize for the so-so quality - I couldn't find my "good" camera, so I used my phone camera instead.

This is the front of the unit. You can see that there are three grounded plugs along the front, and if you look at the professional pic up above you can see the two USB charging outlets as well. There is also a green indicator light that lets you know there is power available to the unit.

The back of the unit has a standard U.S. grounded power plug, which has a very helpful feature that I'll talk about in a bit; first I want to show you another really innovative feature. As you can see the unit comes with a plug cover, which is handy to help protect the prongs and prevent them from becoming snagged or bent in your luggage. Most people would throw this plug cover away - DON'T. Here's why:

There is a small groove in the bottom of the unit, and a corresponding tab on the plug cover. The plug cover fits into the groove and provides a "spacer" between the unit and the wall. This is VERY handy, as I have had other units of a similar style that would slowly pull out of the wall if it was filled with plugged-in cords. Kewl, huh?

360-degree rotating plug with 4 locking positions
The other innovative feature found on the back of the product that I mentioned earlier is that the plug can rotate 360-degrees, and it locks into position every 90-degrees. If you travel a lot you know that the power outlets and their locations can vary widely from hotel room to hotel room. This variance means that a vertical position may be needed for one hotel, but would be totally impractical in another where a horizontal plug would work better.

You release the plug so it can turn by pushing in the white button right below the plug - I'm pointing to it in the picture above. Now this button is pretty stiff, and takes a little extra effort to push in - but don't worry, the product is very durable and is built to take the extra effort required to depress the button. Once you depress the button you simply rotate the plug in the direction desired until it clicks into the next 90-degree position.

Provides complete surge protection through all outlets
This is another area where real value is packed into this unit - the surge protection. Quite often other products that are designed for travel offer little more than lip service towards surge protection/supression, simply so they can claim they offer this feature. This product is different. The protection provided by this unit is quite impressive. The surge protection provided is defined as follows:

• Response time is less than a nanosecond - this basically means that surges are suppressed immediately before it reaches your device
• UL 1449 - this unit is approved by the Underwriters Laboratories, which requires products to pass rigorous standards to get their seal of approval
• Clamping Voltage (or "let-through voltage") - 800v; this could be better, but it definitely isn't bad - and it is much better than NO surge suppressor
• Joule Rating - this is the maximum energy the suppressor can handle without being damaged; the higher the number, the better your devices are protected. This unit is rated at 918 Joules, which is very good for a product at this price point

Comes with a Lifetime Product Warranty, and a $75,000 Connected Equipment Warranty
Here's where you know for sure that a product is a quality surge supressor - how fully does the manufacturer back the product? Belkin definitely stands behind this product, as they provide both a Lifetime Warranty for the product itself, and they also provide a $75,000 Connected Equipment Warranty, which means that Belkin will reimburse you for any damages caused by an electrical surge to any equipment of yours that is plugged into this unit, up to $75,000. That's impressive.

Features mini-USB cable to charge virtually any USB device
This product comes with a mini-USB cable - but only one. Of course if you're reading this then you're probably a geek anyway, which means you have USB cables coming out of your ears. Additionally this is a mini-USB, not a micro-USB cable - which is what my Blackberry Curve 8900 needs, so I have to provide my own cables anyway

Speaking of usage, I had one more "professional" pic of this product being used (from the Belkin site), so here's their example of typical usage...

Conclusion
If you are a geek who travels, and especially if you're heading down to Lotusphere next week, then I highly recommend you pick one of these jewels up. This should free up a decent amount of precious packing space for your trip, because you won't need to carry down all of the power adapters for your various USB devices - you simply need to pack a couple of extra USB cables. Incidentally I also like that I can charge my USB devices through this product, and not by plugging my devices into my computer overnight (which is what I have done in the past).

Pricing
The retail price of the Belkin Mini Surge Protector is $24.99; however Home Depot has it for $19.99. This seems to be the going price at most places (both brick-and-mortar and web sites when shipping is included), so I wouldn't pay more than that if I were you.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention two things:

1. Unfortunately this product works with U.S. power and outlets only (Continuous Duty Electrical Rating: 125V/15A/1875W)
2. I forgot to tell you the size - it is about 5in x 1.675in x 2in. Here's a picture of it with a ruler:

See you at Lotusphere!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 11:31 AM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Lotusphere Lotusphere2010
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Andy Donaldson has created a very comprehensive Guide to Lotusphere 2010. I know he posted it awhile back, but it's always good to remind you again as we approach Lotusphere week. He has a ton of very good suggestions there, and since his list is pretty much what I would list (and have in the past ), I strongly recommend you give it a read. I do have a few more suggestions that aren't on Andy's list...

• Bring a jacket - something you can stuff in your conference bag - because it can be cool sometimes, and it can rain at any time. There are times when I've frozen at Lotusphere, and others when I've burned up - come prepared.
• Kimono's is a great sushi bar, and has karaoke as well at night. This is a favorite hangout for attendees.
• Hang out in the Dolphin lobby at the end of the day if you don't have anything to do. The Dolphin lobby seems to be the unofficial meeting place for everyone, and you're most likely to find a group to "clump with" there.
• The JAMFEST will be in the PRODUCT SHOWCASE this year, so go to the Product Showcase reception Monday night and you're already there!
• I would add GURUpalooza and the Meet the Developers sessions on Thursday as must-sees. These are the two places you get to ask the BP speakers (GURUpalooza) or the developers (Beat - err, Meet the Developers) questions you may have - this is your last chance!
• I strongly encourage all attendees to stay for the Closing General Session. It is always a blast, is always relaxed, and most of all is always a BLAST. My first few years I left mid-afternoon on Thursday, but I stayed one year for CGS and have not missed it since.
• If you want to have a shot at geek glory (and a speaker slot at Lotusphere) then make sure you attend LOTUSPHERE IDOL. Contestants will give five minute presentations on a topic, and a panel of judges will decide who wins; then the winner gets a SPEAKER SLOT later in the week!
• Make sure you get an (un)official C.U.L.T. shirt from one of the sponsors (such as Workflow Studios), and wear it on Wednesday night at the park. If you do you could win a VERY NICE PRIZE. Details on that coming soon...
• Thank a Loti while you are there. Thank 10 of them. Let them know they are appreciated. Even send them a drink as a special token of your gratitude, they'll really like that.

Lotusphere 2010 has more to offer than any Lotus show ever, so I strongly encourage you to review everything available this year - especially you old-timers who think every year is basically the same. If you don't review what's there, you'll miss out on some great stuff!

Rock

Posted by Rocky Oliver At 10:33 AM Location - Flowery Branch, GA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)