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