SLUG follows its name

Well it's done. The first meeting came and went and the numbers were small.
BUT life is good, lined up 2 more sponsors for future meetings, so I get to try again to grow the LUG.

Some good conversations around R8 and the buzz at Lotusphere, was it really 4 months ago?!
Motorola was great, gave away a Treo700 from a Verizon network and some nice padfolios.

Hotel was excellent, I recommend it for events, Radisson Miami in downtown.

To all who did not come, shame on you and don't complain about no Lotus help down here.
But call me, email me, suggest something.

Since the IBM person did not show I was the evangelist and am perfectly happy to be so.

Lotusphere came to me, well Miami

Yes, I went to Orlando and Lotusphere came to me, well the Hard Rock casino in Hollywood.
Well a mini version actually.
Run by Perficient, a BP with a new office in Hollywood. They did an excellent job, Vishal, the local Perficient rep, was very nice and helpful. Wish him the best of luck in growing business down here.

About 20 or so people were there.
Encouraging since I am working on restarting the South Florida Lotus Users Group.
Some big companies were there, 1 brought 4 or 5 of their staff.

Details:
4 sessions.
1 general overall pitch by Craig Pessman which could have had more power to it.
1 portal express overview from Perficient's Portal expert(he really knows his stuff, unfortunately I forgot his name and did not get a card.
1 connections/quickr/green house like presentation by Maria Manchessi( ithin is how it is spelled).
1 Lotus forms by Jamie Hughes. Not sure where Lotus hid this product, but she made it sound really cool, and as a BP I saw it as really key for business. The problem is, I am told, it has been around for 2 years or so, since IBM bought the original company.
It runs on Websphere but not the Portal server, although it looks to have multiple server requirements based on needs.
Still a very cool product.
Sometimes too much info is bad, you know?

Anyway I met some nice people who hopefully will come tot he event in May.
Motorola/Good wants to sponsor and hold the meeting which looks promising.
Also the IBM people in attendance were very supportive of my efforts to start the LUG.

All in all a good day.

CIO Magazine quotes me in article about SPAM

The senior online editor, Esther Schindler, from CIO magazines website had posted in the Lotus forums, and probably in many other sites as well looking for insights about SPAM and LOB(Lines of Business) and CXO's.
You can read the article here.
There were many thoughts pushed, but the one which I htink was missed, although an obvious one, is the following:
SPAM falls under SECURITY not messaging infrastructure or some other "admin" task area.
SPAM can and will be used against your organization at some point in time and who has the budget, if not the resources, to handle it? Not the IT staff. The security staff.
OK, so Postini is a great option, I met them at Lotusphere 2007 and previously. But maybe you are not big enough to pay for them. Maybe you should rethink it.
Look into the expenses you have now to fight spam, from hardware, software, time effort of the IT staff, telecoms/data traffic, and you start to see big numbers.
Read the article if you think SPAM is just a monty python skit!

Lotusphere 2007, to infinity and beyond!

Well at least to R8 and beyond. I should have used it in my session.
Anyway, a great show, very much a Lotus focused event, with very little IBM referencing. Nice in light of the last few years where anything not IBM branded was tossed out.
Where to begin.

UX Lab (User Acceptance)
1st of all if you never did a user experience, they are great but take time, so plan ahead and sign up for a time that works for you.
I did 2, one on R8 collaboration and one on the Dogear product.
What can I say about R8 that many haven't? It's cool, it's advanced, it's a portal/dashboard, it can detach "pieces" like calendar or activities or sametime.
Downside, well, good luck getting some older employees used to a million things blinking and popping up around their screen.
Dogear is interesting, to a point. It is about sharing bookmarks and tags to better search or compare information. Maybe you think I know what I am talking about and like my bookmarks to update yours. Maybe not.
While I enjoy the online sharing of information, sometimes my internal interests should not be shared. Also I found it odd why I would want to include someone else's bookmarks into mine(making a few dozen to a few hundred) when I could just as easily search the system or web for the information as well. I was confused and still am on this point, but as the product was still being UI completed, even though it has been running in IBM for 2 years I was told, it is far from unintuitive and I consider myself technically adept.

I did not make it to too many sessions, but then there are really only a few I ever want to go to since the majority is either about the future (R8 which I still can not touch) or application developement. Damn if I missed the worst practices session, probably the most enjoyable one.

GURUPALOOZA
Yep, fun, but seriously lacking in admin people, HELLO! not everyone cares about appdev. Wait Nathan just threw something at me, it's a flyer from openntf.org.
Seriously, it was great to see so many up there, and put names to faces. The combined experience on the dais was amazing, although a brief name or intro on each person would have been helpful to those of us that just know people by their blog or reputation.
But the email problem questions could and should have been answered in a better way. Well maybe next year I can obtain Guru status or at least I can have it as a goal for this blog and my self over 2007.

Sadly I missed Ed Brill's BoF for bloggers on thursday, overslept, big bummer. And then missed the dinner with them all Thursday because of family things. Well there is always next year.

I was impressed to see all my EMEA friends there, were there any US Lotii down at the show?
Edited names to protect everyone.

And thank you to the IBM partner pedestals that gave out network travel packets (with phone charger connection ends too for USB) and usb hubs, they came in VERY handy in a pinch.

I think in another post I will update my list of required items for Lotusphere.

And as always if you have a Domino emergency, do not hesitate to call. We are open for business.
Edited to protect the innocent!

Lotusphere 2008

I can say, for perhaps the first time in a decade, I want to sign up as an early attendee for next year. I am sure many people would agree the future is bright and yellow and at an early fee of about $1500 it is well worth it.
Now how do i get more hours in my day and days in my week to do everything here.
And oh yeah, everyone is walking around on tuesday saying its been a long week!

ed brills session on selling notes

had a whole blog done, hit send, no go. Evidently pocketpc and my blog do not work well together.
I had done it all on my phone.
Bummer.
Ed and Julian's sessions was great, SRO.
Superman looks the same as in his R5 days but Julian substituted.
10 steps to selling clients and some anecdotals upfront go along way.
And for everyone's benefit, ROI means "Rely on IBM".
Everyone is ecstatic about R8 and the future although for me it will be rough, i am not a developer and eclipse will make my life slightly miserable while I learn some of it.
I also did some user testing on the R8 client, more about that in a different post because, well, it's cool, great, but some issues arose which when i look at it from a corp perspective nothing show stopping of course, just a hint to Iris to create some good help files.

Lotusphere 2007 is here

Not leaving until sunday night, but preparing everything to go.
Full agenda, up very early all week, BP work to do, client work to finish.
Business is good, but business should pick up at the sphere.
See you in Orlando!