Ah, another large conference in Florida draws to a close and I can feel the first beginnings of the Lotusphere flu seeping into my bones ready for flight back.

So, what was this one like? In two words, “bloody busy”. The first couple of days were a complete whirl where I was never quite sure what was happening from one hour to the next, after that I at least had a plan but it was still mayhem.

This year I started the week with a to-do list, a list of clients to find and chat to, more potential clients to find and see if they were interested, 2 sessions to present (1 Best practises and 1 Show and Tell), 2 sponsored events, and all the dozens of other community events that needed to be visited. All in all, it left me completely buggered.

Compared to my roommates and fellow LDCers Ben Poole and Julian Woodward I rarely lasted past 24:00 each night
(yes there were 3 of us in a room as we were conferencing on the cheap, saving the money for client drinks).
Julian had about 18 hours sleep for the 7 days total, tending to come to the room for about 1 hour in the early mornings lay on his bed like a Borg, then rise recharged and machine his way through the next day.

My sessions went both well and terrible, the content and the delivery both went OK. But I had terrible time slots. The limitless languages one was just before the main Wednesday party and against Paul Mooney’s & Bill Buchan’s worst practices which pretty much killed it dead, here is the slidedeck:

The other one was on the Thursday morning at 8.00am ‘Show and Tell’ dead slot, with Julian Robichaux and while we had far more people than we expected, Julian’s content deserved a full house

Ah well, someone has to fill those slots so I can hardly complain,

I also had a few questions and bugs to raise about IBM connections and therefore ventured to the labs to get them resolved. The connections guy I met was very helpful, but the real credit goes to Maureen Leland who was passing and said hello, then asked if I could provide any useful feature requests for connections features (I asked for a navigable ATOM API Map). It made me feel like a million dollars that a senior IBM dev would not only remember me but ask for my opinion on ANY matter. It’s the existence of IBMers like Maureen and Susan Bulloch that ensures that there is still a vibrant groupware/collaboration/social community helping IBM to make a $1,000,000,000 a year from a product that might have well otherwise disappeared into the annals of time.

Going mob-handed with the rest of LDC was brill, what with Matt and I both presenting, Julian being the president of Penumbra and Ben being the lead dev of the well-received socialbizug.org. It was a good showing. However the best part was the endless laughing, some mornings my ribs hurt from it 🙂

This year’s LDC giveaway went perfectly, but Ben is going to do a blog on it so I can skip that bit.

On the final night Julian Woodward treated me to the most perfect drink in the world, my life is complete:

Loads of of other stuff happened including the awesome geek challenge, but what passes for my mind is a still a jetlagged flu-ridden whirlwind so I’m sure there will be more bits to remember and update the site with, but all in all I’m going to agree with IBM that this was not the end but the beginning of the conference.

Sat on the Virgin Flight over to Orlando the wretch Ben Poole and I had time and booze on our hands and thus was the IBM Connect 2013 drinking game born!!

Rules: if you have a valid trigger but are not near any booze (how is this possible), tweet it (hash tag #icBooze), find someone you know ASAP and hark your self to a bar. If for some reason you are not able to do that and are being professional, tot your list up during the meet ups at the bar that night (yes this means you will have to go to a bar and be ‘Social’ {sound of Stickfight throwing up at the use of the word} , but no skulking in your room!!!)

1 Finger

• A non-IBM employee says “social business” and looks like they mean it
• You see someone buy David Leedy a drink
• You get a question right at the [great geek challenge](http://www.greatgeekchallenge.com ).
• You greet or introduce your self to someone by name in the rotunda
• You actually make it to a session AND fill in the bloody evaluation afterwards (lazy sods)

2 Fingers

• You see Ed Brill book signing a book
• A senior member of IBM says lotusphere by mistake
• When you make it to Kimonos take 2 fingers for each party/meet up you have attended already that night.
• You hear the call of the Wild Kipper (if you don’t know what this sounds like, you soon will, you soon will!!!)
• while you are in a bar someone sends at tweet with either the hashtag #ic13 or #IBMconnect and 4 or more exclamation marks (fake ones don’t count!!!!)

3 Fingers

• You are guilty of committing one of the worst practice’s from Paul and Bill’s sessions.
• For each client that actually asks for your card, if you are not a vendor then take 3 fingers if you have found something you are going to recommend to the powers that be when you get back to the office.
• You see an un-signed Ed Brill book (only once per each book)
• You find you are already drinking with a session speaker (both of you take 3 fingers)

1 full drink plus one for the person you see

• You find David Leedy without a drink (don’t forget the hash tag).
• You see [Bill Buchan](http://www.billbuchan.com ) trying to have a cigarette (don’t forget to take the cigarette off him).
• You find a vendor from the show floor sitting exhausted outside looking like they have been though the bowels of Hades.

If you are running short of drink for this game while out and about, find a member of the London Developer Co-op and we will help you with that (if you look a good sort).

I have a well know hatred for a lot of Team leaders/Managers/PM’s, this is because I have worked for some exceptionally good ones over the years, and now realise how badly a poor quality PM can screw over a project, I have always lacked the words to explain what exactly narks me about bad PM’s ,thankfully a clever friend has put it into words

It is statistically improbable that all managerial roles would take up the same amount of time (i.e. a standard working week). Front end staff are usually close to capacity, due to their larger numbers, and the option of using freelance/contract/part time. What this means is there are a lot of managers with time on their hands. Good managers use this as an opportunity to go for lunch with friends/external contacts. Bad managers become “time thieves”. They have nothing to do, so they e-mail 10 people, or organise a meeting with 10 people, because they don’t want to be seen as lazy. This rule is even more extreme with Directors, MDs and CEOs. It’s just improbable that each of these roles would really use a five day week (or whatever your organisational norm).

“Time thief” – Now I know what to call them…

In 2 weeks time I and the rest of the LDC founders will be pounding out to Florida for the first IBM Connect conference (or 20-something Lotusphere depending on how you look at these things)

This is my 5th time going and the first one where I will be speaking on my own, I suspect it will be chaos, but there will be 5 places I am sure to be:

UKnight (sponsored event)
Monday 20:00-22:00 shulas bar
In which the British companies at Connect attempt to bring their favorite bit of home with them, that is a dark bar stuffed with fun people drinking a serious amount for free
Its invitation only so you have to grab one of us to get your sticker before hand (we have big ugly doormen)

Great geek challenge (sponsored event)
Tuesday 20:00-22:00 dolphin ice cream bar
Each year the nerd girls organise a quiz to separate the geeks from the chaff, we are sponsoring it (more free booze), allow the freaky geek in you out of the can and win prizes

BP203 : Limitless Languages In The IBM Social Stack
Wednesday 17:30 – 18:30 Swan Pelican 1 & 2
My first solo presentation, and one on a subject I’m quite rabid about, learn about all the alternative languages you can use on any prodect that supports java what they give you and why, if you can pull your self away from Paul and Bill’s worst practices session, then let me rant and blow your minds.

SHOW104 : Buried Treasure: Finding the Hidden Gold in Lotus Notes Data
Thursday 08:00 – 09:45 Swan Osprey 1 & 2
Julian Robichaux and I show you how to get all that valuable data that’s in your notes applications and integrate it with every system under the sun, your managers will love you for it.

Gurupalooza
Thursday 10:00-11:00 swan ballrooms
The best practices speakers are forced to sit up on stage and answer to our crimes by answering questions from the ravening horde, I will be trying to keep my mouth shut this year

Matt white is also speaking there , you can see his blog on it here

IBM connect is the main conferences I go to each year, (the others are LUGs and conferences of convenience in London) so there is lots of stuff I have to do while I’m there

• Have a LONG talk to the connections developers, as I have been developing on the platform for the last few months and while I now have a good handle on it and its functions there are a lot of inconsistencies in its interface and I want to feed back to them (or discover if I have got it wrong and need to change how I look at the system)
• Find our clients and buy them drinks, along with the rest of LDC I have had a lot of new clients in the last year as well as more work from existing clients, quite a few of them will be at IBM Connect and I want to meet them in person and have the odd tipple with them.
• Find more new clients, this is a professional conference after all, LDC has a great portfolio, skill set and a proven history of delivering against all the odds, I’m hoping to introduce this to more people. (mind you as a lot of the people there are techs the initial conversations tend to be a bit like a technical interview which wipe you out)
• But most of all there are about 200 named people I need to find, chat to, shake hands with, exchange tech ideas and project plans with and finally catch up and have a laugh with

  IBM Connect 2013…Bring it on.

Well, how long has it been since I have written to my blog?. The answer is bloody ages and the reason is work. LDC has simply been flat out with work. With both day work and all nighters. The months have been stuffed with a mixture of major client work, smaller independent projects and community actions such as presentations for conferences such as UKlug and IBM connect. ( which I will talk about In the next blog entry) in fact I am writing this entry sat in bed as I can’t sleep on my first early night in months which strikes me as bloody dumb.

Anyway this entry is mainly a year in review and a look to the future in case people read my blog during IBM connect and wonder why I have been so lazy.

This year has been quite amazing, with the work I have been doing at LDC really showing me where I want to go in the future. The variety of work as well as the variety of clients has been staggering from hideously complex websites to training, from nasty nasty Java to Amazon Web services consultation

Most of all I have been very lucky with the people I have been working with, its quite the most amazing thing to be the dumbest person on the team as you learn shit loads on each project (although it’s terrifying to see how fast Julian can Code, the quality of Matts design and the fact that that even the bloody wretch Ben Poole is getting even better at UI design) and that’s not even including the partners we have worked with such as Gab and Mike from the Turtle partnership ( if anyone says they can keep up with Gab or know a better project manager than Mike then they are a fibber and need a kick in the fork)

Continuing on with this theme will be 2013. Keeping up with all the tech and business design that clients seem to need at the drop of a hat, though I’m fairly sure my brain won’t hold much more than it currently seems to be stuffed with but what is life with out the odd challenge

🙂