Well my first Blug is over and I have to say I am very impressed, Theo Heselmans is a genius and the fact that there was actual IBM backing, both in terms of people and in terms of money made a real difference, apparently Blug is now the largest lotus user group in the world.

The feel was very professional as well as relaxed, I made more contacts and had more serious conversations then even at Connect 2013 and shock of shock there were even times when I exchanged business cards with people when both of us REALLY wanted to rather than it being one sided or for politesses sake.

Both the food and drink for the event were amazing and seemed to be none time based (at Connect and other conferences its always “how much can we get down out throats within the time limit”)

The venue was awesome, the Faculty Club in Leuven

for some reason I have yet to grasp I did not take any pictures of the bleeding inside (face palm)

The first proper day of blug started with a apparently amazing keynote where notes 9 would be released, I say amazing because I was skulking in the speaker room as all my clients had noticed I was busy and so were having melt downs but even here Blug did us proud as the network was nice and fast even when Notes 9 was released and 200+ people pounded the hell out of the network.

I did have time in between sessions, client needs and hard core social interaction to not only have squint at the freebie bag, which unbelievably had some things in it I wanted to keep (this has not happened since the last Ilug) but also kept the bag its self (a note to all conference organisers, unless you are giving us a brand name back pack that’s better than our current one a book bag is the way to go as we can use it later),

The session I did with Martin Vereecken, Mark Leusink and Matt White went down very well with it filling the room

All credit to the amazing slide deck goes to Martin!

Talking of sessions all the content I saw was brill, absolutely no fillers or restrictions, which produced many near perfect sessions.

Lastly the town of Leuven was spellbinding

You will note that [Matt White](https://twitter.com/mattwhite) and I skulked out of the conference to go fetch the gift of chocolate that is required of everybody who visits Belgium, by the end of the conference EVERYBODY had done this task.

Lessons other IBM conferences should learn

– Having a steady but not extreme flow of wine and beer in the sponsor area makes people come to it all the time and makes them more relaxed so they talk to the sponsors, no need to over do it so they get pissed but just grease the conversation wheels
– Sugar and caffeine on hand at all times give people energy and makes the more enthusiastic
– Allow ALL forms of content and presentation just make sure the quality is high.

So my first Blug begins, travelling up in a full car with both Matt White and Jullian Woodwood, with thanks to the kindly Tim Clark from TC Soft Consulting for driving us all that way (and letting me kip on his floor).

This conference is a rare thing, a well run conference organised by Theo Heselmans who seems to be a master at the art as well as of getting money out of sponsors, as a speaker I am being treated amazingly, and the venue is jaw dropping, more on that next entry.

First night was the speaker dinner, in which nice food and amazing beer was served. but my main enjoyment was the company, packed with the smartest of the IBM community, I learnt more and made more contacts there than I have done in the last year put together, this included:

• The new wrappers for the IBM Domino java interfaces , which IBM should have done ages ago but is awesome that the community has taken it on.
• The discovery from Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg at http://lekkimworld.com/ that the problem with log4j that I simply could not fix in domino CAN’T be fixed (god I feel better knowing that)
• Tons of what other people are up to from marketing to breaking into new markets.

additional fun was provided by the caricature painter, who managed to make me look better on paper than I have ever done so in real life.

One final thing, the night before the trip was as normal devoted to building the LDC freebies, so if you want one come pester either Matt White, Jullian Woodwood or me

catch you tomorrow

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…