Now I’m back from IBM Lotusphere/Connect it’s back to work but just to round it up, here is the traditional review of the last week
General
— The tech was good, real improvements, stuff that I want to use and a worthy opponent to the open source and Microsoft stuff.
— Please finish off killing the Lotus brand, Microsoft’s PR work and the memory of the bad UI have done too much damage, no one will give the new tech the chance it deserves.
— Surprisingly IBM have listened, the Opening General Session was a vast improvement and a lot of other stuff has improved from last year.
— Unfortunately, there are still nutters out there, some members of IBM’s legal team really do need to get out more, and whoever organised the visit to the animal exploitation pond (or Seaworld) combined with “le’ts kill aquatic animals on stage” must be working through some childhood goldfish betrayal issues.
— The session schedule could do with some work, no matter what your interest path was, e.g. Dev/Admin/Manager, there was at least 1 day where you were scrabbling for sessions and another day you could not get to see all you wanted. The sessions themselves on the other hand were very very good.
LDC
— Far better brand recognition this year, which is what we were after and I had a number of very interesting conversations that I am hoping will yield results.
— The T-shirts went down a storm, with Mr Woodward’s designs going down the best.
— We spent more than we have done before on marketing and sponsorship stuff, we will have to see if we can follow it up and see what work it generates.
Personal
— I finally got one of these, for which I am insanely smug
It’s not an individual one (will try again for one of those next year), as I co-presented with the fine Julian Robichaux from whom I learnt how a true pro prepares and presents
— I think I have found the subject that I can expand to bring the most benefit to the IBM community, so if they get accepted you should see a session or 2 at this year’s lugs (fingers crossed that I don’t screw up my abstracts)
— Time to redouble my connections AKA web sphere + Bolt ons work
— I think I pulled a muscle laughing at the great geek quiz, thanks to Gab Davis, Carl Tyler, Paul Mooney, Tim Davis etc etc for organising it.
— Whatever they are called, the Lotus Community still beats the pants of all the other tech communities that I have met, truly, without them it would suck bad.
Misc
— There are people who do the work of 10 people each behind the scenes, people like Gab and Paul.
— For heaven’s sake, open the abstract calls earlier next year, it’s not as if the date is a surprise, you have been doing it for 19 years now!
Old Comments
Mark Myers(23/01/2012 01:13:09 GMT)
Oooo good Idea (s)
Sam(23/01/2012 00:05:43 GMT)
Totally Agree on the scheduling – someone suggested for next year:
1. Open abstracts much much earlier.
2. Include a space for speakers to “Tag” abstracts
3. Once abstracts are chosen, email the registered attendees and have them each select the 40 “top” ones they would like to see
4. Run the data all through Watson and have him/it generate the best possible schedule for everyone with as little overlap of tags as possible.
It seemed like the individual tracks were well managed – but there was little coordination between tracks. Maybe this was a result of the late call for abstracts?
The other issue – wifi. It’s IBM, for crying out loud. Come in and set up a decently managed/monitored service. If a access point gets unplugged, you should have monitoring to know about it – every access point should be accounted for and monitored for problems. If one is unplugged, then you would know, and could go plug it in!
, i like the “aaaah” bit