Lotusphere 2007 Review (yes another one)
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What a busy week, I spent 7 days in Orlando during which time the temperature in New Hampshire dropped about 50 degrees down to 0F (-18C), so pretty cold. If Vivek thought he was cold before we went to Orlando, this was a big surpise.
Lotusphere this year was a bit of a mad rush, between customer meetings, booth duty, IBM partner meetings, award luncheons etc. I managed to get to a total of five sessions, three of which I was involved in, the other two were the last day in the form of the closing session and the ask the developers session (I didn't get to ask my question). I got to spend zero time in the labs. I feel like I saw a lot of people, but still feel like I didn't see everyone, I really wanted to bump into Chris Pepin to give him a shake about the IBM customer/partner gateway, which a number of IBMers promoted on their blogs in August, but it still doesn't work reliably, maybe if you're lucky 5 minutes a week. So to those that I missed, sorry, hopefully we can catch up next year.
We had great traffic at the booth, with some great leads. The lollipops and Blackpool rock proved very popular, with it all going by the end of the show. Craig Wiseman was even kind enough to send me a video of his kid eating the lollipop. If anyone else has videos of people enjoying the rock or lollipops please feel free to share.
Well it's safe to say that IBM really has realised the importance and power of Sametime. There were some dark years in the middle, where it felt like the on;y people that got it were ourselves and some key IBM customers. I do get depressed sometimes thinking about how IBM could be so much further ahead of the competition right now if they had reacted a little sooner to customers, that is in the past now though and I hope/believe those days are behind us. I still think the Sametime plug-in offerings from vendors have a long way to go, there are a great deal of plug-ins focused around Audio and Video, but I have yet to see plug-ins that are more than embedded browser apps within Sametime. Who knows, maybe you'll see something soon from us
. It was great to see that IBM is going to offer new video capabilities, this was surprising news to me as at the last customer council meeting just a few months ago, when I asked IBM what plans they had to improve the video in Sametime the answer was none as they didn't believe people wanted it, needless to say in my discrete quite way I told them they were nuts as people were getting more and more used to it with the likes of SKYPE and Yahoo video etc. They pretty much ridiculed me at the time for suggesting such things, but at least now they're doing it.
Notes 8 has reinvigorated the Lotus faithful, again similar to the Sametime story, IBM wasted some years in the middle focusing on the next "big thing" versus focusing on their installed base. Fortunately Microsoft were not very effective during the last 3-4 years with Exchange and Outlook. With IBMs help, Microsoft had a huge big wide window of opportunity and they missed it, they really screwed up. Now I think the fight will be more difficult for them to get people to switch.
Lotus Awards, yes we picked up our 3rd Lotus award this year. Next year I think I will offer a service where I will fill in people's award applications, if they win they give me $10k. If they don't win they give me nothing The awards are always fun, and it's great recognition for the team and the effort they have put in. Talking of the award, I put it in my checked in luggage at the airport, and as usual the TSA opening my bag and searched it, what was different this time is that the little TSA "you have been searched" note had a little handwritten note on it that said the following, "This is definitely leaded crystal - congratulations!". I don't know if anyone else noticed, but with the award standing next to the awards from the other years, the crystal award is about an inch shorter this year, it's ok though as supposedly size doesn't matter.
Roger Lim from Colgate had to have the most popular question in the ask the developers session. It went something like this, "Hi I recently graduated from college, if I hadn't done an internship at Colgate, I would have had no idea Lotus Notes existed", then everyone in the room stood and gave him a standing ovation. I'm sure it's hell for the other Colgate folks at the moment hearing him tell everyone the story. Sadly the people that really needed to see that were the marketing folks and not the developers. I had a similar discussion with our Indian developer who is over at the moment. he said all the graduates know Microsoft, but don't even know Lotus exists. This is one of those areas where to do it right IBM needs to commit marketing $ for a few years, a 6 month marketing program will not work in this situation, the academia market needs years of efforts to get awareness in there. Committing marketing $ to an effort that cannot have immediate measured results is a tricky thing at IBM, so hopefully someone will figure out a way.
Closing Session - I enjoyed it, I didn't take it as a slap in the face as some people did, as the last time you saw this guy was at the Lotusphere when IBM was telling everyone that Domino was like Pluto and Workplace was the real planet. I enjoyed him, as I enjoyed ScienceNOW on PBS. No doubt religious people could take great offense, but as that is not me I didn't. It was also nice to know that come 2029? we won't have to worry about upgrades and downtime as the world is likely to be hit by a large lump of space rock.
More to come later Lotusphere 2007, but I thought I should write something down, as it's been a few days...
What a busy week, I spent 7 days in Orlando during which time the temperature in New Hampshire dropped about 50 degrees down to 0F (-18C), so pretty cold. If Vivek thought he was cold before we went to Orlando, this was a big surpise.
Lotusphere this year was a bit of a mad rush, between customer meetings, booth duty, IBM partner meetings, award luncheons etc. I managed to get to a total of five sessions, three of which I was involved in, the other two were the last day in the form of the closing session and the ask the developers session (I didn't get to ask my question). I got to spend zero time in the labs. I feel like I saw a lot of people, but still feel like I didn't see everyone, I really wanted to bump into Chris Pepin to give him a shake about the IBM customer/partner gateway, which a number of IBMers promoted on their blogs in August, but it still doesn't work reliably, maybe if you're lucky 5 minutes a week. So to those that I missed, sorry, hopefully we can catch up next year.
We had great traffic at the booth, with some great leads. The lollipops and Blackpool rock proved very popular, with it all going by the end of the show. Craig Wiseman was even kind enough to send me a video of his kid eating the lollipop. If anyone else has videos of people enjoying the rock or lollipops please feel free to share.
Well it's safe to say that IBM really has realised the importance and power of Sametime. There were some dark years in the middle, where it felt like the on;y people that got it were ourselves and some key IBM customers. I do get depressed sometimes thinking about how IBM could be so much further ahead of the competition right now if they had reacted a little sooner to customers, that is in the past now though and I hope/believe those days are behind us. I still think the Sametime plug-in offerings from vendors have a long way to go, there are a great deal of plug-ins focused around Audio and Video, but I have yet to see plug-ins that are more than embedded browser apps within Sametime. Who knows, maybe you'll see something soon from us
. It was great to see that IBM is going to offer new video capabilities, this was surprising news to me as at the last customer council meeting just a few months ago, when I asked IBM what plans they had to improve the video in Sametime the answer was none as they didn't believe people wanted it, needless to say in my discrete quite way I told them they were nuts as people were getting more and more used to it with the likes of SKYPE and Yahoo video etc. They pretty much ridiculed me at the time for suggesting such things, but at least now they're doing it.Notes 8 has reinvigorated the Lotus faithful, again similar to the Sametime story, IBM wasted some years in the middle focusing on the next "big thing" versus focusing on their installed base. Fortunately Microsoft were not very effective during the last 3-4 years with Exchange and Outlook. With IBMs help, Microsoft had a huge big wide window of opportunity and they missed it, they really screwed up. Now I think the fight will be more difficult for them to get people to switch.
Lotus Awards, yes we picked up our 3rd Lotus award this year. Next year I think I will offer a service where I will fill in people's award applications, if they win they give me $10k. If they don't win they give me nothing
The awards are always fun, and it's great recognition for the team and the effort they have put in. Talking of the award, I put it in my checked in luggage at the airport, and as usual the TSA opening my bag and searched it, what was different this time is that the little TSA "you have been searched" note had a little handwritten note on it that said the following, "This is definitely leaded crystal - congratulations!". I don't know if anyone else noticed, but with the award standing next to the awards from the other years, the crystal award is about an inch shorter this year, it's ok though as supposedly size doesn't matter.Roger Lim from Colgate had to have the most popular question in the ask the developers session. It went something like this, "Hi I recently graduated from college, if I hadn't done an internship at Colgate, I would have had no idea Lotus Notes existed", then everyone in the room stood and gave him a standing ovation. I'm sure it's hell for the other Colgate folks at the moment hearing him tell everyone the story. Sadly the people that really needed to see that were the marketing folks and not the developers. I had a similar discussion with our Indian developer who is over at the moment. he said all the graduates know Microsoft, but don't even know Lotus exists. This is one of those areas where to do it right IBM needs to commit marketing $ for a few years, a 6 month marketing program will not work in this situation, the academia market needs years of efforts to get awareness in there. Committing marketing $ to an effort that cannot have immediate measured results is a tricky thing at IBM, so hopefully someone will figure out a way.
Closing Session - I enjoyed it, I didn't take it as a slap in the face as some people did, as the last time you saw this guy was at the Lotusphere when IBM was telling everyone that Domino was like Pluto and Workplace was the real planet. I enjoyed him, as I enjoyed ScienceNOW on PBS. No doubt religious people could take great offense, but as that is not me I didn't. It was also nice to know that come 2029? we won't have to worry about upgrades and downtime as the world is likely to be hit by a large lump of space rock.
More to come later Lotusphere 2007, but I thought I should write something down, as it's been a few days...
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Comments
And I was standing in the back of the room with a bunch of other marketing folks, so the message was heard on this side, as well. (I was actually wondering what would happen if we had a "Ask the Marketers" session, too.)
Posted by Adam Gartenberg At 12:41:03 PM On 01/29/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Declan Lynch At 01:32:42 PM On 01/29/2007 | - Website - |
Posted by Mitch Cohen At 01:39:13 PM On 01/29/2007 | - Website - |
Cheers,
Rob
Posted by Rob the Sailor At 04:14:18 AM On 01/30/2007 | - Website - |
I had no idea what Lotus was until I started working for you guys. I had never even heard of it. Now that I'm doing a lot of work for the government I see it all the time.
Posted by Josh Vogel At 08:40:11 AM On 01/30/2007 | - Website - |