Today, I attended the Cleveland Lotusphere Comes to You (LCTY) event. According to Lotus/IBM, they were expecting a total of 70 (including IBM'rs), even though the registrations looked like this:
104 Customers
30 Business Partners
16 IBM'rs
150 TOTAL
I think that they were at least at 70, probably a little more. The main meeting room had very few open seats.
Some thoughts about the day:
The first presenter, Brian Aylward, Worldwide Workplace and Portal Sales, asked for a show of hands that are using the Notes 8 Beta. A few people raised their hands. Then he asked about Sametime 7.5.1 users and few people acknowledged that they were using it. Finally, he asked if anyone had heard of "Quickr" and several people raised their hands. I wonder what the percentage of those 60,000* downloads of the Notes 8 beta were from our area? Brian then launched into a review of the Lotusphere announcements and how those products can change the way that your currently do business, both internal and external.
Next up, Gerald "Jerry" Stowe, Messaging and Collaboration Sales Leader Central Region, to talk about Notes and Domino 8. He stated that 2006 was the year of 7.0.1, 7.0.2, and Lotus Notes Access for SAP Solutions. It was also the "fastest upgrade cycle in history." He also mentioned that 90% of his customers are on Release 6.5.x or 7.x.x. After the review of 2006, he dove into Lotus Notes/Domino 8. His slides told the story of the UI and the design of Release 8. I know the work that went into it, as I follow Mary Beth Raven's blog, and others, but the numbers were quite impressive:
118 Lotusphere Review Sessions
1,925 "User First" Initiatives
Countless sessions at customer sites
I think that Lotus was taking the UI and the design of the product pretty seriously. I hope that they don't lose that drive.
Then a few features of Release 8. Again, if you follow the blogosphere, none of this should come as a surprise, but it is nice to see the slides. First up, the ODF Editors. This is some pretty exciting stuff. However, between sessions, a few of us talked about this, and I can't help but feel that for the average user, this is a very good thing. But will they use this? Can you get them off of Office? Will it take the CxO to say "No more" and recognize the major cost savings of going to ODF Editors? Or will it take a major supplier/government agency to push the change? Or both, or something/someone else? I am getting at the culture of Office. I see the value. I know that I certainly don't need all of the features in Office and welcome a change, and free is all the motivation that I need. But what about the organization? The culture may say "No."
Other features of 8: Read and Unread mail will no longer be black or red, respectively. Rather they will be normal or bold. There is a new Personal Name and Address Book (but they didn't show us any screen shots of it). It is supposed to be "amazing." My question is will the synchronization of the addresses be done automatically or on a schedule? They have improved the Out of Office Agent. Again, no specific slides or any more information. Feed enabled mail. Message recall (I still don't get the benefit of this - but then, I must not get it. In all of the years of using mail, I have never needed this feature.).
And, there was talk of Domino "Next." Release 8 is in beta, and already there is talk of the next version. How cool is that? And what might that bring you? How about directory independence? Alternate authentication methods (Notes ID optional)? Sweet!
What was the message? This is an exciting time to be in the Lotus space, there is a lot of potential, and there is a great future.
Next, Connections took the stage. Presented by Heath McCarthy, Lotus Solutions Architect, this was a nice overview of the product and the five parts to the product. The most interesting thing I took away was the use of tag clouds. They are everywhere in the product. And, from what Heath said, he finds these much more useful than anything else in the product. Why? Because others are tagging things, which will increase the rank of a tag, telling you that other people are finding that information very useful. He uses the cloud more than dogears, as they were much more useful. At least to the way he works. Of course, the discussion of Connections isn't complete without mentioning Blue Pages. The numbers are pretty impressive:
27,300 blogs (400 group blogs), 62,000 entries, 60,000 comments, 10,800 tags.
185,000 dogears from 3,425 users
Another point: Connections allows the knowledge of a business to remain with the business, even if the person leaves.
But won't this be another culture change?
There were some questions after this session, mostly centering around the hardware and software requirements for Connections. One question dealt with Dogears, and apparently you are able to import them into your browser as well as export your browsers' bookmarks into Dogears.
Overall, a very well attended LCTY. And it seemed as though IBM was right, there is a lot of excitement being generated. At least, that was the topic of conversation where ever I went (Notes 8 and Quickr being the most talked about). I was very surprised at the "low" number of people that were testing the 8 beta or knew about Quickr. Because of that, I really wonder about the number of attendees that lurk in the blogosphere. It can't be as high as I thought it to be - either that or they aren't looking at Lotus-centric sites or listening to the Taking Notes podcast. It isn't because no one is getting the message out there. This could be some future sessions for NEOLUG.
Link: Lotusphere Comes to You Presentations and Literature (login required)
* - a number bandied about by Brian.
[UPDATE]:
Here are the attendance results from Cleveland (thanks, Marvin):
Technorati tag: Lotusphere Comes to You LCTY
Comment posted by Charles Robinson04/25/2007 12:14:14 AM
Homepage: http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com
My question is will the synchronization of the addresses be done automatically or on a schedule?
Answer: http://www-03.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/marybeth?entry=the_decision_about_whether_to
I had a user ask me today about recalling a message. She had intended it for the Eastern Sales Region group and instead selected the Central Sales Region. The message included an attachment with meeting schedules that are not applicable for the region that accidentally received them.
The Out of Office enhancements are detailed somewhere in the blogosphere, I'll dig that up tomorrow and share it with you. In a nutshell, there is a new task that can be run that does the OO notification immediately, but it is optional.
As for the spread of information throughout the Domino base, I've found it's very much hit or miss. The people tuned into the blogosphere are very much aware of what's going on, everyone else is pretty clueless. Yesterday I was talking with a fellow dual-propeller-beanie-wearing Domino admin / Notes developer who wasn't even aware Notes 8 Beta was available.
Comment posted by Heath04/25/2007 01:29:47 PM
This was a very well attended event- thanks to everyone who could join us!
Both tag clouds and subscriptions are two hidden jems of Lotus Connections - all 5 services leverage them in one way or another.
I really like the use of tags when using Dogear. I find that I am able to organize and find my own Dogeared bookmarks much better than traditional browser bookmarking. And when you look at the community'sf Dogeared bookmarks, tags are the key to finding quality content on the web. As Gregg said, I find high value stuff bubbles to the top of tag clouds.
As far as import/export goes - yes there is indeed a tool with the product:
-Dogear will import your browser favorites, skipping any URLs that you have already bookmarked on dogear.
-Dogear will automatically create tags based on folder names, if you have created folders for your favorites.
-Download all of your dogear bookmarks in a form that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Mozilla can import as favorites.
-You may save the file and store it as a personal backup of your dogear bookmarks, or you may import them into your browser's favorites.
-The bookmarks are organized into folders based on tags. For example, if a given bookmark has the tags "alpha", "beta", and "gamma", then the bookmark will appear three times in the exported bookmarks: once under the "alpha" folder, once under "beta", and once under "gamma".
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred04/25/2007 10:58:39 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Charles:
Thanks for the reminder to hit Mary Beth's blog more often.
The people tuned into the blogosphere are very much aware of what's going on, everyone else is pretty clueless.
Why is that? Are they so tuned into Notes.net that they don't venture out? I mean, there you are at 'Sphere, 7,000 strong, and Lotus specifically calls out the blogosphere for comments AND brings them up on stage, in addition to BOF's and specific blog sessions. I don't know bout you, but if there is a question on Notes.net that I have an answer on my blog, I post the URL. Isn't that enough to get those people to look around the other areas of the internet?
@Heath: Thanks for taking the time to present. As you can tell, I am surprised at the power of tagging. It's something that I never really gave a lot of thought to, but now, thanks to you, I see tags in a whole new light. And based on the attendance, I hope to see more Lotus presentations in Cleveland.
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