Yesterday was my first attempt to get back into work since Emily arrived as I went along to LCTY. It was a strange morning for me - my Mum stepped up to Grandma duties and came in town with me, and was looking after Emily during the sessions. It was hard, at times, to keep my mind on the speakers and not wondering what Emily was doing - was she crying, eating, sleeping (missing me?!?). For what its worth, I think it was much easier on Emily and Grandma than on me.

The first thing I can say is no different to what I said last year - it seems a bit strange to be calling this "Lotusphere", as it's clearly nothing compared to the real thing. Really, LCTY is just market update and product launch combined. While this is good, and it as great to see a big turn-out again, it's not the full technical and business conference which this region desperately needs.

Even knowing what LCTY is, I was a little disappointed in the 4 breakout sessions on offer this year. First there was a choice between mobile technology or "The Lotus Software Strategy for Team Collaboration and Document Management" which turned out to be a detailed session on Quickr (the new Quickplace). Second there was a choice between Websphere Portal & e-Forms, or Sametime. While there was a great demo of Notes 8 during the opening session, there was no session covering anything more on this - which is really the major reason most people would have been there.

So, that's the disappointments. Now for the good.

The keynote presentation, and demos were excellent. Great strong messages coming from Lotus that shows, again, that Lotus is
starting to make a grand comeback. The messages about product growth, both globally and locally, were extremely positive, and there was a real sense that Lotus isn't playing defense anymore - Microsoft was hardly even mentioned, which made for a nice change.

The Lotus Product Strategy was clear - 5 product lines - Domino, Sametime, Quickr (Quickplace), Connections (social computing - blogs, wikis etc) and Websphere Portal. Interestingly there was no mention of Workplace - did I miss something, is it gone altogether? I think this is a really strong product grouping, covering all the areas that Lotus has traditionally dominated, and the strategy places Lotus in a great position to cover the growth areas - especially in some of the new "trendy" areas - IM, blogs, wikis etc.

The other important message, which is clearly represented in the new products coming out of Lotus, is that there is a new focus on the end-user experience. Some people would say this is too little too late, but I think it's a sign that Lotus has finally got their direction clear, and the engines underneath are sound and there is now time to get the pretty stuff right. Don't get me wrong - I am a big user interface person, and I think Lotus has been lacking in this, but I also think much of the criticism of Notes UI should have been directed at developers, not Lotus itself.

The demo of Notes 8 showed some pretty cool stuff I hadn't seen before, and hinted at some things that I really wanted to get more technical detail on (for instance does the export to PDF work in apps or only from the composite editors? If it's only from the editors, when will this change??) I am looking forward to March when the public beta is available - can't wait to play around with it, even more - can't wait to be able to develop with it...

The two sessions I went to covered Quickr and Sametime. The Sametime presentation was a little disappointing as it mostly covered Sametime 7.5, which, while fantastic looking, didn't cover anything really new for me, so I don't have much to say about that. Quickr however, looks fantastic. It looks like it is finally reaching the goals that Quickplace was designed to meet. I was never a big fan of Quickplace, and detested TeamRoom. I found them clunky and hard to use, and hated the isolated nature of Quickplace. Quickr looks like it resolves many of these issues, and could be a much easier "sell" - providing it has the right technical features (information we didn't get in this high level session). I still have some concerns about the integration with existing apps, and also what sort of client install is required for the connectors, but the end result looks good enough to overcome many issues, and I also can't wait for it's launch later this year.

All in all, it was a great morning, and has set Lotus up for a great year. The future, apparently, is yellow!

I'm saying "final thoughts" as this is a wrap-up of my overall impression, but I will be slowly blogging about the sessions I attended over the next week, but they will be post-dated. I'm doing this as a reference for myself more than anything, so I can remember later what I learned!

Overall I thought this was an excellent conference. It lives up to my memories of my previous Lotusphere, some 9 years ago. The messages coming from Lotus/IBM were positive, and have made me feel pretty good about sticking with this technology for all these years. Although I actually didn't look too much into Workplace or Hannover, mostly because I feel like it's still at least 12-18 months away in the Australian market and I hope to be back to learn more next year, but what I saw did look very good, and an exciting proposition in the future.

In terms of what I'm taking back:
- a renewed desire to learn Java, even if it's just to do small things like those demonstrated in the Java Jumpstart
- a desire to start learning Ajax in a practical way. My major project at the moment is converting some Notes apps to browser apps, and I feel like this will make things slicker.
- Blogging is most definately alive and well, and the Domino blogging community is growing. It was great to meet some of these people, and they are very welcoming to newcomers. The real message - don't be afraid to join in, either with your own blog, or by commenting on others.
- Notes/Domino is still incredibly popular and those who are working with it are still very passionate about the product, which can only be a good thing in the long run.

Aside from the learning and technology, this is a good fun conference - worth the trip and I hope to be able to make the journey again next year.

Now I WILL finish blogging about the rest of the sessions I saw at Lotusphere this year, and will try my hardest to get them up before the end of the weekend. I did, however, want to take a few minutes to blog about last nights' antics - mostly so I can stop blogging in my head and get back to sleep (sad, I know)!.

In honour of Australia Day, there was an Australia party at Jellyrolls last night hosted by Brent Lello of Australia IBM (turns out they do still exist). What a great night. There's really nothing funnier than watching two guys on a piano trying to do "Land Down Under" while being drowned out by 30 drunk Australians! Makes a person proud! There were also some honourary Australians there later in the night - Surjit Chana (see below), and Ben Poole and Declan Lynch were there representing the "Mother Land".

Aside from the drinking and singing and general partying what was really great in context of this week, was how many people we spoke to who were keen to go back home and start trying to raise the profile of Domino in Australia again. In fact, Surjit turned up and the party, and I know a couple of different groups, Tim & I included, actually made a point of interrupting his celebrating to say that it was time for him to "get his ass down to Australia" to help the Notes/Domino (NOT WORKPLACE) message get out there again. He did volunteer that he would be down as soon as we asked - although our reply of "next week" probably won't be met. However, the offer is there from him, and we Aussies now need to push the message to get him down to Australia as soon as possible. There was some discussion about reinstating Lotus Fusion (the Australian mini-Lotusphere which used to be held) and how great that would be. This is a true mini-conference, not the marketing hype of "Lotusphere comes to you" which sounds quite disappointing.

We met quite a few people who were really keen to start up the APAC Notes community again - maybe restarting up some Walnut or other user group meetings, perhaps an Australian discussion or bulletin board for people who want to get help in a reasonable time frame (see Ed's blog about my thoughts on the trouble with timezone difficulties for blogging and Notes.net), and definately raising the profile of Australian & New Zealand bloggers, which I hope to do through www.dominoblogs.com (more to come in the next few days - there's nothing there yet!).

So, hopefully you will start to hear more (both from Tim and myself, and others) about how these things are going over the next weeks and months.

A special shout out to Brent to say thanks for hosting such a great party.

And just as a reminder, repeat after me:
If you drink 10 vodkas on an empty stomach you WILL get sick.
If you drink 10 vodkas on an empty stomach you WILL get sick.
If you drink 10 vodkas on an empty stomach you WILL get sick.

OK - got it!

The Closing Session was a nice bookend to the Opening Session - a light positive message which seemed to catch onto the general feeling of the conference. Surjit Chana, VP of Lotus Marketing, gave a great speech, which generated alot more spontaneous applause from the crowd than the opening session. This is probably just as much a result of people feeling more positive, as it was the positive messages coming from the speech - "Yellow is the new black", a committment to openness, and a committment to fighting the FUD - "the gloves are off".

Probably most of note to the blogging community was the inclusion of some quotes from bloggers - nice to see that Lotus are paying attention to what is being said out there in the world, rather than just relying of press.

Following Surjit was comedian Jim Gaffigan, of Letterman fame was quite funny. He started off with a little, um shall we say "politically incorrect" humour, and some comments about gay porn and Surjit which had people a bit worried I think, but I thought he was really quite hilarious, but I'm not really sure why! I do know that now Tim & I keep wispering "He's/She's/It's weird" whenever we see something a little strange...

Well, although I had a great time at the Seaworld party, I am glad that this was included in the Lotusphere conference as it stopped us from having to pay for tickets - we were planning to go here on the weekend. Glad mostly because it was actually much smaller than I expected, and I would have been disappointed if we had paid $US60 to go.

Tim & I went on the "Journey to Atlantis" ride, which was kind of fun, and then braved the Kracken, which was not nearly as scary as it looked. By the time we finished this we had missed most of the shows, so just grabbed some food and drinks and prepared for the Shamu show. We skipped out of the Shark Encounter in the middle of the line, as we had seen nothing that we don't have bigger and better in our numerous aquariums back home. I guess this comes from living in a land of coral reefs and sharks - we see them so often.

The Shamu Show, however was quite different. We don't really have the whales in parks or aquariums back home, so it was really quite something to see Shamu & family up close. We sat right at the very front, so had a great close-up view, but were lucky enough to avoid getting wet - a remarkable feat! These animals are truly magnificant - so graceful and majestic - just thrilling to watch. In fact, the best thing of the entire night was in the 20 minutes or so after the show when the stadium was empty and the lights out, and we stood and watched the whales just swimming and playing on their own. This was really special, as they just seemed so peaceful, and were even "talking", which was just breathtaking to hear. Unfortunately, this was also the saddest for me, as I always feel a touch of saddness at animals in captivity. I understand that zoos and parks like this can do a lot of good, and often save animals which would not otherwise have survived, but I do get sad that such wonderful creatures are trapped for our amusement. I can only hope that these animals are well treated, and don't know what they are missing.