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!