Ed Brill

Tuesday's posting, where I was seeking input on what other kinds of Lotus events you might be interested in seeing, generated some interesting commentary. I think it can be summarized in three interest buckets: People who can't travel or can't spend money on training, who want webcasts, webi...

On my way out of Cambridge today, I ran into Sandra Marcus and Kristin Keene (no, I can't explain why she was in the office eleven days after having a baby...). The initial results from the Lotusphere '04 survey are in, and the feedback has been really really good. So we got to talking, and t...

Almost all of the Lotusphere '04 presentations from IBM speakers have been posted in PDF form on the Lotusphere section of the lotus.com website. This is something new in '04, based on a significant amount of demand from Lotus customers and partners. Hope you find it helpful....

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...the more I realize how many people I didn't meet last week. Aside from missing out on revealing who "file save" on LDD is, I'm reading blog entries that point to Rune Carlsen, Matt White, Tom Nichols, and many others having been there. Now, so many of the events were such a blur that may...

Interview with Kevin Cavanaugh, VP of messaging development, Lotus:There was little mention of Domino 7 at the general session. Why? Cavanaugh: That's because a huge amount of what we're doing in Domino 7 is server oriented. The real answer is we struggled with how to make it persuasive in a st...

Computerworld running a Domino-based website ("You might be a Lotus Geek if you look for .NSF in a URL")....It's not often that you get something for nothing in this world. But happily, users of Lotus Domino and Notes (or at least those who are under maintenance licensing) will get just that w...

I just had a meeting with IBM Lotus Software GM Ambuj Goyal here at the company's annual Lotusphere conference. Judging from the general tone at the show, my numerous roadmap briefings with IBM execs, and discussions with customers, it seems Lotus is back on track after scaring the bejesus out o...

Well, that was a PITA -- trying to embed images in HREFs just didn't work. So, here is a page with all three of the pics I took at the e-Pro dinner during Lotusphere last week. Apologies to Chris Pepin and Jason Collier for not getting them into these shots....

So much to blog and catch up on.... Another Lotusphere is in the books. Thanks to all of you who were here and made it special; and to those of you following along at home, I hope that I and the other bloggers have been able to give you a picture of the event (10,000 hits per day on this sit...

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This is a little bit of a weird feeling. Over the last few days, I have met a number of people for the first time at Lotusphere. Many of them kindly say "I read your blog" and thank me for writing...this is much appreciated. I've learned a lot about what kinds of content y'all read here, and...

The best moment, IMHO, of all of Dr. Ambuj Goyal's comments during yesterday's opening general session (that's an OGS if you want to sound cool), was his send-off, which felt like the revival meeting that many of us tend to equate Lotusphere with. Turtle captured it: Ambuj is back onstage a...

Three different evening events -- press reception, midwest customer dinner, business partner reception -- very different feels, very different food -- very similar attitudes. Really great to see how positive and optimistic the attitudes are today. I left the business partner reception at 10:3...

Not enough time to write a comprehensive blog entry, but some thoughts from the day so far.... As most of you know, I'm part of the core content team for Lotusphere. So it's always more than a thrill to see the planning come to life. For those of you blogging reviews of particular sessions,...

My first Lotusphere '04 presentation was a treat... I'll write about the content in my still-as-yet-unwritten lotus.com weblog entry, but as for the delivery, well, that was fun. The room was the same one used for the business development day keynote, so about half the room was arranged with ro...

Long day already and I haven't given my pitch yet... Went over to business development day this morning. I'll put something on the lotus.com/weblog about my impressions of the content and the reactions. Here, I'll say that I was pleased with the number of familiar faces and warm handshakes......

Let me be the second person to congratulate colleague Barbara Bowen on winning the Penumbra Group's 2nd annual Prism award. Barbara is a true cheerleader for the value of professional certifications, and has been instrumental in keeping the Lotus certification program relevant as it transitio...

I came out of hibernation following lunch and made the rounds for a couple of hours. Viel danke to vowe & Ute for doing some adventurous grocery shopping for me...the week will be much easier for this. I also spotted bloggers Bruce Elgort, Julian R of NSFTools, blog reader Rob McDonough, h...

Well it's already an improvement over Saturday a year ago -- the high-speed Internet connection seems somewhat useful. I wonder when the bandwidth vampires will arrive. Anyway, I'm hungry -- Tubbi's, here I come ;)...

OK, it's 11 PM, my flight is at 9:15 AM.... Right start to the evening...Oysy sushi for dinner....No Godzilla roll this time ... liked the "California dreamin'" roll and the steamed fish dumplings. Packed, despite 3" of snowfall. Packed...well, just about Grocery shopping list e-mailed t...

If I can distract your attention from the flame wars taking place in the comments to the CNET story...At the show, Lotus plans to detail Version 2.0 of the Workplace platform, featuring integration with Eclipse open source tools and tools tailored to nonprogrammers. Eclipse tools offer a rich cl...

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Well, it took me a while to realize it, but with a couple of days' distance, I've finalized realized that Monday's eWeek story was Microsoft's annual Lotusphere spoiler. It's funny how my link to that article spawned more than two dozen comments, yet the all-good-news story in Network World se...

Even though the buzz leading up to Lotusphere hasn't quite reached the level of years past, and attendees perusing the Web for clues as to the location of the Wednesday night party only found out a couple of weeks ago (Universal Studios Florida), Lotus Software is assuring its faithful that they...

Double-checking my logistics for Lotusphere, I went through a short panic. Somehow, I ended up on United for this trip (actually, I know how, it's a long story). Anyway, ual.com is, in my opinion, not as user-friendly as other airline websites. There's no real way to just see schedule informat...

Ah yes, the annual "try to find a scoop about Lotusphere" season is open. Several readers and a few blogs yesterday alerted me to a comment in one of the trade press's rumor mill columns related to Lotusphere '04. Not commenting in any kind of official capacity here, but is it really believabl...

Yowsa, the blog has been busy today! I suppose being just 14 days away, the interest level and excitement around Lotusphere 2004 is on the rise. I'm just curious -- for all those googlers who are ending up here, or those just stopping by, what Lotusphere information are you seeking? What inf...

I posted a link to the Turtle's LS2004 polls yesterday...and now on the one about me, another 10 people have voted for the "Who?" choice. Very funny....

One can tell that the crescendo to Lotusphere is upon us, as the googles related to Lotusphere here and on other sites show, as well as the amount of traffic on the Turtle's Gonzo Unoffficial Lotusphere 2004 site. Out of respect to The Turtle, I'm trying to participate there as much as I have...

OK, it's out there now -- a whole bunch of people got the Lotusphere 2004 Pocket Agenda today. The party is at Universal Studios Florida. ...

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Ben Langhinrichs has once again generously created a Lotusphere 2004 sessions Notes database. I don't know if there will be an official one or not -- but Ben has the session dates/times data that was sent to all presenters, so I expect his database is accurate. Thanks a lot, Ben!...

Deliberately, I've been kind of quiet about Lotus and Lotusphere over the last couple of weeks. To some degree, this was a result of a vacation state of mind; also, I've been focused on preparing for the upcoming IBM software sales meeting, where I have a bunch of sessions to deliver as well....

I'm sitting here reviewing the draft schedule for Lotusphere 2004, and I realized that I had neglected to mention that the full Lotusphere session abstracts are now posted to the Lotusphere website. You'll see that I am again reprising my Boss Loves Microsoft: Where does that leave Lotus? se...

I'm on a Lotusphere 2004 planning call at the moment, and Sandra Marcus (Queen of Lotusphere) is giving an update on registration etc. I can't share publicly what I'm hearing -- sorry -- but it's putting me in a pretty good mood. Anyway, it's clear that tomorrow's deadline for the early-bird U...

A list of some of the session content for Lotusphere 2004 is now available at http://www.lotus.com/events/govfor.nsf/wdocs/lstrackslist. From what I reckon, it's about 75-80% of all the sessions we've selected so far in these tracks. We published this list earlier than ever before, in hopes t...

A few days ago, Jonvon posted a comment where he asked about the process used for choosing sessions at Lotusphere. Now, I don't want to blog about anything that could get me fired :), so I'll leave out some of the gory details. Lotusphere 2004 is my third go at being part of the content team....

The real deadline for submitting abstracts to Lotusphere has been announced, and it's Monday, October 20. Give you a few more days for those quick fingers to do their magic. www.lotus.com/lotusphere ...

I spent some time on my flight back sorting through Lotusphere '04 session abstracts. Some really good ideas coming in this year, but there's room for more to be considered. This is the first year that anyone -- customer, partner, IBMer -- can submit an abstract directly. The deadline for sub...

Tim Latta from Hewitt just pinged me that the Turtle's Gonzo Lotusphere 2004 site is now live! I'll continue to post LS04 news here, but of course The Turtle is The Institution and authority. It's unlikely, for example, that I'd be writing my own version of the history of Lotusphere+Copa Ban...

Just chatting (ok, e-mailing) with Barbara Bowen, the goddess of the Lotus CLP program (ok, real title: Manager, WW Professional Certification Programs, Manager, WW Professional Certification Programs Lotus Education - IBM Software Group). Barbara has good news for the Lotus Certified ... a di...

Don't miss the link at the bottom of this page... New this year, anyone (customer, business partner, snake oil salesperson) can submit an abstract to speak at Lotusphere 2004. Should be interesting to try to sort out the wheat from the chaff, but at least this way, you don't have to be "conne...

Same day the Notes/Domino 6.5 code will be posted. Good thing that the Lotusphere registration is processed off-site.... From the internal announcement: "In an effort to make Lotusphere as affordable as possible for our customers and partners, a special registration price of $1395 is being o...