Ed Brill

Mary Beth Raven and I were lucky enough to get a private briefing this morning on social media activities planned around Lotusphere 2011.  I was surprised -- in a very good way -- at all the plans my colleagues in marketing have come up with for our soirée in 23 days.  Cool stuff going on onsite, but also a ton of stuff going on online.  

You can join in on the action in many different ways.  A site I really didn't know about until a week or two ago is the Lotusphere social media aggregator.  It's already collecting tweets marked with the #LS11 hashtag, and if you blog, you can register to have your RSS feed collected as well.  If you are a speaker or partner, you can register on the site and have your tweets/blogs collected in those appropriate views.  You can also have content come in from other sources as well.

So, those not attending Lotusphere can participate in the online energy around the event more this year than ever.  That also goes for more video streaming, and access to presentations.  Of course, we want the Lotusphere experience to be the best for those who are paying to attend the conference.  Lotusphere Online will initially be, as it has been in prior years, a system designed around the physical conference -- but based more on Lotus Connections, with communities and pages for each individual session, access to presentations and lab material, and other interactive features.  A few weeks after the conference, instead of the usual bon voyage, Lotusphere Online will actually become open to everyone -- and stay online.

Onsite, some different things happening.  Location services from Gowalla (time for me to check this service out), tweetups, video cafes (with coffee!), and much more.  I'll write some more about these in the coming days.