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Hello Disney World, we're B-A-A-A-C-K!
by
David
DeJean |
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It's been a year, and a lot has happened. Notes/Domino 6 shipped. There's a new face at the top of the Lotus organizational chart. We've changed. Lotus has changed. But the first thing you're likely to notice when you step into the Dolphin Hotel is that the home of every Lotusphere for a decade has changed most of all.
No more do we Lotusphere attendees do things in tents like a huge troop of overage Junior Woodchucks on a camp-out. No more registration tent. No more dining tent. The only tent in view Sunday was the only one we wouldn't want to give up: the party tent.
The reason is that the construction project that was a hole in the ground behind a fence last year has become the Pacific Hall, a convention facility that is to the former dining tents as Valhalla would be to your grandmother's dining room. Pacific Hall looks like it's big enough to seat the whole bunch of us at once—that is, if we'd stop running around long enough to sit down.
But this year, like never before, if you were going to get the most out of Lotusphere, you had to hit the ground running. Sunday in Orlando was not a day of rest. The program was too intense. Once upon a time, Sunday was a slow day. The most strenuous activity was the evening Welcome Reception at poolside; and the JumpStart sessions, added a couple of years ago, were an afternoon activity for early arrivals who didn't go to the Business Partner meetings.
This year, the JumpStart program was a full day that began at 8 AM, paused only for lunch in the Pacific Hall, and drove right through to 6 PM, when the Welcome Reception started. If you weren't here for it, you missed what has become one of the best days of Lotusphere.
As in years past, the Sunday sessions could be read like tea leaves, yielding predictions for what the week to come will be like. The technical JumpStarts that are the foundation of the day's program were as strong as ever—XML, Web Services, J2EE—but there was a new theme this year: integration. The JumpStarts took on a more strategic emphasis, with sessions like "Integrating Domino with Corporate Data and Business Logic." A brand-new track that paralleled the JumpStarts carried the integration theme even further. It was subtitled "Leveraging Lotus and. . ." The keynote session for the track was a presentation by Craig Hayman, IBM's vice president for IBM Software Group Strategy. (His presentation, which should be posted Monday on the Lotusphere site, is worth looking up.) Integration sessions included titles like "Lotus Collaboration Inside WebSphere Portal" and "IBM DB2 Strategy and Integration with IBM Lotus," as well as the mentions of Tivoli, WebSphere, and initiatives like pervasive computing and the e-enabled organization. The I-word is the byword this week.
Pervasive computing is, well, pervasive
Speaking of pervasive computing, it's here. If you needed convincing, all you had to do was look around the Lotusphere crowd. Cell phones were as common as wristwatches. Blackberries were commonplace. On the shuttlebus, I caught my first glimpse of a T-Mobile Sidekick in the wild, which looks like a hyper-Blackberry with a screen that swivels to reveal a full keyboard and includes a cell phone. Cool. Even cooler was Rainer Engel's Dell Axim, a next-generation competitor to the Compaq iPAQ. Engel, who works for Brazen Technologies, a Lotus Business Partner in Denver, showed off an Axim equipped with a WiFi card and a memory expansion card.
But at Lotusphere, THE most pervasive computing device is—a laptop. Everywhere you look there's somebody with a laptop open. The network connection area was already busy on Sunday with laptops hanging off RJ-45 cables. This year there are two new wireless connection areas, as well, one in the Dolphin and one in the Swan Hotel, and both were up and running—and working very well, according to users—on Sunday. The SSID is "Lotusphere," if you've got an 802.11b PC card and are within a few hundred feet of the Copabanana Lounge in the Dolphin.
CLPs abound
Most of the labs don't open until Monday, but the Certification Lab was already open Sunday, and it was packed—surely a reflection of the fact that with Notes/Domino 6 shipping, all the Certified Lotus Professionals are suddenly aware that the new version means they'll have to recertify. The good news is that CLPs can upgrade by passing just one exam. Even better news is that they can get a discount on the test if they take it in the lab this week. The bad news: who's got time to study?
Coming Up: Monday at Lotusphere
The big event on Monday, of course, is the Opening General Session. And the question on everyone's lips is, will the Lotus community get its first look at Ambuj Goyal, recently named general manager of IBM Lotus Software to succeed Al Zollar? It will likely be an emotional farewell for Zollar, who is moving on to head the iSeries server group after three years at the helm of Lotus. A report on the Al-and-farewell tomorrow. |
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