Spam session by Richard Schwartz

I finally got to attend a session! My own presentation, BP107 "Controlling Spam Mail in Your Organization," is over and done with. I think it went OK for the most part. Dieter, Meredith, and I could have talked for at least another half hour if we had been given the chance—we had sooo much more material we could have covered. My only regret is that we somehow managed to remain unaware of the fact that McAfee had a pedestal on the show floor. We had wanted to at least mention every vendor with an anti-spam offering in the vendor showcase. No offense was intended at all by our omission. McAfee's products have a fine overall reputation, and I'm sure that anything they offer in the anti-spam arena is worth due consideration with other available products.

The one session I got to was Rob Novak and Viktor Krantz of SNAPPS' "Bringing It All Together" presentation, which very effectively highlighted the fact that Domino works beautifully with Lotus's advanced collaboration products. They showed a corporate portal application written in Domino that incorporated QuickPlace calendaring, Sametime awareness, and iNotes Web Access into a single consistent and flexible user experience. They also amused the audience with a video production of a "commercial" for Lotus technologies in which the Domino developers at a Hollywood studio implement an integrated solution over a weekend, much to the chagrin of a team of consultants from another vendor, who had wanted to charge millions of dollars and spend months working on an implementation of their own technology, and who had (ahem!) forgotten to provide any information about how their technology would provide security.

The party at the Magic Kingdom this year was better than parties there in previous years. I think MGM is the best party venue, but I'm glad we didn't go there again this year. Variety is good. I never made it to Space Mountain, but Splash Mountain and Thunder Mountain were great, and I zapped lots of bad guys on the Buzz Lightyear ride. The presence of hundreds of glow-in-the-dark buttons (courtesy of HP and TeamStudio) made the Extra Terrorestrial ride less interesting because total darkness is supposed to be part of what makes it a scary experience. These parties always seem to go so quickly! I did, however, manage the obligatory shopping at Disney's souvenir shop.

By the way, two more ten-for-tenners have come to my attention. Debbie Lynd and Henry Newberry have both been to all ten Lotuspheres. This brings the known number of people with perfect Lotusphere attendance to eleven. Are there any more? I'm still searching!

I'm looking forward to attending other sessions during every breakout today, to the always interesting "Ask the Developers" session, and to the closing ceremony. I still have a few balloons left over from my supply of merchandise from the www.spamgift.com site. I think I might find a use for them during the breaks between sessions. ;-)