Sunday, January 27, 2008

My first Lotusphere experience...

I'm going to take care of two birds with one stone, so to speak, with this first post. This will be my first blog entry, hopefully leading to more blogging in the near future. I am also going to write about my first visit to Lotusphere in Orlando.

There are a lot of people I would like to thank for making my first trip to Lotusphere a great learning experience, as well as a lot of fun. I won't thank everyone by name, but I would like to specifically mention Andy Donaldson (for his Guide to Lotusphere post) and Bruce Elgort and Julian Robichaux (and many guests for their Taking Notes Podcasts prior to Lotusphere.)

While I had a great time and sat through some wonderful sessions for five days straight, I think the best sessions I attended were the two BOF's related to blogging (the one at 7:00 a.m. that Jess moderated) and the 5:45 p.m. that Ed Brill (I still don't know what he looks like) was supposed to lead, but Alan Lepofsky did instead.) Andy called me out in this BOF, but I was going to speak out, whether Andy said something or not.

The group of bloggers in attendance at the evening BOF was like a who's who of Lotus bloggers, in my mind. Yes, "rock stars" in a way. You people appear to have a tight knit group, but seemed to welcome the newcomers as if they were long lost friends. I appreciate that welcome into your group, eventhough I was not a blogger at the time.

I would like to make a comment to Gabriella Davis, who was in attendance to the BOF session, and made a comment about posting something that appeared to be so basic... there are new blog readers every day (I am one of them.) Who cares that something you post is basic and readily known to many of the bloggers out there. There are more people like me, new to the blog reading world, new to Lotus administration/development, that whatever you post may be just the answer we were looking for. Don't be afraid to post what's on your mind. Someone may be waiting to read what you have to say, and they don't know it yet.

I had a great time at the ESPN Zone and Jellyrolls on Thursday night. I did spend most of my time waiting to see if Gregg Eldred's request ("The Immigrant Song" - Led Zeppelin) would be played by the duelling piano players. It was great to talk with Gregg, as I am originally from his part of the world, and we talked about many different things, but it all had to do with music and radio from the 80's.

Now... I've got to get a work blog going to introduce Lotus Notes 8, Quickr, and Sametime to the people where I work. Not sure how I am going to go about doing that, but I think I know have some contacts/ifriends that I met over the last week, that I should not have a whole lot of problems coming up with ideas.

5 comments:

Julian Robichaux said...

Thanks for the mention Steve, and congratulations on starting the blog thing. I just added you to my bookmarks.

belgort said...

Steve,

It was a pleasure to meet you at Lotusphere 08. I did enjoy hearing the Zeppelin song at JellyRolls on Thursday night too!

Keep up the blogging as I have added you to my RSS reader.

Jess Stratton said...

Thanks so much for the kind words! And doubly thanks for getting up at 7AM to come to the Bof. :-)
Look forward to reading more...

Ray Bilyk said...

I'm happy that you had a great LS experience. I'm adding you to my reader so I can keep up with you.

Welcome to the Blogosphere! We'll have to sit down and share homebrew recipes one day. (I don't have enough time to brew more either.) Looking forward to reading more...

Don McNally said...

I feel so left out sometimes that I don't brew my own beer (since you, Ray and Devin do). Oh well.

Great to meet you at LS. Hope to see you in Detroit sometime.