Our day was a beautiful day in South Florida for the event, good thing given we were golfing afterwards.
What? Golfing? At an LCTY event? Yes we did.
Call it LGWY, Lotusphere Golfs With You.
Grande Oaks is the site of the movie Caddyshack and they have some great fun with it throughout the building.
We had over 40 people registered, about 30 came out to listen to us and network. I met some people I haven't seen in years and others who knew me from their readings of my posts and other past events.Just one picture of some of the attendees:
Started the day with fellow South Floridian, Steve Zahavi(IBM Business Unit Executive, General Business & Channels, North America) who keynoted and later presented on Lotus Connections and Social Networking for the Enterprise. Great stuff and we are looking at a Proof of Technology possibly in July on Connections. So if interested let me know so we can encourage IBM to do the event.
If you can't wait, let me know as well and we can set you up in a few minutes to go enjoy Lotus Connections yourself, even if you are not in Florida or the US.
Mike Behar (IBM Business Unit Executive, Software Group)was next with a discussion around all things LotusLive and Cloud Computing. Unfortunately our client, the first to sign on to LotusLive in Florida could not make it, but others in the audience have been looking at this as well.
Following Mike was Joel Gomez (IBM Integration Solution Architect) to discuss DataPower an SOA appliance(yes, it comes in YELLOW!) from the Websphere team on how to utilize your data for Portal and Domino, among other great benefits of this product. We have customers interested in this and maybe it will work for you as well. Follow the link to read more about it, then if you have more questions let me know.
Kim Artlip (IBM WW Sales Executive for Lotus Sametime and UC²) came down from Tampa, presented an excellent "Day in the Life of" a Sametime/UC² person. Everyone wanted to hear more about this subject, if you ever need Sametime help or advice get a hold of Kim, your boss will thank you.
One of our Sponsors was Research in Motion who sent Charles Schultz (RIM Software Architect, Enterprise Partner Solutions) from the Ft. Lauderdale office. Did you know the development work on the Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections clients is done down here? Well now you do. Charles also gave away a new Blackberry Device to one lucky winner.
By the time we finished, around 12:45 everyone was itching to go play a round of golf. Luckily the weather held out, no rain, some clouds, a bit of wind and a lot of fun for everyone.
Sponsors also provided some great items which we gave out:
- Netbook bag from GUT Cases
- Plantronics Headset from our Partner Plantronics
- Pen/pencil set from IBM
- Skype Phone from ExtraComm
- Ping Putter from our Hardware Partner Flagship Solutions Group
- Pair of Golf shoes from our Nike Golf Distributor
Thanks again to all the IBM team that helped us, Cathy, Becky, Jamie, Tracy, Larry(on Vacation and he came out for the event), all the speakers, Bob Currie SAS CEO, the entire staff at Grande Oaks especially Barrie and Marie, but most importantly all the customers who came out for the event.
Hope to see you all, and more, next year at the event. I think we have found an excellent place.
Pictures will be posted shortly and I will include a link when they are ready.
PS - Hold July 14th open for the next SLUG (Southeast Lotus User Group) meeting
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