At THINK, Therefore I was

55+ kilometers I walked last week.

For a conference.

The IBM THINK conference.

In Las Vegas.

30,000 people at an IBM Lovefest for 5 days of 3,000+ sessions.

I can only imagine this is what Woodstock was like, awesome speakers and musicians, great amounts of love and imagination and when you left you were worn out beyond belief.

My bad knee needs a vacation.

I was busy almost every day with sessions I gave, sessions I attended and various hall way meetings with IBMers.

Some sessions ran, some in mythical rooms (lacking maps it was hard to find some rooms), others never ran for unknown reasons. I missed more sessions because of the app that synched incorrectly dates and times. I hope they fix that for next year, and give us access to it much earlier.

HCL

My discussions about the HCL deal were interesting, the ICS teams strongly believe this is going to be the best thing yet. The fact Quickr was even mentioned made me pause to think maybe they were really looking at ways to rebuild everything. But dreams aside, the deal will run its course and this year, well really 2019 (presuming R10 comes out in Q4 2018) will be the make or break it year. Barry, don’t worry, I will let you know our top 10 webadmin needs.

THINK Academy

The IBM THINK Academy was a great place to spend time. The life size BattleShip game, professional head shots, Watson, labs galore, Soft Skills sessions where I and many other IBM Champions gave our time to help the next generation and most importantly…food and drinks all day long.

I attended one lab and it was run by a developer advocate Erin McKean, her avatar is a pink robot, that was great, sadly it was the only one I got to be a part of at the show. But it was run quite well and easy tutorial to follow. For more details about it, see the lab on git hub here.

I had more people at my soft skills presentation on speaking, Monday, than my microservices session on Thursday. To be fair, the latter was near the end of the show and attendance was way down by Thursday. I will post about the Q/A from my Soft Skills talks because that was enlightening.

Notes and Domino

Yes we will finally get to use .xls instead of .123 for import and exports. And a few things we have been asking about for years but the HCL team is listening and if you have enough information on why you want/need something, they will seriously think about it. Go to Gabriella Davis's blog post which includes her presentation on what is new, I can't do it justice.

Sametime is NOT Watson Workspace (WW)

Yeah, that is obvious but not to everyone yet. Sametime is staying on premises. WW is web/cloud based.

Sametime was Mentioned but nothing pronounced other than some licensing changes and a possible return to "just chat". Rumors of all kinds of things from a streamlined full stack to a completely microserviced architecture were tossed around. Of course it was dwarfed by the WW information. The new shiny in everyone's eyes. Helps it has Zoom built into it and its infancy is growing so stay tuned.

Connections

Dwarfed by the HCL stuff, Connections had sessions and I went to the troubleshooting one from Roberto and Sharon. Great stuff if you need to dig in deep. Grid looks good but I don't spend much of my time on Connections, although I will be in 2018.

Before I forget , I send my apologies to Heather Graham for cornering her about some things, but knowing each other for 10+ years it happens that some frustrations some with the discussion.

Thank Yous

Thank you to all the IBM Champions that I met for the first time and the usual cast of characters that I call my friends for helping me out or just talking through ideas or just spending time together which in some cases has been years apart.

Huge thank you to Alan Hamilton and Libby Ingrassia and their staff of IBM Champion wranglers. We are not an easy group to please and can be rather vocal when we want to be and they handled all of us quite well. They also supplied us with swag of the best kind and even got the front row tickets fort the concerts for everyone. They also helped get us some speaking options and other meetings of the secret kind so for all they do, thank you!

Thanks also to the team in THINK Academy that engaged us and let us have some fun in their areas to help people who wanted something other than tech details.

Parties
A great shout out goes to Ephox for the never miss Aussie Party, the many Business Partners or Vendors that invited me and everyone to imbibe and enjoy ourselves. For the ones I missed, or could not connect with, my apologies, I tried, but there are always plans and misses at the shows. There are also serendipity occurrences you can only put down to being at the right place at the right moment in time.

Skateboards

Thank you to IBM for the speaker gift certificate for the Logo and Book store. But $40 was not enough to get the skateboard. Libby, can we get IBM Champion ones? J

Next Year

Next year in San Francisco, in February is the next time this will happen, will see what the future brings before I commit to do this again.

A Sad Note

Lastly, I may not have been as much fun this year as usual. I found out on Monday that my best friend’s father passed away and I could not be there for him in Florida, or home in Israel for the burial. No doubt this influenced my time at the show and the nightly activities. RIP, BDE Rabbi, as I always called him even after I was old enough to call him by his first name.

As I head home finally, been away for 12 days, and I write this at 10,000 feet above the ocean I wonder if anything I saw will keep me busy for another 20 years like Domino has for so long. I don’t know. Time will tell. Then again I doubt Ray Ozzie thought Notes and Domino would still be alive.

Where's Keith? Trip plans and my sessions at IBM Think

Where's Keith between March 15th and March 26th? 

IBM Think from Sunday the 18th thru Thursday the 22nd I will be at IBM Think.

Send me messages on Social Media, Twitter(@lotusevangelist) is preferable or Watson Workspace, but any one of numerous ways will work, if you want to meet me or have business to discuss with me like jobs, projects, training requests, competitive pitches coaching.

I will be flying to LAX via CDG on Wen the 14th Air France 10:20am if any of my European friends are on that very, very long flight let me know.

Hopping a flight from LAX to Vegas Saturday night because as you will see below I have a busy morning.

I will be speaking or guiding discussions as follows:

Sun, 18-Mar

10:35 AM - 10:55 AM 

9239A How to Engage More Customers and Potential Clients While at Think

MGM Grand Conference Center, Level 1 - Room 103

10:55 AM - 11:15 AM

9240A Birds of a Feather/Roundtable: Promoting IBM and Vanquishing the Competition

MGM Grand Conference Center, Level 1 - Room 103

Mon, 19-Mar
3:00 PM - 3:40 PM
Hone Your Communication Skills - Powerpoint and Presentation Skills, Intro to Body Language Workshop
At the Think Academy, located in Mandalay Bay, 2nd floor, Shoreline Ballroom

Wen, 21-Mar
12:30 PM -1:10 PM
Hosting a Champion Chat: So You Want to be an IBM Champion
Champion Corner Bayside D

Thu, 22-Mar

10:30 AM - 11:10 AM

2858A I'm a Lego Man Living in a Duplo World

Mandalay Bay South, Level 2 - Lagoon B

1:00 PM - 1:40 PM
Repeat Session: Hone Your Communication Skills - Powerpoint and Presentation Skills, Intro to Body Language Workshop
At the Think Academy, located in Mandalay Bay, 2nd floor, Shoreline Ballroom

Beyond that I would say look for me in my Champion gear but there will be over 200 IBM Champions walking around.

I will be taking the late flight to JFK on Thursday night and then a Sunday afternoon back to Israel direct from JFK should anyone be flying my way.

My First Impact Conference

As a long time Lotusphere person, I am reminded of Bruce Springsteen after he played, and won,  the Academy Award in 1994 for his song the Streets of Philadelphia and said this "And thank you all for inviting me to your party."

I came out to Impact not sure what to expect. At times Websphere is my friend and at times a hard companion, but I found a great community of people here so far that rival my friends in the Lotus/ICS world.

My journey to Impact 2013 held in Las Vegas at the Venetian hotel, started at 5:00am Sunday morning. Head over to the airport and got through security just in time to board my flight that left at 7:30 am  and on time I might add. We landed in Dallas on time, waited about half an hour and filled up with a few people, but most of the flight was empty. I guess everyone was staying in Dallas. We got to Las Vegas on time, my bag was the fifth one off the plane. Off I go to catch a shuttle and....my first delay. We waited almost 45 minutes for a shuttle to take us to the hotel and then it took about 30 minutes. Those of us hanging out already knew we were going the right place because Lotusphere backpacks, IBM paraphernalia was attached to each of us.

Obviously, I did not get that "I'm home" feeling, as I do when I walk into the Dolphin hotel in Orlando. My bewilderment at where things are and how to get there reminds me just how hard Connect must be for someone new to the conference. The Venetian is a beautiful hotel and all I can say is WOW! The Dolphin and Swan rooms have nothing next to the Venetian hotel! Vegas really knows how to take care of people. Once you get your bearings, you should be fine.

By the time I got registered and charged some devices, I missed lunch and most of BP day. Picked up my badge, business partners have blue pouches, and my Champion ribbon. Off I went to find where we were making a commercial shoot with the other 34 IBM Websphere Champions coming to the conference. What seems like a simple thing, repeat your line 3-4 times, turns into a lesson in elocution and stage voices. I think the Redbook video I did over the summer was easier, because it was less formal. Either way, I look forward to seeing how we all come out and hope you enjoy the videos too at some point once we can post them.

After the shoot, I went to listen to a session on leveraging IBM Worklight for your mobile needs. More on Worklight over the week. We have a break, when I went to call home and then down to the conference floor for the BP reception and first look at the exhibition hall. From the diagram it looks huge and it is. Inside the hall is "The Social Playground", in the back, where I will spend some time doing smaller talks and answering questions about being a Champion. I ran into a few old friends, met some new ones and joined the GWC, the Global Websphere Community, The GWC had a remote control car field setup and a race car sitting by their area. 

I am amazed at how many people there are here and the number of tracks and sessions. I thought Connect was over filled, this makes that look like kids play. There are over 40 sessions running concurrently at some points! It would take weeks to catch up to every session you missed. My guess is they can't really do this as a 2 week conference, but seriously, how do people get anything out of this when they are so overwhelmed with options. And great options usually too!

Looking forward to Monday, Forest Whitaker, a great actor and film maker, is the guest, THEY TELL PEOPLE in advance at IMPACT who is the speaker. Lotusphere and Connect we have had to wait to see who we run into in the Dolphin Rotunda due to the secrecy. Which actually to me is better due to the various betting and anticipation that we all work on up to the moment they take the stage.

Look for more tweets, posts and details over the next few days but I can feel the love of other Champions. Off I go to find the general populace and where they hang out instead of ESPN, Kimono's or the Dolphin bar.

PS - There is a contest on for everyone to take a picture with an IBM Champion and post them with a #ibmchamp if you want to find me, follow me on Twitter and 4Square as @lotusevangelist.