LCTY event in Miami, Palm Beach/Boca Raton

While it has taken some time, I am now happy to say our LCTY site is now live.
You can find it here, www.lctyflorida.com.

Florida, the home of Lotusphere, where it all starts for many of us each year, is also where LCTY's (for the moment) stop. On our site you can get links to all of the Florida LCTY events, not just the 2 we are running.

June 10 is the last date on the IBM public site, for North America and that is our event in Boca Raton.

So just how does one close an LCTY event? An excellent question.

We were thinking about closing the 1st LotusLive deal in Florida at it, too late, we did it already.

Maybe a Domino.doc to Quickr migration announcement, again, already got it.

Maybe we can find an old Domino customer to bring them to 8.5.1, nope did it already, although there might be an R4 server still in South Florida.

Possibly the 1st IBM Cloud Computing deal for a Websphere/DB2 project? hmmmm, maybe.

But we look forward to meeting some new people, hearing from our speakers like a yet unconfirmed IBM executive, a great chance to hear about mobility and Lotus software clients from RIM our sponsor of the events, if we have enough interest for a technical session or 2 I will probably present as well.

Thanks go to the IBM teams who are being so helpful and assisting us with logistics as well as nailing down the IBM executive.

So if you happen to be on vacation or visiting a client or maybe you are a Microsoft person who reads my blog, come on down and introduce yourself. There are secret meetings/sessions as well, but you have to register to get notification of these.

We do ask everyone register so we can nail down the right size room, food and perhaps other goodies.

So go to lctyflorida.com and register for either Miami, June 9 or Boca Raton, June 10.

LCTY Tampa, Florida June 9th

If you are in the neighborhood and want to drop in to listen, meet with me or learn about mobilizing your applications(one of the topics I will be discussing) let me know so I can plan my day accordingly.

Or better yet let other people know and come visit as a group.

From the Flyer:

The best of IBM Lotusphere 2009 is coming to Tampa,to help you take collaboration to the next level. Here's a second chance to find out how the latest collaboration tools and technologies can help you achieve better business outcomes.

Get sneak previews and the latest information on Software Analytical Solutions and IBM Software and solutions. And attend key sessions on:

*Messaging and Collaboration
*Social Networking
*Going Paperless
*Mobile Options
*and more...

We cordially invite you to join us for our interactive sessions. During this time you will be able to ask questions while interacting with other local executives. This will be a great time to hear the latest and greatest solutions from IBM while gaining insight into how other local companies are moving forward with collaboration.

This is a no-charge event.

Continental breakfast and lunch will be served.

Tuesday June 9, 2009
Registration: 8:30am
Start Time: 9:00am
End Time: 1:00pm

IBM Tampa Office, Rm: 539
3031 North Rocky Point Dr.
Tampa, FL 33607

RSVP and questions: email or IM me or Mike Davis at: mdavis@sasgroup-us.com

Presenting Lotus Connections and dead silence

Today was the LCTY Miami event and for those who have not seen it yet, it covers the main points of Sametime, Quickr, Lotus Notes & Domino, Lotus Forms, Portal and Connections.
The IBMers in attendance and presenting were very helpful and Brian did a great job of demoing some items I could not(especially around Sametime UC).
Lotus911 was the sponsor and Jeff Kridder, Lotus911 COO, tagged me to present 3 sessions, Sametime, Quickr, Connections.

We had 20+ people attend and some lively discussion especially around MAC support.

In an interesting display of knowledge, when Jeff or I asked about Connections we got nothing. No one had seen or heard of it, or even looked into it.

A strange insight to what included 5 of the top companies based in South Florida.

What are they thinking about? How could we help them and let them know more? Perhaps I had failed in some way to keep people updated on developments at Lotus. As it turns out few had attended Lotusphere 2008 which also explains quite a bit.

Those of us NOT in a corporate setting can forget just how focused one can be when involved in the day to day of a business.

However more telling was that in a mix of admins, developers and business line or management no one had even tried to play with it or create a skunk works project.
What ever happenned to wanting to see what's new? Or having test labs for creative play time?
Maybe Google gets this one right, people should spend some part of their day on something not related to their primary task and see what comes from it.

I still get excited by new code, even if I can't always get it or load it immediately.

When did everyone else stop getting excited by this?

Lotusphere Comes to You - Miami and Tampa

Not likely to get any hits on this aside from the few in Florida but it needs to get out.
April 29th is Miami and May 6th in tampa.
Lotus911 guys stole it from me(actually IBM never gave me a chance). In truth with the holiday coming I owuld never have been able to do it properly so it is for the best.
Maybe next year.
Want to see us top 50 people at the events.
Miami is at the IBM Office on Blue Lagoon by Miami Airport.
You can register and find out more from the Lotus website for LCTY.
See you there, for more information email me or IM me on the Bleedyellow.com Sametime server.