Mobile Computing Interview

IBM provided me with an opportunity to interview David Isenhour Strategic Alliance Executive Mobile Computing.

My immediate questions were around the RIM Quickr and Connections clients. Price is probably under $50 per client and to be available from the IBM sofwtare entitlement sites.

The RIM Sametime client will still be free.

Joined by Andy and Jack we had a great conversation around what influenced our respective upgrades, device choices, business decisions around devices.

As I posted back in October, the iPhone at the time was forcing companies to upgrade because executive management had one and expected it to work with the office email, etc.

With Android support coming, the recent addition of encryption support for iPhones and a Traveler server that will run on Linux(someday perhaps?) the case for the future of mobile devices looks strong and IBM is working on making these things easier(within their capability) and faster to market, if they have the capability to do so.

If I learned one thing from Lotusphere this year it's that this last year or 2 will continue, IBM is producing pieces we all need and use at a much faster pace than nearly anyone else.

Domino.Doc Informal Roundtable

I participated in a discussion with other Business Partners who are working on migrating all of you running Domino.doc to Quickr, Filenet, ECM, Alfresco or Domino or anything else.

Jelan Heidelberg of IBM helped facilitate the meeting. I may have been the only BP at the table running the Lotus Quickr 8.5 latest beta, aside from Daniel Lieber and company.

Meeting some of the others brought out how international Doc is in usage, although I believe there are more Doc installations outside the US, our questions were all helpful to everyone.

One thing we asked about and will get is a specific forum for us to discuss various information with each other. Collaboration at it's best level. Competitors and partners sharing data, just the way it should be.

If you utilized Workflow in Domino.Doc or did some more advanced tuning to Domino.Doc, you may want to see how your app converts now. If you have some issues, some updates in Quickr 8.5 may help with this but that's all I can say as I am not a developer.

Daniel mentioned that Doc is really resilient, part of the reason many chose it to start, but your data is not. Although all looks good, the migration might fail due to a bad attachment. Resave the file and try again.

We are looking at a few new migration projects since January 1 and that is a great sign that customers recognize the value of their data and infrastructure of which Domino.Doc is a part.

Review of Day 1 of Lotusphere 2010

You probably saw some of this in Twitter or other sites, but here is my take on day !.

The opening session included a background of past lotus videos, ads, speakers, products etc.the last 20 years, hopefully someone inside IBM will publish that video for all of us. It was nice to see where we were and where we got to do today.

The violinist from last year and orchestra did not return, but we did have some excellent drum beaters reminiscent of the R5 era ads. Plus a pair of excellent violinists and a drummer with a great afro.

In his opening, Bob says "our partners will play a huge part" in the growth of IBM this year and so far, it has been a great 2010, for us, and hopefully for you as well.

Then the guest speaker was the one, the only, not sure who we can have to beat him next year, William Shatner. He was everything we always wanted of him and possibly more. Sadly he was not available for autographs or photos to the bloggers or anyone else(aside from probably those back stage).

Shatner said "remakes are great.. but only remind you of how great the original was". How true,
He spoke on ideas, Tekwar, the search for God/Spock an alien who thinks he's god and how collaboration makes the impossible possible and ultimately provides a better finished product.

Then back to Bob and Alistair and how we are Beating the competition.

We have the right tech, people, strategy but we needed a profile and Lotus Knows puts Lotus in front of everyone.

Announced 18,378 new notes since R8 came out.

One quote also was "Sometimes I almost feel sorry for our competition. We can't all be leaders."

The RIM CTO described their mission as "taking your desk to your hip" and it is true today and will only expand over time.

The Zurich COO mentioned fighting old terms, like software in a box, because after all when was last time it was shipped in a box.

There are 380,000 Panasonic cloud users going to LotusLive and NOT because of messaging but because of a broader view of collaboration and efficiency across regions and business lines.
Panasonic didn't come to IBM for mail but for a business idea how to grow their top line.

There also was a beautiful yellow Corvette brought in for the GM speaker. The Corvette is the model HZH which was a special run of yellow with black stinger designed for Hertz, the car rental company.

Much applause for Quickr calendar integrated with personal calendar when that was discussed and demonstrated.

Alfresco has more than 1,000 enterprise customers and all of which can now be integrated with Quickr, another partnership that IBM can leverage.

Notes 851 is twice as fast in the pickup than any other version in Lotus history and no wonder with DAOS, ID Vaulty, iPhone support, Traveler, Xpages and numerous other benefits. It was also the most expensive product yet.

An excellent line, "Customers have changed their Outlook on collaboration and Exchanged it for something better".

Announced another sidebar application, this one from Gist, it streams news and events in your social networks.

LotusLive will be expanding in Spring with 5gb and 1gb file store, options for BES, traveler and full notes client functionality coming soon too.

LotusLive Labs is available today and include slide library, event maps and more. See my next post on my interview around this topic.

Never mind buying new servers, just expand out to LotusLive, you will probably get more for doing so then you can imagine.

Ed expands on LotusLive on his blog.

"These printer people are pretty feisty." -- Alistair Renne to Xerox Partner on stage.

The big announcement was about Project Vulcan which is a vision of evolution for Lotus products.

The key points about it are it is easy to use and deploy, consistent UI across all platforms including mobile devices.

As you can see a busy session and that was just 2.5 hours.

More posts about my interviews with IBM executives coming soon. On to day 2.

I am Speedgeeking again this year

Rocky was kind enough to let me do it again and my topic this year is one which hopefully you all know and have done, but nonetheless gets little attention at times.

Topic: Web Administrator to the Rescue!

Watch and learn the basics of setting up Webadmin(you really can do it in 5 minutes) and why it is important to your daily life as an admin and how it will save your hide sometimes.

Speedgeeking is done on the Dolphin where we usually have lunch.
TUESDAY, 19 JAN 2010; and remember it is 6:15 - 7:30PM in the Dolphin Pacific Hall.

see you all there!

I will post how to do it, in case anyone needs it, after Tuesday.

Lotusphere Sunday Update

Checked in, got my packet, bag et al. So far sessions have been packed, but I am in the BD day for business partners. Competitive sessions of course and they are full.
Good news if you missed it, they will be available to BD attendees online soon, check the Quickr site.

My interview schedule includes lotuslive, Lotus Notes and Symphony, Strategy, UCC, Mobile and Portals. Plus various IBM mini keynotes and the like.

Only problem is some of these conflict with some sessions I really wanted to go to. But looking forward to all of them and of course tomorrow's OGS.

Between 2-2:30 and 3:30-5 Monday I am doing interviews so catch me earlier or later.
Skype is up usually.

Speednetworking for Partners tongiht, as well as Turtle's session and the what appears to be futuristic beach reception party coupled with the Tweetup. See you all there.

No Abstracts for me this year

But it works out in your favor.

Some were about how to enhance your support methods or build up your documentation for SOX or Disaster Planning or Business Continuity, I will most likely blog these at some point, with dbs to help get you started as well when applicable.

Other sessions submitted were based on articles and presentations I did this year which are of interest to a core group of (Quickr mostly) people, but maybe not the vast audience. Back to the white board for next year.

We had discussed on Twitter about doing an Un-Sphere for those who really wanted their sessions to be heard. I suggest when Ed and team open up Lotusphere Idol you try again, but otherwise blog it, pod cast it or slide share it. That is if you want to go through with it all, which as some pointed out is unlikely. I encourage you to be disciplined, create a deadline and just do it. It might make your session better for next year or the next LUG event coming soon. Or you may come up with a better idea for next time.

Some of us had wondered if we should do a 15 minute thing for people at Lotusphere but to be honest, aside from Lunch, not sure when that would ever work. And, in my case, I think I would prefer to just have more Blog posting material. But if this idea is of interest, to do some at lunch, sort of a lunch and learn thing, we can try it, I guess on the Monday at lunch and if it works do it each day?

Go see the people that are speaking, especially the new ones, they deserve your time and maybe, you might like them too and add them to your list of "must sees" for LS11. Many bloggers are speakers, so you probably have a fair idea already what to expect, but live is always more fun. Remember the speakers are other Lotus lovers, just like you, and for that reason, there really are no bad sessions at Lotusphere.

You always learn something from every session.