UPDATE 2/2/15 : 5:03PM EST - Super doh! Forgot to mention the Domino4Wine (hence the sudo)...

I was fully expecting to write a "what a train wreck" review before I went. I was not expecting to say I had a metric shit ton of fun. But I did. And based on other posts I've perused it seems almost everyone else did. There are far more eloquent reviews elsewhere, so this will be bare bones.

First the "ups", in no particular order:

• Much, much improved OGS. Flow, demos, people who care.....And a quintet, who doesn't like quintets?
• It doesn't seem to matter how many people don't turn up every year, BALD still rocks with people new and old
• Verse, and yes, a feature actually made me moist (more in a post on that later)
• No theme park. Hardly ever went anyway. Gave more time to "proper" socializing
• The 3rd (or 4th??) annual day-after-ConnectED-sphere breakfast. If you ever get a chance to have breakfast with any of these, do it : Lisa Duke, Julian Woodward, Ben Poole, Mat Newman, Amanda Bauman and Tony Holder. A truly mind bending experience, and not for the faint of heart
• No law enforcement was called as we left the Dolphin rotunda at 4AM on Thursday AM
• Math(s) during the CGS. Who doesn't like math(s)?
• Size does matter. Smaller *is* better
• Coming soon (or not), move the Domino view indexes out of the NSF....also called NIF something or other
• They are taking Domino security seriously again
• The Penumbra Dinner and Lisa getting her "captain hat" to go with "the Duke family yacht"
• Domino4Wine from the great folks at Prominic....run DDE and Admin on OSX and/Linux. See more here http://vimeo.com/117342115

Now the "downs"

• I'd guess there were more "technical" sessions than last year, but the admin in me was still left yearning. If you're into Xpages, then you are A-OK. Anything else, the outlook was a tad glum. There was lots of Verse, but not really a lot of *actual* Verse. If IBM wanted to leave me gagging for more, it worked. I really shouldn't have had to sit through three or four near identical sessions to figure this out
• Same price, less days
• New hotel price was $70 per night more expensive. 25% more expensive
• If you know the "Carry On..." films/movies, you'll know what I mean when I say the conference had a bit of that kind of feel to it. That maybe an "up" though, so who knows
• Tickets for booze, although IBM did seem to succumb to "social shame" and reverse that decision, no doubt to Mark Roden's dismay....he had at least 20+ tickets. Again, could technically be an "up"
• The required BlueMix slide in pretty much every presentation I sat through. Still a bit hazy on what BlueMix is
• Beyond the Everyday still makes me think of that movie with Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise, neither of whom presented
• The sheer amount of time between sessions....some were 45-60 minutes apart

Now for the synopsis....

To me, it doesn't matter what you call it, but I think it would matter where you hold it. Vegas? Nah, not really me. Florida-sphere for me given the chance.

I do think Verse has some legs if IBM can get it out soon with features that make it killer. There is one feature I really, really like but it won't be there until Verse 1+. I am worried about seeing the words "IBM" and "freemium" in a sentence. They have divested themselves of any business deemed a "commodity", so they don't have the skills and I doubt they'll have the stomach for consumer long term. If it's just to garner press, then yeah....otherwise color me nonplussed. Verse on-prem? My guess is 6-12 months behind what they are aiming for if they are trying to make it "simple", although I am getting that "Quickr feeling" about this, you know, the one where the rug gets pulled out from under you.....yeah, that one.

I was pleasantly surprised that IBM didn't just completely paper over the elephant in the CGS room by indicating that the decision for next year had not been made (that's what I heard all week by the way). Subsequent "rumor" has it that we may not hear until May-ish.

Finally, IBM needs to be very careful with the loyal (?) folks still using their stuff on-prem. They need to get 9.0.2 out or roll out the 9.0.2 features in fix packs or other avenues. If 9.0.2 doesn't ship until Q4-2015 then it will be two-ish years since 9.0.1. That's just bad form and sends the wrong message. IBM must multi-task effectively, for it is they who have decided to go multi-client.

So there you have it. Maybe the best ConnectED-sphere yet. I'm still contemplating how much of that is down to the attendees and how much is down to IBM.