February 6 2011 Sunday

Some LS11 highlights for me

I try to stay away from the "river of drivel" posts and this may turn into one....I also refuse to turn this into a "OGS sucked post" (it did, but you can read that elsewhere)....

Anyway, LS11 is over and here are the things that stuck with me:

1) Mary Beth Raven winning the PL Blogger of the Year. The first #NerdGirl and a very well deserved recipient. Mary Beth and Ed are both now winners. IBM take note on "why" they constantly rate as top read bloggers. Period.

2) I guess I am now a #NerdGirl. I was press ganged asked to be part of the panel at the very last minute. Being a loud, obstinate, SoB man we all need to look at how and what  we do affects those around us. Hopefully I didn't do too much damage to the male sex with my participation.

3) Lisa Duke. For those not at Lotusphere IDOL, The host, Ed Brill,  had a bit of time to kill and asked the audience if anyone would like to present for 5 minutes. No prep. Just "go!". Lisa's hand went up so fast she nearly took my head off. I think Ed was expecting to have to shame someone into doing it, so I think he was just as surprised as everyone else when Lisa raced up there. Needless to say she did a splendid job of talking "LUG's". Also congrats to everyone else who had "prep time"  and to Mark Myers for winning. I would be more than willing to present with any of the participants. I must admit that it looked staged to me as Lisa did such a good job. Both she and Ed have told me it was not.

4) Ask the Product Managers. Ed again MC'd this session. And boy does he know how to diffuse an unexploded bomb < hat tip >. All 25+ gave an intro and also gave some "news". This "news" pretty much blew the explosive air out of the room and the session went on to be one of the most open and enjoyable sessions I attended. Again, they "should" really read my blog post too see what stuff that was left out due to time.

5) Live TWiL. Much hilarity was had. Not sure if this will come across in the actual recording but time will tell. Stuart tried to corral the panel and audience and yet we still went over 60 minutes! Oh and if you've been following twitter, yes, we now have the recording.

6) The Xpages book sell-out. Wow. Simply wow. This is the "shot heard around the world Lotus Domino style". There's already talk of the next book as well. This is the biggest selling IBM Press book in six years. We need this. We need more of this. Now hopefully Domino admin will join Xpages, Sametime and QuickrD.

7) The students. A truly brilliant idea from the folks at GBS. Great stuff.

8) Friends old and new. In no particular order, Stuart, Sharon Bellamy, Mike McGarel, Mitch, Ed, Mary Beth, Sean Poulley, Theo, Kat, The Turtles, "The' Turtle, Jan Kenney, Mat (one "t") Newman, Paul Withers, Mark Myers, Keith Brooks, Vowe, Kevin Mort, Rich Greaves, Tony Mcphail, Mark Bennet and the hundreds of others I'm not recalling due to lack of sleep.

9) Everyone who stopped me and said they'd listened to This Week In Lotus.

10) The subset of (9) who said they'd liked TwiL ;)

11) IBM's Watson. Basically it should have been billed "Meat Bags vs HAL". This stuff is equal parts  impressive and scary. At least we know IBM and not MS nor Google will eventually rule over us all. There's a reason to stay an IBM BP if I needed one ;)
Darren Duke   |   February 6 2011 02:10:35 PM   |    ls11    |  
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1 - Lisa Duke    http://www.simplified-tech.com    02/06/2011 4:38:50 PM

"There's a reason to stay an IBM BP if I needed one ;) "

Amen. I'm so glad we started selling IBM hardware last year. Hopefully our robot overlords will look kindly on us because of this decision. As I said on Twitter:

"_ @ibmwatson friendly reminder for when you become self aware - humanity makes a good battery. No need to go all SkyNet on our asses."

In all seriousness, IBM did a lot right at Lotusphere this year. Hopefully STS did, too.