Photos later due to technical difficulties Chris Miller on stage opening up IamLUG we got tired of everyone internationally having these cool conferences so we brought one here. Why August in St. Louis. – It’s cheap and I live here (Chris) Free Wifi and Free Coffee all day! 170 delegates from the US and 5 others Booty Sweat making an on screen appearance at the OGS (thanks to @greyhawk68) Mary Beth Raven wins the IamLUG YouTube context with “I am a sock puppet” can’t wait to see that later. Kevin Cavanaugh, VP Messaging & Collaboration now being introduced for the keynote, and promises some surprises. Kevin is talking about the Lotus portfolio in the market place, leading off with the analysts recent positive press coverage of Lotus Notes “Microsoft has its Sharepoint-based offering, but this does not yet offer the feature and level of integration displayed by Lotus Connections” Butler Connections is the fastest selling software ever in IBM Software Group “Symphony has the full engineering excellence – reliability, usability, support and maintenance – the we expect of any enterprise product, especially from IBM” Bloor Kevin – “average customer wastes $200.00 per user buying Microsoft Office” we are serious about Symphony and will continue to develop it in the market place. “Sametime presence is the ancho technology that brings IBM’s collaboration and communications components together” Gartner 2009 Marketscope for Instant Messaging Look at what [IBM] is doing with Quickr. It is extremely extensible and gives organizations a lot of opportunity to customize applications, to build new functionality… ” Nemertes “This is a big convenience for Lotus Notes users, who will find value in being able to access popular business tools without leaving the Notes app. More then 43 million professionals connect on LinkedIN while TeipIt organizes trip details, along with directions and weather forcasts in to a master itinerary” eWEEK Every time we announce one of these we get calls from five other companies looking to integrate with Notes, “IZBM is changing the conversation about collaboration and social software. IBM Lotus will be doing this on several levels: extended collaboration, the value the openness brings to the collabroation equation and the importance of using collaboration to optimize talent” Hurwitz Two years running of IBM beating the completion at Enterprise 2.0 Connections over Sharepoint in 2008 Lotus Live over Google in 2008 Kevin is talking about the cloud and while he says Lotus will go toe to toe with anyone on cloud based e-mail it is about changing the model and enabling external collaboration, customers running their Domino environments efficiently are typically at a lower cost per user then google charges. In CRN Magazine Lotus Notes 8.5 defeated Microsoft Exchange 2010 in a competitive product review (originally was a bake off between Notes 8.5 and Exchange 2007 results were to lopsidedd so CRN switched to Exchange 2010 even though it did not ship yet) Kevin is now introducing a new advertising campaign with a minimum 18 month commitment showing a picture of a cab with the tagline “Lotus knows which route the cab should be taking to the airport” Big applause for the Lotus Marketing campaign Kevin is showing. Community input in to Lotus Knows “x” Do you know Lotus? for the marketing campaign look for more information in mid August to participate. Kevin is wrapping up, we are going to work very hard over the next 18-24 months to change the perception of Lotus. Chris Miller coming back up on stage now 175 people watching the stream live of the OGS Paul Steel Manager of Technical Services for the Global Strategic Accounts Team at Research In Motion is now coming up on stage (RIM is platinum sponsor of IamLUG) RIM and IBM working closely together, at Lotusphere and WES IBM/RIM announced a close partnership allowing Lotus technology to be available quickly. BES certified for 8.5 with in 10 days of it shipping, expect to see that again with 8.5.1. Extending Connections, Quickr, Sametime and Symphony down to the Blackberry device. Paul is now getting ready to give away a Blackberry Device, looking for the oldest blackberry device in the room looks like an 8900 is the winner. The 8900 owner is now getting any model they want free from RIM. Nice opening giveaway. That wraps ups the OGS off to find coffee