For the third year following the Lotusphere Closing General Session a group of people headed over to the Fantasia Garden Mini Golf Course for the “Blogger Open”.  This year we had 60 golfers out on the course, and it would appear that Disney is willing to have us back again next year again.

Big thanks to the event sponsors

Special thanks to GSX for providing the grand prize, and to  Research in Motion, the London Developer Co-op, HADSL, and the IdoNotes Podcast for providing additional prizes.  Congratulations to  Mike McGarel for his excellent performance in Lotusphere Idol, and for once again taking on the challenge of designing and building the Blogger Open website (done in XPages of course).   Also thanks to Joe Hoetzl for the blogger open graphics.

Congratulations to all the winners (and losers since they got prizes to) and thanks to everyone who showed up to play and have a good time.

Thanks to Warren Elsmore for taking some pictures and letting me use his camera to take others.

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If not before see you all again next year in Orlando, and put the 4th annual Blogger Open on your calendar for January 19, 2012.

Wednesday morning and once again I made it to a 7 AM BOF, this time it was Customizing Lotus Connections, facilitated by Clayton Coleman, and Mac Guidera.  Another impressive turnout for a 7 AM session, and more good conversation about Lotus Connections.

Next up was the final keynote session of Lotusphere 2011 “The Future of Social Business” (live blog of The Future of Social Business). This was a terrific session, especially Dr. Andrew McAfee’s portion.  If you missed it, it’s worht taking a few minutes to watch, Dr. McAfee comes on about 2 minutes in.

Following the keynote, in another Lotusphere first for me it was time to go “off campus” for a bit, I never knew before that IBM has a briefing center in Epcot Center, where I had the pleasure of spending a few hours on Wednesday.  The briefing center is about 10 feet from here

They also have a “Smarter Data Center” with used to run some of their exhibits in Epcot which I was taken on a tour of during the visit.

Back “on campus” where I finally found some time to spend in the Meet the Developers, and User Experience labs, as well as finally making it down to the Vendor Showcase before they all packed up and went home.

Before heading off to Universal there was time for another Birds of Feather session, this one facilitated by Luis Benitez, the topic was Lotus Connections: Lessons Learned from the Field.  The session had a standing room only crowd (remember this was an hour before Universal), and was a terrific discussion on deploying Lotus Connections and driving adoption.  Sacha Chua was in attendance and sketched notes which you can see here.

At the same time as this session the live edition of This Week in Lotus was recording a few doors down the hall, I managed to get in there for a few minutes as well, and somehow wound up on the panel for the last few minutes as well.  If you haven’t yet listen to this episode, and others, Stuart and Darren somehow find the time to deliver a new episode every Friday, give them a listen.

Finally time to head off to Universal Islands of Adventure for some fun, The Incredible Hulk roller coaster is one of my favorites (though 4 times was a bit much), and while I am not a Harry Potter fan I did make it on to the Forbidden Journey ride, great ride, but I prefer the plain old roller coasters not the ones that include all the 3D effects.

Thanks to GBS for adding a little extra fun to the evening, I was a finalist in their $10,000 drawing, though I didn’t win.

Back to Disney, another fun evening at Kimonos, and a precious few hours of sleep before the final day of Lotusphere 2011.

An early start Tuesday for a 7 AM BOF, Extending Lotus Connections, facilitated by Mac Guidera, and David Brooks, in what became a theme for the week an excellent crowd for a 7 AM BOF at least 25 people in the room.  It was great to see both a good turnout and a lively discussion between customers and business partners about API’s in Connections, how they are being used, what is new in 3.0, and what else is still needed in future versions.

Following the BOF it was back to the “bloggers den” where I spent a good part of the morning.  First for the Tuesday keynote “Becoming a Social Business” (Live Blog of Becoming a Social Business).  I really didn’t know what to expect from this keynote going in, it turned out to be an excellent session.  See the live blog for the full write up, and click the pictures below to see them in more detail.

Following the keynote, was the LotusLive Cloud Collaboration Strategy Session (Live Blog of LotusLive Collaboration Strategy), another good session reviewing LotusLive changes in 2010, plans for 2011, and a few customer stories. See the live blog for the full write up, and click the pictures below to see them in more detail.

Still saying in the same seat in the same room (at least it was a comfortable seat) the Lotus Mobile Strategy Session was up next (Live Blog The Lotus Mobile Strategy).  If you walked away with nothing else this year (there was a lot you should have walked away with) the message that IBM gets mobile, is committed to expanding Traveler, and building out other device specific apps for Mobile is a clear takeaway.  Very interesting that throughout the session clear commitment to  Apple, Android, Nokia and RIM, not a single mention of Windows Mobile, not even when discussing the current version of Traveler that does support Windows Mobile, not a big deal from my perspective, I wonder what others thing.  See the live blog for the full write up, and click the pictures below to see them in more detail.

After spending almost the entire morning in the same room, it was time to move on, a quick lunch and then a meeting with the Global Customer Partnership Council (GCPC).  As a council we meet throughout the year, but Lotusphere provides one of the two opportunities we have each year to meet in person.  It was too bad that this overlapped with Lotusphere Idol, which I would have really liked to see.

Following the GCPC it was back upstairs to my seat where I spent the morning for the Application Development Strategy Session (Live Blog Application Development Strategy).  I was a little surprised that attendance in the room seemed light for this session, though it might have been that most of the developers were off in xPages sessions at the time.  The energy was certainly there around xPages, so I am guess conflicting sessions and the late afternoon time slot were the reasons for the lower attendance.

Following the App Dev session I spent an hour in the Innovations Labs, this is definitely one of the jewels of Lotusphere, I always put aside time to spend in the Innovations Labs where you can see projects from IBM research and specifically research from the IBM Center for Social Software.  A lot of this work takes place behind the scenes throughout the year, and this is one of the few opportunities to see some of these projects in public, and remember some of todays research projects are tomorrows products and features.  I hope to follow up later on with posts on a couple of the projects I saw in the labs in detail.

Still plenty left to go on Tuesday, a quick stop at the Penumbra Ice Cream social for a quick milkshake, thanks to Penumbra I needed that to get me through Speedgeeking which was next on my list.

I had never been to Speedgeeking at Lotusphere before, something always seemed to conflict with it on my schedule. To solve that problem I volunteered to speak at Speedgeeking, and it worked I finally made it.  I did a 5 minute pitch on Managed Replicas in 8.5.2, I will get my slides posted soon.  Fun event, new group to give your “session” to every 5 minutes, very informal, and a lot of fun, glad I volunteered to participate.

From there the day wrapped up with Dinner, the Australia Party at Jellyrolls (if anyone asks the Australians know how to party), a visit to Kimonos, and eventually a (very) little sleep before doing it all again on Wednesday.

Some completely random thoughts in no particular order

1. The WiFi held up nicely this year, vast improvement over previous years

2. My first and only cup of coffee the entire week was on Thursday morning – don’t know how or why but I am not a Starbucks fan and the cup I had was terrible so just as well

3. Warren Elsmore gets extra geek points no not for a Lego model of the Dolphin Hotel, but for loading a custom firmware on his camera

4. For the first time in 7 Lotusphere I made it to the Vendor Showcase Monday night for the reception

5. It was really nice to walk around not surrounded by piles of snow for a week

6. Still impossible to do everything at Lotusphere, sessions I wanted to see, friends I wanted to see present, people I wanted to spend more time with.. no regrets though, I did what I could in the time I had.

7. No football on Sunday I really like this setup but based on next years dates, looks like it will be either Wild Card or Divisional playoff games on Sunday

8. They changed the vendor for Kosher meals this year, I enjoyed the meals much more this year then in the past.

9. Mat Newman – life of the party, delivered one of the most talked about sessions of the week, walked away with a couple of awards for ISW (if you haven’t yet check out Wildfire on OpenNTF), you can say he had a good week, and added a lot of fun to my week.

10. Riding the Hulk 4 times in 2 hours is a bit much, the first three were fine, the fourth one took me a little time to recover from.

11. Carrying a camera at all times is a guarantee of capturing great memories from the week – it’s a trade off I leave the DSLR in the room sacrificing quality, but using the point and shoot which is easier to carry and use all the time.

12. More on photography – for a second year in a row I was good at not only taking pictures, but getting in to pictures myself as well, nice to come of of pics taken with my friends, not just of them.

13. I was at Kimonos at closing 3 nights…. I never thought I would say this but I might need to learn from Paul how to have an early night

14. 500 Students at the OGS good… shame they were bored… the rest of their day was good though (More on this in another post)

14. OGS trending on Twitter…. way cool

15. Of all the events I have attended, Lotusphere remains the most unique, and the only one I have seen that evokes such passion from it’s attendees

16. I still like the older (2009 and prior) badge holders better, the velcro closed badges of the last 2 years are prone to opening, and itch the back of your neck (fortunately I was prepared with a Curious George bandaid to keep it shut, and prevent the itching

17. The UKLUG guys know how to throw a party

18. The Australians really know how to throw a party (see number 9)

19. Brian Cheng rocks demos! (and is an all around good guy)

20. Not carrying a laptop for most of Lotusphere made the week so much easier… Smartphones and Tablets FTW!

Jumpstart day was a little different for me this year then in past years.  I generally try to do something different on Jumpstart day, attend a session out of my area of expertise, in the past that has generally meant finding a Development session to get through, this year that didn’t happen, I had a busy day that left little time for sessions.  The day went something like this

Business Development Day OGS: This was a first for me to attend, as a customer an opportunity for me to hear a slightly different angle on the Lotus Strategy. Much like the OGS on Monday this session ran a bit long, but the panel they brought up on stage was a little more engaging than the ones on Monday morning.  Overall good experience to sit through, not sure I would invest the time again next year.

JMP206: How I Went Beyond the Hype, Narcissism, and Trendiness to Become a Social Software Super Hero:  Bruce promised “something different” and he and Chris Martin delivered.  A 2 hour session on how to effectively use Social Media with some thoughts of their own, and videos of others with in and very importantly from outside of the Lotus Community.  Two of my favorite slides from the week came in this session:

Sunday afternoon shifted from sessions to other events.  First Lunch, presentations, and informal networking with the IBM Accelerated Value Program (formerly Premium Support) team and other Accelerated Value customers.  Followed by a reception and meeting for LotusLive design partners.

This took me to the Lotusphere opening reception, which I still have not quite figured out what the theme was but involved these people (or were they props, decorations? really not sure)

This is a real person, there were a bunch of these around he would freeze and appear to be a statue, and start moving in time to freak out the closest person

Cupcake anyone?

And finally the strangest one of all

Nothing like being stopped for a conversation with a head sticking out of a table, and she stopped whoever she could for a conversation.

There were a lot of other people doing all kinds of interesting things floating around the opening reception, while I didn’t get a chance to capture them all, I think you get the idea.

Dinner, the first visit of LS11 to Kimonos, and a (relatively) early end to Sunday, getting ready for the OGS and a very busy Monday.