Lots
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Lots
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Live blog of the Tuesday Keynote at Lotusphere 2012Â Social Business. An Opportunity to Stand Out, feel free to leave a comment or ask a question I will do my best to respond
Live blog of IBM’s Cloud Strategy session at Lotusphere 2012, feel free to comment or ask questions I will do my best to answer.
Join me for live blog coverage of the Lotusphere 2012 Opening General Session, feel free to comment or ask questions will do my best to answer them
Over the last few years while sitting in the Orlando Airport waiting for my flight home exhausted from the week that is Lotusphere I have taken a few moments to write a post thanking the people who did something to make that Lotusphere special and memorable for me.
The first person on that list is always my wife Elisa. Every year I leave the (usually) cold, sometimes snowy northeast, and head for a week of warmth in Orlando. In the meantime Elisa is home with three kids that over the past few years have either had vacation from school, or were home thanks to snow days.
This year is no different, and at the same time it is very different. By now I think you all know that last June Elisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a summer and fall of chemo, and surgery a week ago, Elisa is happily cancer free, but still recovering from surgery after which there is still radiation.
The only reason I am able to attend Lotusphere this year is because Elisa insisted that I go, even knowing that she would still be recovering from Surgery.
Thanks also go out to my parents and my in-laws who have been helping us out non stop through 20 weeks of chemo and again now during surgery and the recovery.  We definitely appreciate all the help you have given us, and there is no way I would be able to even think about going to Lotusphere with out knowing you would be here to help.
I am sure I will have my usual Lotusphere thank you post on the way out of Orlando a week from now, but I wanted to thank Elisa for letting me go in this anything but normal year. Next year you have to keep your promise to make the annual pilgrimage to Orlando with me.
Links
Lotusphere 2011 Departing Thoughts and Thanks
Farewell Lotusphere 2010 and Thank You
Some thoughts and Thank Yous on the way home and Lotusphere 2009
As in past years I plan on live blogging a number of session at Lotusphere starting with the Opening General Session, as well as some of the product strategy sessions, and keynotes.
The schedule of live blog posts are as follows.
 Monday
7:45 AM Lotusphere Opening General Session
3:30 PM IBM Cloud Strategy
4:55 PM IBM Sametime and UCC Strategy
Tuesday Janury 17th
8:00 AMÂ Keynote – Social Business. An Opportunity to Stand Out
Wednesday January 18th
8:00 AMÂ Keynote – Looking Forward. The Future of Social Technology
Thursday January 19thÂ
11:00 AM Ask the Product Managers
If anyone is interested in helping out during the Ask the Product Managers session please get in touch with me
I might add other sessions as the schedule permits, check out my Lotusphere 2012 page for the latest updates.
With
Tom Duff – did you know that Tom maintains a Lotus Jobs blog? Seven days a week with few exceptions he posts jobs available worldwide for people with Lotus skills.
Ben Langhinrichs – for 12 years now Ben has created the Lotusphere Sessions Database each year, adding new content and features to it every year. This year he is presenting a Lotusphere Session about the XPages redesign of the Sessions Database. Also thanks to Gab and Tim of The Turtle Partnership who host the database as well as develop mobile versions for iOS and Blackberry.
Yancy Lent – Yancy is the man behind PlanetLotus a one stop shop to browse over 300 blogs of Lotus related content
Bloggers, Podcasters – did a blog post help you solve a problem? Help you find a critical piece of information? Do you have a favorite podcast? Find the people who create the content you like and thank them for it.
Speakers – regardless of whether or not you attended their sessions you never know when their slides might help you down the road. The speakers spend hours and hours of their own time preparing and rehearsing their session for Lotusphere, let them know you appreciate it (especially the Show and Tell track)
OpenNTF Contributors – have you visited the OpenNTF site? Used any code? Find the developer and thank them, while you are at it thank the OpenNTF board and committee members.
Track Managers – the track managers take 1000’s of abstracts and whittle them down to the ones you see at Lotusphere. They make tough decisions that are not always popular, all with the intention of providing the best possible content at Lotusphere.
Joyce Davis – in addition to many other things Joyce facilitates the monthly IBM Collaboration Solutions Community meetings, if you have not attended them in the past think about adding them to your calendar for 2012
Sponsors – there are so many great events that take place at Lotusphere things like The Great Geek Challenge, UK Night, the Blogger Open, and probably many others, events which are fun, and free to attend thanks to the generosity of the sponsors.
Lotus User Group Organizers – did you attend any last year? IamLUG, UKLUG, ILUG, BLUG, AUSLUG, TriState LUG, and many many more I am sure. These events don’t organize themselves they are organized by dedicated people who invest a great deal of their own time on behalf of the community. If you didn’t attend a LUG you still benefited from them, many Lotusphere speakers got their starts at a LUG, building the confidence to take on the big stage at Lotusphere.
Your Employer – at least if they are paying your way to Lotusphere make sure they know you appreciate that they see the value in attending the conference
I did not submit any abstracts for Lotusphere this year as I knew I would not have the time to properly prepare for a session, as usual though I have found a few ways to participate in the event, so if you are looking for me here are a few of the places you can find me.
Monday
I
Tuesday
11:15-12:15 in Swan Mockingbird NERD101-Spark Ideas brought to you by The Nerd Girls you can read the full session description here, here is my abstract for the session
Get Cancer Get Social
Six months ago cancer made an unwelcome entrance in to my life, when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. A cancer diagnosis is overwhelming to say the least, and comes with a lot of doctors, opinions, medications, etc. The tools you may not think of immediately to fight cancer? A positive attitude, a sense of humor, a blog, twitter, and facebook. Hear the story of how these social tools make coping with and fighting cancer easier.
There is also a followup Birds of Feather session at 5:45-6:45 on Tuesday in Swan Parrot 2 ( I am still trying to work on my availability to attend the beginning of the BOF, not sure if I can make it yet, but it runs in to my next event below)
I am really looking forward to presenting, and watching the other talks at this session, you can see the full list of Spark presenters here.
6:15-7:30 in Dolphin Pacific Hall SpeedGeeking!
I had a great time at SpeedGeeking last year so when I was invited to present again I couldn’t say no. This years presentation:
So you want to be a Blogger
You read blogs, now you want your own, or you have one, but you want to expand it’s reach. What about Twitter?. This 5 minute session will give you the basics to grow or expand your existing blog, as well as some quick tips and tricks to get the most out of Twitter.
Not sure what speedgeeking is, read last years explanation. It is sure to be a lot of fun, and a great way to learn a little about a variety of topics in a short amount of time.
See you at Lotusphere