Lotusphere Recap: Tuesday, Keynotes, Innovation Lab, Milkshakes, and Speedgeeking

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.