When I first looked at the schedule for Lotusphere I was surprised to find seven keynotes on the schedule in the past there have been three (maybe four) but it was a pretty big leap from there to seven.  After the OGS and the different style they used this year I understood the number of keynotes.   I attended five of them, and oddly enough you can tell which five from my browser screenshot 🙂 I live blogged all five that I attended, so my intent is not to recap them individually here, rather make a few general comments about each one before getting to the TelePrompTer issue. The Lotus Application Development Strategy, Lotus Notes and Domino, and LotusLive (Working Smarter Together) sessions were all well done in my opinion.  Well balanced between roadmap, customer or partner stories, and demos.   Unfortunately the same can not be said for the Social Computing and Unified Communications keynote.  The Social Computing keynote included five customer stories, only one of which was really told well.  Don’t get me wrong I think all five customers had excellent stories to tell, but one wandered off the script completely, and another got up with no script at all, and it was quite obvious in the delivery.  As has been the case the last couple of years the session ended with a spoof of a popular TV show, this year it was “Collaboration with the Stars”.  The session was already light on product content and demo, and perhaps it is time to retire the “Flarepoint” routine and invest the time in talking about the Connections and Quickr products.   The Unified Communications Keynote to be fair started about 15 minutes later then it’s 5 PM scheduled start time as the previous session ran late, and by this time I had already sat through the 2 1/2 hour OGS, as well as 2 keynotes, so I probably was not in the right frame of mind for it from the beginning of the session.  Additionally I had a 6 PM commitment so I knew I would not be able to see the entire sessions.  All that said the “Bruce the Magnificient” routine at the beginning while funny provided no real content value to the session, and once the customer came up on stage with out a script and proceeded to draw what was a good story out way to long I was done. Now lets talk about the TelePrompTer, there have been various exchanges on Twitter, and at least one other blog post on their use.  First this is not the first time TelePrompTers have been used at Lotusphere, they have been there all six years I have been there at least, and I suspect a whole lot longer.  Second at Lotusphere 2008 I had the opportunity to participate in the Social Computing Keynote, and in doing so use the TelePrompTer.  My experience was that it definitely is not the style of speaking I am used to, and took some getting used to. That said I do feel though that for the customer story portion of the keynotes they really are necessary, I will explain. The customer stories need to be focused, they follow a very familiar format – Challenges faced, Solutions Considered, Why we chose the Lotus Solution, How it has helped solve our business challenge.   When the stories are scripted they come off just like that, short, sweet, and making the point.  The ones that either deviated from the script or had no script did not get their points across.  You could tell they had a good story, but it did not come off well at all.   As for the IBMers on stage using the TelePrompTer – I agree they should know the script well enough that it should not come off as simply reading it (and for the most part I don’t think anyone came off that way) but the TelePrompTer is not going away.  In addition to there being a lot of content to remember in the OGS and Keynotes, the scripts are revised and revised and revised right up to the last minute, and in addition if I understand it correctly they all have to be cleared by legal as well.  Like it or not the TelePrompTers will be back at LS11.  For those presenters used to a more informal speaking style it is a challenge, but I thought most of the IBMers did a nice job. If you want more details on any of the keynotes here are the live blogs Live Blogging: Opening General Session Live Blogging: KEY104 IBM Lotus Notes and Domino: Strategy and Future Directions Live Blogging: KEY106 Social Collaboration Delivers Real Business Value Live Blogging: KEY102 The Future of Unified Communications and Collaboration Live Blogging: KEY105 LotusLive and Lotus Saas Strategy Live Blogging: KEY101 The Lotus Application Development Strategy

Project Vulcan was introduced last week at Lotusphere 2010, we first heard the term during the last 20 minutes of the Opening General Session.  I am sure over the coming weeks and months we will see more about Project Vulcan, but here are some of my initial thoughts. First I hope people understand what Vulcan is, and what it isn’t.  It is NOT a product, it does not have a ship date, and it never will.  So what is it?  Vulcan is a set of principles that will be used in developing the next generation of Lotus Software, this includes next versions of Notes, Domino, Sametime, Quickr, Connections, and the rest of the portfolio as well as any new products our friends at Lotus may come up with.  Before we go any further read back that last line, while there was no formal announcement of Notes Next (or Notes 9 as some expected) there was a clear commitment to it.  The statement I heard was after Notes/Domino 8.5.2 is shipped in the second half of 2010 Notes will be “vulcanized”.  While we still need to explore a little further what that means, it is a clear commitment to continue building on the Notes/Domino platform  In fact if you watched any of the Vulcan demo concepts they all revolved heavily around a next generation Notes client.

So what is Vulcan?  First is a commitment to a set of technologies that will be at the core of all development.  HTML5, CSS3, Dojo, and Widgets/Portlets  will all be key components in future development , there is also a commitment  to OpenSocial, Atom / REST, DXL, OpenID, and OAuth. So forget about all the acronyms and terms for a minute, what does it all mean?  It means IBM is continuing their commitment to open standards, and making their tools easily extensible to include third party applications, as well as fully integrate the Lotus products in to a single (notes) client. I don’t like the comparison of Vulcan to Google Wave.  Google Wave was touted to be “What e-mail would be if it were invented today” and in reality is a long instant messaging session (with playback).  Vulcan again not in itself a product, but rather the guiding principles of software development for Lotus in the coming years.  A lot of the fruits of this labor will show up in existing products, as well as any new ones that get added to the portfolio.  Additionally by further embracing the open standards it makes it easier to integrate almost any other service/application with tools in the Lotus Portfolio. Another focus of Vulcan  is the Social Analytics that we saw in all the demos.  Once could say Facebook Suggests meets the enterprise.

I can’t wait to see more of this in the products, but can’t help think that to prepare for products likely to ship in 2011, enterprises need to really focus on adopting the tools available today in order to have the data required to make Social Analytics work. I think that this is an extremely positive announcement, IBM Is committing to providing us with the cross product integration we have been asking for, with robust 3rd party support.  They are building from the ground up starting with the APIs to make the system open and extensible to all.   Finally in what I think is a really key move the technology will be available in beta during the second half of 2010, and served up via LotusLive Labs.  This will allow any developer to easily begin working with the technology, and building applications to work with it, with out the need to build their own back end infrastructure to get started.  We saw during Lotusphere how rich the Business Partner community is, as well as the number of partnerships Lotus is working on (Gist and Tungle to name a couple), this platform should  only encourage more developers and partnerships to work with Lotus. I know I am looking forward to seeing more about Vulcan as the details continue to develop and emerge over the next few weeks and months.

SUT

In case by some chance you have been living under a rock and missed this one, lots of familiar faces in this Lotusphere wrap up video!

Checking in to say hi, and report that I am still alive and well.  This might be the first time I sat down all day so much to write about and so many pictures to post from Lotusphere just no time!! This afternoon Adrian Spender and I presented SHOW303 all about configuring and customizing Lotus Connections.  I didn’t realize it but apparently I had really been stressed over our demos all week, which in the end all went well.  I was really surprised by my relief after the session. Disney Hollywood Studios was a great location for the Lotusphere Party, Tower of Terror, Rock N Roller Coaster, Toy Story any much much more! Hopefully a little more time to blog tomorrow and start to catch up, and if the network allows post some photos, but for now it is 1:30 AM and I have some misguided notion about getting to a 7 AM BOF session later this morning.