With all of the great resources, events and people in our community heading in to Lotusphere 2012 I thought it would be nice to put together a list of some people in the community who should be thanked for their efforts.  List is in random order, feel free to leave a comment with suggestions for anything or anyone I might have missed.

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 have used the Genii Software Lotusphere Sessions DB to plan every Lotusphere I have ever attended (less than the 11 years Ben has provided the database), this year being no different.  Ben has been very vocal this year trying to gather and add information to the database, take a look Twitter ID’s, Location Services, Tweet Buttons, Books, Podcasts, you name it.  For a full walk through check out Chris Millers Episode 91 -Lotusphere Sessions DB walkthrough.

This got me thinking, the name is all wrong, sure it started as a Lotusphere Sessions Database, but with all the work Ben has put into it, it is so much more now.  It is a tremendous community resource, right in your notes client.  Whatever you are looking for it’s there.  Need a book, podcast, a training course, does a certain person use Twitter? It’s all in there.

Regardless of whether or not you are attending Lotusphere, this database should be on your workspace, and if you are attending Lotusphere, don’t throw it out when you get home, the sessions might be over, but the rest of the information will provide value throughout the year.

Thanks Ben, but how about a new name, one that better reflects the contents of the database? Lotus Community Resource Database? Lotusphere Sessions and Community Resource Database?

What do you think? Have any suggestions of your own?