CuriousMitch
The ramblings of one curious guy

Tag Archive: thanks

Thank you Elisa for Lotusphere 2012

Categories: LS12

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

Elisa’s Blog

Lotusphere 2011 Departing Thoughts and Thanks

Farewell Lotusphere 2010 and Thank You

Some thoughts and Thank Yous on the way home and Lotusphere 2009

 

Posted by Mitch Cohen on January 13, 2012 @ 8:21 am
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People to Thank at Lotusphere

Categories: LS12

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

Posted by Mitch Cohen on January 12, 2012 @ 8:41 am
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IBM Champion Program

Categories: IBMChampion

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I am very very late to the game with this post, but I did want to say thank you to those who nominated and selected me to be an IBM Champion.

You can see the entire list of IBM Champions for Collaboration Solutions here, and there is a Twitter list that follows all of the Champions who are on Twitter as well.

There will be more champions nominated and selected in the future, so check the IBM Champion Home Page for all the details and think about who you want to nominate for the next round.

Posted by Mitch Cohen on July 6, 2011 @ 8:47 am
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