Licking my Lotusphere wounds

Andy Pedisich  January 23 2010 02:07:43 PM

It's the Saturday after Lotusphere and Linda and I are safely ensconced at home again.  

My sincere thanks to the many attendees who made it to our Domino HTTP session at 10:30 AM Sunday, and even more remarkably to our Roaming User 8:00 AM session on Thursday morning. It was great having you all there, and Rob and I had fun delivering the information.  Both sessions were very well attended.

My favorite session evaluation comment was, "Obviously, they hate each other, but an effective and very watchable session." Obviously, a little tongue-in-cheek there.  Rob Axelrod and I have been friends for more than a dozen years, maybe even more than that.  He is the go-to guy for new ideas, especially ideas that have the potential to make you phone your wife for bail money.

This year at Lotusphere was made harder, mostly because I was having some issues with the roaming user functionality.  I could not get "roaming on a file server" to work properly and I was coming down to the wire where I'd have to fish or cut bait.  I'd get the first workstation set up OK, but the second one would never do it and kept asking for the ID file, which was supposed to be in the personal address book.

Down I went to the Lotusphere lab to meet the developers where I talked to one of the client IBM people, William Mills.  Nice guy, by the way.  Very knowledgeable.  I told him of my problem and he said he didn't have any recollection of a reported problem like the one I was having.  So we kind of walked through it one more time and he had a "Eureka" moment.  And here it was.

File server roaming is something you upgrade a user to via policies.  And the policy does not put the ID file in the address book.  It relies on you, the administrator.  You're supposed to be using the ID Vault.  Ah HA!

Thus, I spent time in the old Dolphin hotel room re-working my laptop demo environment, making sure that all the cool demos, and I do mean all of them, worked with the ID vault.  It really worked too.  ID Vault is so unbelievable cool, it just worked and the roaming user demos kicked butt.

Another cooler thing I was able to do at The Fear was to be the press corps by virtue of having this blog.  Thank you for that, Lotusphere 2010.

Among other things, I was able to attend a "Fireside Chat with Alistair Rennie" with a bunch of other bloggers like the lovable Andrew Pollack, and John Head.  (See Ed Brill's post about New Leaders of IBM.)  Also at the fireside chat were Bob Picciano, Mike, Rhodin, and the Brillinator himself.  I had no preconceived notions about being there and hoped that these guys would at least be approachable by us humans.  You'll be happy to know they were.  Of course, they had their talking points.  They spoke of being focussed on integration with the needs of business and with making the IBM/Lotus software as a means to get the business where it wants to go, providing a platform for tying everything together.

That kind of talk gets me going, because it means that there are places to grab to continue to hitch a ride, to be smart, and entrepreneurial.  That's so important and vital to my plan to never retire.

A few years ago, I was concerned that gears were being switched and that Notes was going the way of XY Write.  I don't have that feeling anymore.  Haven't had it since the conversation about mmmm... the product, I can't remember the product that scared the crap out of me.  Mmmm... Freudian mind freeze... dammit.  I think it rhymed with Shmirkplace or something.  That was worrisome. I've been OK since that talk died down.

And this Lotus Live cloud thing.  I do understand this cloud business.  I buy the concept.  I know perfectly well the implications of it.  I accept it. But it's like bottled water to me.

The problem with bottled water is that I don't make any money when you buy bottled water.  If I got maybe 1/8 of a penny for each bottle that was sold, I'd be a fan. I make nothing from bottled water sales and I make nothing from the cloud.  Nothing personal.  It's just fact that makes me ambiguous about the cloud in general.

I've been re-inventing myself ever since I found out what that term means, and will continue to re-invent what I do.  And that's what I really liked about the conversation with Rennie, Rhodin, Piccano, and Brill.  Apparently they are also personally invested in the re-inventing business, re-inventing themselves and the big engine that they work with. What gets crafted by these guys will affect all of us in the yellow bubble, so it's good to pay attention to how they're doing.

All in all, a good and very lively Lotusphere experience for me.  Still had the Community experience and saw lots of old friends.  I hope it stays around forever.  It's one of those things that's the same every year, but is a little different every time.

Thank you, Lotusphere 2010 folks for keeping it all together and making it look easy, from the support to the organization to the product showcase.  Not so much for the waiting line and for the long bus ride to the party across the street, but for everything else, thanks!  Really!  Seriously!  I'm sorry I am so impatient. I'm an engineer and that's just the way we are built.

- Andy

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