Despite a distinct lack of delays or other airline related mishaps, my return from Orlando was made slightly more complicated by dead batteries in a.) my iPod (mid flight, no less), b.) my laptop, and c.) my cell phone. Given that I no longer even know the phone numbers of close friends, I’ve long recognized that to some degree at least, I’m utterly dependent on my phone. But you never really realize just how dependent you are until you’re trying to coordinate someone picking you up at an airport and can’t tell them when or where, or ask where they are. And of course, because it’s me and I was travelling, the pay phones outside by the arrival pick up were broken (one probably by me). But overall, no complaints – I made it home the night I was supposed to, and that’s what counts.
Anyhow, I had an excellent two days at IBM’s Lotusphere show. In addition to enjoying excellent Indian fare and a couple of Kingfishers with Josh on Monday night, I managed to connect with sharp folks like Christopher Byrne and Ed Brill prior to their appearance on a blogging panel. Great to see them.
But anyhow, I’ve had a couple of people ask me about the show, so without further ado, here’s the Q&A:
Q: What was the big news – what were people buzzing about?
A: Well, the Hannover demo went over very well, and I personally was interested in the GA of Workplace, but from the conversations in the lobby, to the chatter at lunch, to the guy who shared a shuttle back to the airport with me, the surprising – to me – subject that dominated conversation was the Sametime UI and network updates. Folks were a.) relieved to see commitment to the platform, and b.) happy to have the ability to interface with folks on different public networks. There were also a number of conversations around how Lotus might be turning the corner with respect to their UIs.
Q: What do you mean by turning the corner with respect to their UIs?
A: Well, to put it bluntly, Lotus has not exactly been setting the bar for user interfaces over the years. And as one attendee put it, functional as the product is now and has been for years, such things do matter. Workplace might not be the most attractive product around, but it’s certainly not the ugliest, and now the Notes and Sametime worlds have similarly easy-on-the-eyes releases either out or coming soon.
Q: How about the Workplace apprehension amongst Notes customers – did you see any of that?
A: Quite the opposite, in fact. Over lunch, one Lotus manufacturing customer regaled the table with tales of how everything – WebSphere, etc – but Domino was shelfware, b/c they were a Domino shop through and through. Further, while his higher ups were planning to evaluate Workplace, he anticipated that never coming to fruition b/c he was getting what he needed out of Domino. Absent from this little anecdote was the rhetoric from the past few shows, which would have included a couple of shots at Workplace and a general denigration of anything non-Notes/Domino. While this customer had little time for the Workplace message, neither were his hackles raised, and take my word for it – for IBM, that’s progress.
Q: What were the big themes for the show, in your opinion?
A: It depends. While Seinfeld’s Jason Alexander in the opening session was pushing the “openness” message, that didn’t really resonate all that strongly to me. The key themes as far as I was concerned were:
- Taking Back Collaboration: in a couple of back-to-its-roots moments, a couple of different Lotus executives were heard to utter “we invented collaboration” – choosing to emphasize the pedigree that their product line has in this particular space
- Not Content w/ Second Place: as previously mentioned, Lotus seemed to drop the gloves at this show – more so than in any previous show I’ve attended. Perhaps its because their product line is finally stabilizing after a couple of years of flux, perhaps its because some of the ’05 numbers were better than expected, but Lotus was not at all shy about having Microsoft in its cross-hairs. While previous shows might have been characterized as more “let the best product win,” this was more a show about winning either way.
- Componentization is Showing Benefits: as previously discussed, the componentization of the products does seem to be resulting in substantial time to market improvements.
Q: What did you enjoy most about the conference?
Q: I’m not sure how it was for some of the other attendees or analysts, but I was the receipient of tons of demos. It’s always nice to hit conferences like this and hear about the products, but it’s even better to see them. Yes, you have the regular spate of laptop demo issues – forgotten passwords, poor performance, no network access, etc – but it’s so much better to see the products than be told about them. Kudos to the IBMers for arranging that hands on time.
Q: What are the major threats you see for Lotus going forward?
A: Well, I’ve made this point often before, but I heard similar comments in varying forms from other attendees so its worth repeating: Lotus typically does an excellent job of designing collaboration features for users on the same system – what they are less strong at is considering the fact heterogeneity rules the day, and that users are going to want to collaborate with folks not on their system. The very notable exception to this, of course, was the announcements of Sametime interoperability with the public IM networks. But users – and me – remain concerned that the assumption is too often that everyone’s on Notes, Workplace, etc.
Q: How was attendance, energy, etc?
A: According to Mike Rhodin, attendance was the best it’s been since 9/11, and I see no reason to dispute that. It took me a good 20 minutes to move 50 feet from the main session tent to the press/analyst Q&A room b/c of the volume of bodies. A couple vendors did report, however, that foot traffic to the booths was relatively unimpressive – not in line with the general attendance.
Q: What other feedback did people have about the conference?
A: Well, I missed the social events on Monday night due to dinner, but it seems as if they were quite enjoyable b/c two of the folks I was sharing wireless with on Tuesday morning were talking about how hung over they were. But on the ride out to the airport I chatted with a very nice gentleman from an exhibiting vendor who was quite unhappy with the choice of venue – he’d much prefer Vegas, apparently, believing that Orlando is played out. While I personally prefer attending venues more centrally located in a city – say, like Moscone – I’m no huge fan of Vegas, so Disney’s fine by me.
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