Yes, indeed, I will be on the road again! This time around to Hamburg, Germany, and as early as next week to attend an external conference whose line-up put together so far is rather fascinating and impressive: Next Conference, a.k.a. Next08 - Realtime. At the same time that I will be attending the event, I have been invited to participate as one of the speakers (Have got a keynote session at 2.45 p.m. CET on May 15th) and will have the great honour of sharing the stage with one of the folks I have been following for quite some time now and for whom I have got plenty of admiration accumulated over the course of the years. Yes, I am talking about JP Rangaswami, author from Confused of Calcutta and today Managing Director of BT Design for BT Group, according to the Wikipedia.

If you care for a moment to check out the agenda you would be able to see the good amount of great speakers that will be there, too. Some of them folks I have been following, and violently agreeing with all along, for quite some time as well, but who I have never met face to face and next week may be the perfect chance to do so. Examples like Stowe Boyd, yes, that edgling, Steve Rubel (The one and only!), Stefan Kellner (From Plazes), Gunter Dueck (Fellow IBM colleague who has done some tremendous piece of work on Knowledge Management and data warehouses), Leisa Reichelt (Author of the super fine Disambiguity) and the list goes on and on and on.

Thus with that specific agenda and impressive list of amazing speakers, you can imagine that the excitement is starting to grow inside of me quite a bit. More than anything else, because it is just right around the corner and can’t wait to get there and continue to learn from all of these thought leaders who have been pioneering in the Social Computing and Enterprise 2.0 spaces for quite a bit already!

In case you are wondering what I would be talking about at the event, I am sure that, if you have been following this blog for a while, you would already have a sense of what it will be about. Yes, indeed, about my experiment on giving up on e-mail, work related e-mail, that is. And with the well known title (Put together already by Craig Cmehil and Ed Stephens, respectively) of "Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail". I have already finished the slide deck and this time around it is very much public, for open consumption, outside of the firewall, so once I get the heads up from the conference organisers I will be sharing the deck over here, after I upload it into Slideshare.

Yes, almost ready, indeed! You may be wondering when I am planning on getting there, right? Well, I will be arriving on the 13th, at around mid-day and will be leaving Hamburg on the 17th of May late in the evening. So if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or to catch up with a lovely conversation while I am there, do not hesitate to contact me and we will arrange something, I am sure. For now, signing off and checking out some further details from the overall conference itself, which I am sure is going to be one of those special events where I might get to finally figure out whether I am a centroid or an edgling. Or something in between, who knows heh

Tags: Conference Events, Next Conference, Next08, Realtime, IBM, Hamburg, Germany, JP Rangaswami, Confused of Calcutta, BT Group, Stowe Boyd, Edgling, Centroid, Steve Rubel, Stefan Kellner, Plazes, Gunter Dueck, Lisa Reichelt, Disambiguity, Craig Cmehil, Ed Stephens, Slideshare, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Marketing 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Media 2.0, e-mail, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media

So, with all of that said, I am just going to put together a few lines in here to let folks know that, once again, I will be on the road travelling to meet up with a couple of customers. This time around, as you may have been able to check through my Dopplr account already, next week, on the 19th of May, and till the 22nd, travelling to Barcelona and with a fully packed agenda for the 20th and 21st meeting various clients to discuss Social Computing within the Enterprise, and the kind of impact Social Software is having within the corporate world.

I will be coming back on the 22nd and since I already got the flight tickets and everything I just need to worry about the hotel, although I have been provided with some excellent recommendations already. Probably staying in the city center to be able to move easily and quickly, too! I doubt I would be getting much free time during the course of the 20th and 21st, specially during the working hours, but other than that it looks as if I am going to be pretty free for the rest of the time.

Thus fancy meeting up? How about some lovely tapas, a couple of beers here and there and all of that on the beach?!?! That’s the plan I have already set up with Tom Raftery, who earlier on today contacted me through Twitter to let me know that he got notified by Dopplr that we would be both going to the same city at the same time! How cool is that? (Dopplr ROCKS!!!) He is going to be there for the Startup 2.0 event, while I will be meeting up with customers, but it sounds like a really cool plan to me! Not only will I be able to finally meet up with him in real life, but I would be able to catch up with the event he will be attending with his highlights while I treat him for a drink or two heh

I know as well that Ferdy Rodenas lives in Barcelona, so that’s probably going to make it easy as well to meet up with someone I have been looking forward meeting up for a little while now, after all of our online interactions in various different places, just like Tom.

Thus there you go. We got a plan. Tapas, beers, a bunch of good friends and all of that on the beach, because I am sure the weather is going to be rather nice. Want to meet up, if you are around? Do let us know. Through a comment over here, or on Tom’s blog or Ferdy’s or hook up with us on Twitter. Probably the easiest way. Hope to see you there!

(Not sure just yet whether I would be able to blog about the outcome of the meetings with these customers, you would need to wait for a few more days, but if I can, I surely will, because so far the the scenarios are just perfect on one of the core arguments that I use for my pitch on Social Software in the Enterprise. Stay tuned for more to come…)

Tags: IBM, Travelling, Trip, Barcelona, Customer Meetings, Dopplr, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Innovation, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Tom Raftery, Twitter, Startup 2.0, Events, Ferdy, Ferdy Rodenas, Tapas, Beers, Beach, Life, Work, Balance

But if I have to be honest with you folks, the main reason why I am so looking forward to this week’s Web 2.0 event is because for the first time in years I would be able to put together a face behind the text, the voice, the interactions of a whole bunch of people I will be meeting up with for the next few days. It is going to be one of those experiences where I will be taking social networking to the extreme once again. The experience through the Web on what you can get from social computing will have NOTHING to do with what is going to happen tomorrow and over the course of the next couple of days.

And today just saw a glimpse of it already. Arrived at the hotel, chilled out a bit, unpacking and getting comfy and, of course, had to get the wireless connection to see what various people were doing and right away and in less than 30 minutes I got my WHOLE week booked up with some really really cool events!! Way awesome! Not only meeting up with a great bunch of social software enthusiasts, but also exposure to lots and lots of great materials, fantastic keynote speakers, lovely dinners and meetups in the evening and after the event already packed with additional activities I will be confirming with different people involved. So if you tried to get in touch with me before, not to worry, I shall be sharing all of the details with you shortly. If you haven’t got in touch just yet, but planning to do so, by all means, I am sure we could spend some time catching up with each other! After all, one thing is the social computing interactions through the Web and another thing is just getting to experience it in real life.

Which is what I am about to do in the next few hours, so you may need to excuse the light blogging coming along, since I doubt I would have much time to blog it all initially due to the fact I will be running around like mad helping out that everything works out all right with the rest of the organisers. Plus attending some sessions, plus meeting some new people, plus getting to talk to some of those folks I know for years! and the list keeps growing larger and larger by the minute!

So much so that I think that in between enjoying the event, the multiple various conversations I will engage with, the social events and whatever else I sense there will be very little time blogging ahead of me. Thus that’s why this time around I am going to try something different…

Remember my twitterrhea over at Lotusphere 2008, where I got a chance to tweet quite a bit on all of the happenings during such a terrific event that I got exposed to? Well, this time is going to be different. To start with, I have gone ahead and created an exclusive new Twitter id: elsuacon, that I will only be twittering about the different events I will be attending from here onwards, and that getting started tomorrow. So I am planning to go wild on that one and make as much annotations as my little brain can process, with the hopes that those notes in Twitter will help with the creation of highlights through various blog posts on what the event has been. Thus the blog posts may not be that often, since the sessions are very very short and there are multiple places where I would have wanted to blog and won’t be able to, but my new Twitter ID, elsuacon, surely is going to get plenty of activity.

So you can imagine that with all that said, I am going to share with you one short, quick warning: do not subscribe to the channel unless you would want to go through some twitterrhea which may take over your own Twitter snippets. You can certainly keep commenting and engaging in the conversation over at my usual Twitter handle, but everything else, like session reviews, anecdotes, summaries, stuff learned, etc. etc. will go into this new Twitter account I have created.

Hopefully, that way, I can put together plenty of thoughts very quick for each session, which I could then summarise and put together with some nice wording after the whole thing is done as part of the Highlights. Apart from the day to day dialogue. At the same time, I am sure you have seen already how one of my fellow IBMers,  Sacha Chua, one of the folks I have been wanting to meet up for a long while now!, has created a hashtag for the event under web20summit, so folks can also follow our thoughts easier and much much faster.

And talking about thoughts, there would be plenty of other stuff I could talk about for what’s left of the week, but one step at a time, my body is seriously asking for some rest, and I think I am going to give in. So, stay tuned for plenty more to come and if you see I have gone far too quiet on this blog, it is for sure due to the fact that I am taking the extreme the usage of elsuacon, over at Twitter!

Can’t wait for all the fun to get started!!

Tags: Yorktown Heights, NY, IBM, Watson Research Center, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, Web20Summit, Web20Summit2008, Web20Summit08, Conference Events, Summit, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal KM, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Social Software Adoption, MacBook Pro, Twitter, Blogging, Con-Blogging, Metablogging, BOFs, Birds of a Feather, Crowne Plaza, White Plains, Events, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, elsuacon, Sacha Chua, Hashtags

This is an event that focuses on "emerging business and technology activities within IBM that utilize the Web as a platform and define how the Web will drive innovation to IBM’s business and for our customers", which I know for most of you folks out there would sound very familiar with other social computing related summits. And it would probably be, at least, from what you can sense while reading that quote I just mentioned above.

To me, this is going to be one fantastic, wonderful and unforgettable event because for the first time in over five years that I have been working as a Social Computing evangelist at IBM, it will be the chance for me to meet up a good bunch of the folks I have come to develop a virtual relationship with through various different social software tools, both internal and external, and this would be the first time that I would be able to meet up with most of them in real life!

We are all incredibly excited about the opportunity to meet up and share our experiences with one another face to face (Still the best social networking experience there is out there. No doubt!!) on how we are, each of us, getting along with embracing, adopting, promoting, facilitating, living the Enterprise 2.0 experience at such large corporation as IBM.

I wish I could share with you folks the agenda of the event, but since it is just an internal only event, I am going to keep it to myself for the time being, but for sure it is going to be one marvelous occasion. That’s for certain! A good bunch of the topics that will be covered are around several of the subjects I have been blogging all about over here on how IBM is adopting various social software tools within the corporate world. So perhaps not much new in that space, if you have been following this blog closely for a little while now. However, the interesting part would be how different people from various business units and organisations get to share their take on how that adoption is going ahead. Exchanging experiences, pain points, lessons learned, success stories, you name it! Now, that is just going to be incredibly fascinating to witness and engage in with further conversations.

Like I mentioned above, I was checking the other day the list of people attending the event and I realise how one of the major highlights from the event, even before I get over there, is going to be the networking piece! Of course, I will be blogging all about it as I am planning to take my MacBook Pro with me. I am sure, I will be twittering as well quite a bit throughout the event and who knows whatever else. Each of the sessions lasts for about 30 minutes, so there will be some compressed and brief thoughts, I am sure, but they would eventually get there.

One other reason why I am really excited about the whole event, apart from the incredibly good quality of the sessions, and the networking that will be going on, is the fact that it will be as well the first time that I will get to present, this time around as a Birds of a Feather (a.k.a. BOFs) session, on my own experiences on how I am getting on with giving up on e-mail, work related e-mail, that is. Yes, that is right, I will be conducting that BOFs session during the course of one hour, and whatever else more, on how such experience is going and how other folks may be able to join me with it. That would be the first time that I will be sharing plenty of tips on how I actually get it down and how for the last 8 weeks I have been able to reduce considerably the good amount of e-mails I was already getting through to me at one point.

I just can’t wait for that session to take place, since I will actually be using a couple of slides as entry points to get the discussion going and then I will dive right into it! (Not to worry, I will share the slides as well over here in its due time!). Now, here is the big question. What do you think is going to be the title of the presentation / BOFs session? Any ideas? Well, if you followed my Twitter stream a few days ago, it is actually coming out from a good number of conversations I had on that very same day. And thanks to Craig Cmehil and Ed Stephens (And a bunch of other folks who chimed in altogether as well) the final title I have adopted is:

"Thinking out of the inbox: More Collaboration through less e-Mail",

which fits in quite nicely with what I have been doing over the last few weeks. Thus thanks much, Craig & Ed, for participating in the brainstorm session and for helping out coming up with that title! Loving it! (Stay tuned later on in the week for another lovely surprise coming up your way , by the way).

Finally, to wrap up, I will be leaving Monday early morning next week, arriving through JFK on Monday afternoon and staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains for the entire week as I will be leaving on Sunday evening. Thus if you plan to be around and fancy getting together for a drink or two (Guess I will be rather busy from the 15th till the 17th, but pretty open after that, for sure!), get in touch and we will get together! Right now that end of the week looks very much available at the moment.

And that would be it for now, folks. Like I said, I will be doing plenty of blogging and twittering all along on what promises to be an stunning event around Social Computing, but if you really want to get down to some serious social networking, and you happen to be around, give me a buzz and we will meet up!

Tags: Dopplr, Yorktown Heights, NY, IBM, Watson Research Center, Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 and Beyond Summit, Conference Events, Summit, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal KM, Personal Knowledge Management, Personal Knowledge Sharing, Social Software Adoption, MacBook Pro, Twitter, Blogging, Con-Blogging, Metablogging, BOFs, Birds of a Feather, Craig Cmehil, Ed Stephens, Communication, Crowne Plaza, White Plains, Events

I know I will be back to Zürich as soon as by the end of April, so perhaps I will expand further on those different events I had planned and which then got postponed. We shall see.

For now a couple of highlights from Lotusphere Comes To You - Zürich March 2008:

It was the first time that I ever made it to any Lotusphere Comes To You event and must confess that I was a bit nervous just before getting the show started. Being the kickoff keynote speaker session talking about Social Computing @ IBM to about 100 customers and business partners, surely puts plenty of expectations straight up front to you to do the right job! And not sure why, must have been how incredibly well organised the whole set up was, but there I was with my Mac, the other presenters with their ThinkPads and no other computer in the whole room! Ready to rock!!

What a great event it was! I spent about 40 minutes talking about the kind of impact social computing is having within the enterprise and how it is tremendously disrupting the way we share our knowledge and collaborate with others and how communities are the primary social computing drivers within the corporate world of social software. I mentioned as well how they are the ones who are defining together which tools to stick with and which ones to bypass. How for the first time they are responsible for the tools suite they would be using with their own community members. And how organisations are starting to pay more and more attention to how communities are operating and increasing their overall productivity and knowledge shared by making use of these social tools.

From there onwards I shared a number of different screen shots with some of IBM’s most popular social software tools, both inside and outside of the corporate firewall. To name a few of them: Lotus Greenhouse, alphaWorks and alphaWorks Services, Blogs (Including some BlogCentral stats where we recently reached over 200,000 blog posts and comments since late 2003), Lotus Connections, developerWorks Spaces, IBM Jams, ThinkPlace, Fringe, Dogear (Part of the Connections bundle), Beehive, WikiCentral (And wikis in general).

Then from there onwards we had a bunch of different questions on how it may potentially work within the corporate world and what may be potential issues, like taxonomy vs. folksonomy, security, privacy, letting command-and-control go, etc. etc. Yes, along the same lines of what you usually can expect for the kind of presentation I gave.

Reason why I am mentioning all of this in here is because originally I thought I would be able to share the slide deck with you folks over here, but unfortunately while I was revising it to sanitise it a bit I am not going to be able to. Most of the slides are screen shots from those various tools where it is showing the names and telephone numbers, amongst many other details, from various of my social networks along with their pictures and I don’t think it would be fair to them to expose them, just like that, because of a presentation. I rather prefer to respect their privacy, just as much as they would be respecting my own, and that’s why I am going to leave things as is.

Sharing the slide deck without the tools / screen shots section would not be having the same effect, so perhaps what I will do is come up with some kind of mockups and share them accordingly as time goes by. We shall see. Or perhaps I’ll ask my social networks whether they would like to come up on the show or not. We shall see. Will keep you posted.

From there onwards, and while Ron Sebastian and Jutta Kreyss, were providing their own presentations on demonstrating the latest Lotus offerings from Lotusphere 2008 and Best Practices on the Open Client, respectively, I actually had to go to the IBM Research Lab in Rüschlikon to present that exact same presentation to an IBM client within the banking industry. 12 people sitting in a small room and with plenty more time to dive into the various topics and get a bit of a much more interactive section, which is what happened in the end.

Some folks out there say how both the banking and government industries, perhaps banking even a bit more, are a bit reluctant from Web 2.0 and social computing behind the corporate firewall. Well, what I experienced with that particular customer and their understanding of social computing was rather quite the opposite. Ready to rock and get some action going to help empower their knowledge workers to be in control of the knowledge flow again and get back into the conversations! Fascinating stuff!! Really.

I thoroughly enjoyed that very first occasion of presenting at Lotusphere Comes To You and no more, no less than in Zürich, one of my favourite European cities, specially when after a hard working day of having some really good and exciting conversations about the stuff you are passionate about, you go out with some friends and enjoy a super lovely evening with a chocolate fondue to end up the event and then off to dinner for a meat one! And, of course, some lovely Swiss beer, too! … It just cannot get better than that!!

Fantastic!!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere2008, Lotusphere, Lotusphere Comes To You, LCTY, LCTY2008, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Computing, Communities, Social Media, Learning, Innovation, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Zurich, Switzerland, Ron Sebastian, Jutta Kreyss, Mac, Greenhouse, alphaWorks, alphaWorks Services, Blogs, Wikis, BlogCentral, WikiCentral, Connections, developerWorks, developerWorks Spaces, Spaces, IBM Jam, ThinkPlace, Fringe, Dogear, Beehive, Rüschlikon, Fondue, Beers

Thus if yesterday I mentioned that on the first week of March I will be in Zürich presenting at Lotusphere Comes To You, just a few hours ago I got the confirmation as well that I will be participating at a workshop in Madrid, Spain, around the subject of Lotus Enterprise 2.0, taking place on March 14th for over three hours.

This surely is going to be one of those events that I will be looking forward to, since it would give me the opportunity to go through a slide deck, which I’ll be sharing over here shortly, on Social Computing @ IBM, but at the same time I will have enough time as well to be able to demo extensively some of the different IBM social software tools we use both internally and externally and show their value to enhance our various knowledge sharing and collaboration experiences.

So instead of having to rush off through a whole bunch of tools, show how they work and how IBMers are taking much benefit from making use of them, I would be able to spend a good time picking up some of the most popular ones and demonstrate what the fuss is all about and why they are having such a massive impact in our daily interactions. The event is going to take place at an IBM location, so I am sure the network connection would be good enough for me to share some insights on how it actually went.

I am now currently finalising the last few details, but there is a great chance that I will be arriving there Thursday evening, and staying over the weekend as well, so if you fancy getting together for a drink or two, or just hooking up, do let me know or contact me offline. I will also be updating my Dopplr profile, once I get a chance to book everything. Stay tuned …

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotus Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Learning, Communities, Learning, Events, Madrid, Spain, Dopplr

Yes, that is right. It looks like this year I am finally going to be able to make it to one of the conferences I have been looking forward to for a long while: The Enterprise 2.0 Conference - Lead the Evolution, In Boston June 2008. Finally!! As the time goes by, I’ll certainly be blogging a whole lot more about it. No doubt, since it is probably as good as it gets to talk and deal with various different topics around the subject of Enterprise 2.0.

However, there is one other conference event that I have been interested in attending for a little while ago and that time and time again, I never manage to be able to make it! And that is the one organised by the folks over at Unicom called Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business, which this year is going to be held in London - March 5th to 6th 2008.

Once again, the timing for me is the wrong one, but it surely is one of those interesting events that, if you are around, you cannot miss! You would be able to find some more details about it over here, as well as under the Programme & Schedule. In this particular occasion the topics are rather spot on on what I would love to talk about for hours and hours and hours (i.e. Social Tools Hit the Mainstream; Social Computing and the Knowledgepowered Enterprise; Facilitating Open Innovation in a Distributed Community Using Free Social Software Tools; Technology Brings Power to the People; How we got here with Web 2.0; KM goes Social: From KM 1.0 to KM2.0; Case Study: Deploying, Measuring, Succeeding with Social Software, etc.).

But if there would be anything that would be of interest to me as well, it would actually be the folks who are initially going there and who will be presenting. What a fine line-up! David Gurteen, Ian Hughes, Ian McNairn, Lee Bryant, John Davies, etc. are some of the folks who would be there and although I have been following most of them for quite a while, it would surely be rather nice to be able to make it and catch up with them in person!

Alas, I guess that will have to be at another time, because, like I said, the timing has been rather bad for me once again and I will not be able to make it, but if you are planning on going, don’t hesitate to let us all know about it and, much more importantly, share your insights with us through your blog(s)! I am sure we would be able to learn a thing or two from such a fantastic bunch of speakers! Sigh … Suppose it will be another time…

Are you going to be in London from the 5th to the 6th of March 2008 and don’t have any plans? Well, not to worry, here is a blog post where I am sharing the details from a very interesting conference happening during that time: "Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business". Wish I would be able to go …

Tags: Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Media, KM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Communities, Learning, Unicom, London, KM Events, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, Boston, David Gurteen, Ian Hughes, Ian McNairn, Lee Bryant, John Davies

Later on, I will create another blog post, probably the last one from the series, where I will be sharing with you folks what I have learned from the entire event itself, and what I should have done to even take much more advantage from the conference itself. Yes, I had a great time, but there were a few things I think I should have done different in order to get even more out of it. But that is the subject for another blog post…

Waking-up late

Yes, I know, I am guilty of that one. Perhaps because it was the last day of the conference. Perhaps because I stayed up with the Lotus Connections folks till very early in the morning. Whatever it was, I eventually missed out the first couple of hours of speaker sessions. I just couldn’t. So I decided to recover and make some time to spend the rest of the day attending what was left from the event itself, which then proved to be rather interesting as well, to say the least.

GURUpalooza Session

To start with, I attended one session called GURUpalooza, which, to me, was quite an interesting session, since it was the first time I ever saw something similar. So here we have got a bunch of gurus on IBM Lotus offerings sitting on stage waiting to be hammered with questions from the audience on how to get the most out of those various applications. Anything goes. All questions get answered or, at least, it is tried. The session was moderated by Rocky Oliver, who I had the pleasure of briefly introducing myself to during lunch and which I wish I would have had more time to talk some more. Perhaps next time!

Although I couldn’t twitter as much as I would have hoped (For a few minutes the wireless connection was not up to speed) I did eventually get some twittering going on to share some of what it was like. And what I found remarkably interesting was the fact that there were plenty of various different questions and only one around the area of social computing. Yes, only one, when I would be expecting quite a few of them, specially around the area of why bother with social software? What are the business benefits? How do I get started within my organisation? Why should I care / listen to social computing? etc. etc. You know what I mean, the usual stuff you get asked about quite a bit from time to time.

Yet, it didn’t happen during that particular session, which makes me wonder whether people are already getting involved and still haven’t come up with those questions (Or they already know the answers) or, rather, that they are not bothered at this point in time and things are still very much at the beginning. Some food for thought… (We shall see what happens next year…)

Lunch Break

From there onwards we all went for lunch and although it was a rather informal and light lunch, it was one that I enjoyed quite a bit, since it gave me the opportunity to meet up other folks I have been working with for a while, but that I never got the change to meet in person. Well, I finally got it done! Here are some photos we took:

Ask the Developers Session

Right after lunch we went for what is supposed to be a classic from Lotusphere, which is the session Ask the Developers, where some of the top notch developers from Lotus products get on stage and over the course of one hour they get asked plenty of questions from the audience, most of them of a technical nature. Yes, this is the session where apparently you can tell the developers what you like, and don’t like, about a specific product, application, feature, etc. etc.

And after having attended it, I think I know why it is so popular! It is a complete buzz with plenty of people from various different companies sharing their ideas and experiences from using IBM Lotus products and providing some instant feedback on what works, what doesn’t and what they would like to see improved! Social networking face to face at its best!! Listening to feedback and reacting to it to help improve your products! It cannot get better than that!

I had so much fun with the entire session that I went crazy with Twitter and shared quite a bit of the different questions asked / answered, to give you an idea of the nature of the questions and the reactions provided. Lots of good fun, I tell you!

Closing General Session - Alton Brown

From there onwards, those of us who were still around headed to the main tent session, which was the closing general session where every year there is a guest speaker. This year that speaker was introduced by Marjorie Tenzer and it was no other than Alton Brown.

At the very beginning I wasn’t really sure what the real deal was, since I didn’t know who he was or what he would be talking about. Then after five minutes of him talking, a couple of Web sites surfed, I was completely sold! What a fantastic bloke! Yes, I know, those of you in the US & Canada probably already know about this, but must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it quite a bit. I twittered a little bit about his performance, but when we were getting immersed on what he was doing with food (Think of food & science mixed up together with some spices and lots of good fun!!) I decided to stop twittering and, instead, take pictures!!

And boy, did I get carried away or what? I took a whole lot of them that still need to be tagged, annotated and everything, but you can already find them in my Flickr stream. What a great show!! I could then see why he is such a bit hit in the US. Wish we would be able to watch him over here in Europe without having to pay for expensive sat. T.V. Alas, we would have to content ourselves with the whole bunch of videos on YouTube, which is not too bad (Was surprised to find so many in there!).

And with that we came to the conclusion of a superb conference event over the course of five wonderful days! It was my first time at Lotusphere and I am sure it won’t be the last one. I am *so* going to make it next year. No doubt! But then I will be sharing shortly one final blog post on what I am planning to do in preparation for next year, because there was just so much going on that one needs to be prepared well ahead of time. And that’s what this upcoming blog post will do…

For now, here are some pictures I took during Alton’s closing session:

Oh, and if you are wondering what I did in the evening, I actually went Downtown Disney with half of Ireland to enjoy a couple of pints, have some good dinner, head back to the hotel and enjoy the peace and quiet of hanging out at the Dolphin bar without the massive crowds from the last five days! Priceless!

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I knew I made a heck of a purchase a few months back, when I acquired the Nokia N95, but up until the Lotusphere event I didn’t really have the chance to test it out properly in such a massive event as that one. And, boy, was it up to the test or what?!? And big time!! With it I have been taking lots of pictures all over the place. All in all around 300 for the entire event, of which 268 are already in my Flickr account. I have been listening to various different podcasts, both related to the event and non-related. Watched a good number of vodcasts, too! (Gotta love the quality of the image and the sound!). Surfed the Web as much as I could do with the free wireless available throughout the premises, so I could check out what people were blogging about during the event or Twitter here and there about the different places I was or just simply checking out some of the Web sites from the various announcements that went live during the course of those few days.

Of course, I used the N95 quite heavily as well to make plenty of phone calls to meet up with people. Sent a whole bunch of SMS, played a few games while waiting on the hotel lobbies to meet up folks, etc. etc. But if there would be a single reason why I am in love with the Nokia N95 is because of this:

Yes, I know, there are very few words that can describe the quality of the output from those videos for such a tiny little device like the N95, which I now carry with me everywhere I go! Because you never know when it’s going to happen again, right?!?

(Stay tuned because last couple of blog posts with further highlights from Lotusphere are coming up shortly!)

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, New Media, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Learning, Podcasts, Vodcasts, Twitter, Nokia, Nokia N95, N95, Apple, iPhone, Lotus Foundations, Lotus Foundations Server, Flickr, Videos, Multi-Media, Multimedia, Blogging, Metablogging