Lotusphere Day 1 wrapup
Category Lotusphere2008
Busy, busy day... as most of them tend to be during the conference. :)
First up was the Opening General Session. I liveblogged it, so you can check out my comments there.
After a quick lunch, a very fast run through the product showcase, and an impromptu meeting with a colleague, it was off to the first breakout session for the day...
AD301 - IBM Lotus Domino Designer with Marueen Leland and Mark Jourdain - Once we got the "here's why Domino Designer is so valuable" stuff out of the way, the session was great. I guess there are some people there who haven't gotten completely involved in application development, but to most of us, Domino Designer use isn't even a question. The big news was that Domino Designer 8.5 will be based on the Eclipse model. This means that all the power and capabilities of the Eclipse IDE becomes available to us, like debugging, code editors, code completion, etc. Can't wait to get my hands on that. Now is a very good time to download the basic Eclipse IDE and start getting familiar with the layout. I think the transition will be pretty easy, but starting now would be advantageous.
Next...
BP206 - Features Every IBM Lotus Notes Application Should Have by Andre Guirard and Julian Robichaux - Could quite possibly be the most useful session I'll see this week. Plenty of advice and tips from no-brainers like using the field help, up through full-featured help databases to let the user have full control over the documentation. I was ashamed to admit how much I still have to learn (and change), but downloading their session and database will help me incorporate many of those best practices. I may even get the chance to help out on the tool that Andre is working on getting into OpenNTF to check design elements for consistency. That's something I've wanted myself for a long time, and that could be worth the cost of admission alone.
Next...
BP304 - Templates, Templates Everywhere - If You Know Where To Look with Kevin Pettitt and Bruce Elgort - This is another one of those sessions that you might be tempted to blow off with a "yeah, I know about OpenNTF". But Kevin and Bruce quickly covered a wide range of open source templates to do all sorts of things, and unless you live on OpenNTF, you probably missed a few of these on your own. I came away with about 10 "check this template out" items that I need to download when I get home, and a couple of them will address items I've had posted on sticky notes for the last month or so. Again, a very practical session with an immediate payback.
Finally...
BOF201 - Adding “Lotus Evangelist” To Your Job Title (Without Updating Your Business Card) with Gregg Eldred and yours truly... We had about 15 or so people there, which wasn't bad considering we were up against the Product Showcase Reception with free beer and food. But there was a lively discussion, and the feedback we got was that the session was very helpful. I was happy with the way it went, and I'll be less "risk-adverse" to doing BoF's in the future.
Since I missed the end of the showcase, I stopped by the Picabo cafeteria to get a burger to go to take back to my room and relax. Those plans were somewhat altered when I ran into Susan Bulloch and Wes Morgan having a pizza down there. What was a "sit for a couple minutes until your food comes" turned into about 30 minutes of side-splitting laughter. Wes is an incredible storyteller, and you can only imagine the stories he can tell about being a 6'5" American in Korea (without knowing the language). I had tears flowing a couple of times, we were laughing so hard. It was a great way to end my day. Thanks, Susan and Wes...
So now, it's time to think about bed. I'm getting a scratchy throat, which isn't good since I still have to make it through Wednesday with my session and a couple of appearances at another one. Of course, having a deep cigarette voice (without the cigarettes) might just make the whole "developer" costume complete. :)
Busy, busy day... as most of them tend to be during the conference. :)
First up was the Opening General Session. I liveblogged it, so you can check out my comments there.
After a quick lunch, a very fast run through the product showcase, and an impromptu meeting with a colleague, it was off to the first breakout session for the day...
AD301 - IBM Lotus Domino Designer with Marueen Leland and Mark Jourdain - Once we got the "here's why Domino Designer is so valuable" stuff out of the way, the session was great. I guess there are some people there who haven't gotten completely involved in application development, but to most of us, Domino Designer use isn't even a question. The big news was that Domino Designer 8.5 will be based on the Eclipse model. This means that all the power and capabilities of the Eclipse IDE becomes available to us, like debugging, code editors, code completion, etc. Can't wait to get my hands on that. Now is a very good time to download the basic Eclipse IDE and start getting familiar with the layout. I think the transition will be pretty easy, but starting now would be advantageous.
Next...
BP206 - Features Every IBM Lotus Notes Application Should Have by Andre Guirard and Julian Robichaux - Could quite possibly be the most useful session I'll see this week. Plenty of advice and tips from no-brainers like using the field help, up through full-featured help databases to let the user have full control over the documentation. I was ashamed to admit how much I still have to learn (and change), but downloading their session and database will help me incorporate many of those best practices. I may even get the chance to help out on the tool that Andre is working on getting into OpenNTF to check design elements for consistency. That's something I've wanted myself for a long time, and that could be worth the cost of admission alone.
Next...
BP304 - Templates, Templates Everywhere - If You Know Where To Look with Kevin Pettitt and Bruce Elgort - This is another one of those sessions that you might be tempted to blow off with a "yeah, I know about OpenNTF". But Kevin and Bruce quickly covered a wide range of open source templates to do all sorts of things, and unless you live on OpenNTF, you probably missed a few of these on your own. I came away with about 10 "check this template out" items that I need to download when I get home, and a couple of them will address items I've had posted on sticky notes for the last month or so. Again, a very practical session with an immediate payback.
Finally...
BOF201 - Adding “Lotus Evangelist” To Your Job Title (Without Updating Your Business Card) with Gregg Eldred and yours truly... We had about 15 or so people there, which wasn't bad considering we were up against the Product Showcase Reception with free beer and food. But there was a lively discussion, and the feedback we got was that the session was very helpful. I was happy with the way it went, and I'll be less "risk-adverse" to doing BoF's in the future.
Since I missed the end of the showcase, I stopped by the Picabo cafeteria to get a burger to go to take back to my room and relax. Those plans were somewhat altered when I ran into Susan Bulloch and Wes Morgan having a pizza down there. What was a "sit for a couple minutes until your food comes" turned into about 30 minutes of side-splitting laughter. Wes is an incredible storyteller, and you can only imagine the stories he can tell about being a 6'5" American in Korea (without knowing the language). I had tears flowing a couple of times, we were laughing so hard. It was a great way to end my day. Thanks, Susan and Wes...
So now, it's time to think about bed. I'm getting a scratchy throat, which isn't good since I still have to make it through Wednesday with my session and a couple of appearances at another one. Of course, having a deep cigarette voice (without the cigarettes) might just make the whole "developer" costume complete. :)
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