2012-01-19 19:55:50 | Blog
The wonderful and warm weather continued today, although we did get a refreshing hour of rain in the middle of the day. I could learn to live here, so easily!
I decided to sleep late today, so I didn't get up until seven o'clock this morning. I then went for a 10 km run and since the sun came up while I was running I realized that I was getting dehydrated. I therefore stopped at the shop to grab lots of water bottles on my way back to my room.
After a quick shower I headed down to the conference, grabbing a bagle, a youghurt and a Nesquick shake (darn, those things taste good!) on my way to the shuttle going down to the Swand and Dolphin hotel. I got down there just in time for the ten o'clock session, which was:
AD 105 – Use IBM Lotus Domino Xpages for Your Social Business
Nothing really new in this session that hasn't already been covered in the other Xpages sessions. I still see lots of potential in the Xpages tools. Which brings me to the next session:
BP 103 – IBM Lotus Domino Xpages Blast
This was a thorough rundown of various tools that exists for your Xpages development projects. I will have to download the latest release and fix pack of Domino 8.5.3 to get the right packages for what I want to try to do. Can't wait.
I then had lunch with Chris Blatnick, which is always nice. After a short trip to the vendor's area I decided to change my schedule. I was planning on going to a session about Notes and Domino 8.5.3 but I instead decided to go to this one:
ID224 What's Coming in IBM Lotus Quickr for IBM Lotus Domino Next And Beyond
During the opening session on Monday a presenter joked that Sharepoint is the coffin where files go to die. My experience is that this could be said for Quickr as well, but I have been told by several people over here that they use Quickr quite a lot, especially towards external partners and customers.
The problem with Quickr is that it looks so ugly and dated. It's hard to use and the design is awful. If you want good design and functionality you have to use developers to make it for you, and boom, there go your arguments against the uselessness of Sharepoint.
During this presentation they showed the latest version and the best I can say is that the default design templates now no longer looks like they're made in 2002 but that they were designed in 2009.
However, if you use the Quickr connector which makes it possible to work towards Quickr rooms via your Notes client, from Windows Explorer (it's mapped like any other network drive) or directly from Microsoft Office, you can actually get a pretty good tool out of it. I can see lots of uses for it.
The final problem with Quickr is that it also seems like IBM isn't quite sure what to do with it. If you have IBM Connections Files, there's no need for Quickr, except if you want people from outside of your companies to share files with you. It can be done in Connections, but it's a lot more cumbersome than with Quickr.
BP 109 – Apps, Apps and More Apps: Meet the Very Best Open Source Apps from OpenNTF – The 2012 – Edition
Wow, what session title! And what a session it was. Bruce Elgort was as always in top form. I think Elgort is the born salesman: Funny, great people skills and the perfect presenter. He has also been doing a great job with OpenNTF for years, and runs a successful business with his wife Gayle, so he he's a talented developer and businessman too.
Niklas Heidoff demonstrated almost 30 projects that are freely downloadable from OpenNTF. Heidoff is a truly great developer, and he's very passionate about both his work and OpenNTF. He also explains what he demonstrates very well, and the charming German accent is an added bonus.
For those not in the know: OpenNTF is basically the Notes/Domino world's SourceForge. I urge everyone to make good use of their applications, databases and code libraries that they make available. Tell your ICT manager (or CIO) today! I for one will try to promote them even more than I've been doing and I've already put stickers about them on my laptop, cell phone and rucksack. A small start but I hope to be able to contribute a bit more in the future.
Since I've attended loads of sessions so far during the conference I decided to give it a rest and sat down to answer emails, do some blogging and pay some bills before I mingled with contacts that I hope will be useful in the future. I also decided to go to the vendor area to buy some books, only to find out that they closed at four o'clock and would not open again during this conference. Darn!
Fast forward to the evening: Every year IBM rents an entire park for the Lotusphere attendants on the penultimate day of the conference. This year it was Sea World. I've been to Sea World before, but this time we went in the evening, so it was a very weird experience. Especially since most of the park was closed.
However, I did get to drive both the Kraken and the Manta rides, so I'm not complaining! I love rides like that, and I talked one of the guys from my group to join me. He was very skeptical when we took the Manta, but after overcoming his fears he really enjoyed the Kraken, which is the better ride even if Manta is the newer of the two. And it's always great when you don't have to wait in everlasting lines to go on a ride.
At the end of the evening we walked to the arena to see Shamu. I saw the show several years ago, and I honestly can't remember that it was so boring when I was there the last time. One of the reasons might be that when I saw the show previously the trainers were still in the water with the Orcas. The drowning of one the trainers a few years back seems to have put a stop to it though.
So after a while I left. Seeing a beautiful magnificent animal like an Orca splashing water on people makes me more sad than entertained, and having a long haired guy pretending to play guitar to “I wanna rock'n roll all night” just isn't my idea of good entertainment.
One day left of the conference but still four days left of our stay here in Florida. Back with more updates tomorrow.
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