34: Lotusphere Idol, Gurupalooza, Harry Potter and booth babes - What are you looking forward to at Lotusphere 2011?

Episode 34, recorded Thursday 13th January 2011, discussing preparations for Lotusphere 2011, Lotusphere IDOL, Gurupalooza, the Blogger Open, being a booth babe and tips for first-timers…

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Darren Duke (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Susan Bulloch (blog | twitter) Susan Bulloch has worked for IBM Lotus Software since 2000 in software support and development positions. Susan currently works as a Support Engineer on the Lotus Products SWAT Team, supporting the entire Lotus product line, specializing in Lotus Notes and Domino. One of her specialities is Calendar & Scheduling. She has worked with Lotus Notes and Domino since 1992 as an administrator, instructor, developer, and architect in banking and utility industries. Susan has a Bachelors degree in engineering and a Master’s degree in Information Technology. She holds certifications in all current Lotus Notes product releases, and is actively involved in quality testing Beta versions of new IBM products. Susan is a frequent speaker at technical conferences, including Lotusphere, the View Admin conferences and at regional user group conferences worldwide. This year, she’s Track Manager for the Best Practices track at Lotusphere, Host of Gurupalooza, a Judge at IDOL and one of the many Nerd Girls working to produce some interesting activities.

Roy Rumaner (blog | twitter | company ) Roy has been a Lotus Notes Developer since 1994. In that time he has consulted for many of the Fortune 50 companies in and around the Chicago area and across the country. He has been a speaker at Lotus conferences, was the co-author of two Lotus Notes books, is a regular presenter at GRANITE (the Chicago Lotus User Group) and most recently at MWLUG. Roy is the IT Director for The Essential Business Software Group. Roy is also the Director of IT & Training (US) for MyDealerSoft – a fully web enabled Auto Dealer Software suite that covers all business needs, inbound and outbound for Dealerships.

Mikkel Heisterberg (blog | twitter | company) Been working with Notes/Domino, Sametime and Java for the last 17 years and have a strong foundation in the Lotus portfolio. I have written five articles for THE VIEW, spoken at several conferences (Lotusphere, ILUG, DNUG) and I’m a Design Partner for Domino NEXT and Lotus Connections. I am a frequent blogger (http://lekkimworld.com) and I am the author of the open source documentation framework LotusScript.doc and the TwitNotes sidebar plugin for Notes 8.x. I am a partner at IntraVision, a Premier IBM Business Partner from Denmark. IntraVision is the creator of the OnTime suite of products (http://www.ontimesuite.com).

Mike McGarel (blog | twitter | company) Mike has been a Notes/Web developer for over 12 years. He currently works for Czarnowski, a North American exhibit services company, responsible for both intranet and customer extranet applications. He has concentrated on XPages development since last year’s Lotusphere. Mike co-presented (with Roy, of all people) a beginner’s XPages workshop at MWLUG this summer and was a regular speaker at GRANITE, the Chicago-based Lotus user group. Mike was recently voted Vice President of GRANITE for 2011.

Topics

Lotusphere 2011

Now just 16 days away!
Important coffee news!
Making preparations
- IntraVision’s OnTime web app
- How it was built?
- Who’s it aimed at?
- How long did it take to flush out from idea to product?
- Android client
Lotusphere IDOL 2011
GURUpalooza
- Thursday 10AM
- No Rocky this year!
- All non-IBM presenters from BP, SNT and JMP sessions on stage for the audience to ask questions of
- What are the rules?
  - Those breaking the rules must donate to charity
  - Bring your questions – you’ll get honest maybe too honest answers.
  - Any Gurus being disagreeable with others will be sent to the side of the stage to dance – either alone or with their nemesis.
  - This session is for the attendees, so we want to get as much good info out that as we can
Also on Thursday the 3rd Annual Blogger Open
- It’s free miniature golf, open to anyone, not just bloggers.
- Sponsored by Andrew Pollack’s Northern Collaborative Technologies, Chris Miller’s IDoNotes, and David Leedy at Notes in 9. (Thank you, gentlemen!)
- The site has links to photos from the previous two events.
- At 5:30pm after LS11 is all shutdown
- @bloggeropen on Twitter
- Registration will open Monday, January 17th. Space is limited so you should sign up quickly if you’re interested. Registration will be simpler this year. There will be no specific start times for groups — your “team”is whoever is around when it’s time for the next group to start.
Booth babes
- That’s Roy 🙂
- What are you expecting?
- Ytria will also be giving away everyone’s favorite Lotusphere goodies – Jelly Beans!
TWiL at LS11
LotusCab?
- No really, follow LotusCab on Twitter and find Ride-Share partners to and from the airports, hotels, etc
- Run by Docova
Charity raffle for a very, very good cause the Children’s Cancer Association – “It’s a small Lotus World”
- Go enter at Bruce Elgort’s blog
Request from Sharon Bellamy – what advice can the panel give for a first timer at Lotusphere?
- Attend BALD
- Attend the Turtle’s party (after BALD)
- Get to the OGS early
- Attend The Great Geek Challenge on Tuesday
- Attend Gurupalooza
- Go to the labs! (bring your PMR numbers)
- Attend Ask the Developers
- Attend Ask the Product Managers
- Attend Research Lab
- Attend the Blogger Open
- Go to any BoF that fleets your fancy
  - Mikkels and Bobs on plugin development is of course a must! 🙂
- Tell everyone you are the “Sharon”that TWiL keeps mentioning 🙂
- Read Andy Donaldson’s Andy’s Guide to Lotusphere
- If you see someone you want to meet/talk to/stalk then start talking to them. Some will run away, most won’t
- Follow the advice in the tips sections
- Time flies at the Wednesday night party. If there’s a ride you want to go on, get to it quick!
- Close out LS11 with Lisa, Mike, Stuart and Darren at Kimonos on the last night. At LS10 we were officially the last party there!
  - Let’s start a tradition……
  - The 2nd Annual Lotusphere Thursday Last Call Party!

Other news:
Lotus User Group podcast with Alistair Rennie

http://www.lotususergroup.org/interview
Alistair’s “Excellent speaker” clue leads us to suggestions on the Lotusphere guest speaker…

The X-Cast returns!

XPages related podcast is alive!
Now with Tim Clark, David Leedy and Paul Withers
The latest podcast features a great rundown of every XPages-related session at Lotusphere. – MM

Blogger of the Year voting is open
Verizon now have the iPhone
SkiLUG

SkiLUG is a user group event that combines technical sessions and outdoor winter fun in the U.S. state of Maine. Bill Malchisky is the brains behind it. It takes place soon after Lotusphere from Friday, February 25th through Sunday, February 27th. The URL is http://www.skilug.org.

Tips

Darren	Start your LS11 conversation ice breaker with “Do you listen to This Week In Lotus? Those guys are brilliant/idoits/wasting their time/deserve a GRAMMY”
Mike	Two Lotusphere tips: 1) Talk to the fellow attendees at Lotusphere. At your lunch table, while standing around between sessions, wherever. Technical content at Lotusphere is fantastic, but the relationships you build can be even better. 2) For you XPages developers and wannabe XPages developers, look for the new XPages Cheat Sheet put together by David Leedy. It’s four pages of basic XPages material that is invaluable. I have a review copy and I’ve already referenced it several times. Dave announced it on the most recent XCast and has a blog post about it on Notesin9.com.
Susan	Treat your IBM developers well! A greeting, a drink, a coffee – they are the hardest working people…..
Roy	1) Get lots of sleep a lot before you go. I know everyone says it, but after 15 Lotusphere’s, I can tell you that if you follow his advice and network, you will be up until 2 or 3 in the morning talking to all those new friends, discussing lots of new ideas and then you need to be back up and ready to go to a session or breakfast at 7. And don’t discount the idea that you need to wear comfortable shoes (maybe bring a second pair and switch off each day). Last time I logged my mileage at LS09, I walked well over 15 miles in 4 days. I would even go so far as to recommend buying a couple of pairs of comfortable socks. 2) Leave the backpacks in your room. You really do not need to carry around all that paper they give you. The daily schedule will fit in your pocket and if you really want to take notes or carry a couple of water bottles bring a fanny pack or use your pad or tablet. Just remember to put the Showcase prize forms and punch cards in your pocket Monday morning. Lots of good prizes to be had if you get all the stamps. 3)Last thing, this is a casual show so suits and ties are not required– unless of course your name is Bill Malchisky.
Mikkel	Have two Lotusphere tips and as I’m a developer I have to send people of with a coding tip as well. For Lotusphere – make sure to come by our booth in the showcase and see the future of group calendaring. We have an all new UI written entirely in Java that will blow your socks right off!! Also be sure to check out our Lotusphere planning app that we discussed earlier. As for the coding part – when doing LiveText recognizers in Notes the regular expression you specify is case sensitive but if you prefix your regular expression with (?i) it will become case insensitive. Really cool and it makes it a lot easier to write your regular expression. For more info see my blog.
Stuart	1) Don’t ever ever submit an abstract to do a Show and Tell session! 2) Engage, engage, engage. Put any shyness or ‘English reserve’behind you. You’re only at Lotusphere for one week a year, so maximise the value you get by taking every opportunity to talk to people – in sessions, in the labs, on the Showcase floor, in Kimonos. 3) Take a stack of business cards!