The opening session's band first appeared to be 12 piece cover band with 6 singers. They started with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (leading into "With a little help from friends") during this song the familiar kaleidoscope shown in the handouts and some bright red fractal images appeared on the huge wall to wall screens).
The images morphed into a different kaleidoscope in circle of the around the Lotusphere logo. Mid-way through the song the stage lasers burst into a wide array of psychedelic flare and the wall screens then changed into a large swirling galaxy of stars.
Somewhere between the first in second song the number of performers on stage increased to 20 or more.
The second act was a series of David Bowie songs. The first being "Changes". This song displayed a large image of the moon as seen by one of the hovering Apollo spacecraft. This image changed back to the galaxy image with a slight difference of what may have been a supernova or star chamber cloud. The following song was "under pressure" which had a water effect image.
The third act consisted of songs from the who: "Pinball Wizard", "I'm Free", and the theme from Lotusphere that is revolves around you. The who's "You?" (Think about you...I see the millions of you...) song.
After these series of songs on stage appeared a number of IBM Lotus executives such as: Michael Rhodin, Ken Bisconti and Ron Sebastion. Appearances by the executives of Sametime also gave brief keynote speeches (notably Bruce Morse).
Mr. Rhodin began the keynote address by mentioning that 2006 was the year of "You", most notably from Time magazine's person of the year (cover shown on screen). Some of the announcements he made were:
- midyear delivery Hannover
- there was a 30% increase in Notes users forth quarter and that this was second year sustained increase of double digit growth
- 7000 people were in attendance
- 1869 certified Lotus Professional attending which was a large increase over last year( was it 400% quoted?)
- He even mentioned that Lotusphere had made its appearance in "Second Life" - although it was shown on screen, I have not had a chance to go see it yet.
Mike finished the main opening keynote by presenting this year's guest speaker Neil Armstrong. Neil gave an interesting talk about his experience in the Apollo missions. Some of the interesting items quotes and facts from his topic were
- Orlando airport's designation of MCO was a hold over of the old McCoy Airforce base which is where the test flights of the X1 for the preparation of the Apollo missions were held
- Russians had sputnik first, the engineers in the early days of NASA had "kaputnik"
- The navigation of the early astronauts were by eye "Hey, that must be Australia down there..." dead pan delivery was very funny
- The navigation was pretty bad that although they had naval ships ready for his landing he was so far off he actually landed just outside Okinawa
- Even with the low powered computers they had (only 4KB memory, 8 digit -no alpha read out display), he still had to get accurate distances (within 11 inches) for the "3 day trip" to account for the mileage on his expense report (another great delivery)
Mike Rhodin cam e back on stage for the next session and started talking about the future products coming out Lotus. The strategy of their focus was that more and more individuals were working away from there office: business travel, telecommuting, and every day computing for entertainment. The signs were leading to what might become one day of making the "office" obsolete (slight pun intended).
By way of example, an anecdotal comment was made that on a recent interviewee at IBM, the applicant said that "email is for their grandfather". Current and future generations are embracing technologies of social networking more quick and more readily. They are sharing more, more frequently and more quickly. The tools to perform these tasks must make sense for user, they must be cool to the user and they need to solve the problems for real people.
Tools like Sametime that give immediate presence and awareness. Two major companies / government that have embraced this technology are the Dept of Defense and GE. A product related to(third party?) intellicare gave a Sametime testimonial from several nurses having the immediate access to medical opinions from Doctor's throughout the hospital.
- An announcement was made that video chat was coming as a supported framework on the Mac & Linux.
- There will be multi devices chat (chatting not only individuals but other hardware and software). An example was demonstrated on this, that was a bit complex to explain.
- Chat windows will be merged. No longer have many separate windows open, there will be a "toolbar" showing the individual chat sessions open (displayed using the individuals picture captured from their account)
- There was a live demonstration of a soft-phone (software integrated possibly through VOIP?) with voicemail in the chat window
A new product line was introduced to push through Lotus' brand into the social networking for business with Lotus Connections.
- A public beta will be available next month
- There was a demo of how "mashups" were created. "Mashups" is a relatively new term for composite applications: pieces of different applicants pulled together in a new way to perform a new and important business task.
- In the demo, the "Mashup" creation reminded me of the simple way that you would create joins in Access: a table here, a table there, you click and drag and the information was connected. Now take that concept to a Notes application: a database here and a database there that you define the wiring/linking and viola the information is joined: you select one piece of data in one frame/window/portlet you have its related data automatically updated from a completely different application shown in its window.
Another new product was announced for the social networking crowd: "QuickR" (taking the recently fashionable naming conventions from other products in the community).
A (cue the angelic AWWW music) FREE personal version (for those with maintenance packages) of QuickR is to be made available (in February).
- Provides for project management
- social networking
- templates, templates, templates
Other news:
- Lotus recently acquired filenet (this was an item to look into for imaging products... to be discussed later in the Product Showcase area)
- Available through QuickR will be a check in and check out of the document/attachment/ files that are shared
- There will be an enhancement/add-in? to Lotus that when you send an email with an attachment, Lotus will automatically prompt you to say "Would you rather send a link (to this massively huge attachment that will clog up your email traffic if you try) instead of an attachment?" (Commentary added as this was a huge ovation from the admins in the room that have to detail with overloaded email traffic (such as video clips)
To close out the opening session, the fanfare increased with more great light show affects.
All around the room "Connections" were made with yellow lasers as Mike described how you will share the content with the person in the next cubicle, to the person across the office, to your immediate business associates, and then around the world. A very cool laser affect crawled along the wall about 10 feet up reminiscent of some recent scifi films showing even more connections. The opening band closes the session with the light show with a repeat of the Who's Song "You" song earlier. A nice ending of the opening session.
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