IBM Lotusphere 2008 – Orlando, FL. – 20th to 24th January – I’ll Be There! And You?

As you may have well already read over at Dennis Howlett‘s Irregular Enterprise blog, or through my various twitterings, this coming Saturday I will be travelling again to the US to attend my first conference of the year and must say that I will be starting with an awesome event that I have been looking forward to for the last couple of years. Yes, indeed, this coming Saturday, and till Friday afternoon next week, I shall be in Orlando, Florida, attending IBM‘s Lotusphere 2008!!!

To say that I am incredibly excited about the whole thing is probably an understatement, because I know I am off to a wild ride (Never better said!)!! This time is going to be a special occasion as well, since I will not be presenting at the event itself. I will just be splitting my time in attending as many of the sessions as I possibly can and hanging out at the "Social Software @ IBM" booth where I will be talking to a whole bunch of customers on the topic of social software, social computing and how IBM is making use of such tools to improve the knowledge sharing and collaboration across the enterprise.

At the same time I will be spending quite a bit of time demoing, while talking, of course, some of the most interesting IBM social software tools that have been coming along over the last few months, as well as giving folks a teaser about a couple of them that haven’t seen the light publicly just yet, but of which you will find out some more about very very soon! One of them, specially, is the one holding me from sharing the slide deck and pitch I did at the recent IBM iForum event in Zurich that I have been talking about quite a bit. Stay tuned because that one is coming up shortly as well! Thus if you are around and are willing to spend some time seeing what’s going on in that space come over to the "Social Software @ IBM" booth and say "Hi!" 🙂

As I get myself more and more exposed to various different details, I shall be sharing them over here. However, there are already tons of materials available all over the place that you can check out to see what the event is going to be like.  As a starter check out the Technorati tag for the event: Lotusphere2008. Then you can head over to Planet Lotus, which I am sure is going to be raving with commentary throughout the event (Already got started!). There is also a Ning space built up for the occasion as well as a Twitter channel. And the list goes on and on and on…

Also, and while you are busy trying to figure it all out, you may want to check out the link to the Tracks and Sessions to see some of the outstanding materials that will be presented throughout the few days the conference lasts. I would be, of course, very interested in following up with all of the different sessions related to social software and social computing (InsideLotus – Lotus, Portal and Collaboration Software has actually put together a very nice summary in this case, if you would want to read further on it right away).

Oh, you may be thinking that checking out all of the different sessions and tracks through the Web site is not really that friendly, right? Well, here is Genii Software coming to our rescue and putting together a superb Lotus Notes database with which you can navigate through the entire event and find the sessions you would be interested in! Here is another link to one of the most recent blog posts on the topic where you would be able to read some more about it. This would certainly become really handy, while I am stranded in airplanes for over 20 hours this coming Saturday, don’t you think?

Finally, there is one other thing that I would want to share further with you. Stay tuned for the various multiple updates that would be coming from various prolific Lotus bloggers, because I am sure they are not going to stop a single minute before, during and after the event. Special attention to Ed Brill‘s blog, Alan Lepofsky‘s, Chris Reckling & Ted Stanton’s InsideLotus, Mary Beth Raven‘s blog, Rocky Oliver’s Lotus Geek and The Taking Notes Podcast blogs, amongst many many others, because I am sure they will all keep you busy for quite a bit. Oh, and I, too, would be looking forward to Blogging community birds-of-a-feather, of which you can read plenty more over at Ed’s blog.

In short, it looks like it is going to be one of those events difficult to forget! Plenty of good fun all around! And since it is my first Lotusphere I bet I am going to enjoy it even more! More than anything else because I am seriously looking forward to meet up with a bunch of folks I work with in this distributed world day in day out, also meet up with some of the folks I have been reading of their blogs for so many years (It surely is going to be nice to put a face behind the quality writings); and finally get together on to some really good discussions with various different people on social software and social computing! What else can I ask for?

Oh, yes, I got myself an extra battery for the MacBook Pro I’ll be bringing in with me, so it looks like I am all set! Let’s hope that the network connection would work as you would expect (So that I can blog about some of the stuff that would be going on during the event); that I get the chance to show the demos the way I intend to (Yes, indeed, I will be using the Mac for those, too!! 😉 ) and that I am able to find the folks I want to meet up amongst the several thousand people attending!! So if you are around in Orlando during that time (Starting this coming Saturday and till Friday morning) and want to say "Hi!" or go together for a drink or two while doing some massive social networking … stay in touch! You can comment on this blog post, contact me through Twitter, or Facebook, or the Ning Lotusphere space, or e-mail, or … well, you know where to find me 😉

See you there!

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, Collaboration 2.0, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Learning, Communities, Dennis Howlett, Irregular Enterprise, Orlando, Florida, iForum, Innovation, Ning, Planet Lotus, Twiter, Genii Software, Lotus Notes, Notes, Connections, Lotus Connections, Quickr, Lotus Quickr, Sametime, Lotus Sametime, Ed Brill, Alan Lepofsky, Chris Reckling, Ted Stanton, InsideLotus, Mary Beth Raven, Rocky Oliver, Lotus Geek, Taking Notes Podcast, Blogging, Metablogging, Mac, MacBook Pro, MBP, Apple