After 27 hours in transit, I am, finally, home! Yes, that is right, after over a day of travelling I am now back, coming from one of the best conference events I have ever been to in my short career in the IT world: Lotusphere 2008!!! What a blast, indeed, folks! I mean, I had very very high expectations and everything about the whole event, after having talked to different people about it for quite a while, but this past week has been just incredible! So much so that on the way back I just couldn’t help thinking about the great time I had, the awesomeness from all of the folks I met while in there and the incredible amount of stuff I learnt all along. And all that probably helped me enjoy those 27 hours of travelling back since it didn’t feel like I would be too tired. Yes, I am sure, it was the excitement kicking in!
Anyway, you would remember how last blog post I put together over here was detailing a little bit on the highlights from the first day of Lotusphere, Sunday 19th. From there onwards things just went incredibly busy and massively hectic and just didn’t have much time to update the blog. Instead, as you would all imagine, I decided to dedicate my time to one of the activities I like the most about conferences: networking. And that’s what I did! And big time! Oh and plenty of twittering as well! Yes, I realise that I didn’t have a chance to say "Hi!" to a whole bunch of folks I would have wanted it to, but it surely was a good start to put together a face and a voice to those folks I have been reading or connecting virtually with for quite some time now! Priceless!! Hanging out with various different folks till the early hours of the morning, closing the bar brings back lots of good memories from previous conference events I may have attended.
Anyway, I am now back home already for a few hours and while I am trying to keep myself awake, since I don’t want to just get to bed too soon, I am starting to wade through various different blog posts I’ll be putting together about the Lotusphere event itself. Pretty much along the very same lines as the highlights entry I mentioned earlier on, so you can expect over the next day or so about four long blog posts on the subject. Then from there onwards, there is just so much I would want to talk about and mention over here from what I saw / talked about while in there, that I am probably going to spend a few days sharing further insights with regards to some of the incredibly exciting announcements that went live while in there! I am hoping that would be all right with you folks, if you see that over the next few days I may be talking a bit far too much on such IBM event, but I think it’s worth it.
Oh, and talking about announcements, I just realised that, while I was at Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando, I made one of those huge achievements that I never thought would have been possible. Yes, that is right. For someone who studied to become an English teacher it’s funny to think that earlier on this week, on the 20th of January 2008, I actually made 11 years working for IBM!! Wooohooo!! That is just huge!
That’s right! I started working for IBM in a contractor company back in 1997 and supporting the mainframe for the UK. Then from there onwards I managed to get into the training department from the overall project, and from there moving forward into Knowledge Management and Social Computing spaces. Till now. Quite an experience, I tell you! And fast forward to today, 11 years and still going strong!
With all of the stuff that was going on during the event I even forgot about my own IBM anniversary and didn’t blog about it. So, now that I have got a few minutes and in order to help me stay awake, here I am putting together these lines to wish me another 11 years of good and exciting work doing the stuff I have been enjoying for the last few years! KM, Collaboration, Communities, Learning and Social Computing!!
Of course, regular blogging activities will resume for this particular blog shortly, once I am done with my mail backlog, or, and stay tuned, because I’m also preparing an entry on how I am going to get rid of e-mail in 2008 to share my knowledge and collaborate with other folks using social software tools… But that’s a story for another blog post…
(It’s good to be back again!)
Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Events, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Networking, Twitter, Learning, Communities, Anniversary
Wellcome back Luis, entiendo que estes cansado del viaje, pero seguro que ha merecido la pena.
11 años en IBM ???, yo llevo 32 y todavía sigo por aquí, las cosas han cambiado mucho desde entonces. Yo también estuve en mainframe una temporada, con aquellos 3090 refriguerados por agua, parecia que eras un fontanero.
Eran mejores aquellos tiempos ???, no se, diré simplemente que eran diferentes.
Un saludo
Martín
Siempre que hago algún comentario en tu blog se me olvida decirte que hace tiempo vi que SIDRA400 lo tienes en tus enlaces, pero el link está mal.
Un saludo
Well done Luis… congrats on the 11 years!! Thats quite an achievement 🙂 enjoyed your twitterings from LotusSphere, kept me sane during a busy week!!
so did you end up getting an iPod touch at the apple store on your way back ??
Hi folks! Thanks for dropping by and for the feedback comments! Martin, después de haber dormido 11 horas seguidas la verdad es que ¡uno se siente persona de nuevo! Cansado, pero ¡ha merecido la pena de una manera irrepetible! Espero poder relatar algunos de esos highlights en los próximos artículos. Pero sí, ¡¡ha merecido la pena muchísimo!!
Whoooaaahhhh!! ¡¡32 añazos!! (Como dirían por ahí) Llevas tanto tiempo en IBM casi como años tengo yo. Eso es dedicación, sí, señor, y lo demás son cuentos chinos. Yo espero poder llegar a unos cuantos más y ver cómo cambian las cosas. Desde luego eran tiempos diferentes, cuando estábamos con las mainframes, pero igual de divertidos, por lo menos los recuerdos que tengo de cuando empecé todavía siguen ahí, relucientes y muy frescos.
Con respecto a lo del enlace de tu blog in my blogroll, lo tenía actualizado en mi lector offline de feeds, pero no en BlogLines. Lo acabo de corregir y ahora está ya bien. Dame un toque si todavía está equivocado y lo miramos. ¡Gracias por los comentarios!
Andrew, thanks much for the congrats and kind wishes! It surely has been, at least, for me, for sure! Appreciated the commentary on the twitterings during Lotusphere. I am hoping it was useful. I am working on a number of different blog posts on it and I am sure plenty of great stuff will come out from there, too!
Yes, I did ended up at the Apple Store in Florida Mall, on the way to the airport and got myself an iPod Touch, the 16GB one, more than anything else after having played with it the night before while hanging out at the Dolphin bar with Adrian Spender and a bunch of Irish lads. Had a great time and from what I saw and the price there, I just had to get one! 🙂 hehe And loving it so far!! Will be blogging about it, too, soon!
Thanks for the feedback, folks!