IBM Lotusphere 2008 – Highlights from Fourth Day – Wednesday 23nd

Continuing further with my highlights from the IBM Lotusphere event that took place last week, we now go on to the fourth day of the event, Wednesday 23rd, where a whole bunch of really good stuff happened throughout the entire day! Not only from the perspective of attending some sessions, well, actually one of them, but also from the perspective where I got to meet up a whole lot of people I have been hanging around with for some time already! But let’s get started from the very beginning.

Social Software Keynote with Jeff Schick

First thing in the morning for me was to actually make it to the keynote on Social Software by Jeff Schick, which, I must say, was a rather entertaining show, since we did have our very own Innovation Idol live on stage (More of that in my Flickr stream and throughout this blog post, too!). But apart from that, it surely was one of those very informative keynote sessions where Jeff got on stage a number of folks talking about how their own businesses have been adopting social computing using some of the various IBM Lotus Social Software offerings: Ben Lichtenwalner (From TeachforAmerica), Josh Kimball (From The Bank of New York Mellon) and Mitch Cohen (From Colgate-Palmolive, who, by the way, happens to have quite an interesting blog with some really good stuff in there and he is also twittering! I had the pleasure of talking to him as well, while hanging out at the Meet the Developers Lab, while we both were getting a demo on Lotus Connections v2).

This specific section of the keynote, to me, was of particular interest as we were all able to hear first hand what were some of the main challenges for all of those companies to start adopting social software and how they have overcome them through time. So with great and avid interest I twittered the whole entire thing! Way better than me trying to reproduce it all over here. Very very informative, I tell you, and a clear move that despite some initial hurdles, in the end, it will happen. It does happen.

Going back to Jeff and instead of me telling you all of the stuff he mentioned I would refer you to the same links I shared above from my twitterings and also this specific YouTube video where you can see a good 3 minute show that will give you an idea of what Jeff talked to us about.

From there onwards we went into some really funny Innovation Idol stuff that I think would be very descriptive from the following pictures I took live at the event and which you can find in my Flickr account:

And then, finally, we got to one of the subjects I really wanted to dig in some more, which was going through an extensive demo with one of my fellow IBM colleagues, and good friend, Suzanne Minassian, who shared with us some of the really cool stuff happening with the upcoming release of Lotus Connections v2, providing us with a very thorough demo on some of the new features. At this stage I took a whole bunch of pictures and continued to twitter some more, if you would want to get a glimpse of what’s coming. But not to worry, I am planning on covering this very same topic at a later time since there were a couple of speaker sessions dealing with this very same subject.

Either way I was completely jazzed up at this point in time, more than anything else because some of the new features put together were things we all wanted to have for some time. And they are now finally happening! W00t!

Meeting with folks for customer meetings on social software

Right after the keynote session finished, and instead of going and attending a couple of breakout sessions, I actually had a meeting with a couple of IBM colleagues I have known for a while through our internal blogosphere to talk around the subject of social computing and some questions that a couple of customers were asking about back home. Really interesting and I am hoping that one day I may be able to blog about it and what happened in the end. Stay tuned for some more to come…

Meet the Developers Lab & Lunch with IBM’s Social Computing Ambassadors

After finishing up that meeting with those colleagues I decided to head down to the Meet the Developers Lab where this time around I hanged out with my good friend Adrian Spender, one of the main developers of Lotus Connections in Dublin, who gave me another hands on demo on Lotus Connections v2 focusing on the main Dashboard coming up very soon. Goodness! There I was again, drooling all over the place, making a mess! heh Like I said, I will be talking some more about it as time goes by, but those who have been playing with Connections would agree that it was a very much needed improvement and what an improvement!

That’s also where I met Mitch Cohen and we talked briefly while he was on his way out. Yeah, I know, I was surprised a bit when he mentioned he is one of my blog readers. Goodness! I didn’t see that one coming! But it felt good! heh (Hi Mitch! Great stuff being able to meet you face to face! Thanks for reading! 😉 )

Afterwards I headed down again for another superb lunch with a good bunch of IBM social computing ambassadors from the community I mentioned yesterday and spent quite some time exchanging ideas, sharing our stories on what worked, what didn’t, the challenges we have faced thus far, and overall made it a really really nice lunch where, as usual, I learnt a whole bunch of stuff on how social computing is getting adopted in different countries and geos. Very educational and one of the perks of bringing social networking into a real-live environment!

IBM Adoption of Social Software Booth

From there onwards, it was my turn again, for the last time, to co-host the booth we had and hoped that folks would come over and talk to us, but apparently things were a bit slow that afternoon, probably as plenty of folks were already preparing themselves for the evening party and / or early leave the next morning. Either way, we enjoyed some very very entertaining conversations with David Tebutt, who never stops to amaze me the amount of knowledge he has got around the IT world, and not just social computing. He can keep you entertained for hours no end, and he surely did! Thanks, David, for making a very quiet afternoon rather enjoyable and very enlightening!

Lotusphere 2008 Party: Universal Studios

And, then there was a party! Yeah, baby, one of those parties you know you are going to remember for a while! That’s right. All of those folks who wanted to go headed down to Universal Studios where we had a really good time and where instead of me telling you all about it, I shall just grab some of the pictures I took during that evening and you will see what I mean …

 

Oh, but that is not all of it … Because on our way back to the hotel I bumped into two really good friends of mine who I have known for years, but that we never managed to meet up face to face: Amy Widmer & Kathryn Everest. Of course, we had to go and celebrate it and we headed down to the Dolphin bar, where the whole Lotus Connections crowd was hanging out, and lo and behold I knew my evening had just gotten started!! … Till the very early morning! And it surely did!! Thanks to very thought-provoking and inspirational conversations (Yes! At that time of the morning!) with folks like Gene Leo, Miguel Estrada or Elias Torres (Oh, by the way, next time you bump into Elias ask him to talk you to about Spectacular! You can then thank me later… heh), along with Amy, I ended up going back to the hotel room very, and I mean very late!!!

Tomorrow, last day of highlights from Lotusphere 2008 😉

Tags: IBM, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Collaboration, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Media, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Communities, Flickr, Photos, Team Building, IBM Software, Twitter, Blogging, Metablogging, Learning, Socialising, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing Ambassadors, Social Computing Evangelists, Meet the Developers, Labs, Spectacular!, Social Networks, David Tebutt, Jeff Schick, Ben Lichtenwalner, TeachforAmerica, Josh Kimball, The Bank of New York Mellon, Mitch Cohen, Colgate-Palmolive, Lotus Connections, Connections, Connections v2, YouTube, Videos, Innovation Idol, Suzanne Minassian, Adrian Spender, Universal Studios, Amy Widmer, Kathryn Everest, Gene Leo, Miguel Estrada, Elias Torres