Total sessions 189
Websphere sessions 7 3.7%
Portal sessions 27 14.3%
Workplace sessions 9 4.8%
Notes 8 sessions 20 10.6%
Expeditor sessions 4 2.1%
Since Lotus Component Designer components can be deployed on Websphere or Portal I chose to include them with Websphere. Portal's numbers were already high enough.
What is Lotusphere's focus? What is the target audience?
I think it's rather unfair to highlight Notes 8 sessions but not Domino 8 sessions, of which there are literally dozens.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Lotus Component Designer has increased presence on the agenda prescisely because of its utility in the Notes 8 / Eclipse context.
Ed, I rolled Notes 8 and Domino 8 together. I pulled out session titles that explicitly said they were for Notes or Domino 8 in the title. I may have missed a few when I was skimming at 11:00 last night, but based on your response here I can see that number is much higher than what I have reported. I go back through and review all the session abstracts to determine which ones are for Notes or Domino 8.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that Notes 8 isn't available even as a public beta, yet a significant portion of the Lotusphere coverage is about it. Very few attendees will be able to take that information home and make use of it immediately. The unofficial guesstimates I have seen put the Notes 8 release several months after Lotusphere. I just feel that the sessions could be better spent on information people can use now than information they might be able to use several months down the road.
A bigger concern of mine is the growing focus on Websphere and Portal. I don't know if that is in response to requests from customers or if that's showing an IBM and BP agenda. That's not a criticism, it's the genesis of my question: What is the focus of Lotusphere and what is the target audience?
I'll update my post with my recount of Notes and Domino 8 sessions.
Re "WebSphere and Portal":
ReplyDeleteThere are no sessions that I can find on the agenda for WebSphere Application Server.
WebSphere Portal -- a product that is part of the "Lotus" division portfolio within IBM -- belongs on the agenda as one of Lotus's products. Interestingly about half of the sessions about WebSphere Portal are actually sessions about integrating Portal with Domino or other parts of the Lotus portfolio, in addition to admin/directory/security etc. And there's no apologizing for the fact that WebSphere Portal technology is increasingly important even to Notes/Domino customers -- the Portal engine can serve up comoposite applications to a browser, or the Notes 8 client can serve them up to a Notes client user. It's not an "IBM agenda", it's a case of evolving with where the technology is going.
As for Notes 8 vs. prior versions -- we have been talking about Notes/Domino 7 at Lotusphere for three years. At this point in the cycle, Notes/Domino 8 will ship in mid-2007. It has been typical for us to shift the content at Lotusphere to the next Notes/Domino release at the conference prior to the ship date, so that organizations can start planning deployments.
Havng said that, a majority of the best practices sessions are on here-and-now Notes 6/7. Some of the jumpstarts and hands-on sessions are as well.
It's hard to meet all objectives, but I think this agenda balances them out as best could possibly be done given all the diverse interests of the potential Lotusphere attendees.