My Lotusphere Review

Now the dust has settled from Lotusphere, I would like to offer my thoughts in review.

First – let’s get it over and done with – it was my first Lotusphere as a speaker. Hopefully it will not be my last. I certainly intend to submit abstracts new year. I had a great co-presenter in David Leedy. Yes, it was a lot of work, but if you don’t put in hard work and preparation, I believe it shows in the session. And no matter how interested people are in your topic, if the material is not presented well, if you don’t consider the audience, it will not be successful. I regret that I didn’t have time to go into greater detail on the last two demos, particularly to show just how easy it is to create an extension to a dojo module. But hopefully the sample database (which will be on lsonline shortly) and the background on the anatomy of a dojo module give even fledgling javascript developers enough information to have a go. Even during the presentation I noticed the multi-column legend was vertically aligned so that all content was centered on each row. Overnight it occurred to me that because the legend is in a table, it should be easy to add styling or a class to each table cell. So just over five minutes later I had working code to add a style to the legend label. Two minutes 45 seconds later I had created the code and tested a style for the icon cell. That code is also in the sample database.

Even before Lotusphere it was noticeable how many XPages sessions were scheduled. The sessions were well-attended and shows a great enthusiasm for the topic. The sessions on the Extension Library and Extensibility API were very interesting, particularly how quickly Paul Hannan added XPages functionality to the Lotusphere Session database. The speed with which the XPages cheatsheets disappeared after sessions also shows the desire for XPages just two years after it was first announced at Lotusphere 2009. The “Mastering XPages” book sold out on Tuesday morning, despite IBM sending more copies than any other book. And discussions are already taking place over a second XPages book. The documentation has improved significantly over the last year and the questions in Gurupalooza and Ask The Developers demonstrated very little areas of frustration with XPages development. Domino Designer 8.5.3 is being developed to enhance the XPages experience, giving a new XPages perspective and making it easier to include Java in an XPages application. And that is the beauty of XPages: it is easy to develop a powerful XPages application without delving into more advanced XPages skills; but once you become au fait with XPages development it is possible to delve into Themes, Localisation, even Java and add even more power to your applications. This is an exciting time for Domino developers, particularly with the focus in the future on making it easier to integrate with non-Domino datasources.

The Opening General Session was rather light on product announcements. The main topic was a marketing call to arms of “Get Social. Do Business”. But one significant product launched which supports this vision was LotusLive Symphony. I think this will be a major product for the next few years, changing the way businesses work on documents, spreadsheet reports, presentations etc. On the whole these kinds of documents are collaborative efforts. The output is precipitated by a meeting with individuals then taking actions to collate information to contribute to these documents. LotusLive Symphony allows a single document to be used with an activity-centric focus – unique when compared with other productivity tools I am aware of. The recent changes and comments functionality is also aimed at making it easier for people to collaborate on the output. The whole approach is sympathetic to the collaborative theme of the IBM tools and an area in which IBM has a proven track record. And that makes me confident that the product is in good hands. Indeed the innovation and power of the product reminds me of the feeling I had when I first got to know XPages. This could be big. It could be very big.

Of the other new products at this Lotusphere, Cognos had a strong focus. Business intelligence is an important area and Cognos is a more marketable product that gives IBM a good footprint in large companies. From what I heard there is also a free edition, Cognos Express, which is the product I will be looking to learn more about.

As ever though, it’s the people who make Lotusphere what it is, the community. Their passion and the support of IBM make the event and the products what they are. Yes, there are always areas for improvement, but on the whole Lotusphere 2011 was the start of a promising new year.