IamLUG 2010 Recap
Well it’s been a couple days since I left the IamLUG conference in St. Louis, and I have to say that once again, Chris Miller and crew put on a fantastic conference.
First off, the sessions were top notch. Admin (from some of THE best in the business), Best Practices in Development, XPages (lots of XPages, also from the top names), IBM Strategy, the Ninja-coding antics of Nathan Freeman and Tim Tripcony and more. So the content was awesome, and the only problem I had was choosing between sessions.
The Keynote didn’t have any big announcements like last year’s Lotus Knows bombshell, so I guess my expectations were a little too high for that, but I thought Doug Cox gave some good information. AND, he didn’t harp on about Websphere which gained him huge yellow points in my book. In Ed Brill’s strategy session, he gave us some good info on what Lotus Live entails, and even showed off a working demo of Project Vulcan. It will be interesting to see how much it evolves moving forward. In addition, Ed shared that he didn’t see a major feature release of Notes happening in 2011. So that means no Notes 9 in 2011. I thought that was surprisingly candid, but I kind of like it. Give everyone a year to breathe and get up to date on the 8.5.X codestream. Because Vulcan does seem to be another re-invention of how a client should operate.
As for the venue, well it’s at an all-suite hotel, so the rooms are huge and mine was very nice. And for conference food, this was probably once again, the best I’ve ever had at a conference. In addition the hotel is connected to a casino with several top notch restaurants (the Burger Bar, SleeK and Asia come to mind) and is right on the edge of Laclede’s Landing. This means you cannot go hungry (or thirsty for that matter.) So for me, the location is an hour plane ride away, or even close enough to drive down from Chicago. So I LOVE the venue, and hope it stays here for years to come. The ONLY bad thing I experienced personally was that the lobby felt like a sauna on Tuesday. It was over 100 degrees outside with heat index near 115. The humidity was horrid outside, so I think the lobby just couldn’t keep up. Other than that, all was good.
So once again, I learned a lot, all for FREE, from great speakers, in a great location. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.
So many thanks to all the sponsors that helped make this happen, especially IBM. This is a great conference to give a little shot in the arm to the Lotus faithful in the middle of the year. Now, on to Lotusphere!
🙂
August 6, 2010 @ 10:42 pm
If only you hadn’t bailed on my bartending at SleeK! Free JW Blue Label would have made the conference, dammit!
Anyway, thanks for the kind words. We look forward to making some of those swift and silent techniques available to the Lotus world at large. It truly was an exceptional event to be a part of.
August 7, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
We were happy to have you attend once again and feel it is one of the best to be found outside of Lotusphere. The food always sticks out in people’s mind when it is bad, so we wanted to make sure it was great.
I hope everyone reads your excitement and attends next time if they once again hesitated to register.
We hope IBM joins us again as well for the next one.
August 10, 2010 @ 8:44 am
Please don’t sell yourself short. I would say that there are many ways that IAmLug is actually better than Lotusphere. Here are my top 4.
1. You actually get to know the presenters. At Lotusphere, there is always a mob of groupies around the presenters. The Lug is much more intimate. Many times, you will be in class and sitting next to one of the many top notch presenters.
2. Price, of course. I think some of my coworkers were put off by the price. I got the feeling that the thought “It’s free. How good can it be?” was going through there head. Their loss. However, I think the word is out and they will probably be there next year.
3. For me, proximity. I live two hours to the west. A two hour car commute kicks butt.
4. Location. Personally, I like that this conference is at a real place and not some immagineers interpretation of a real place.
The only down side is that this time I lost the $50 I won at IAmLug 2009, plus $10 interest at the black jack tables.
I know the guys and gals that put this on are still in recovery mode, but I certainly hope they try this again.