Lotusphere 2011 Opening General Session Live Blog

No matter what products you use, you are moving towards Social Business.

LOL, Doug is saying that if you use a ‘legacy’ system for email like Exchange, you can still use it. Will integrate with Sharepoint, Exchange and Office.

Beta releases of the Customer Experience Suite coming later this year.

He is a great high-energy demo guy. Look forward to see him for years to come.

Just showed the activity stream on the iPad. Also very cool…

WOW, just showed dragging and dropping friends from a facebook page right onto a webpage he was creating. Nice.

In-line editing on the in the online files is very cool. Inline previews, easy drag-and-drop.

Brian Cheng back on stage. Great addition to the demo team!

Talking Sametime Unified Telephony. Only need a simple SIP trunk to connect future Sametime to your own phone systems.

Sametime Next being improved and ready later this year too. The mobile access is huge!

Sametime Next mobile support. So Sametime natively on mobile devices. Sametime has a critical role to play in our social business strategy – Kevin Cavanaugh

Suzanne showing sub-communities. Meeting room enabled with video too. New web-based video, embedded, NO CLIENT DOWNLOAD.

Project Concord became LotusLive Symphony with trials available this week and pubically available second half of 2011.

Connections Next: Integrate Social Mail. Will connect to Domino and Exchange. More Open Standards support too. Beta Release in second half of 2011

Doug talking about Social Everywhere and partners to connect Connections with third party products. Cognos and Rational Team Concert to name a few.

Suzanne says ‘on premises’ correctly! YAY. There’s a reason we love her.

LotusLive Symphony announced. Online collaborative documents, going after Google Docs it seems. Nice.

Embedded experience is cool. Embedded previews and comments without having to leave and go to another app or window

Suzanne is now on stage. Showing the Activity Stream again. Shows your internal AND external social networks in the stream. Cool.

Spoke about Lotus Utility Server in the cloud. Notes apps on Lotus Live. Cool.

Kevin Cavanaugh came on stage. Showing Nokia phones like the E7 and announcing support for the new Nokia devices. Cool. Too bad no-one uses Nokia stateside really.

Domino Designer Next will be given ability to connect into the social API’s as well.

IBM Social Business Toolkit helps you pull information into Vulcan, for the activity stream.

Doug back on stage. Talking about elegant experience, contextual information, embedded experiences. BETA later this year of Notes/Domino Next.

Demo was far too short, but Notes Next and the activity stream looks cool. As does some of the mobile stuff

Announcing that better XPage mobile device support coming.

I think they will really stress mobile this year. It’s pretty obvious. Interesting, the activity stream is being shown live on Android too. Cool.

Ron is talking via video now to stress mobile. Doing Sametime native on Android. Very cool.

Shared Calendar is a new feature in Notes Next. Department Calendar might worried right now.

The demo guy is someone named Brian who is actually really good with good eneregy. Surprised not to see Ron Sebastian or Suzanne. Brian is good though.

Notes Next client being shown. An Activity Stream included now. Showing a file sidebar. Showing Hybrid setup with email on LotusLive on files locally so you can combine.

Talking about Vulcan and Northstar. Northstar is the Exceptional Web Experience. IBM Customer Experience Suite is out now. Hrm. Nice to know it’s available on prem as well as the cloud.

Doug Cox, VP of Dev is on stage now and talking about the Next products. Here come the demos.

Larry Bowden saying that the demos are coming got the largest applause of everything so far in the OGS. Heheh.

Check out twitter for the real response from real geeks on this. Not a lot of happy campers right now. 1 hour 27 minutes in. Still no demos, still no announcements, no product talk ups.

Talking about exceptional web experiences. But really. We get it, big customers LOVE Lotus. WE dont need to be fed Kool-Aid. We need demos, and product announcements, and fireworks. This is SO not that…

Now customers AFL, Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts and RBC on stage with Larry Bowden. Back to the old white guys panel. Wheeeee…

Showing a video and putting chairs on stage again. More panel talk coming?? Eeek.

Hour and 17 in, and no demos or new announcements yet. Eeek. Will the students in the audience be turned off?

Outpermorming companies are 57% more likely to be utilizing Social technologies

Social Computing Guidelines by IBM were created way back in 2005. First major company to do so

For every 1% improvement in employee retention saves IBM $50 MILLION dollars… Wow.

Talking about HR usage to getting people more social. Starting by playing social games. Now talking about their W3 intranet. 3 of 4 IBM’s utilize it every day.

Sandy Carter, VP Worldwide Sales now on stage.

‘So Social means sharing the family jewels’ Jeff Schick… LOL

Customer Panels are nice, but it’s not like we get any good info really. It’s just nice to see people who have had success with the Lotus portfolio. It’s a good thing, just not particularly interesting.

They are all talking about how their business has gone social and how important it is. So yes, we get it, social is awesome. If anyone knows that, it’s Notes people!

Blackberry Developer program. Top 25 apps on Playbook will be featured at Blackberry World in May. Very cool

Blackberry Bridge securely connects to Domino email and Connections natively. ‘Professional Grade, Consumer Friendly, this is Playbook’

The Playbook looks really cool. Talking about Flash websites, pushing the fact that Flash is embedded. Saying there will be lots of Lotus support

Co CEO of RIM Jim Balsillie on stage now (and he was Malcome Gladwell’s college roomate. Showing off the RIM Playbook right now.

Check out the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. WE are the outliers according to Mr. Rennie.

IBM turning 100 years old this year. No party, just want to build a smarter planet.

Open Standards more important than ever!

Taking this to it’s full potention? Think of Outcomes, Define the Social Business Framework (which IBM provides) And Catalyze the Community!

New business model is Engaged, Transparent, Nimble and Successful

Alistare saying that this is the fifth major shift in computing. Mainframe, Departmental, PC’s, Internet, and now Social Business. ‘Social software is a continuation of a commitment that began on this stage’ – Alistare

‘This may be the most important Lotusphere EVER’ – Alistaire Rennie

‘It’s important to send the elevator back down’ Kevin Spacey talking about helping those below you and making them successful too!

Keynote speaker: KEVIN SPACEY! One of my favorite actors of all time… awesome

Mass Ensemble was the opening band. Awesome.