Wow, this morning has been brutal. -9 degress. That is what my car was registering this morning at 7AM. Windchills are getting it down to -30 degrees at some points… Welcome to Chicago. Oh, and yes, for those wondering, I do have a satisified smile on my face today 🙂

Lately, whenever I’ve told people I live in Chicago, people go “Congrats on the Bears being in the Super Bowl” which causes me to suppress a gag reflex. You see, even though I live here, I’ve always hated the Bears.

I don’t hate Chicago. In fact I truly believe that this is the best city in the United States. For people, and food, and culture, and yes, even sports, Chicago rocks. I love it here, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else at this point.

That being said, I still hate the Bears. It stems from growing up in rural Iowa, outside of Dubuque to be exact. Dubuque, Iowa is about four hours away from Chicago. This caused the vast majority of people in Dubuque to be Bears fans. To a lesser extent, some Packers and Viking fans, but for the most part, if you watched football in that geographical area, you were a Bears fan.

I, of course, was NOT a Bears fan. I had been a Dolphin fan since I was a zygote. My uncle lived in Miami and knew people in the Dolphins organization. My Dad was a fan, and so was I. So growing up, I was not part of the sheep that followed the Bears, I was a proud Dolphin fan.

The Dolphins were perennial playoff contenders in my youth, and even made the Super Bowl in the early 80’s. They lost, and whenever they did, I got tons of flack from the Bears fans. I got shit for being a Dolphins fan all the while I was growing up, and it all came from Bears fans. Then came the 85 season. The Bears were unstoppable, until they played the Dolphins of course. The Dolphins beat them that year, ruining their chance at a perfect season. That caused Bears fans to pretty much hate me all the more.

Then when the Bears won the Super Bowl, those fans became unbearable (pardon the pun.) They were so damn full of themselves. And the fact that the Super Bowl Shuffle was out there didn’t help. Maybe it was because I was a teen, and kids tend to be mean, but every Bear fan I met growing up was neither gracious nor humble. They all acted like they were above other football fans, and they hated my Dolphins. I always proudly cheered for my team, and wore my Dolphin gear, and I constantly got flack for it.

So, it really drove me to hate the Bears. It’s deep-rooted in my childhood, and not something I’ll easily shake. Now I don’t hate ALL Chicago teams, I like the White Sox and the Bulls. In fact, I started liking the Bulls when they got B.J. Armstrong (a former guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes.) I didn’t even know who Michael Jordan was at the time. I do hate the Cubs, because their fans were just as annoying in my youth and I must’ve heard “next year” a zillion times. So I get a little warm feeling every time the Cubs fail as well. The playoff meltdown a couple of years ago was awesome to behold.

Anyway, back to the Bears. Now that they are in the Super Bowl, everyone here in Chicago is all high and mighty about them again. Once again, my Dolphins ruined their perfect season, so Bears fans hate my Dolphins as much as usual. I STILL get flack from the Bears fans for being a Dolphins fan, so to think that just because the Bears are in the Super Bowl that I’ll cheer from them because I’m from Chicago is ludicrous. I am so cheering for the Colts that it isn’t even funny.

The Colts also have classy guys. Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Joseph Addai. The Bears have felons. Tank Johnson? Daniel Manning? And how about that wonderful quarterback, Rex Grossman… god, Griese should be your starter, and deep down every single Bears fan knows it. But according to you all, the Bears are going to crush Indy. We’ll see.

So don’t call me a traitor for cheering against Chicago. You can be a traitor if you were never on the team to begin with. I love Chicago, but will always hate the Bears.

I’m wearing my Indy Blue right now. And all I can say is:

GO COLTS!!!

EDIT: To emphasize my point, I’m writing this on the train, and the train conductors were talking and were just appalled, appalled I tell you, that someone had the audacity to wear a Colts sweatshirt today. Pretty much encapsulates it for me!

My final Lotusphere article for Intranet Journal is available now. Lotus Conference Ends On High Note.

For review, here are the three articles that I did this past week of the Sphere:

• Lotus Gets Social, Gets A Life – This was the initial article that hit the new announcments of Quickr and Connections and touches on IBM’s involvement in Second Lift.
• Lotus Notes 8 Beta Set For Next Month – This hits all of the enhancements coming to the Eclipse-Based Lotus Notes 8 client which goes into beta in February. New GUI, ODF Document Managers, Extensibility and more.
• Lotus Conference Ends On High Note – Gives all the numbers Lotus touted, touches on upcoming Sametime upgrades, delves into Connections a bit and has some decent quotes.

This was my first time covering the event as a journalist, so I hope the three articles encapsulated most of the pertinent info from the event. Look for more articles in the coming months!

• Bad Weather – This was the first year in memory that was quite so bad. Cold and rainy a good portion of the time. I’ve seen both cold and rain at the Sphere before, but not quite to this extent.
• More Women – Everyone I talked to said that there seemed to be noticeably more women here this year than ever before. It’s quite a good thing for diversity in our profession.
• More Younger People – Every year it used to seem like the same crowd, and every year we seemed a bit older. Now I’m starting to see younger folks filling in the ranks. That’s another good thing for our community. And now with the new social technologies, maybe that will draw more of the youngsters
• The Lotusphere bag – Feh. Seems like a cheaper knockoff of last years excellent bag. It’s like this year’s bag is Sharepoint, and last year’s bag is Notes.
• Animal Kingdom is better for families – Too many shows, and more things for the young ones really made this a place for you to take the whole family. Not as much to do for fun if you are like me and like rides but could care less about shows. Oh, and the thorough soaking in the rain was fun too.
• Quickr – I think this will really take off. Especially since it can drop right into a Notes enviroment
• Connections – Activities might fly, but I think the rest of it will be slow to build an momentum. WAS, DB2 and LDAP are all needed, and many organizations will see that as a barrier to entry. Hopefully they make it easy enough to set up so that those of us that actually LIKE the features might be able to use them.
• Community – This time of year is very special to me. It’s like a family reunion. These people are some of the brightest, nicest folks you will EVER come across. I’ve very proud to call this group of people my friends.

The CULT shirt this year had the large “I AM” with a blank line for you to fill in. I still haven’t filled it in, but three good options come to mind:

• I AM… far too trusting
• I AM… Minibar-less
• I AM… recovering

🙂

My latest for Intranet Journal entitled Lotus Notes 8 Beta Set For Next Month is available now. For an overview on the new features and my take on the client, check it out.

Just got back from the Blogger BoF, and it was a packed house. I couldn’t believe that we filled a room, albeit a small one, at 7AM. In my eight Sphere’s, This is the first time I’ve ever actually MADE something at 7AM at Lotusphere. I guess the trick in making a 7AM session is to not go to bed.

Anyway, I’m glad I made it. I felt, and by many people’s accounts, looked, like hell. But I think I contributed to the discussion. It was nice to see that so many of the bloggers have gotten tangible benefits from blogging. People were talking about new jobs, writing gigs and relocations all centered around what was read on the user’s blog. I was in the same boat. This blog largely contributed to my starting to write for Intranet Journal.

Speaking of Intranet Journal, my second article this week (all about Notes 8) should show up on their site later today. Once it does I’ll put a link here.

But for now, it’s off to bed. Last night is what I would call EPIC. Thanks much to the whole crew for a wonderous evening. You know who ya are. With friends like you, I definitely do not need enemies! 🙂

Just wanted to get this out there for a few people since they were asking. I got confirmation today that version 1 of the Connections product runs on Websphere, DB2 and LDAP. So it won’t be as easy for pure Domino shops to drop in like Quickr seems to be. Also, it’s not finalized, but you should be able to license pieces of Connections, or an all-in-one bundle.

Specifically it was said that the Activities piece can and probably would be the most likely piece to have separate licensing at launch. That would allow people to just buy activities and incorporate that into their environment.

Of course this is not finalized yet, so some of this may change, but for now this is how it will probably be. I dunno, if the installer can make the WAS/DB2/LDAP setup really simple, then it might get traction at Domino shops, otherwise I fear it will really only be useful for those that already have portal expertise in house.

Today IBM released one of their research products for public consumption. The product is called Many Eyes and it is a visualization tool that allows you to see table-based data in loads of innovative ways. Of course, this being the Web 2.0 version of IBM, there is a lot of social interaction placed around this as well.

There are RSS Feeds, commenting and the ability to upload your own data collections. There is also a Blog This button that gives you what you see below:

The visualization styles are very cool and extremely fast to switch between. Check it out at www.many-eyes.com or head to Innovations lab in Asia 3. Good stuff.

My first Lotusphere article for Intranet Journal has been posted. Lotus Gets Social, Gets a Life is up now. Check it out to read about the new products Quickr and Connections as well as more info on all of today’s Lotus announcements.