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Disconnecting

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IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere) starts next weekend in sunny Orlando, Florida.  This is a tech conference I’ve attended every January for nearly the last 20 years.  I’ve attended as a developer, an admin, a speaker, the press, a blogger, and as a pointy haired boss.disconnecting

This past week has been filled with throwback photo apps showing me pictures of this day and that day in history, and every one has been brimming with pictures of this awesome yearly pilgrimage.  So many memories of really wonderful times.

This conference has meant an awful lot to me all these years.  I’ve met people from all over the world whom I will consider friends for the rest of my life.  I’ve been able to hire and work with people who were part of this community.  I’ve experienced bachelor parties, and cigar meet ups, and random dinners with folks who happened to be in the same town as me at the same time. It’s a special thing, this community.  And I’ve been thrilled to be such a part of it over the last 20 years.

So why am I not officially attending this year?  Well it really comes down to the technology.  We’re moving to Outlook and Office 365.  We will also be replacing our HR and ERP systems, and with it, some of our Domino development. Quite frankly a lot of the choices make sense, and we’ll probably have a better environment because of it.

So as IBM Technologies are fading within my place of business, so too are any valid reasons for attending Connect.

Unless I have an abrupt career change (which I’m not anticipating) I will be starting a relatively new chapter in my technology career.  It’s going to be weird, but the yellow bubble is like Hotel California.  I can check out, but I can never leave.

Nor do I want to.  I’ll still be on Twitter, Facebook, and here and I’m even taking a family vacation during Connect this year so I can stop by and see everyone.  I would miss you all if I couldn’t.

So, since my time in the bubble is coming to an end, I figure I’ll lay this out there for posterity.  It kinda seems like tooting my own horn, but it’s more for me to remember all the stuff I’ve accomplished with this technology.  I loved this tech, and it is what gave me an IT career and for that I will be forever grateful.

  • I started as a trainer, training 1700 users of a bank how to use Lotus Notes (version 3 to 4 I believe)
  • I became an admin and help desk for those 1700 users, supporting the software for everyone.
  • I became a consultant and was trained as a developer, and did work on Fortune 500 accounts
  • That same consultant gig lead me to admin work for a tech services company
  • So I was back to being an admin, and doing some dev work, and helping run an IT org
  • Then I went to my current company as an admin of all the collaboration services
  • 4 years later I took over as Manager of IT
  • The next year I became Director of IT and have been doing that for the last 7 years

In the same time span

  • I wrote professionally for Intranet Journal for 3.5 years on how to use Lotus technologies in your intranet.
  • I was a board member of Granite, the Chicago Lotus user group
  • I’ve blogged here about IBM/Lotus for over a decade
  • I had a white paper I wrote given away by a vendor at their booth at Lotusphere
  • I had a picture I took appear in every Lotusphere giveaway bag
  • I’ve spoken at Lotusphere
  • I’ve spoken at IBM Edge
  • I’ve been the official photographer of IAMLUG
  • I helped our company become a member sponsor of OpenNTF
  • I’ve been a part of several official IBM whitepapers, including writing one with John Head
  • I was one of the customer interviews for the worldwide webcast launch of Notes 9
  • I’ve had the privilege of managing and being teammates with the absolute best private company group of X-Pages developers on the market.

And as much as I have championed the technology, I wasn’t a total fanboy.  I made sure to use software that was always best for the job, not just because it had IBM branding.  A look back through my blog will attest to that.  Workplace Services Express is a very good example 🙂

That said, I owe IBM and Lotus an immense debt of gratitude.  Those companies are really responsible for me having a career and two decades full of wonderful memories and friendships. 

So thank you IBM, thank you Lotus, and thanks to all of you reading.  I hope everyone really enjoys IBM Connect this year, and I hope it goes on for decades to come.  It’s time for other people to enjoy the kind of things I have.

Anyway, I’ll still be around.  Don’t be a stranger.

bloggerhodgman

IBM Connect 2013 Recap – The People

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In my last post, I spoke of the IBM Connect show itself, and what it meant from a show and technology perspective for me.  That’s only part of the story.  The real value in Lotusphere for me has always been the people.  The business networking is invaluable, but the enduring friendships are what truly stand out.  These folks have become family over the years and this conference has always been our family reunion.

That’s what I would really miss most if I decided not to come.  Not seeing these friends and colleagues in person would cast a definite sadness over my January.  It’s obvious that other friends feel the same way.  There were at least a half a dozen friends who no longer come to the conference who still traveled to Orlando to be able to hang out and see everyone.  For some, like my good friend Tom Duff, it was a very sad experience to call it his final Lotusphere.

But like Tom referenced in his blog post, Volker nailed it:

“Let me tell you something: life is about people, not about technology. Your friends will be your friends. And you will see them again. And again, and again. Technology changes, friendship lasts. In change, there lies opportunity.”

And I know these friendships will endure.  I can go all over Europe, or Australia, or pretty much anywhere in the US and I know someone I want to visit with, have a beer and a good meal with.  You people are special, no matter what color you are wearing or what code compiler you are using, or how pointy my hair gets.  I’m very happy to call you my friends.

I’ve always thought of us as a very welcoming group too.  You can see it in the yearly Blogger photos growing in size year after year.  We love to welcome new people in, and this year I was more encouraged by seeing some younger talent coming around.

It’s not a lot, and maybe not nearly enough, but I spoke with several people who were new to the IBM technologies in the last few years.  That’s a great thing, and we need to encourage more to do the same.  The only way our species can survive is if we breed more of us. 🙂

In addition, I was really touched by a post by a new blogger named Monica Mora   who had always wanted to go to the conference, and this year she made it a reality. It’s a great post on the real power of “social” in our community.  I’d love to hear more of these voices in the future.

Speaking of hearing voices, one of the best things to humanize Lotusphere are the Nerd Girl Spark Ideas talks.  If you want to really get to know the kind, caring, artistic folks of our community, this is a wonderful place to start, and it’s not about our technology choices at all.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the week started with a tragedy to our Lotus family.  A Danish gentlemen named Kenneth Kjærbye passed away after a freak accident during the annual motorcycle ride that many of my friends and a co-worker partake in.  By all accounts, everyone from the police, to the motorcycle shop, to IBM were very supportive and responded warmly and wonderfully given the situation.  I could only offer my condolences, hugs and support to all of my friends who were deeply affected. They carried on with brave faces, but I know how much they were hurting.  Once again, this community came together to help however they could, and I’ve heard from the folks affected how much is was appreciated.  My thoughts are with all of you, and especially Kenneth’s family.

These are the extremes of this family.  We grieve together, and we enjoy life to the fullest together, and celebrate everything in between.  These people, you people reading this, are what makes this conference and our community special. Big virtual hugs to you all until we meet again.

IBM Connect 2013 Recap – The Show

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At the end of January I took my annual pilgrimage to Orlando, Florida for the IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere) conference. It’s something I’ve looked forward to every year for a decade and a half.

This year I approached it with some trepidation. I was afraid that IBM was changing it away from the conference I loved to something… well more corporate. I wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The change was pretty evident in the Opening General Session. IBM did a great job, but was showing off technologies that are more apt to the Fortune 100 than companies like mine.  In fact, I think someone said that the upcoming Notes and Domino 9 only got a total of a 56 second mention during the two plus hours.

For my team, who runs our company on XPages, based on Domino, that was kind of a bummer. However, the real travesty would have been if the technical tracks fell flat, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth. XPages had an incredibly strong showing (40+ sessions.)  The Best Practices track was as valuable as ever, and I think the content was even stronger than years prior.

Outside of the tech content, there were a lot more things offered for the pointy-haired bosses, and HR and Marketing professionals.  They are definitely offering more to bring those folks to Orlando, and that’s fine. They didn’t lose focus on the technical side despite the lack of sessions on some things like Quickr.  It makes sense as they are trying to migrate everyone to Connections, and that product continues to get even more compelling.

The conference in general made reference to Lotuspheres past with a wall of photos and a great video of highlights through the years.  The one thing they also promised to do was have a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Lotusphere.  This is the one IBM screwed right in the ear.

You see, our session booklets said this party was to happen on the Product showcase and it was at a time during sessions.  So if you wanted to attend, you had to skip out on content which I did.  I got to the floor and started looking around.  I found lots of other friends doing the same thing.  What did we find?  Nothing.  Well unless you count one thing of balloons and some cupcakes.

Don’t get me wrong, the cupcakes were FABULOUS, but that wasn’t really the point.  I expected an homage to the past, and kind of a passing of the torch from Lotusphere to Connect.  I skipped actual content damnit, I wanted my goodbye.  But much like we’ve felt about Notes and Domino over the years, it seemed like IBM just forgot about it.

At least on Twitter we made the “party” seem worth it, what with our piercing stations, the llamas, the live performance by Psy, and the tattoos upon nether regions.

Despite that particular shortcoming, IBM Connect seemed to maintain the things that made Lotusphere great in years past.  I really had gone into this whole process feeling that this could possibly be my last year, but when all the dust settled I felt a lot better about things.  So will I be back next year? I guess we’ll see.  One thing I would really miss is the people, and I’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.

LS2013

Goodbye Lotusphere Hello Connect

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The end of this month I’ll be attending a yearly technology conference in Orlando, Florida for another time. How long? Well, If I had birthed a child way back when I started attending, that kid would be in high school. It’s a long time to do anything in this world, and as with anything you do this long, change is inevitable.  Up until now, that conference had been called Lotusphere. This year, the moniker has changed to IBM Connect.

For the first time in nearly a decade I’m not working the show as press, or as a technology blogger, or as a speaker.  This year I’m just going as a customer.

It’s actually a nice thing for me.  In the recent past I’ve always had interviews, and press briefings and blogger “nachos and news” events that I had to attend.  I missed a lot of session content and even some parties because I was sequestered away in a back hotel hallway interviewing executives and writing articles and blog posts (sometimes on a deadline.)  Last year, I didn’t have writing responsibilities, but I had to speak on stage twice.

This year I just have to attend sessions and soak up all the information I can.  I still may take as many pictures as always, but I might not even write a word about the event until well after it’s over.  That’s a fairly seismic shift for me, but quite frankly I’m looking forward to it.

The event is obviously changing in other ways too.

Most notable is the fact that the Lotus branding is being deprecated and everything is now true blue IBM.  I agree with the decision on the branding point, but not seeing thousands of bumblebee backpacks will be a sad departure from years past.

In addition the conference has really expanded to include more managerial, strategy and big picture business tracks and the focus isn’t quite as strong on the technical ones any longer.  I’m wondering how this might affect it’s usefulness to myself and my team.

I’ll miss some of the people who will be absent this year too.  Some staples on stage giving sessions, and staples on stage singing karaoke at Kimono’s.  This saddens me for many reasons, not the least being that some of these people no longer make their living based on IBM software.  That means chances to see them in person are far less likely.

Lotusphere has always been a family reunion for me.  Reconnecting with the people who bled yellow and had the same passion for the software that I had.  We would talk tech, network, learn, party and become close friends.  It was the recharge I needed to kick off the year in high gear.  WE were social business long before anyone coined the term.  This year, I’m just not sure it will be the same.

That said, I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt, and reserve judgement until I’ve seen what IBM has to offer.  I just can’t help having a nagging feeling that is my last yearly trip to Orlando.

Here’s hoping I’m wrong.