To start with, I think this article has an amusing opening line…
Once the neglected stepchild of IBM’s colossal services business and systems unit…
Presented in the style of a slide-show, this article describes why software is now big business in IBM (which I’m rather relieved to hear). The Lotus brand gets three slides right at the end, describing Project Vulcan, LotusLive Labs and the expanding support for mobile devices. So, head straight to slide 25.
Here’s a chance to register for some Lotus webcasts during June…
To register go to this page and then follow the links to the individual webcasts.
If you missed the UK LCTY events, or you attended and want to enjoy the sessions all over again, you can go here.
It has been noted that the audience looks a bit sparse, but that’s because the camera captures the first few rows. And as you all know, people tend to avoid the front rows. I don’t know why – I know you get wet when you sit at the front at SeaWorld, but that doesn’t tend to happen at software events.
This promised to be a busy week – two LCTY events, and in the middle I had to go to Dublin for a day to provide some Lotus strategy / portfolio training. That involved flying from Heathrow to Dublin, Dublin to Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh to Heathrow. Mother Nature had other ideas, but more on that later.
LCTY London was a knock-out – I don’t know the final attendance number but the place was swarming with customers and business partners. I spent a lot of the day with the film crew from our PR agency, ensuring that we were capturing the thoughts of customers, partners and IBM staff. You can see the results here… of course I managed to get my handsome mug on camera, but unfortunately the edit gives the impression that I repeated myself (probably because I did).
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the closing talk by Professor Brian Cox, discussing the vast and tiny aspects of the universe. To say that he had the audience mesmerised was an understatement. I had the chance of a brief chat with him before he went on, and I asked how long the ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ series took to film (answer: from March to November 2009) and if he really went to all those places just to film some relatively small excerpts (answer: no, because while there they took the opportunity to film content for other programs). Professor Cox, like so many of our favourite speakers over the years, stuck around to chat afterwards, and even autographed Wild Bill’s iPad.
Click on the picture of Professor Cox for a larger version.
After a day in Dublin I boarded a plane (with propellers) to Edinburgh. Twenty minutes after the cabbage crate was due to take off, the pilot informed us that we would now be leaving (good) but would be making a brief stop in Glasgow so that they could drop off an engineer and some spare parts (oh, great). Upon landing at Glasgow, the stewardess said “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Glasgow”. Like we wanted to be there… which, of course, we didn’t. The subsequent short hop from Glasgow to Edinburgh was over before the plane could get above thirty feet.
I then joined some colleagues in a sports bar to watch Tottenham versus Arsenal, and the least said about that the better.
Thursday morning started with news of the volcanic apocalypse, and after breakfast with my frolleague Richard Bye I checked whether the hotel could extend my stay. Seconds later a text message from British Airways arrived, stating that my flight had been cancelled. Very efficient BA… and the text message arrived at 7:47 (yes, 747, how ironic).
I quickly investigated the possibility of returning home via train, and in a matter of minutes the 16:30 and 17:00 trains became fully-booked and unavailable. So I booked the 17:30 train. After another successful LCTY (with more filming) I boarded the train and got home around midnight. Some of my colleagues arranged a convoy of rental cars and arrived home a lot later.
I guess I have to thank Mother Nature for delaying the ash cloud by twelve hours… I think a journey home by ferry and train from Dublin would have been a lot longer and more stressful.
One more snippet of info, discovered by Mike Smith of The Turtle Partnership. There was one other LCTY event going on that day, the 15th of April. Do you know where? Rekyavik… that’s in Iceland.
This was announced on Twitter today, but I wanted to provide some more information. Following nine months in the role of Messaging & Collaboration Business Unit Executive (North East Europe) I’m moving back to a role with Lotus UK & Ireland (UKI as it’s known). In the this new role I’ll be looking after the growth markets of Unified Communication & Collaboration and software-as-a-service. In other words, Sametime in all it’s flavours, Sametime Unified Telephony, and LotusLive.
Perceptions are interesting. I received a great many ‘congratulations’ messages today – thank you for those. I also received a few messages along the lines of “what happened?”, “was I happy about it?” and “was I pushed?”. I know the reasons for these questions – essentially the North East Europe role could be seen as senior to the UKI role. I’m returning to a role very similar to my previous role, albeit with different aspects of the portfolio.
To answer those questions… yes I am happy and no I wasn’t pushed. I instigated the move. I was asked to re-consider, and I received a great many internal e-mails citing disappointment (and best wishes) and an acknowledgement that I’d done a great job.
So why did I make the move back? I’m not going to discuss it fully here, but one of the main reasons was travel – multiple days away and arriving back late at night was not suiting me or the family. I know some people relish it and find the travel exciting, but I didn’t realise the impact it would have.
My new title will be something like ‘Portfolio Manager, Unified Communications and On-Line Collaboration Services’ – let’s see if that will squeeze onto a business card.
An update on the guest speakers… not William Shatner, not Leonard Nimoy, and certainly not Harry Hill (I admit defeat). In Edinburgh we have Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller DCB, who is described as the former ‘real-life M’. Or for those of you less familiar with the 007 franchise, James Bond’s boss (if he existed). Given the events she handled during her career, this should be a fascinating talk.
For London I’m very excited by the prospect of hearing from Professor Brian Cox – unfortunately I missed his closing session at Lotusphere as I was on the way to the airport. I’ve been a fan of Professor Cox’s television work – his Horizon program on nuclear fission was riveting, and I’m loving his new series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’. I do wonder how he managed to convince the BBC to send him around the world to many exotic locations in the cause of talking about our solar system, but I guess that when you’re extremely clever you can do that. Did he really need to go to Alaska just to collect a bag of methane? I know of sources slightly closer to home.
Whether you’re North or South of the border, you can register here.
One more thing – I said that I wasn’t speaking at this year’s UK events (that may change, it’s always a possibility) but I will have another role to play. More on that soon, and if you’re attending LCTY in London maybe you can be involved too…
It’s that time of year again – registration for the UK-based Lotusphere Comes To You events is now open. There are three events this year – London (13th April), Edinburgh (15th April) and Warrington (13th May), the latter being run by our excellent Business Partner Polymorph. One great attraction this year is the fact that I won’t be speaking (for the first time in many years) so you won’t have to listen to me… instead you will have the pleasure of hearing from Kevin Cavanaugh, Vice President of Messaging and Collaboration.
The usual fevered speculation about the guest speakers can now commence – we were going to book William Shatner, but he did the Orlando main event so we had to drop that idea. I can tell you that Harry Hill is too expensive (I didn’t bother suggesting him again this year after discovering the cost last year). I’m not going to drop any clues this year, basically because I have no idea myself.
Anything else? Oh yeah, you’ll want the links – click here for the London and Edinburgh events and here for Polymorph’s event.
Don’t worry, this won’t take long. I’ve seen a lot of links for ’10 things’ today, either for the year or the decade, and I really can’t be bothered to do my own. Anyway, most people will be out boozing tonight and nursing a hangover tomorrow, so there’s no point, no-one will be reading this.
I started the decade (i.e. January 2000) in my first management role, heading up a team within the larger Lotus Technical Sales team… the Technology Advocates were specialists (experts you could say). What a line-up… Rob ‘Choddo’ Hayden, Tony ‘Woody’ Cocks, Andrew ‘Thommo’ Thomas, Ed ‘Tedwardo’ Hollands and Mike (he didn’t have a nickname) Hayward. My c.v. says I had a team of eight, so if anyone could remind me of who the other three were I’d be grateful. I think the overall structure of Technical Sales was quite fluid in those days. Three of that original team eventually went to Microsoft, although only one remains there.
Sixteen months later, after watching my manager deal with the biggest pile of expenses I’d ever seen and then promptly leave (for Microsoft), I took over as Lotus Technical Sales Manager for North Region – which consisted of the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and, of course, South Africa. Don’t even try to understand it. I got the news of my promotion while I was in Prague for Choddo’s stag weekend. Blah blah blah, a couple of other things, current role.
dadams.co.uk started in 1999 so it was around for the whole of the decade, albeit not in it’s current form running on WordPress. There was a time when it boasted a synopsis of all South Park episodes from the first three seasons – I remain a huge fan and was glad that it got back on track following poor 4th and 5th seasons. My first post of the decade on dadams.co.uk discussed ‘The Millennium Bug’. Since then, the web site has undergone a series of face-lifts and a major upheaval in April 2007 when it was moved to WordPress rather than hand-written HTML using Dreamweaver.
On the personal side… the saddest event of the decade was the death of my dad (September 2006), and never being one to do things by halves he died less than a week before we moved house. I flew out to Florida on a Monday morning, attended his funeral the next day, arrived back home on Wednesday morning and we moved on the Thursday. Three years later I’ve painted every square inch of wall and ceiling (not including the bathrooms) and lived through a major kitchen re-fit.
Travel-wise, we made two trips to New York (we had to cancel the first one planned – September 2001), we went to Chicago for the first time ever, and I made four trips to Orlando for Lotusphere. The Adams clan went to Menorca every year of the decade, I went to South Africa a few times, and made debut trips to Denmark and Norway.
So that’s about it. Achievements? I’ve managed to keep us solvent despite Mrs A’s best attempt to spend every penny I’ve earned (only joking dearest… put that rolling pin down). And I’ve watched my lovely daughter Lauren (a.k.a. Lolli) grow from a cute toddler to a wonderful beautiful (not to mention clever and humorous) girl who plays the flute, has a huge array of gymnastic medals and an eye for fashion (that’ll cost me too), and regularly baffles her mother with her grasp of technology.
And finally, a new year resolution? Yes… 1920 x 1200.
Before I start talking about Lotusphere 2010 I just wanted to mention that today is the 18th anniversary of me joining what was, at the time, Lotus Development Corporation. I know what you’re thinking, I must have gone straight from junior school. I turned down an offer to join Borland and made the long journey from Shepperton to the far end of Staines, and took up a role in Customer Support. Later that week, when they found a spare computer for me, I installed Notes version 2.0a.
But that was last century, and now we’re looking forward to another decade of wonderful Lotus solutions. The perfect way to kick off a new decade is to attend Lotusphere 2010… a chance to immerse yourself in the latest technology, to find out how other business are benefiting from their investments, to meet new and existing contacts, to experience some weather that’s probably better than where you live, and to go to the mall to satisfy your wife’s shopping list (but perhaps that’s just me).
Although the details on the track sessions aren’t available yet, the main agenda is. For anyone who’s been to Lotusphere before, the agenda won’t be a huge surprise. Monday features the Opening General Session – I have no idea who the guest speaker will be, but I’m sure the William Shatner rumours will be surfacing again… and here’s a thought, the Lotusphere budget probably could accommodate Harry Hill. The rest of the week is the usual break-out sessions and labs, along with Lotusphere Idol, speed-geeking, customer panels and bird-of-a-feather sessions.
I note that this year the agenda states ‘continental breakfast’ – and I’m wondering which continent they’re referring to.
Anyway, I hope to see you there – I’ll be the guy with the black and yellow rucksack.
Check your diaries folks – on 16th October 2009 IBM Lotus and Canonical (the providers of the popular Ubuntu Linux platform) will join forces to deliver an event designed to help businesses understand and realise the benefits of open source collaborative solutions.
Adam Jollans, IBM’s Linux and Open Source Strategy Manager, will kick off with a session about open source solutions revolutionising the IT market. Then we have someone called Darren Adams (who is apparently very good) talking about Web 2.0 collaboration and the desktop of the future (today), followed by more information about Ubuntu and freeing yourself from the Microsoft Windows and Office lock-ins. After a free lunch, there’s a hands-on technology workshop which will allow delegates to experience the IBM Lotus collaboration suite running in a Ubuntu Linux environment.
With organisations continuing to look for ways to drive down costs, Ubuntu and solutions such as IBM Lotus Symphony offer the potential for cost savings – just ask the French Police. So why not invest a day to see how your business could benefit?
The event will take place at IBM South Bank. A page for registration will be available soon. In the meantime mark it in your diaries and check back here for a link in a couple of days.
Update: the link for registration is now available.