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David Allen and I presented our session: "Maximizing Personal Productivity with IBM Lotus Notes." It was a fun session and I estimate that we had about 450-500 in attendance. Well, just before we started the Q&A, I mentioned that I had brought CD's with me as a gift from the Notes on Productivity Blog for the attendees. I explained that I had brought 200 CD's and that if folks were unable to get a CD from someone at the back of the room, they could stop by booth #722 to get one. Well, at that moment, at least 2/3 of the audience stood up in unison and rushed the back door while Ed Brill moderated questions. I couldn't believe it! I did not connect the fact that the reason they were rushing the door had nothing to do with Ed, David or myself but the limited supply of CD's until I realized that once people left the room, a number of them returned, CD in hand, smiling.

OK, I should have not announced the resource CD until after the Q&A.

If you did not get a CD, please stop by pedestal #722. We will have another box of CD's and we would be happy to give you one.

I need to file this one under "Lessons Learned" for next year.

I'm off to the Swan Mockingbird for a 7:00 AM BOF session with David Allen. After that, David and I will be hanging aroun pedestal #722 until David leaves for the airport, mid-morning. We hope to see you there!

(I will update photos later this afternoon/evening...)
Today's the big day! Lotusphere Opening General Session

Live blogging from Lotusphere. Oops. Can't connect to WiFi. OK, Almost-live blogging....

After finishing breakfast, I wind my way in the queue of thousands, waiting to get into the Lotusphere Opening General Session (OGS).

I've just walked into the Lotusphere General Session. I hand over my golden ticket which gets me an immediate escort to the Bloggers Den - a roped off area with 20 Lotus-yellow bean bags with our names on them. Ed Brill motions me to my bean bag.  I'm in the firs row. Wow! To my right is fellow Notes blogger, John Head and behind me is Alan Lepofsky.

First up, Blue man group. Awesome.

Continue Reading "Lotusphere Opening General Session - Live Blogging" »

I've not been doing as much blogging as I would like - things have been quite hectic and will probably continue this way until after tomorrow.  David arrived at the Dolphin Hotel, this evening, and after registering and walking around the Lotusphere beach party we went out for a delightful dinner (thanks, David) to visit and talk about our presentation.

We've decided to shorten the "presentation" part so that we can open up more time for questions at the end. If you have a question you want to ask, I encourage you to write it down and come prepared. I'm going to ask Ed Brill our host and moderator to keep things moving and limit folks to one question so that we can cover a lot of ground. We also talked about the latest versions of Notes and PDAs (e.g. Blackberry or iPhone) and what we thought it would take to make the killer mobile productivity application. Of course, that led to the age old, "why don't some people get notes and what can we do about it" topic, some of which may spill into our presentation. Bottom line: we think IBM Lotus Notes is an awesome product, over-capable and under-utilized and most people are barely making use of the power of what the Notes team delivered even a decade ago. In our presentation, we will talk about how to use Notes more productively as a tool for personal knowledge management and as a tool for action management.

Our session is at 5:00 PM in the SWAN 7-10 (January 19). I'm concerned that the room won't hold as many people as may want to attend, so I encourage you to arrive early to get a seat. I have two hundred Notes on Productivity Resource CD's that I will bring to hand out while they last.

I've already been stopped in the halls by many who read this blog. If you read my blog and are at Lotusphere this year, I hope you will stop by and introduce yourself!

Update: If you would like to meet with me and David and visit, we invite you to attend our Birds of a feather session, which takes places Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM. Or, stop by the eProductivity pedestal #722 in the Product showcase and check in with my team; they will know where to find us.

Congratulations to Ed Brill for winning the PlanetLotus Blogger of the year award at the B.A.L.D event at Big River Grille today.

Yancy Lent announced the award and they accepted it on Ed's behalf as Ed was no doubt hard at work elsewhere at Lotusphere.

Congratulations Ed!!

After registering, we decided to head downstairs to catch a glimpse of the Lotusphere 2009 Product Showcase. There's still a lot of work to do...



And, very exciting, here it is: the eProductivity Pedestal #722!



We'll come back tomorrow to set up the booth.  

Now, on to the BALD event.

Registration was a breeze. This is going to be one busy event as I have several roles:

• Speaker, presenting with my colleague, David Allen
• Blogger, on behalf of Notes on Productivity
• Exhibitor, on behalf of eProductivity
• Attendee, as Eric Mack

IBM Provided the opportunity for speakers to sign up for a coaching session with Bill Chuck, aka BCzar guy, so I signed up. Thank you, IBM!


Bill and I met for an hour and I ran through the presentation deck that I created with David for our Lotusphere presentation. It was very helpful to have Bill play audience and provide feedback from a positioning and audience perspective. My big takeaway was about meeting people where they are in light of the current economy. This was a good point and one that works well considering our topic. David and I will show folks how to get more from their Notes investment by thinking differently about the tools they use and how Notes can be a powerful tool for personal knowledge and action management. My biggest concern going in was the # of slides we have to present and the short amount of time. Given the choice between cutting out 20 slides or running longer (perhaps with a shorter Q&A session) I wonder what would be better? I'll try to prepare for both options and talk with our track chair. We're the last session for the day, so perhaps we can have some flexibility.

Anyway, I highly recommend Bill Chuck's coaching. if you are a presenter and have not signed up, I encourage you to do so. Bill's web site is www.bczar.com

We'll see how this works out as a tool for real-time micro-blogging from Lotusphere.

My Twitter ID is EricMack

Eric

If you are planning to be at Lotusphere, you are in for a treat! Stop by pedestal #722, say hello and hand us your business card. Then, pick up your Lotusphere 2009 resource CD from the Notes on Productivity Blog.



This CD contains the presentation slides from my Lotusphere presentation (BP304) with David Allen, a number of GTD Documents from the David Allen Company, two recent podcasts on using Notes productively, (courtesy of Bruce Elgort and Michael Sampson), links to useful resources, and a special gift from eProductivity.

This is my way of saying "Thank you" to the Notes community and for stopping by to say hello!  I look forward to meeting you!

Remember: eProductivity, Pedestal #722 in the Lotusphere Product Showcase. See you soon!

Industry analyst, Michael Sampson, recently interviewed David Allen about his use of  Lotus Notes, and today has published the almost one-hour long  discussion. During the podcast, Michael and David talk about: how David uses Lotus Notes in his company, what he thinks of Notes and the tools he uses, and David's upcoming presentation at Lotusphere.

At the end of the podcast, Michael puts his IT analyst hat on and shares his thoughts about why he thinks Lotus Notes works so well for David Allen and his company.

Here's an opportunity to listen to two very smart (and productive) people talk about Lotus Notes!

Michael Sampson: Interview with David Allen on Lotus Notes