I quickly have fallen off the Blog updates, I thought I would have had time!

Well It appears there may be a very good explaination as to why attendance was announced as up 2 percent from last year. So far I have heard that there are approximately 2000 no shows this year. Also, I received information from a Vendor on the show floor that the majority of badges scanned were from IBM and they were listed on their badges as "late" or "last minute" registration.

It will be interesting to here how, or even if, this is mentioned in tomorrows closing session.

Heading to bed, Sunday was a packed day, Finished the day with a Great Notes Linux on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS session. It truely was what a show and tell session should have been. Final session on Turtle's guide to Lotusphere was a fun and entertaining.

The reception party was good, then went to local IBM customers rep party where I was given misinformation about Lotus Foundations, Met a software vendor at the Dolphin bar that corrected that info, and provided accurate more complete information.

Met up in the Dolphin bar for great stories

Today the day started off early with Jumpstart JMP301 Lotus Foundations at 8AM. Not a bad turn out for an early morning session. Considering the audience, (Resellers) the turn out was good. This appliance is billed as the all in one solution for a Small Business, if offers everything from DNS, Firewall, HTTP, email, FTP, spam filtering, anti-virus, can run Domino, Deploy Notes clients, File Sharing, AND MORE!. This is the total solution for small businesses from 1 to 500. The best part is it is autonomous, it can monitor and restart and reconfigure itself as needed. No IT staff required. Pretty big claims but it also comes with high praises from the people using it today. Definitely worth looking into!

The second session was a detailed look at Foundations and a step by step install of the server. The first hour was slides and the second... which I didn't stay for, was showing the install, i got up when they said, we have preset up the install to this point... I then proceeded to the alternate session on my list that was very well done, The A-Z of IBM Domino security features. This session hosted by Gab Davis and Andrew Polk was very well done. The session was packed full, very rare for a Sunday Session that is being repeated.

Observations:

Attendance is down, as concluded by a single Opening General Session, scheduled for tomorrow. No surprise, considering the economy. But I have to say for selfish reasons that I prefer a single OGS versus being split into two groups and some filler session (i.e. last years Lotus Solon mess, I will never forget the 20 something female game designer, that said she would prefer to be in a virtual game than living in real life, UGH!)

I am not happy to hear that the MP3's will be sold this year, and not provided free of charge, especailly after the poor delivery method last year.

Backpacks are made very cheaply this year. (minor point, but still worth mentioning)

off to the next session!

I wearing shorts and a short sleeve polo shirt already! The weather is 62 degrees and sunny. I just got into my room and unpacked, seems  there was a little mix up at check in, so they upgraded my room to a junior suite. Big screen LCD TV and a nice view of the lake, Oh Yeah! Must be karma... I was asked to give up my isle seat on the plane so two women could sit together, no arguements so far!