Been There, Done That, Got a Whole Lot of T-Shirts Too …

 
Lotusphere 2010 has come and gone and it was my 6th time in Orlando and the 12th time for Patrick. So we’re pretty familiar with the event, the place, the halls, etc. Come to think about it, being familiar with the show is very useful because you know where all the halls are, such as the “Dolphin Northern Hemisphere III” one, without having to look at the signs and without having to pull out a map. It’s awesome when you are in a hurry.
   

Anyhow, long story short: we went there with one goal: to find integration points between Lotus Notes 8.5.1 and Oracle … the result? Not so great. Oh sure, there’s LEI, there’s DECs and various vendors which all had data-pumping solutions we could build on … but there is nothing like Alloy out there for Oracle. However, things might change in the near future and time will tell if the vendor we spoke to will get his dev team to provide a similar solution … time will tell indeed.
  
Walking the Mile …
  

This being my 6th Lotusphere, I decided once and for all to figure out just how much walking around I did. And as I’ve seen on planetlotus.org, I wasn’t the only one wondering the same because another blogger also posted something about it (I will need to find his blog post and link to him). As you all know, a GPS doesn’t work indoors, so I enlisted the help of my old, but trustworthy, Polar RS200 Running Watch that comes with a foot pod to measure the distance I’ve walked/run. Over the years, I used this watch while running in several 5k, 10k, half marathons and in one full-blown marathon so you can say that we go back a long way. And, in case you wonder if that gizmo is precise, I calibrated it a while ago and it became really precise after that. In fact, during each of the aforementioned races, it was spot on during the 5k and 10k races and within a few dozen feet on the 21k and 42k races.
     
So, how many miles did I walk? Here it is:
  

• 1.818 mile on Sunday (2.920 kilometers)
• 2.789 miles on Monday (4.490 kilometers)
• 3.168 miles on Tuesday (5.100 kilometers)
• 6.766 miles on Wednesday (10.980 kilometers)
• 1.416 mile on Thursday (2.280 kilometers)
• Total: 15.957 miles (25.77 kilometers)
     

Please note that due to some precision loss when rounding up after converting the kilometers to miles, if you do the math, you’ll notice a small difference but it’s nothing to write home about.
  

So, basically, I walked a bit more than half-marathon during Lotusphere this year. Please note that I turned on my foot pod only when I was walking to/from sessions, to/from lunch, in the product showcase and at MGM. Otherwise, I turned it off.
  

The Polar RS200SD Running watch

 How Far Is It?
   

Just for your information, you need to know that from the far end of the dinning hall to the fountain in the rotunda of the Dolphin, it’s 300 meters (984.25 feet).
   
And from the fountain in the rotunda of the Dolphin to the complete end of the Sawn conference rooms, it’s another 500 meters (1640.42 feet).
  

Basically, if you’ve just finished a session near the end of the hall in the Swan and want to go to lunch, it’s half a mile to walk. And then, as luck usually has it, if your next session is back at the complete end of the Swan … you’ve got to walk another half mile back.
  

Parting Thoughts about Lotusphere 2010
  

Ok, a few final words about my thoughts on Lotusphere 2010:
  

• The sessions were just as good as the previous years. As usual, there are too many interesting sessions to see and not enough time. As an admin, I’m really wondering if I should deploy Sametime 8.5 … I’ll have to think about it. As a part-time application developer, it’s clear to me that ”the writing is on the wall” and that Lotus has placed their chips on XPages and Web Services.
• The food was good, just as usual.
• The vendors had some nice swag this year … or maybe it’s just me who didn’t notice it the previous years. Or maybe I just really wanted to win a big tv once in my life …
• Also, maybe it’s me again, but I feel that they weren’t as generous as the previous years with the coffee, water bottles and soft drinks. But each year, I get a bit more addicted to coffee and sugar so that explains it.
• Someone, somewhere, probably-high-up-in-the-food-chain-of-Lotus, chopped the budget of the Certification team: the Certification Lab didn’t have any CertFX or SelfTestSoftware to help us study. Also, maybe they indulged us a bit too much in the past because I would really have needed a chair massage in the Certification Lounge (my back was killing me at one point) but they didn’t have that this year.
• I don’t like the “map(s)” for the session schedule instead of the good ol’ booklet for the schedule. I am really not a fan of that. It’s probably cheaper to print the “maps” rather than to print a booklet but the booklet was so much better in my opinion.
• Conclusion: for me, it was a pretty “bland” Lotusphere 2010. There was no real earth shattering announcements (except for the presence of William Shattner) that affected me in my daily life but it was a nice Lotusphere (maybe Project Vulcan will hit me later … but I’ll wait and see). Oh also, the fact that attendance was lower this year, it was nice to be able to walk around without bumping into a gazillion people.
      

Thanks for reading!
  

PS: Now that I’m back from Lotusphere, I really need kick-off my new year resolutions series and I also need to post something on how to Smart Upgrade to Lotus Notes R8.5.1 Fix Pack (I just created the package today).