You Cant Afford To Miss Lotusphere 2003 Part 4

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You can't afford to miss Lotusphere 2003 -- Part 4 [Dec 23]
Lotus
Lotusphere 2003 This article is the fourth in a series that presents reasons why Lotus
Search Lotus registration customers and Business Partners can't afford to miss Lotusphere 2003. Look
About Lotus for a new story in the series each week as we count down to January 26. In
this week's story we talked to two Lotus Business Partners, John Head and
What we sell "You can't afford to Rich Schwartz, who will both be presenting this year at Lotusphere and are
miss Lotusphere 2003 -- especially looking forward to heading to Orlando. Next week -- the business
News & events
Part 1" angle of Lotus software.
· News by date
"You can't afford to It's that time of the year
· Press room miss Lotusphere 2003 -- Rich Schwartz, the founder of RHS Consulting, a Lotus Business Partner and
Part 2" a member of the Penumbra Group, perhaps sums up the Lotusphere
· Events
experience as well as anyone when he says, "It's the one week during the
Success stories "You can't afford to year that I say I work the hardest, but it's the good kind of work... the fun kind
miss Lotusphere 2003 -- of work, and I look forward to everything about it. OK... not the sore feet, sleep
Downloads deprivation and the hoarse voice -- which are inevitably part of my annual
Part 3"
Training & certification Lotusphere experience --but everything else."

Support It's the "everything else" that makes Lotusphere such a great experience for
Business Partners Schwartz and for John Head, Technical Specialist for PSC Group, LLC, who
is quick to add another of the true values of this week in the sun when he
points out that Lotusphere, "is the time to re-energize relationships and build
Related information: new ones."
Lotus Developer Something old, something new
Domain Being regular attendees, both Schwartz and Head know a lot about
Warranty Info Lotusphere. In fact this year's edition will make it a perfect ten for ten in
attendance for Schwartz and while there is always something new to
How to buy experience, this will be the first time Schwartz will present at Lotusphere.
John Head, Technical
Specialist for PSC
Related links: Head is a veteran having presented numerous times, yet he still thrills from
Group, LLC
the experience, "Presenting on stage is a definite rush. It's like taking
DB2 Data Management everything you have learned and done for the past year, and letting others
see those accomplishments. I have been to and spoken at many of the
Tivoli different Lotus technology conferences. All of them are great. But what makes
WebSphere Lotusphere different is the entire atmosphere; the labs, the showcase, the
number of people. The intensity is just so high and Lotus really makes every
effort to have as much technical information as possible."

"Lotusphere is the Big Leagues"
Leading a session for the first time is a big deal for Schwartz. "I've spoken at
Lotus' DevCon, at Advisor conferences and View conferences, and at some
Rich Schwartz, the conferences outside of the messaging and collaboration world. But
founder of RHS Lotusphere -- for me -- this is the Big Leagues. I'm tremendously excited
Consulting about it, because I know that for a lot of people this is the most important
conference of the year, and I'm getting to be part of it. I'm honored. I'm
excited. Jazzed -- that's a word that's not really part of my usual vocabulary,
but I think it fits this feeling really well."

Know your audience
Preparation is integral to delivering a successful presentation and Head starts
by understanding his audience, "The audience has changed since I started
speaking in 1997. It has gotten more technical in nature. Back in 1997, the
majority of the audience seemed to be people interested in ideas, but not
actual code or samples. But that has changed, and for the better in my
opinion. The majority of the sessions I have done at Lotusphere have been
technical, for an audience of Notes developers."

Head then starts putting together his presentation, "My presentations are
usually 30% slides and 70% samples and code, and being in the audience
myself many times, I know people want to see it live and working. The hardest
part for me is how much actual code to show. That is what I spend the most
time balancing. I also try to make sure the demos have real business
implications, not just code snippets. The last thing I do is put the demos
together so that I can offer them to the audience for download."

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You can't see everything at Lotusphere
Schwartz has been "the audience" for each of the last 10 years and in the
cold of New Hampshire where he is based, Schwartz starts mapping out his
Lotusphere plan. "I tend to split my time almost equally between the sessions,
"The best feeling I get is the product showcase, and the labs. I never really know what's going to strike
when an audience my fancy in any given year, or where I'm going to find it. You can't see
member sees a sample everything at Lotusphere -- that's just not possible -- but I try to spread myself
or idea I am presenting, around as much as possible, to get as much as possible."
and then puts it to use
in some way I never This year Schwartz will also get to give as much as possible as a presenter.
thought of."
John Head, Technical Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam
Specialist for PSC Schwartz will be co-leading a presentation entitled, "Controlling Spam Mail In
Group, LLC Your Organization." His session undoubtedly will prove to be very popular
because as Schwartz points out, "Over the past 18 months, the volume of
unsolicited commercial email (aka "UCE" or "spam") has grown dramatically.
Spam is always annoying, often vulgar, and this problem is going to continue
to grow. Some estimates of lost user productivity are as high as ten minutes
per day per employee, and the people who lose the most time are usually the
"power users" who rely on their email the most. Plus, spam wastes a lot of
network and computer resources."

Schwartz will be co-presenting with Dieter Stalder, of STDI Consulting in
Toronto, and Meredith Lovett, of IBM. According to Schwartz, "People are
going to be very surprised by some of the things Dieter has found. Dieter has
been doing a lot of research on the spam problem, and he will be presenting
a lot of information that will help Domino administrators pick the best strategy
for fighting spam on their servers."

Meredith Lovett is one of the developers on the messaging team for Notes
and Domino 6, and she will be explaining and demonstrating the new
anti-spam features in this release. Through Meredith, attendees will get
"under the hood" insights into the new features, which will help administrators
understand the trade-offs they'll have to make between performance, spam
detection, and avoidance of false positives.

Some estimates say that 50% of all email on the Internet will be spam by the
end of 2003 and Schwartz will bring his expertise to this problem by
presenting Best Practice information, based on both customer case studies
and his experience with the Notes and Domino 6 anti-spam features and 3rd
party products. Schwartz points out, "The practical advice we'll be giving will
help Domino administrators develop and implement the anti-spam strategy
that fits their organization's needs and dramatically cuts down the amount of
spam received by users. We have answers that a lot of people have been
asking lately, and they aren't necessarily the answers that people will expect.
It will be really interesting to see how the audience reacts. And we're going to
have some fun with it, too. Spam is a serious subject, but how can you not
have fun with something with a name like 'spam'?"

Coming together
John Head will also be looking at e-mails, but the kind you want to send and
receive. His session -- "Coming Together: Advanced Integration of Notes 6
and Microsoft Office" -- is in the Best Practices Track. This session will focus
on advanced development topics such as how to integrate Microsoft Office
XP into applications built with Notes 6, both client and Web. Head will
demonstrate "how to take advantage of new features in both Notes and Office
and add useful functionality very quickly. New 6 features, such as document
locking and round-trip document editing, will be injected into mail merge,
charting, and organizational charting functionality. Lastly, I'll be showing a new
way to allow users to build documents in Word with data from Notes that an
end user can understand."

I never really know Head has consistently found that presentations are a two-way street, "The
what's going to strike best feeling I get is when an audience member sees a sample or idea I am
my fancy in any given presenting, and then puts it to use in some way I never thought of. The emails
year, . . . [so] I try to or conversations after the presentation make all the preparation worth it." This
spread myself around type of interaction had a significant influence on this year's presentation, "I will
as much as possible, to be sharing the next generation of mail merge integration that I briefly talked
get as much as about last year. One of the samples I will be showing came from an audience
possible." member who took my code and did something amazing with it."
Rich Schwartz, the
founder of RHS It's all about the content

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Consulting Head will also be leading another session with the enticing title, "It's All About
The Content - Knowledge Management Put To Use," which is in the Customer
Track. This session highlights a solution for the College Bowl Company, Inc.
of Woodland Hills, CA that has transformed the way they generate, review,
process, and produce content for the academic quiz bowl games they run.

The solution involves the Notes client, web reviewing, and a process of
producing word documents with all of the rich text content from the Notes
application. "We will showcase an application that has changed the way
College Bowl produces their content," Head explains. "Upon roll out, the
application saved College Bowl over 80% of their yearly production budget, as
well as generated the most accurate content ever." This application was one
of the customer references that was submitted for the Lotus Beacon Rising
Star award, for which Head's company PSC Group, LLC has been named a
finalist.

Peer-to-peer, face-to-face
On a personal level for Head, Lotusphere is about generating, reviewing,
processing and producing content as well. "It's the one time of the year I get
to see my peers face to face. With email, online forums, and instant
messaging, most of my communication with them is done virtually.
Lotusphere is as much about the networking and after hour events as the
sessions during the day. As a Business Partner, it's a great way to connect
with clients. Lotusphere is very much a working week for me, but it's the most
enjoyable work week all year!"

But for Head it is also a time to learn and gather information on new products
and techniques, "I am really looking forward to gathering as much technical
info on QuickPlace 3.0, Sametime 3.0, and hearing the progress Lotus has
made on the next generation of products since last year and DevWorks Live."

This is Mecca
Schwartz concurs that the opportunity to gain technical knowledge is
unparalleled. "I compare Lotusphere to the "immersion" experience used in a
lot of foreign language training or executive education. You live, eat, breath
and sleep Lotus technology for the duration of the conference. Everyone
does, the conversations in the halls, along the walks between venues, and in
the suites and parties after hours reinforces the information that you pick up in
the sessions. You compare notes (no pun intended) with other attendees,
hear different points of view, and gain new understanding."

"And it doesn't hurt at all that you might be sipping a cup of coffee or eating
an ice cream bar while this is happening. This is Mecca for the Lotus crowd.
Everyone is there... the vendors, the IBM developers and product managers,
lots of customers, and many of my fellow consultants. I'm an incorrigible
networker, so this is an opportunity I can't pass up. There are so many
people, and there are only five short days to reconnect with old friends and
make new ones, so it's non-stop for me from early morning until late at night."

The origin of Business Development Day
The networking (and the fun) begins a day early at "Business Development
Day" for which Schwartz claims to have provided the inspiration, "Shortly after
Lotusphere , in 1995, Don Bulens, who was the Vice President of Lotus
Business Partner program, asked for feedback about the special sessions for
Business Partners that had been offered, and Schwartz responded that he
liked these sessions but was disappointed that he had to miss some of the
technical sessions in order to see them."

So Schwartz suggested that Bulens consider starting the conference one day
early for Business Partners. "A few months later Don announced that he was
taking my suggestion and that Lotusphere would be preceded by "Business
Development Day" in 1996, and they've done BDD every year since."

Aha!
One is a veteran presenter and one is a first time presenter, but both John
Head and Rich Schwartz know how wonderful the Lotusphere experience is.
Head advises his fellow attendees, "go out and meet people and have fun.
Live up the week. Make up the sleep afterwards."

"The best part (of Lotusphere)," says Schwartz, " is usually something I don't
expect -- a 3rd party product in the showcase that solves a problem I didn't
even know I had, or a conversation with an engineer in one of the labs that
brings on one of those "Aha! moments." For example, a revelation that

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something I've known about for years has a new wrinkle that suddenly makes
it even more useful."

So, here's to the "Aha! moments" that you can't afford to miss at Lotusphere
2003.

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You Cant Afford To Miss Lotusphere 2003 Part 4

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