Scenes From Lotusphere 2010

Under the ubiquitous marketing moniker "Lotus Knows" (as seen on the side of this bus outside the Dolphin Hotel at Walt Disney World), Lotusphere 2010, the 17th annual gathering of the Lotus faithful, was held in Orlando, Fla., this week. Here's what you missed if you didn't make it.

Bob Picciano, IBM Lotus division general manager, has been promoted to general manager of all software sales at IBM. Picciano made the formal announcement here during his keynote presentation on Monday, although word of the management change leaked out during the Business Day presentations to channel partners the day before.

Picciano devoted part of his speech to touting IBM Lotus' competitive successes against archrival Microsoft in 2009. Some 1,000 Microsoft partners signed up to resell Lotus Foundations, the company's appliance product, in 2009, he said. And during the year one-third of all new Lotus Sametime users were also Microsoft Exchange users.



"There's a lot of disinformation being spread all over the place by desperate competitors who really lack solutions and a future vision," Picciano said, referring to marketing claims made by Microsoft in 2009.

Picciano introduced Alistair Rennie, previously vice president of Lotus development and support, as the new general manager of IBM Lotus. Rennie's task will be to maintain Lotus' market momentum while working with the company's channel partners to add cloud-computing software to their product offerings.





Rennie, in his earlier development and support post, was responsible for the strategy and development of IBM's collaboration application portfolio. He also led the company's worldwide technical support team that's responsible for customer satisfaction. Before that he led the IBM Lotus Software Services operation, the division's consulting services organization with operations in 35 countries.



Rennie joined IBM in 1989 in the company's Toronto Software Laboratory. He holds degrees in economics and business administration from the University of Western Ontario.

Television actor William Shatner was this year's surprise guest speaker during the opening session. And it's a good guess there were more than a few Star Trek fans among the hundreds of computer engineers and software developers in the audience.



Shatner said he had learned a great deal during his lengthy career in show business. "Singing and talking are almost the same thing," he said, and "remakes are good, but they remind you of how good the original was."

Shatner gave a brief talk on the importance of collaboration -- a key theme for Lotus software and for Lotusphere -- when making films and television programs. But he got his biggest laugh when he referred to his other job, pitchman for the travel Web site Priceline.com. "For those of you who traveled here on your own or booked your own hotel, talk to me, I can get you a better price."

Lotusphere attendees were briefed on development projects IBM Lotus has under way. Topping the list is Project Vulcan, a long-range development effort to integrate on-premise and Software-as-a-Service applications, link business applications with social networks and collaborative services, and provide a consistent user interface across desktop and mobile devices.



Rennie, the new general manager of IBM Lotus, emphasized that Vulcan is "a concept for Lotus, not a new product," and called the announcement "a sneak peek at our vision for the evolution of collaboration ... our technology road map. It's our lens for the future. It's also pretty sexy."

Ron Sebastian, executive architect for Lotus software, gives attendees a demonstration of new collaboration capabilities in upcoming versions of Lotus software.

The welcoming beach party outside the Dolphin Hotel is always a good time, between the live music, open bars and wide variety of food. This year's festivities, with temperatures close to 60, was much more comfortable than 2009 when evening temperatures didn't feel all that much above freezing.

In keeping with the conference theme of 60s television shows, one serving table at the party included characters from the cartoon The Jetsons. But does anyone remember what kind of software Rosie the robot maid ran on? She struck me as a Linux kind of gal

Dr. Emmett Brown made an appearance at the party with his DeLorean car in the background.

The door was open. But were the keys in the ignition? Hmmm...

One of the stranger decorations around the pool during the festivities.

The exhibition floor was generally busy as show-goers checked out the offerings from some 150 IBM Lotus partners, as well as the latest applications from Lotus itself.

This year's winner of the Best in Show award for products on display was iEnterprise's iExtensions CRM software for SMBs that runs on the IBM Notes Client, the IBM WebSphere Portal, Web browsers and smartphones. Here CEO John Carini poses with the trophy (left) at the iEnterprises pedestal on the show floor.

Research in Motion's booth was a popular place, not surprising after IBM and RIM unveiled new social networking applications for BlackBerry smartphones. They included a new BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Quickr and a new version of the BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections. The companies said the applications would be available from IBM.

What trade show would be complete without rock star wannabees trying their hand at "Rockband 2"?

The conference bookshop was a popular place. But from these titles, you'd think anyone trying to get into cloud computing wasn't very bright.

If you don't like yellow -- especially yellow shirts -- you really wouldn't like Lotusphere. Here Lotus developers and employees giving product demonstrations get ready to call it a day.