I’ll be posting all my pictures directly to the ‘Lotusphere 2005’ Album that you can access on the left.

Live Blogging – corrections coming later

The opening session demos have started. On the designer side we have been shown the new Web Services and complex views using SQL when your data is stored in the Db2 backend.

The notes client also has many great new timesavers. Mail threads, being able to see if an email has been sent directly to you or not, autosave for those times when windows crashes on you and a ‘confirm quit’ dialog box for those users who have a tendancy to exit notes by accident.

Web conferencing has been expanded, with new features like indicators to show who is speaking, allowing the moderator to mute people and even have your web conference call you when your including services like audio bridging.

Lets have a look at the Workplace Services Express products. After a quick look at a VERY SLICK interface for end user customisation we have a look at how the web service created earlier can be used to pull data directly from Domino into Workpace. With out of the box functionality like this i’ll certainly be investigating my free passport licence so I can try this out myself.

WOW. just looking at the Workplace Collaborative Solutions. This product will have it’s V2.5 release later this year and includes everything in the services express product but also have the notes stuff built in there. Just looking at this demo I have to say I want this now. The other components like doc managament and the new Activity explorer stuff makes this a great product. The activity Explorer can really help in project managment, It tracks what you are doing within Workplace and stores and tracks you interaction with others so that you can return to that IM chat you had last week, the screen you shared or the document you worked on.

Workplace Designer. Ok, you may have already read Andrew Polacks’s site so you may know some of this but sitting here I’m looking at the new workplace designer and I have to say it looks just like the domino designer, the bookmarks on the left, forms, views, scripting it’s all very similar to what we are all used to in the Domino Designer and it even has the ability to import domino forms for ease of use. This is another product I won’t mind getting my hands on.

I have to say that the demo’s this year were a lot better then last years and the roadmap is clear and not confusing. The next few years ahead are mapped out and it’s clear that Domino itself will still be around in years to come.

Live Blog. Spelling mistakes will be corrected later

…John Cleese. With a great collection of scenes from him many Monty Python films. More in a few minutes.

Ok, couldn’t blog due to too much laughter, John was a hoot. Very funny and he even told us all to visit his website at thejohncleese.com.

Onto the main speach. Ambuj is out talking of how Lotus technologies is growing again, how figures are up like the fact that there are 40% more busines partnets in the audience today.

The stratigy of two years ago was a two way highway. This vision is starting to merge into a new one of single destination where customers from either the notes side or workplace side will be able to join together. With workplace client technology with integrated notes client this vision has started to come through.

And we won’t have to wait. The technology, originally slated for Notes 8 is going to be available now in the Notes 7 version which will be available this summer. And notes 7 isn’t going to be a bloated damp squid. The server has been optimised to run up to 50% more capibilities. Oh and Lotusscript lives…

Another new product called Workplace services express already brings a lot of these modules together. A 3 cd product that installs in under 30 minutes. shipped last month and if your a passport customer you can try it for free as all passport customers will be given a single free licence

With a brief history of Lotus Notes we welcome onto the stage Ray Ozzie. Groove Technologies has a late entry stand in the product showcase so who knows maybe there is going to be increased interoperability between groove and Notes in the future.

Envision A Decision

Arrived safely last night after a terrible 4 hour delay in Dublin Airport. Managed to get to the ESPN party to meet up with a load of familier faces and have a few well deserved BEvERageS. The buzz going around is that this is going to be one great week. Stay tuned for loads of sessions blogging.