What does it all mean?
How big is this thing? As I've mentioned in earlier DominoPower articles, Lotusphere sells out in a little over eight hours. That's fairly impressive for a business conference. Before we tuck this one into the history books though, we're left to ponder what it all means. As business conferences go, Lotusphere certainly ranks up there. With 10,000 people in Orlando, in January, at Disney, it's certainly does have all the right things going for it. Maybe I'm just getting a little jaded by this event, but this year's Lotusphere seemed just a tad long in the tooth to me. If I had to pick a single word to summarize Lotusphere this year, it would have to be…exhausting.

Let's crank through some of the mechanics, give out some fabulous prizes and then we'll discuss a couple of other topics.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
If you're not a Lotus business partner, then you may not realize that Lotusphere actually begins on Sunday, not Monday. This year was no exception, BDD (or Business Development Day) is designed to show the business partners how to get more from their relationship with Lotus or just run a better business. In years past there have been some awfully good presentations and breakout sessions designed around growing your business, understanding new Lotus technologies or marketing initiatives or current market events (preparing your consulting company for Y2K). This year was little different.

The keynote on Sunday morning was a "parting is such sweet sorrow" speech from Jeff Papows. Unapologetic to the last, Mr. Papows reviewed the achievements for the year and discussed the continued strong performance of Lotus Notes along with the emerging performance of the new product solutions like Raven as well as old standbys like Domino.Doc. Jeff then introduced the new CEO of Lotus, Al Zollar. Anticipation had been running high amongst the partner community about the new leader. Would he give a galvanizing presentation? Did Al have some late-breaking announcement that would stir the audience? Would he go on the record and say that Lotus was unabashedly committed to the partner program? Nope, Al stood, turned to the crowd, waved and sat down. Interesting.

Next, Pat Hume took the stage. She's the new Head of Business Partner Relations at Lotus since Tim Dempsey fled the top spot late last year. Pat spoke about the new opportunities for business partners in several key areas. Mainly, though, she focused on two Lotus originated initiatives: the ISV and ASP channels. Pat was then joined onstage by a gospel choir and proceeded to join in the singing. I'm not quite sure how many business partners got the gospel as a result of this somewhat unusual presentation, but several people did walk out whistling the tunes.