There is nothing amazing in Lotusphere selling out in [two] hours. The same affect could be accomplished by having the Rolling Stones play a single night's show at your local University's basketball arena.

I have to agree with Jon wholeheartedly. The amazing thing isn't that it sold out in two hours. It's amazing that it didn't sell out even faster, which it, no doubt, would have if all of the servers were functioning optimally.

One of the things I loved hearing from the other DominoPower authors were the stories of their experiences with the registration process. It's hard sometimes when you're in the vacuum of registering to realize how many other people are in the same boat with you. I thought I'd share some of these stories with you since I had such a good time reading them myself:

John Roling
Basically, I was running a little late, so I didn't start trying to get in until about 8:05 a.m. CST. I had planned on starting my attempts at 7:45, but traffic was bad... Anyway, when I started, I realized that I didn't have the phone number to call. So, I tried to get to the Lotusphere Web site, and it kept timing out on me. So, I only had the Web avenue and no phone number to call. I was in a panic.

So, I called the Lotus Business partner line. The initial person I talked to didn't have the Lotusphere registration phone number, but she said someone would call me back as soon as the person with the information got there. She took my number, and I never expected a call back.

I kept hitting the Web site, and eventually I got to a page that had the phone number to call. The online registration still wasn't letting me in, so I started trying to get to the Web site while simultaneously repeat-speed dialing.

About 15 minutes later, I got a phone call back from the Business Partner line, and they gave me the phone number I was supposed to call. (I didn't tell them I already had it, and I thanked them profusely anyway.)

So I kept trying both and got in on the Web site. I went through registration and got in fine. This was about 8:45 a.m.. I didn't get my confirmation email until about 9:15 a.m., however, so it was 30 minutes before I knew for sure that I was getting in. Anyway, I also reserved my hotel online and got a confirmation email immediately.

The registration was just as hectic as last year. It's like getting tickets for your favorite band in concert: it's a lot of stress, but the payoff is great in the end.

The only thing that upsets me about the process is the fact that the Web site had so many problems. Lotus wants us to believe that Lotus is scalable and can handle tons of transactions when paired with things like WebSphere. They should have proven it with a Web site that could handle the demand. It shouldn't have taken me half an hour of hitting the refresh button to finally get in.

Dan's response
I'll agree with John that the only thing that did upset me about the registration process was the Web site problems. But I've since mellowed after receiving my official confirmation for Lotusphere 2001 via email just yesterday. My 45 minutes of pain have faded away into daydreaming about what I'm going to do once I get there.