True, there were fewer sessions. The General opening Session was held only once, with simulcast overflow in the Swan ballroom for some unlucky people. The Yacht & Beach club was hardly used, which for most people was a plus, given how far you had to walk to get to it. But sessions were well attended, and in many ways the choices were better than before. All the old favorite topics and speakers were there. What would Lotusphere be without Julie Kadashevich's session on Agents?

Change of focus
In the past few years Lotusphere has been almost exclusively about Notes and Domino. This year, that wasn't the overwhelming emphasis. There was much more about Quickplace and Sametime, as well as several sessions on Discovery Server topics, and some on WebSphere. Indeed, in the opening session, Quickplace and Sametime got almost as much airtime as Notes 6 and Domino 6--as they are now officially called. That's right, "Notes 6" and "Domino 6." Not "R6." SAP apparently has some trademarks here.

An issue of branding
More obviously, Lotus is now an IBM brand; everything is marked as Lotus Software or Lotus Software from IBM. Some people will take that as a clear sign that Lotus is now, seven years after the merger, being submerged into IBM. I happen to think otherwise; to me, it's the Lotus name being applied to a family of products, centered on Notes and Domino, that deal with people and collaboration, and that the brand, just like the DB2, WebSphere, and Tivoli brands, has the might and money of IBM behind it.

The branding enables people still to see Notes and Domino as "Lotus" products, with, hopefully, all the good brand values that Lotus has had in the past. But being a brand from IBM, rather than a separate company, means that the products have not just Lotus people behind them, but the whole of IBM: IBM's technologies, IBM's innovations, and IBM's people. This came out again in Ed Brill's answer to an impassioned question at the Meet the Developer session. Yes, a Marketing man was answering questions at a developer's session without being booed off the stage.

The major complaint
The big bitching point, however, was the removal of the JSP engine and the associated developer tools from Domino 6 and Designer 6 in favor of J2EE support via WebSphere. I talked with a variety of people who all had uncomplimentary things to say. One, James Ray of Infineon, had spent several weeks exploring this and writing a detailed article for another publication. However, this is work now wasted, so you can imagine he was not at all pleased with the announcement.