To me, the very best thing is the people. OK, so the hot tubs are also a big draw, but really, honestly, it's the community that makes up the users, developers, administrators, and creators of Notes, Domino, and all the other Lotus technologies.

There's no better way to prepare for next week's big event than to talk to some of the most interesting people in the Lotus community and have them share their thoughts and expectations for Lotus, Lotusphere, and 2004. Here's what they had to say.

Mike from IBM
Mike Shamrell has long been one of our best windows into Lotus and IBM. He's consistently been able to help us understand what's happening and, at least to us, is often the first person we think of when we think of IBM. His perspective is quite valuable. Mike tells us:

Here are some high-level thoughts around Lotusphere and ND7...

• There will be more of a balance between announcing new stuff and giving attendees updates/new info on stuff they already use. I guess the feedback in years past is that people wanted practical content -- in other words, more information they could take home and use immediately. So there will be a lot of more emphasis in sessions and BOFs on our core products.

• We're also going to be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the conception of what would become Lotus Notes. Since it was formally shipped as Lotus Notes in 1989, more than 60,000 corporate customers and 118 million end-user licenses have made Notes is the best-selling, longest-selling communication and collaboration client on the market.

• ND7 is going to be focused on the server. Since IBM started shipping new versions of Notes/Domino roughly every 18 months, we've tried to make point upgrades (e.g. 6.5) focused on client features, while upgrades like ND6 and ND7 are more packed with server-based technology and new features. With ND7, customers can look for a bit more autonomic functionality, as well as some pretty significant increases in server capacity.

• For our developers, we are going to show some new features in Domino Designer, specifically around Notes apps and XML/Web Services support. Basically, we are going to try and make our Domino development community more comfortable with the thought of building apps for the Workplace platform.