A surprise was the appearance on the main stage at the opening session of Ray Ozzie. His position in the Lotus community was highlighted by the fact that he was greeted with more applause than was John Cleese, including a standing ovation. Ray also appeared in a panel session chaired by Esther Dyson, CNET's Editor at Large shown in Figure B, looking at Notes 1984 to 2005 and beyond.

FIGURE B


Esther Dyson chairs a panel session on Notes. Roll over picture for a larger image.

One of the things Ray discussed was how Notes changed, around 1996 or so, with the advent of Notes 4 and LotusScript. At this time, Notes morphed from being a tool for the end user, to being a professional developer's tool, and Ray rather regretted this happened. Indeed, Richard and I had discussed this very point with Ray the previous evening, as you can see in Figure C.

FIGURE C


Senior Technical Editor Richard Echeandia with Ray Ozzie. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Richard and I also talked directly with Ambuj Goyal, Lotus General Manager, about how Lotus makes its money. We noted that Notes and Domino are now pretty mature in the marketplace, so the bulk of the revenue from them to Lotus is the maintenance, rather than new sales. So was Workplace a way to generate new license fees income?

Emphatically not, was the response. IBM expects customers that are happy with Notes and Domino to stay with them, and as they upgrade to newer and newer versions, they'll be fully placed to take advantage of the convergence of Domino with Workplace. Users will be able to move to Workplace functions from Domino, or even the other way as part of the maintenance stream, and will only pay new license fees where they're taking on new capability.

Richard
Ambuj is a very smart guy, who really has grown to know this space well in only two years. I can see some challenges from a licensing perspective in the mechanics of how that'll work, but the spirit is definitely in the right place. I was most impressed by how Ambuj would ask a question and then listen, really listen, to how people were responding, and then speak to that. Add to that the fact that he was speaking to reporters with no handler from IBM, or their PR firm, and I felt like the communication was much better and more clear this year than in the last 3 years.

Mick
This year there were two end-of-conference panel sessions; the usual "Meet the Developers" session...

Richard
Which many people referred to as "Beat the Developers"...

Mick
...And just before that, a new session "Gurupalooza", where all the speakers from the Best Practices track were paraded in front of the audience for questions, hosted by Alan Lepofsky. During this session Bill's Highland Park turned up again, this time looking rather the worse for wear (the bottle, not Bill). Apparently the winning questioner turned it down.

The inevitable question of silly names for products also surfaced, with a comment that maybe the IBM Marketing Department is paid by the word count in product names. Indeed, that question also arose in the "Meet the Developers" panel, where Ed Brill, commenting once again that he's now in Sales, not Marketing any more, made the point that "IBM" is the best known brand. After shouts of, "then call it IBM Sametime," Kevin Cavanaugh, Development Manager for Domino and Notes, pledged that he would take the sentiment back to Marketing and ask them to think again.

And that's it. Lotusphere 2005 is now all over. Get online, review the opening sessions, and start becoming familiar with what IBM is offering as the direction for Lotus.

What's next? Lotusphere 2006, same place, same time. We look forward to seeing you there.

Mick Moignard has been working and traveling with Notes since Release 2.0 in 1991. Mick is a DominoPower Magazine Senior Technical Editor and a Principal CLP with Unipart Advanced Learning Systems, a Lotus Advanced Partner in the UK. Mick can be reached at Mick_Moignard@unipart.co.uk. Richard Echeandia a Senior Technical Editor for DominoPower Magazine and is President of Advecticus, at http://www.advecticus.com.