Buzz's buddy Neil
Before we got completely firehosed with announcements and demos, a sprightly 76 year old Neil Armstrong (he of Apollo 11 and the first man on the Moon fame) spent a few minutes talking to us about some of his experiences with new technology.

He mentioned the IBM computer in the Gemini capsule, with its huge 4k of memory and its one-line, 7 digit display. He then dryly described his part in an experiment in 1969 to measure the distance from Earth to the Moon, using a mirror on the Moon and a laser on Earth. He described himself as the installation technician -- of the mirror.

The firehose
Then it was back to the show proper, and the announcements and demos. Did I say firehose? A far simpler Lotus product line, one that's much easier to understand and promote, means that the market can see where Lotus is going.

Mike Rhodin's focus on execution seems to be proving out so far, with actual product shipments on time. Customer investment in their Notes, Domino, Sametime, Quickplace, installation is secure and looks to be for years to come.

Notes and Domino 8 came out from behind the "Hannover" codename. A new version of Quickplace, with the very webby name Quickr, showed that Lotus are now fully in control of product names.

Lotus Connections brings social computing into the business arena, and could well become the centrepiece of Knowledge Management inside many organisations. Sametime has an upgrade to 7.5.1.

Say goodbye to our little friend
The one thing we missed in our August preview was the death of Workplace. IBM, of course, didn't call it that. In essence, Workplace didn't really die, but had a kind of rebirth. The valuable pieces have been subsumed into the product line elsewhere.

For example, the Eclipse-based Workplace Rich Client has become Lotus Expeditor, underpinning Sametime 7.5's Connect client, underpinning the Lotus Notes 8 client, delivering for both the componentised composite applications framework.

It can also be deployed just as stand-alone applications runtime platform, though whether anybody does that without one or both of Notes and Sametime remains to be seen.

Pity about the demos, though, which were a bit lack-lustre. What I think Lotusphere OGS demos need is a bit of Mussie Shore from 1996: just quickfire show-off-the-new-features as new features, rather than roll them up into scenarios. Ron tried, but it needs a bit more pizazz.

Focus
All this was just what we wanted to hear. No more of the directional wobbles, silly names and two-lane highways of 2001/2002. A clear strategy, focused and complimentary products, and a Lotus secure in its place and brimming with confidence for the future.

This was great start to the rest of Lotusphere week, and then, basically, it just got better. Particularly as we all dried off from the opening firehose and what we'd just seen and heard started to click into place.

Where was Microsoft?
One name was absent, though. Microsoft. There were Microsoft employees there, including one-time Lotii Gary Devendorf, who is now at Microsoft and showing their customers how to connect to Lotus Notes.