No question, the portfolio has been strengthened with new and updated products that bring collaboration into new areas and with new paradigms, and in such a way that the products complement and inter-operate with each other. It's a great time to be a Notes/Domino professional.

And finally, what of Lotusphere 2008 itself? Well, it was bigger, again, than last year, with the opening session split into two runnings for the first time in many years. As each session ran, a complimentary Lotus Salon 2.08 event ran over at the Swan. Initially I read this is just entertainment, but under the covers of the short presentations made, there were undercurrents of new ways and new tools for collaboration that may well appear through games and gameplay techniques and through artistic visualisations of data and date/people relationships.

The business partners in the Showcase were doing well. I spoke with a few who all told me that the number of good leads they'd got were meeting, or exceeding expectations. Indeed Richard Schwartz of Hewlett-Packard said on his blog that they'd exceeded their objectives by the end of Monday afternoon. Another BP said to me that just about everyone they spoke with was ready to "cut the crap" and just do business.

Most of the familiar events occurred, JAMfest -- now at the Atlantic Ballroom on the Monday, organised parties and receptions, and many instant parties at the various bars and restaurants around the site. There were a number of community inputs to the show too -- PlanetLotus.org, Bleedyellow, and the takingNotes podcasts.

New for this year was Lotusphere Idol -- yes, talent contests come to Lotusphere. Would-be contestants, who were to be Lotusphere newbies as far as presenting goes, were to submit a session abstract before the show started. Five were selected for the final. In that, each of them had to speak for five minutes to introduce their session, judged by a panel taken from the 'Sphere content group and some presenters, with the audience applause also taken into account.

There were a couple of ringers to liven the show up, too. Andy Pedisich was a worthy winner, presenting his complete session on upgrading to Domino 8 on the Thursday. Talking of sessions, the quality of those that I went to were first class, and the usual problem of making choices when there was the inevitable clash of sessions was eased somewhat by the slides being available on the Lotusphere web site ahead of time for nearly all of the sessions.

Downloading slide decks and having a quick scan sometimes helped to make the choice easier, and sometimes harder. The finale was dealt with by American celebrity chef Alton Brown who talked about geeks and geekfood, somewhat from the point-of-view of his 8-year old daughter, capped with Red Bull Sorbet cooled with liquid nitrogen, which was deemed awesome (and more) by Devin Olsen.

And finally, not only will Lotusphere be at the Swan and Dolphin next year, January 18-22, 2009, but it will be there in the same week until at least 2015. Yes, there will be Lotusphere until at least Lotusphere 22, in 2015. You need to start making your case to the boss now to be there next year.

Richard Echeandia a Senior Technical Editor for DominoPower Magazine and is President of Advecticus, at http://www.advecticus.com.