Sunday, January 17
On Sunday night, January 17, things started off with a big party behind the Dolphin and the Swan Hotels. Ives Development (at http://www.teamstudio.com) gave away hundreds of glowing buttons (they worked kind of like glowing light sticks) and everyone was wearing them. Lots of people were having a blast playing with some great little plastic wrestling guys that Lawson Software (at http://www.lawson.com) was giving out. People were drinking lots of free beer and using the IBM beer cozies that were being given out by Emerging Technologies (at http://www.etsgroup.com).

Things culminated in a big show, with TaiKo drummers playing and Steve Beckhardt of Iris flying down from the roof of the Swan to come speak about R5. Okay, most people knew it was a stunt double, but it still looked cool. I heard a lot of people say they were glad a good product like R5 wasn't going to be released until all the bugs were out -- even if that meant it wasn't released at the show -- although everyone was a little bummed not to have R5 in their hands. Folks were very pumped up about the new release and there was a feeling of joy and optimism in the air.

Monday, January 18
Monday started out bright and early with the Opening General Session. This included an interesting keynote speech by the two astronauts from Apollo 13.

Hopefully this isn't some kind of bad omenThen again, Apollo 13 isn't just the story of a failed mission, it's also the story of all those incredible people working together to bring our heroes home. I heard someone remark that the two astronauts had obviously done speaking at technical seminars before. They made mention of what it would have been like if Lotus products had been in the cockpit of Apollo 13.

Impressive sales figures for Lotus Notes were announced. Also, Lotus officially announced that they'd ship a Linux version of the Domino server by year's end, reversing past statements from Jeff Papows.