For the most part, there's no sign of the Wall at all, just some museums and tourist shops at the crossing points. Parts of the Wall have been preserved, but mostly it's been removed completely and replaced by futuristic new shopping malls and office blocks. We managed to find a 250-yard stretch of Wall by following Zimmer Strasse west from Checkpoint Charlie. The Wall is an odd structure. You might expect such a famous icon of political oppression to be of impressive size and solidly built. In fact, it's neither. It stands about ten feet tall, is only a few inches thick, and is covered in graffiti. It has what looks like an old drainpipe stuck on top, and it's full of holes as if the rotting concrete just wore out. I found it difficult to believe it once separated East Germany from West Germany.

Now, however, the barrier is destroyed--uniting the city once again. How appropriate, then, that Lotusphere Europe 2000 should take place here in Berlin, highlighting the achievements of a company that has torn down the barriers within corporations and united workers through the power of groupware.

Business Partners
The main Lotusphere conference didn't open until Tuesday, but Monday was taken up with presentations and sessions for the companies that are Lotus Business Partners. The Business Partner opening session was predictably cheesy in style but gave us the first chance to hear from Lotus CEO Al Zollar, who's an entertaining speaker and comes across as approachable and sincere. He had a number of announcements to make, which were repeated later in the week. You've probably heard them by now, but for the record they were:

• K-station, the first Raven Knowledge Management delivery. K-station is the portal server; the discovery engine will follow later;

• Domino 5.05, enabling single sign-on among Websphere and Domino, Outlook clients for mail and calendar, and BlueJay or DNFS (Domino Network File System);

• Sametime 2.0, with moderated chat, integration with translation services such as BabelFish, and audio and video.

Zollar also told Business Partners about the idea of "Solution Pooling," where Lotus would consider selling Business Partner products to their enterprise accounts. In the Q&A that followed, it was clear that Business Partners were not happy with the existing arrangements. The largest Business Partners are the PBPs (Premier Business Partners), and their main problem is having to compete with Lotus' own LPS (Lotus Professional Services) consultancy and education offering. For the smaller Business Partners, the issues are the lack of substance in the Business Partner program and its complexity.