Yesterday was the final day of the IamLUG conference. I attended several sessions, Eileen Fitzgerald and Jamie Magees’s “Obedience for Developers”, Matt White’s XPages session, Michael Masterson’s Plug-in and Sidebar development, Rob Novak’s session covering MyDomino. I especially pleased to attend Matt White’s session since I had missed it at Lotusphere.

Twitter
I really *can’t* get away with writing a wrap up about this conference without discussing Twitter. As many of you know, I am an avid Twitter user. And yes, “user” is appropriate in this context, as many tell me I have a problem. I don’t see it as a problem at all. Thanks to Twitter, I have gotten to know many people in the Lotus community. This made meeting people and getting to know them that much easier in person. It is highly amusing the number of pictures of IamLUG attendees with mobile devices in hand. And I become the butt of many Twitter jokes. In no less than THREE of the sessions that I attended, the speaker made reference to me and my Twitter addictions. I was even made fun of in Chris Miller’s closing.

Regardless, I think it made my experience at the conference that much more fun. For those of you who still hang back and aren’t on Twitter, or are on, but don’t participate, jump in! CAUTION: Be sure you REALLY are sending a Direct Message if that is your intent. And perhaps after having a beer or two, consider a ban on sending Direct Messages from Twitter. Just sayin’.

Wrap Up

Overall, I think this was a fantastic conference. I have been to Lotusphere twice and (obviously) it is a completely different experience. I believe attendance to IamLUG was near 200 people. That creates a much more casual atmosphere. People really get to know eachother. I never once passed out a business card. Isn’t that funny? I think part of this was the casual and close nature of this conference. As I said, I already knew a lot of the people I was meeting face to face from Twitter. Judging from the number of new followers I got this week, I think any new people I met just started following me on Twitter rather than exchanging business cards. Although I think Lotusphere is an integral part of my year, I really recommend attending one of the smaller user conferences such as this one. It’s a really fantastic experience. All the benefits of the big conferences, like great speakers and great content, but a more casual and open atmosphere.

HUGE kudos go to the team that organized this! Things really proceeded smoothly and had I not known that this was the first time for this conference, I never would have guessed it. I’m sure more work than we could ever imagine went into this conference behind the scenes, and I THANK YOU ALL.

Run Report

Final day for a run. I was running on empty! I’d had very little sleep, but I knew Paul, Karl and Paul would be waiting for me, so I went. We ran. I won’t lie and say it was a good one, but we got it done!

[edited for a typo, I REALLY CAN recommend this conference! Duh. Why I should never write/tweet/email/really do anything when sleep deprived.]

Today was the official first day of the conference. The day kicked off with registration, breakfast and then the Opening General Session. Kevin Cavanaugh spoke, and I am sure what he said is covered in much more and better detail on other people’s blogs. My big take away was the new marketing campaign, “Lotus Knows”. Pretty quickly people were jumping on the hashtag #LotusKnows all over Twitter.

I attended some great sessions throughout the day, John Head’s Integration and Coexistence, Paul Steel from RIM showing development for the Blackberry and Julian Robichaux’s Free Your Data!

My last session of the day was Ed Brill’s session. Again, I am sure a lot of others covered the content a lot better than me, so on to…

The Run Report

This morning the group grew to five people and we didn’t lose anyone. A very very humid run, so an impressive run for all of us, especially since three of the runners come from countries where the humidity is less than it was today, which felt like it was about 10000%.

Running again tomorrow, meet at 7 AM at the fountain if you’re interested! (way to get people to run, hey join us, it’s really humid!)

Sunday at IamLUG. After the run described in part 1, I went to the St. Louis Cardinal’s game with several IamLUGers. People met back in the hotel atrium for beverages, dinner at the burger place in the hotel, then we… [this entry was edited for general audiences] (I am joking, just not much happened that is blog-worthy.)

The Run Report

Johnny Noltensmeyer joined me for my run this morning, and much to my surprise, so did Paul Mooney. Despite his protestations that we would have to (and should) leave him behind, Paul managed to keep up.

Anyone else who would like to join us for a run, we’ll meet in front of the fountain at 7AM…

My worlds collide, a post about Lotus Notes AND running!

I flew to St. Louis yesterday. Got here in a reasonable amount of time. Checked into the hotel. The rooms are terrific, they’re all suites with a living area and a separate bedroom. Met up with some IAMLUG’ers, had a few drinks, and wound up at a rap concert of all places. Apparently they have concerts by the arch during summer. I saw that guy, you know, the one with the two CDs. Unh huh. Him. Right. Sorry, I don’t really follow rap, but I had a fun time, probably due to the excellent company.

I had to call it a day around 10:30 or so. Need to pace myself.

Up this morning and headed out for a run. Taking the advice of the front desk, I headed over towards the arch. A nice little pathway circles around the arch, making for a very nice run. There are some river views, views of the arch of course and just for @AngryJohhny there are some stairs if you’d like to run them! The surrounding park has a nice little pond, and is shaded much of the run.

I always find running in a new place an interesting way to see it. The area near the hotel is a popular spot for bars and clubs and such, so of course running there the next morning includes seeing a lot of people cleaning up a lot of um…messes.

Also watching the crews in the park taking down the equipment from the prior night’s concert.

So, a great start to what I think will be a great conference. (I was told there will be diet Coke available all day.) Looking forward to a lot more people arriving today! And heading out for a Cardinals/Astros game!