Not Going to Lotusphere 2012

Posted: December 21, 2011 | | Categories: IBM Lotus Domino

For the first time in 16 years, I'm not going to be in Orlando for IBM Lotus Lotusphere. I've attended every Lotusphere but one and presented at many of them. It's been a wonderful experience for me and I'm sad for it to end, but I couldn't justify going this year. I hear from others, more and more people are in the same boat as me.

Too bad. A lot of really great things happened to me at Lotusphere. Let's see:

I met my wife at Lotusphere. I met her briefly at Sea World at Lotusphere 1999 then connected with her again the following year at Lotusphere. We kissed for the first time at the Copa Banana bar at her company (Interliant) party. Less than nine months later we were engaged and three months after that we were married.

I was responsible for applications that won two IBM Beacon Awards: 1997 for Biggest Business Impact for an application I helped design for Key Bank and 2001 for Best Tool or Utility for a software package I created which is, I think, still sold today (https://wolcottgroup.com/adt){target="_blank"}.

• I presented a lot of great sessions there (in my humble opinion, of course).
• I met a lot of great people there.
• I made quite a few friends there.
• I drank an awful lot of alcohol there.
• I sat through a lot of keynote sessions – my favorite was John Cleese, my least favorites were the every one in the last five years or so.
• I manned booths there working for three different companies over the years (Realogic, Wolcott Systems Group, and RIM).

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