Lotusphere is always something special … and not being at Lotusphere is always a bit sad. Unfortunately LS2006 was the last I attended in person in Orlando.

Whenever possible I followed the bloggers on-site through the week and especially the Opening General Session (OGS) … but of course it’s not the same as being there.

This time IBM offered a live stream of the OGS and it was a great experience. It eases the pain of not being there a little bit. And it was fun to interact with those being in Orlando as well as with some of the over 1,200 viewers of the livestream.

Sitting at a Munich Starbucks and being directly connected to a live event happening in Orlando … another example how small the world became today and what technologie can do nowadays.

Regarding the OGS itself I have mixed feeling. Michael J. Fox was a great speaker. Kudos for IBM’s choice this year. It was somewhat sad to see his current condition and what Parkinson had done with this great actor … but it was inspiring at the same time how he challenges himself. I’m not sure if I would be able to speak in front of several thousand people under that circumstances!

In regards of the products: IBM Connections Next looked very impressive. But for Notes / Domino it becomes clear that the product is alive and in good condition but without adding connections you definately are missing the cake. To get full value of what the next-family is offering Connections is a “must have”. And I am not sure if I am really happy about that.

The cat is out of the bag in terms of names: The next version of Notes/Domino will be called Notes / Domino Social Edition. I am fine with that “official” name but still curious what the “street name” will be. Still smells a bit like Buzzword Bingo added to a product name ;-)

But renaming “Lotus Live” into “IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business” is a bit weired. I agree with @EdBrill that “Smart Cloud Engage” isn’t that bad but why not sticking with “IBM Smart Cloud” for the product line. That’s what the people will call it anyway. Adding “Social Business” is just Buzzword Bingo, too!

I am sure the attendees of Lotusphere 2012 will explore a lot of great stuff … and also this was a good overall OGS I missed the “There’s one more thing” that’s really exciting.

Notes/Domino is far away from being dead or killed. I think it’s like the new black backpacks for the LS 2012 attendees. There may be only black outside … but there’s a lot of yellow inside ;-)

(backpack picture found at: http://noteshexe.de/blog/?p=2012)

In the last two days I participated in a very interesting conference in Frankfurt called IBM Social Business JamCamp … and I must admit for IBM standards this was a rather unusal event. Of course this was aimed to customers to sell IBM’s own social business tools. But they took the titel of the conference serious - so in most part it wasn’t a marketing gig. Beside some industry speakers they had a good number of “social-natives” who - correctly - didn’t care about tools but the needed changes to become social. Unfortunately - after hearing all those “great” stats from IBM VP Sandy Carter in the opening keynote - I am not sure if IBM’s upper management does already get it right. They seem to still live the “we have the tools, now be social” dream. Doesn’t work that way! Fortunately there are forces (thanks to Stefan @Digitalnaiv Pfeiffer for organising this) that seem know that it has to be done different. And don’t get me wrong … there are a lot of less social companies out there but if you focus on “social” the way IBM does then you have to be leader of the pack. And they are not there yet. So I think this conference was not only a learing curve for customers but for IBM’ers as well. Kurt De Ruwe from BASF showed in a very good customer case how they introduced social tools and which obstacles they had to resolve: e.g. people being reluctant to tag (public sorting) instead of putting stuff into folders (personal sorting). Can’t mention all here but on the first day two sessions stuck out: One was about Dundu. Dundu is an artproject were up to 5 people move a huge figure of a human by acting on the arms, legs, head etc. seperatly. Doing this with small ones (less than a meter tall) this can be used for team and trustbuilding. Interesting and entertaining concept. The second one was called “Courage to Share” and was held by Kai @lao_tse Fitzner. He made very clear that being social needs a cultural change and mainly one were some people have to give up control. Ironically that shouldn’t be a problem at all as this “control” is an illusion anyway. A fact that could have been seen very good in the way the changes in the northern african countries happend. Control only works as long as those being controlled allow it. Of course this is not a “call to arms” but still structures in companies have to change somewhat to allow real “social”. On the second day also two sessions were especially remarkable: Uwe @bicyclist Hauck showed how the (mobile) workplace of the future can be available today already and also emphasized the needed cultural change to make it the standard instead of the exception. Gunter @wilddueck Dueck showed some entertaining psychological aspects of the whole social business world. Overall there was a lot of interesting stuff that makes you think how and when you can start introducing social business to your own company. But one thing seems to be clear: social is not just a hype … it will stay like the internet. And the needed change will come sooner or later. So it’s up to us if we want to be trendsetter, mainstream or those who have to run behind the pack or even risking to be left behind at all.