Collaboration University 2008 - New Look and New Locations - Registration Open
Category NoneEven while packing for ILUG next week, I can't help but to announce with as much hooplah as I can muster in this small space that Collaboration University 2008 registration has opened today. With a brand new website sprucing up the joint, we're all excited to begin the summer-long journey towards another successful and excellent conference on Lotus Quickr and Sametime. We're even adding some Lotus Connections content focused on integration and APIs.
I alluded in a previous posting to some changes this year, and suppose it's time to let them be known.
New Look
As you can see from the new website and comparing it to the Internet Archive, we've taken on a fresh new look - something you can expect to see throughout the Collaboration University experience. We're using Dojo, a lot more pretty pictures (from our own cameras!), and a lot less text.
New Digs
First and foremost, we're moving from Kansas City to Chicago - already mentioned that, but it's worth a repeat. Second, the venues are NOT hotels. What this means for our attendees is that they'll have a choice of hotels, many within walking distance, in two cities with excellent transportation! It also means the rooms will not be so cold, and the projectors will probably work all the time
In Chicago we'll be at the IBM Innovation Center, located on the Chicago River a few blocks from Michigan Avenue. I have visited the building twice this year, and folks it is a great place to have the size and type of conference we produce. In two weeks I'll be in London visiting our venue there, IBM South Bank. Just a few blocks from Waterloo station, Marriott County Hall, the London Eye, and accessible from all over central London. Our dates (both start on a Monday and run through Wednesday):
Chicago: September 8-10, 2008
London: September 15-17, 2008
Many thanks to Ed Brill for assisting with the introduction at the IBM Innovation Center, and of course to our co-producing partners The Turtle Partnership in London, and Darren Adams from IBM for assisting with the London venue.
New Content
Let's see, since last July's conference we've seen two releases of Quickr, two releases of Sametime, an entire new product with Sametime Advanced, the Webdialogs acquisition which became Sametime Unyte, two point releases of Lotus Connections (with a massive 2.0 release coming any week now)...there's a lot to talk about, isn't there? While we will cover the "basics" to some degree, you can count on the content being fresh, new versions and old covered, and we'll be delving into Connections for several sessions - enough to satisfy everyone's need for new technical information.
New Workshop Concept - Like, Real Life
For our workshops this year (Wednesday afternoon post-con), we're trying something different. We're going to give you a month's experience in 3 hours! The workshop will focus on Quickr Domino development and administration. Developers will go to one room and work on an application - with significant help - for 90 minutes, while the admins will start with a "bare bones" install of Quickr and apply best practices security settings, modify LDAP, configure notes.ini and qpconfig.xml, and set up MSSO. Next, each developer will pair up with an admin to deploy the application and test it. If that's not real-life enough, your resident business client (me) will request a critical change in the application so everyone - developers and admins alike - can learn what choices you have to make when deploying changes to a production Quickr environment.
Homework & Prerequisites
So every time there's a conference, there is always a mixed bag of experience levels showing up at the door. It's the nature of the beast. With so much packed into a 3-day schedule, our approach has been to start with more basic topics and ramp up quickly. That means the first few sessions could be too basic for experienced attendees (though I've never been told that it's not challenging enough by the end of the day). So we're planing to release some basic sessions electronically to attendees in August as pre-conference "level set", for those who would like a head start. Totally optional, but those who go through them get 3-4 more sessions! The main benefit is that we can all start faster and get into more complex topics on the first day.
So please go have a look around the Collaboration University website, and register early! As you might expect, there are early registration discounts, and as a "thank you" to past attendees, an Alumni discount.
Now, back to packing! Dublin here I come...
Comments
Nora's parents live there.
Is it just me, or are neither you nor Liz on Twitter?
Posted by Turtle At 09:35:11 PM On 06/05/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Rob Novak At 07:22:48 AM On 06/06/2008 | - Website - |
I'm completely new to IBM collaboration, and am trying to establish collaboration vehicles for my team. As a (mostly) non-IT person, would there be value in Collaboration University for me?
Thanks!
Joe
Posted by Joe Valente At 11:36:40 AM On 06/13/2008 | - Website - |
While most of the actual sessions will be technical (increasingly so on the second day), you'd be mixing with major customers, the best and brightest business partners for these products, and several IBMers. We're planning out some labs as well.
The sessions tend to be best practices/experience oriented - and the development ones really show what is possible with Quickr and Sametime.
Besides, it's Chicago, and we might find some Jazz
-Rob
Posted by Rob Novak At 11:43:56 AM On 06/13/2008 | - Website - |
:)
Posted by Joe Valente At 01:04:11 PM On 06/13/2008 | - Website - |
:)
Posted by Joe Valente At 01:51:25 PM On 06/13/2008 | - Website - |