Starting to think about Lotusphere

It's nearly that time of year again. Lotusphere registration time is just around the corner. The 2010 event looks like it will be particularly interesting to me. There should be plenty of coverage around Lotus Connections - the social collaboration tool that I'm convinced is the "next big thing" for the Lotus brand. I'm hoping that there will be some good business sessions as well as the uual techie deep dive content. I'm also hoping that there will be opportunities to get stuck into some of the IBM Execs (in a positive way) about the current "Lotus Knows" marketing campaign.

Now it has to be said that decamping to Florida for a week, in January, to get re-energised about the Lotus brand is not the worst way of spending ones time. Unfortunately, it's not the cheapest either. There's the cost of registration, the flight, the hotel, and all the incidental expenses as well - typically there's nochange out of £2,500 per head once all the costs are added up. Here at Portal Partnership we always try to send a good sized delegation to lotusphere - there are customers to chaperone, IBMers to meet, business Partners to catch up with, and that's before you even think about the huge breadth and depth of sessions that are presented. All of this means that I end up with a lot of interest in attending from a number of colleagues, and then of course this leads to an "interesting" negotiation with our Finance Director about the cost!

So, I was very interested to read this piece by Sandy Carter of IBM in B2B magazine http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090929/FREE/909299982 In particular, her comments about Social Media being a driver for on-line events caught my eye. If, as stated in the article, IBM are investing heavily in the area of virtual events, complete with keynote sessions, breakouts etc., then the days of events like Lotusphere might be numbered. That will be good news for FD's around the world, but it would mean that January would be a little duller for those of us who have over the years become regular attendees.

Personally, I think the cost argument on it's own is likely to be very persuasive, but there are negatives as well - the act of travelling to a different location tends to focus the mind, and the absence of all the distractions of the normal workplace is a big benefit. I guess we need to see how this trend develops.