After 27 hours in transit, I am, finally, home! Yes, that is right, after over a day of travelling I am now back, coming from one of the best conference events I have ever been to in my short career in the IT world: Lotusphere 2008!!! What a blast, indeed, folks! I mean, I had very very high expectations and everything about the whole event, after having talked to different people about it for quite a while, but this past week has been just incredible! So much so that on the way back I just couldn't help thinking about the great time I had, the awesomeness from all of the folks I met while in there and the incredible amount of stuff I learnt all along. And all that probably helped me enjoy those 27 hours of travelling back since it didn't feel like I would be too tired. Yes, I am sure, it was the excitement kicking in!
Anyway, you would remember how last blog post I put together over here was detailing a little bit on the highlights from the first day of Lotusphere, Sunday 19th. From there onwards things just went incredibly busy and massively hectic and just didn't have much time to update the blog. Instead, as you would all imagine, I decided to dedicate my time to one of the activities I like the most about conferences: networking. And that's what I did! And big time! Oh and plenty of twittering as well! Yes, I realise that I didn't have a chance to say "Hi!" to a whole bunch of folks I would have wanted it to, but it surely was a good start to put together a face and a voice to those folks I have been reading or connecting virtually with for quite some time now! Priceless!! Hanging out with various different folks till the early hours of the morning, closing the bar brings back lots of good memories from previous conference events I may have attended.
Anyway, I am now back home already for a few hours and while I am trying to keep myself awake, since I don't want to just get to bed too soon, I am starting to wade through various different blog posts I'll be putting together about the Lotusphere event itself. Pretty much along the very same lines as the highlights entry I mentioned earlier on, so you can expect over the next day or so about four long blog posts on the subject. Then from there onwards, there is just so much I would want to talk about and mention over here from what I saw / talked about while in there, that I am probably going to spend a few days sharing further insights with regards to some of the incredibly exciting announcements that went live while in there! I am hoping that would be all right with you folks, if you see that over the next few days I may be talking a bit far too much on such IBM event, but I think it's worth it.
Oh, and talking about announcements, I just realised that, while I was at Lotusphere 2008 in Orlando, I made one of those huge achievements that I never thought would have been possible. Yes, that is right. For someone who studied to become an English teacher it's funny to think that earlier on this week, on the 20th of January 2008, I actually made 11 years working for IBM!! Wooohooo!! That is just huge!
That's right! I started working for IBM in a contractor company back in 1997 and supporting the mainframe for the UK. Then from there onwards I managed to get into the training department from the overall project, and from there moving forward into Knowledge Management and Social Computing spaces. Till now. Quite an experience, I tell you! And fast forward to today, 11 years and still going strong!
With all of the stuff that was going on during the event I even forgot about my own IBM anniversary and didn't blog about it. So, now that I have got a few minutes and in order to help me stay awake, here I am putting together these lines to wish me another 11 years of good and exciting work doing the stuff I have been enjoying for the last few years! KM, Collaboration, Communities, Learning and Social Computing!!
Of course, regular blogging activities will resume for this particular blog shortly, once I am done with my mail backlog, or, and stay tuned, because I'm also preparing an entry on how I am going to get rid of e-mail in 2008 to share my knowledge and collaborate with other folks using social software tools... But that's a story for another blog post...
(It's good to be back again!)
Tags: IBM, IBM Lotus, Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotusphere2008, Events, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Networking, Twitter, Learning, Communities, Anniversary