9-5 on the show floor today.  Traffic lighter than last year but still had some quality conversations with potential customers.  Lotusphere is as much about connecting with the community of partners as it is  with customers. Still lots of chatter about R 8.5 Designer and X Pages. Stephen of http://dominoyesmaybe.blogspot.com/" title="http://dominoyesmaybe.blogspot.com/">DominoYesNoMaybe fame has some good comments if you want to tune in.

Had a couple of Domino.Doc (Lotus Document Manager) customers come by check us out.  The migration path for them by IBM is Quickr and the Connector to Filenet or IBM Content manager.  Although DomDoc has some UI challenges, it did have some pretty impressive functionality and some customers were using to as an EDMS system.  Going to Quickr and the connectors at this time means a J2EE infrastructure as the Domino connectors are not available yet.  For the SMB guys, that is a huge investment and they have been looking around for a pure Domino solution.  Quickr on its own lacks functionality that even smaller companies require if they want to do more than collaboration and file sharing. http://www.docova.com" title="http://www.docova.com">Docova is a pretty good fit in this case.

Tuesday night there were several social events scheduled.  I went to Canada night, and was surprised to see a live band, excellent buffet and open bar  (aka no drink tickets required).  You could see the chamber music the band was putting out was even getting to them, and when I suggested some Canadian content they were quick to pound out a decent version of Taking Care of Business.  

I forgot about the Symphony Kareeokke , which I understand was a blast. They would put a topic up on the screen and you had to present to it with no advanced prep time.  Sort of "Whose Line Is It Anyways" style.  Jelly Rolls was hopping, as usual, with IBM Austrailia forgetting who was who and giving out drink passes to hot Vince Vaughn look-alikes.  For once common sense prevailed and I bailed early. You could tell Wednesday morning on the show floor was going to be a nasty experience for some.