Back In Boston

     

Well I made it back to Boston last night.   I have to say, this might be the most exhausting work trip I have ever been on.  Unfamiliar beds, time zone changes, being out of my eating and fitness routines, struggling with language issues, they all take their toll.   I am not sure how Sales people do this all the time!

Since my speaking engagements were for the most part at conferences or group meetings, I was able to speak to well over 100 customers in just a few short days.  This is both mentally and physically very draining, but at the same time incredibly valuable.  Based on these customer interactions, I found the excitement level around Notes 8 and Quickr to be incredible.  There was also a ton of interest in Sametime, and a growing buzz around Connections, but not quite at the Notes 8 level.  There were some customers very well educated on our offerings, while others were just hearing about Connections, Quickr, and our use of Eclipse for the first time.

I met with one customer so excited to get Notes 8 + Sametime 7.5.1 + Quickr deployed, that the IBM account team actually had to be the one to say, "Ok, slow down lets plan this in phases".  To balance out the enthusiasm, I will admit I also heard comments from customers such as "This is great stuff, but too late, our executives have already made a political choice to use SharePoint".  We discussed this, and I explained how while I do understand it would have been nice to have seen all these new products and progress from Lotus 2 years ago, I can't go back in time.  Instead, we need to focus on the excellent deliverables of today, and see how we can work together moving forward.  I had one very enlightening conversation where a customer told me how they have failed to get QuickPlaces migrated to SharePoint, nor their Notes applications.  I guess migration is never as easy as it is "sold" to management.

Anyway, here are my photos from the ILUG 2007 trip to Glendalough (the first few photos in the set are from Mount Pilatus in Switzerland) and here are my photos from the French Open.

Now that I am back, I promise to resume "Notes Tip" postings next week.  In the queue is finishing up my tips on creating local replicas, learning about searching in Notes (full text indexing), and some cool features of Notes 8.