Getting to Lotusphere 2008

It's that time of year for my annual visit to Orlando to attend Lotusphere. It's the 15th year that IBM Lotus been doing this event at the Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando. The event always promises to be interesting and it's had ups and downs over the years. If I recall correctly I've attended 13 Lotusphere's in my career, which qualifies me for some sort of button or badge. It may or may not qualify me for the job I plan to do over next week; reporting and commenting on events, announcements, and reactions of attendees at Lotusphere 2008. I will do my best to paint the clearest picture of what I see and bring it to you here (maybe with some actual pictures).

Heading off to Lotusphere 2008 I have some questions in mind that I hope will be answered while I am there. 2007 was a busy year for IBM Lotus delivering a major upgrade to Notes/Domino, significant upgrades to Sametime, and additional options as well as accelerators for WebSphere Portal. IBM Lotus also introduced two new products to the marketplace in 2007, Quickr 8.0 and Lotus Connections 1.0, which demonstrated IBM Lotus' commitment to future technologies using web-based interfaces and social software. So the main question going into Lotusphere 2008 is what's next IBM Lotus and what can we expect from these products now? (Ok that's really 2 questions) I suspect I'll get some answers.

Products aside, I have other product related questions, such as (in no particular order):

1. What is IBM Lotus doing in the mobile space?
2. SaaS is grabbing headlines and what will IBM Lotus offer it's customer in the area of hosted solutions?
3. What's the story with IBM Lotus development tools? Will it be easier to develop web apps for Domino or other IBM Lotus interfaces?
4. Notes mail, anything new since the last time we looked?

I'm also interested in more communications and collaboration market related questions, specifically:

1. So far, 2007 has been more of an installed base play, what is IBM Lotus doing to attract new customers?
2. What does IBM Lotus see as its largest competitive threats and how does it propose to address those concerns?
3. What is the value proposition IBM Lotus is offering customers in 2008?

Ok, so that's enough questions for now. I am looking forward to next week's events. It'll be a busy time and it's always exciting. If you're at Lotusphere and see me don't hesitate to say "Hi".

BTW: If you're looking for other blogging coverage of Lotusphere check out Planet Lotus!