My Lotusphere 2010 session

This year’s Lotusphere Sunday is going to be a little less busy than usual for me.  I am co-presenting with John Head a JumpStart session JMP 106 – “Kum Bah Yah” Meets “Let’s Kick Butt”: The Integration of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino with Microsoft Office, .NET, and IBM Lotus Symphony.  Unlike the previous years, we are only presenting it one time at 4PM. There will be no repeat session. So, if you’re interested in learning all about the integration of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 with Microsoft Office, .NET technologies, OpenOffice.org, & Lotus Symphony. We’ll start with the basics and build up to mail merge, exporting to a spreadsheet, charting, presentations, and integration on the Web, don’t miss JMP 106 at 4PM in Swan 7 – 10.  As usual, the session will be made up of demos, demos and more demos, all of which, including the slides, we will make available for download from our blogs.

Hope to see you at the session tomorrow.

How to insert graphic into your Lotus Symphony presentation

John Head recorded this video showing an innovative approach to inserting graphics from a Lotus Notes image repository straight into your Lotus Symphony presentation.

JumpStart 205 – Integration of IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino with Microsoft Office, .NET, and IBM Lotus Symphony

Welcome to the real world, where Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino are just part of your corporate toolset. This session will introduce you to integration of Lotus Notes and Domino 8 and 8.5 with Microsoft Office, .NET technologies, OpenOffice.org, and Lotus Symphony. We’ll start with the basics and gradually build up to advanced integration. Mail Merge, exporting to a spreadsheet, charting, presentation building, and integration on the Web will all be covered. Advanced topics such as Visual Studio Tools for Office and integration with Lotus Domino Web Services will round out the session. All new samples including integration with XPages will provide samples you can use as soon as you get home.

John Head & Alex Kassabov

Dolphin Americas Seminar : Sunday, 1/18/2009 : 8 AM to 9:30 AM
Swan : Sunday, 1/18/2009 : 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM

Note: The first run of this session is only 90 minutes. The second run is 120 minutes. We will have more content in the afternoon session.

And the complete demo database can be downloaded here.  

Oh yeah, and thank you everyone for getting up to see us speak at 8 am on Sunday.

Partner spotlight is on PSC

The Lotus Symphony website is shining the Business Partner Spotlight on PSC.  If you want to know how PSC can help you with evaluating if Lotus Symphony is the right solution for your organization and how we can help you deploy Lotus Symphony, click on the PSC website for more information.  And check out the collection of solutions centered around Symphony.

Lotus Symphony as an alternative to Office 2007 – but why hasn’t everyone heard about it yet?

Yesterday I had lunch with several IT folks from one of my clients. At one point in the conversation they started talking about what software they will be next pushing out to all desktops. Someone asked when they would be deploying Office 2007. Turns out that at this organization users need a special permission, manager’s authorization, to receive a copy of Office 2007. The main reason — it is too expensive. The conversation naturally turned to low-cost alternatives, such as OpenOffice. And then I asked about Lotus Symphony. To my surprise, nobody at this good sized IBM/Lotus customer has heard of Lotus Symphony. While I was explaining what Lotus Symphony was all about, the heads were nodding, the eyes were shining — the story around Lotus Symphony clearly made sense here and they got it. A enterprise-class productivity software suite that is free and is provided at no charge — what’s not to get?

It is clearly disappointing that Lotus Symphony does not get more exposure. A few full page ads in eWeek or similar industry rags could go along way towards raising general awareness of this excellent alternative to an expensive product with a steep learning curve.

And in the mean time, I’ll be going back to my client next week with a Notes 8 CD in hand and showing them what Lotus Symphony can do for them. Coincidentally, PSC now offers a Lotus Symphony Executive Jumpstart, now listed in the IBM Lotus Business Solutions Catalog.