Great idea. I voted yes for this. I've wanted to have more business and productivity sessions at Lotusphere, but as you found, people mostly want the technical stuff. Maybe now that we are seeing the larger number of attendees like in years past, user-oriented sessions will become more common. Best Practices is really the only track that non-IBMers routinely participate in, so perhaps we need another track altogether.

As you say, devs and admins need to be productive too, and I'm sure manager types would appreciate a session like this. I say go for it!

Speaking as someone who is not a developer and an admin in name only, I would really welcome more of these types of sessions to be able to bring other "decision makers" at my company to Lotusphere, to see how others are using Notes for something other than email, calendar, and contacts.

I've presented sessions like this years back when I was part of IBM working on the Collaborative Computing Team. The users we presented to did say they got a lot out of the sessions and also when interviewed months later, they told us that the sessions did make them use their IT tools (and Lotus Notes in specific) more efficiently. I therefore do believe that such a session would be a good thing. Interesting enough the few developers we managed to reach with these sessions also had to admit that they saw quite a few things that they didn't know about or didn't think of.
If your session makes it and you need more ideas on what to cover, please let me know and I'll send you a list of the topics we covered in our sessions.

As long as it's not heavy on MindManager Pro or other commercial products it could be a good thing. It should be as generically Notes-oriented as possible.

Personally i don'tthink this should be on an event like LS...It has not much to do with the lotus product suite.

@6 That depends on how Eric fills this in. Lotusphere traditionally is quite technology oriented showing the latest and greatest in the Lotus brand. I think we can all agree that Lotus has a set of fantastic products with great possibilities, but if the users don't know those possibilities or don't know how they would be useful in their daily work then those possibilities go to waste. If Eric will focus on how people can use the Lotus products more effectively in their daily work then I think such a session should be on LS. If he does focus more on adding even more technology to help you (like OpenNTF Mail & eProductivity), then I would withdraw my support for this idea as well.

Good point, Martjin.

As I mentioned in the description, this session will look at some of the best practices of information and knowledge organization as well as how to effectively manage projects and actions with Lotus Notes. This session, if approved, would focus on best practices for using Lotus Notes that do not require any third party applications. The goal is to present best practices that can be applied right away with any version of Lotus Notes.

To my way of thinking, this is really a session on personal knowledge management and productivity using Lotus Notes. I realize that we may be pushing it for this tyoe of conference that has traditionally been more tech oriented. Still, given the votes cast so far, there appears to be at least some interest.

As far as third party applications go, I think it would be valuable to show a handful of tools that can extend the value of Notes, but I would not plan on more than a few minutes to do so, and then at the very end.

My goal is to give the attendees information and tips that they can apply right away. If you look at last year's proposal with Bruce and Alan, you'll see the kinds of things I have in mind.

That said, given the power of IdeaJam, folks may vote for or against these ideas and they may post comments, which I will consider, in my decision to submit a proposal (or not).

Thanks, everyone!

Eric

I almost voted against this based on the title. I don't care for the system or other such systems.

On the other hand, I think Eric has some good ideas here and while its not what my best ideal of a bp track would cover, I can't see Lotus putting it into any other track and it does have a lot of value for people at Lotusphere.

Thanks for your comment Andrew. (The more comments people share, the better I can tune the outline in response.

While I admit that I'm partial to David's GTD methodology, it's only because for me it's the only method that I've been able to sustain over a few months (It's been 12+ years) . Many other approaches were more exciting but too tedious and I found myself working too hard. Your mileage may vary.

I hope that the point people take away from this session is that you can think differently about your work and become more efficient and effective in the process.

Eric