Ben,

What would be great is a web interface so that those of us on an iPhone / iPod Touch could access the sessions db.

I've not thought through any sort of requirements at all but my plan for '08 is to just have my Touch with me during the day so I need something that can either be in my calendar or on the web.

Matt

Matt - We have had a BlackBerry specific solution for the past few years (provided by The Turtle Partnership), and I know a couple of people have put this on a more general PDA compatible version, but I like the idea of a better web interface for iPhones and other smart phones. I'll talk to the Turtle Partnership people and see if they want to take that on. Thanks! - Ben

Ben - Thanks for putting this database together every year. I use the database for prioritizing the sessions that I plan to attend before I add them to the calendar. There are just so many good sessions that it's a difficult task to lay out your schedule so that you can fit most of them in, even with many of the popular sessions being repeated.

I actually modified the design last year to create actions to prioritize the sessions from the views (primary and 1st 2nd and 3rd alternates). I also created view icons for the priority rankings. This made it much easier to plan my final agenda.

Randy - If you feel comfortable doing so, send along a copy of the revised database and perhaps we can make some of those changes part of the standard design. - Ben

Ben - I've e-mailed you the database with these changes. I didn't spend much time making the changes, so don't expect much. Hopefully it will at least give you some ideas that you can use.

Ben, thanks for all the hard work. As a windows mobile user I would like to see it as a browser solution. I put it on a web server last year but it was not always so easy on the little screen.
In the end I selected ones I liked and cut/paste them into my C/S and replicated them to me phone, which I found to be the best usage of it wihtout having to open my laptop.
So if you can add a "select to add to your Calendar" option that would be excellent for me. It should include the title, description, time, place, speaker.
cheers

Thanks for the effort, yours is a great resource for planning, I used it intensively the days before Lotusphere.

My suggestion would be to make it more useful while on the event. I found it hard to follow up the events I had selected (even when I liked the ability to copy entries to the Blackberry calendar). I also tend to prioritize the sessions, so something like a mobile web UI that has a couple of News at the top, then the upcoming sessions (by priority). May be later you can add Notes to the sessions, and request the PDFs from those sessions, so you'll have a whole Lotusphere log.

Ben -- thanks for the effort. Very much appreciated.

My idea is simple, but may be arduous to implement. There exists no cross-index for the Showcase vendors by product name, or product type. Many people know the products, but are less familiar with the ISV. Perhaps listing a product or two from each vendor or a classification (e.g. Fax, CRM, Project Managment) to better find vendors for what you need.

This has been suggested to IBM for the past four years IBM by many BPs that I have witnessed. The IBM crew working the floor agrees that it would be a good idea and also have claimed to suggest it to the conference team. After four years of asking, it remains missing. Most exasperating.

Is there a way to have the vendors send in e-mail and then feed in their results directly into the DB? Just a thought...

Mr. Langhinrichs,
I have greatly appreciated your hard work on this. Please add those of us (still?) using PalmOS-based phones (Treo680 specifically) when considering your future plans.
While I would appreciate a web-based option, the Journal-based one has worked perfectly for me in the past, with the Add to calendar very useful indeed!
The only 'issue' I've had was keeping up with changes once LS starts. I don't see how that could be fixed unless the changes were made avaible and could be processed automatically.

Craig - Thanks for the kind words. It has been a pleasure (well, not always, but mostly) creating this resource over the years. I'm glad it has been of assistance.

As for getting changes once LS starts, we started last year with a replicatable database. It was still somewhat of an effort during Lotusphere to actually make updates, but we also used it after Lotusphere to track links to sessions that were posted by speakers. We plan to do both things again this year, plus hope to have some other more interactive content that can replicate as well. I hope those changes make this even more valuable for you. - Ben

@10 - To clarify, my comment - My impression was that you had to do some rather complicated processing to create & maintain the db. I meant that IBM really should make the updates available to you automatically (via web service, view lookup, DXL or something...) so you could EASILY use that source to script/schedule updates to the db. I know how busy you must be during LS, and there doesn't seem to be any discernable reason you should spend an ounce of effort during LS on this. (Isn't that what agents are FOR?) Of course, the raw data has to be available to you in a convenient format....

Craig - I greatly appreciate the sentiment, but IBM has been unable to get its act together to help in the past. There are lots of good people who mean well, but the bureaucracy is just too dense. So, while I wish I could get updates from IBM, if I wait for them, they'll never happen. And yes, it is rather complicated processing because I usually have to programmatically rip it off the web pages. Ick. Anyway, thanks for the postive comments! - Ben

Ben,

Thanks for the work you put into the database. I have used it the last couple of years. One thing I do after the LotusPhere is to download the updated presentations (either from the LotusPhere website or the various blogs). That way I capture the presentations and sample databases together with the agenda and abstracts making it easier to find them at a later time.

It would be great if these presentations were added to the central replica of the database (e.g. by letting the presenters submit their presentations themselves?)

John