I should say up front, I have no connection with IdoSphere 2011. I am not a presenter, sponsor or even (so far) an attendee. Instead, I am using the excuse of providing a Sessions db to work out the details of a Social Business experiment.  The experiment is creating a Virtual agenda for a Virtual conference which spans more than the actual conference.  There are archived sessions, books, webcasts, courses and people who are not at the conference, but are linked to it in one way or another.  Since I love this image, I'll use it again, but feel free to simply download the IdoSphere 2011 Sessions db and see for yourself.  Since a number of the presenters have not submitted their abstracts (tsk, tsk), there are some "Not available yet." notes, but the Additional Resources tab works very well, and the Virtual Bookstore makes even more sense when there is no physical bookstore (your purchases through the bookstore provide a very small financial incentive to keep doing this, so don't hesitate to buy all the books you want).

Let me know what you think, as I am tempted to do this for subsequent conferences such as IamLUG, ILUG, UKLUG, EntwicklerCamp, Admin2011, etc.  With each subsequent conference, the archived session store will grow (with duplicates and obsolete sessions removed), so that the related content will become more and more valuable.  At least, that's what I think.  I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

As I prepare for the EntwicklerCamp conference in Germany, I have been describing Midas Rich Text LSX methods that I am using along with XPages and web editors for an interesting technology fusion.  Not saying what the project is yet, although guess if you like. Those at EntwicklerCamp will have an opportunity to see the project working, but soon after that, I should have a demo for others.  This is a follow up to my earlier two Method to the Madness posts, Connecting to an XPage with Midas and Custom XHTML input for XPage field.

As I continue to develop the project (hint: it has a slight connection to my IdoSphere post), I have discovered that my database is missing some resource files I will need.  I'll need a CSS style sheet and at least a couple of JavaScript files.  Since I won't know exactly which ahead of time, our third method will be GeniiSession.CreateFileResource. As before, I have included much of the general help, as well as an example.  Please note that in the example, if the file has a .css extension, it is automatically added as a Stylesheet resource, while other files are added as regular File Resource files.

Are you starting to see how many different things the Midas Rich Text LSX can, aside from just "manipulating rich text"?

CreateFileResource method  

If you asked Chris Miller, who is holding IdoSphere, how many sessions there were and how many speakers, or if you looked in the agenda on the IdoSphere site, you would likely think there were 18 sessions, 9 dev and 9 admin, given by 20 speakers.  You might think there was little point creating a Sessions database for 18 sessions that you can easily see on a single sheet of paper.

I contend that you (and Chris) would be wrong on both counts.  In my IdoSphere Sessions database, there are currently 61 sessions given by a total of 59 speakers.  What's more, I think the sessions database adds real value, especially because the IdoSphere conference is Virtual and especially for those who did not attend Lotusphere 2011.

Perhaps this screen shot will help explain.  There is a session at IdoSphere which I call DEV07:

It looks like a cool session, probably worth the price of admission to IdoSphere all by itself (but since that is only $35, it is not a high bar).  But imagine for a moment that somebody is "attending" IdoSphere who wasn't able to get to Lotusphere, or wasn't heavily tied in to that event.  Take a look at the Additional Resources tab which shows up when the person opens that document:

For the customer interested in the topic, there is an XPages book, a Lotus Symphony book, four archived sessions from Lotusphere 2011, and two courses from TLCC.  Any of these resources would have been available to the customer if he or she had searched carefully, but these are focused carefully, preselected and available with more information at the click of a mouse.

Some of this is available in the Lotusphere Sessions database, but the notion of archived sessions from previous conferences is new.  Mind you, we don't have the actual presentations, but simply links to both slides and other resources the speakers have made available.  Take a look at the By Day By Time view.  There you can see how I got to 61 sessions:

This logic carries through to every part of the database. If I think Kathy Brown's session on XPages for Lotus Notes Client Developers is great, and want to see what else she has done, I'd be disappointed if I only saw that session, but in the IdoSphere Sessions db under Kathy's person, I see an archived session from Lotusphere 2011 and a Webcast she made in August for IdoNotes.

And guess what.  Shortly after IdoSphere will be EntwicklerCamp, followed by UKLug, etc. etc.  Sessions that speakers choose to make available from IdoSphere will then become archived sessions at the next conference.  I will probably delete any session over 13 months old, or that is superseded by a new version, but I think you get the idea.