Genii Weblog

IdoSphere: 18 sessions/20 speakers or 61 sessions/59 speakers?

Thu 10 Feb 2011, 08:43 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
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:


DEV07 Super Feats of Integration: XPages w/Symphony, Sharepoint & Office (web link)
Speakers: John Head, Alex Kassabov
The Interwebs - Wednesday  10:15am - 11:30am

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:

Inline JPEG image

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:

Inline JPEG image

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.

Inline JPEG image

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.

Copyright © 2011 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


973.1. Kathy Brown
(02/10/2011 02:19 PM)

Wow Ben! This is fantastic! (And not just because you sited me as an example. ;) ) This is a great idea, I'm really looking forward to seeing this build. Thank you for all the hard work!


973.2. Chris Miller
(02/10/2011 02:41 PM)

You talk about an awesome example of a community idea that then becomes viral. this is just what we needed for a long time