This is your opportunity to see first hand in the labs what we can do and where we are going.  There are tons of sessions to hear from the experts, listen to real customer experiences and share what you know and build your skills. The product showcase will be filled with partner solutions and integrators that can help you extend solutions in your organization.

Need more reasons to attend?  See the Top Five Reasons to Attend Lotusphere 2012

New this year, IBM Connect 2012 is a two-day social business event covering a wide range of topics from what it means to be a social business to creating value and better business outcomes. IBM Connect runs in parallel to Lotusphere 2012.

This is a great time to make relationships that can help you grow, keep you connected and elevate your access!  Join in on the conversations that are happening now and will continue through out the conference!

Look forward to seeing you there!

Register NOW Become a more social business with IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3

From http://www.lotususergroup.org

Ed Brill Director, Messaging and Collaboration, IBM	October 6, 2011 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.3 provides numerous feature enhancements that benefit end-users, developers and administrators. Come hear about Lotus Notes and iNotes improvements for Mail and C&S; expanded device support, usability and administrative enhancements for Lotus Notes Traveler; performance/scalability improvements for XPages; Domino Designer productivity improvements; and expanded virtualization and data storage enhancements for Domino. In the last but certainly not least category, come hear how 8.5.3 accelerates your ability to find people and content as you embark on becoming a social business.	Pete Janzen Sr. Product Manager — Domino Application Development, IBM
Jason Dumont Program Director for Messaging & Collaboration Client Strategy, IBM		Jan Kenney Product Manager — Lotus Notes Traveler & Lotus Mobile Connect, IBM

Join us for the inaugural Pacific Lotus Users Group (PACLUG) event at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas on June 21-22. This event will bring together IT and LOB professionals from all over the Western United States to share ideas and tools using IBM Collaboration and Social Business solutions. This free event will provide you with the most current information about increasing your efficiency through collaboration and integrating your platforms with social business tools.  This is an event that you will not want to miss!

We have many great plans for our inaugural event. These include:
·        Expert panel discussion on “The Future of a Social Business”, which will cover topics like Web 2.0/E2.0, mobility, gamification, enterprise collaboration and much more!
·        Keynote address including demos from Alistair Rennie, GM of IBM Collaboration Solutions
·        Lab solutions area to see demos and meet with IBM subject matter experts
·        Solution Showcase including the IBM Pavilion
·        Discounted certification exams and testing area
·        Meals and receptions

Sessions and Speakers include:

• A “Day in the Life” Exceptional Work Experience – Chris Crummey, IBM (@ccrummey)
• Application Development Strategy – Presented by IBM
• Building the Next Generation Web Experience with IBM Forms with Workflow – without coding – Bob McCandless, Alphalogix (@BobMcCandless)
• Creating or Moving Your Social Portal to the Cloud – Tom Simmons, Alacrinet (@tjsimm)
• Developing Mobile Apps with XPages 8.5.2 – Lance Spellman, WorkFlow Studios (@lance_spellman)
• Discussing a Mobile Strategy for Lotus Notes/Domino – Richard Sharpe, TeamStudio (@teamstudio)
• Exceptional Web Experience / Portal in the Cloud – How to make the right business driven decisions – Steven Gerhardt, Ixion
• From Phone Calls to Mobile Web – How Bekins Brought Mobile to Trucking – Mike Ostrowski  (@mikeostrowski)
• Getting started as a social business – Don Browning, Sirius Computer Solutions (@CollabGuyDon)
• Introduction to IBM Lotus Web Content Management 7 – Naji Zeineh, Citent (@Citent)
• Leading the Way to Exceptional Customer Web Experiences – Jon Raslawski, IBM (@jrazz)
• Licensing Strategies for New Innovations – Presented by IBM
• LotusLive – Moving to the Cloud. LotusLive Hybrid infrastructure explained – Mark Harper, IBM (@k5tao)
• Messaging and Collaboration Strategy – Ed Brill, IBM (@edbrill)
• Organizing an XPages development team – Brian Benz, (@bbenz)
• Powering a Market Leading Business with Social Collaboration – Presented by IBM
• Project Vulcan in Action – Mind Meld Sold Separately – Bruce Elgort, Egluji Software (@belgort)
• Sametime from the Administrators side – Andy Higgins, IMCollaboration (@amhiggins)
• Security, DoD, and connecting it to Notes/Domino – D’Artagnan Fischer, SDDUG
• The Lotus Mobile Strategy- Presented by IBM
• Two-minute drills for Administrators – Ted Hardenburgh, Group Business Software [GBS] (@thardenb)
• Unified Communications and Collaboration Strategy and Roadmap – Presented by IBM

Total Cost:
This is a free event for all attendees. You do not need to be a part of a local users group to attend, nor do you need to register for any other conference. Since this is a FREE conference, we have limited availability to host the event. Make sure you register today and make plans to attend. Your total cost will be your travel to Las Vegas and hotel arrangements. We have a block of hotel rooms at Planet Hollywood for $99/night.

This is your opportunity to learn and network with colleagues from all over the Western United States. Register today at www.paclug.org!

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/paclug
Friend us on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/4oej3vd  
Like our Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/4twr9pe
LinkedIn Event page: http://events.linkedin.com/Pacific-Lotus-Users-Group-Conference/pub/646205
Lanyard social conference: http://lanyrd.com/2011/paclug/

Bringing IBM expertise to a global forum

Every year, IBM brings together leading-edge thinkers, technology gurus and business experts for more than 30 technical universities and seminars worldwide.

These events provide a forum where IT professionals can explore current and emerging technical topics, meet respected industry leaders and network with peers from around the globe.

• Upgrade your IT skills. The key to success is training; get it quickly at an IBM Technical Universities.
• Test-drive the latest technologies through hands-on labs. Roll up your sleeves and get involved with the latest systems and software.
• Hear breaking news from the original source. Get up to speed on the latest product releases, trends, tips and techniques – direct from IBM.
• Network with experts and colleagues from a variety of industries.
• Load up on great information. Get the background you need to make quick, intelligent business decisions.
• Explore a wide selection of topics. Expand your skills in the area of your choice with a variety of elective sessions for every level, from new user to expert.
• Certify your skills onsite with testing at many events.
• Get the most out of your training experience. We’ve designed cost-saving programs to meet your needs and your schedule. There are even classes on Sunday at many events.

For more information and registration

LotusLive online services….

… uniquely integrates through open standards with existing, on-premise customer solutions

… access through a familiar web 2.0 user interface

… makes it easy for customers to extend collaborative capability to the cloud

LotusLive is IBM Lotus’ portfolio of solutions that offer Software as a Service (SaaS) for organizations to leverage in the cloud. In addition, LotusLive Solutions can extend your on premise investments to the cloud.

SaaS became a well used word in 2009. Organizations found that they needed to find ways that they could cut IT costs, simplify end user connectivity, managing help desks and streamline costs associated with upgrades. Software as a Service offers a cloud model of delivering software, on demand, managed by an outside source. It is very structured and controlled, with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) being offered and just enough capabilities. Business are finding that while this is an attractive offering, once getting down to the realities of it, there are limitations. There are challenges with an all-inclusive approach. It would be difficult to deliver all the services that a customer needs to run their business including business applications, telecom, help desk all in one place. There are many concerns regarding volumes of existing information, data migration, mobile access, all or nothing solutions, integration with their internal applications and security models, let alone having someone else manage all of your content.

IBM has recognized this. In talking to our customers regarding their needs, IBM has found that not one size fits all. In the LotusLive Portfolio, IBM offers technical delivery solutions that can help to bridge the needs of the end users, the requirements of the business, and balance some of the financial relief that the business is looking to solve. In the LotusLive offerings we have a portfolio that allows for a hybrid model which extends On-premise investments to, hosted and cloud solutions.

The rich portfolio of service offerings of LotusLive that make collaborating across boundaries easy for business of all sizes.

There are some basic common needs, but we all know that the requirements for communication is not the same for everyone in your organization. Corporate Directors and C-Level executives have very different needs from the needs of the janitor.  That is an easy one.  However, there are more gradient levels and companies need to figure out how to profile their user communities.

IBM understands this. We have reviewed the user communities of customers, IBM internally and worked with analysts, and have defined three primary categories based on their business and collaborative requirements. The following three categories cover the distinctions – however there are also gradients inside of these categories as well.

• Knowledge Workers - requiring the most sophisticated messaging and collaboration
• Task Workers - these needs vary by function, some need full collaboration, others over-served
• Boundary Workers - clearly need just the essentials for email and calendaring

This approach of profiling the users, offers the customer the ability to determine what level of capabilities are needed and how to deliver these the abilities, all the while being able to leverage the capabilities of the SaaS model. By understanding the needs of the users, and the business, this is where you build the strongest case for Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Leveraging costs across the organization, based on end-user requirements, provides the best overall TCO

IBM offers two different workshops to help customers:

User Segmentation Workshop

IBM helps to define the collaboration culture in your organization. We then conduct an exercise to help develop corporate personas. Once these personas are identified, we analyze their categories based on their social networks and sub networks. Once these have been outlined, use cases are built to help define vision and approach to delivering email and collaborative tools to the business.

TCO Value Workshop

In this workshop, IBM works with the customer focusing on data specific to their environment to review existing options. In evaluating all the delivery options available, we are able to help the customer build distinctions to provide a complete TCO view of each of the delivery models. We compare these options side by side regardless of whether it is SaaS, on premise, a hybrid implementation with on premise and SaaS, on premise with appliances, or all three.

So when you think of SaaS, consider the bigger picture, and be sure to engage IBM to assist you in examining the options. Remember that IBM has the experience in running efficient, reliable, secure and large scaled computing environments. The flexibility of options for delivery models. The innovation of Enterprise Web 2.0 based social computing paradigm that will allow more effective collaboration among employees, customers, and partners. All of this while leveraging our internal resources to partner with customers to develop cloud strategies and implementation plan that’s the right fit.

For more information please see http://www.lotuslive.com or contact me directly and I can get you in touch with someone that can help you.

In a world of on-line collaboration, sometimes there’s nothing like meeting face-to-face! So we’re kicking off a new series of events aimed at helping you and your teams better understand how to embrace the power of collaboration, regardless of where you are in the process, or which Lotus software products you currently use.

Get up close and personal with our executive team and product experts for a day of interactive sessions, demos and one-on-one meetings, and even some sneak peaks of what we’ll be showing at Lotusphere in January. Come see us at one of of our upcoming events we have planned this fall. We have a lot up our sleeves!

If you want to learn how to benefit from your existing collaboration infrastructure, or maybe even looking for some new ideas — you’ll want to be here.

UPCOMING EVENTS:
* Chicago: October 6th
* New York: October 22nd
* San Francisco: November 5th

Register today at: ibm.com/software/lotus/events/smarter-collaboration/live/

Get Smart. Start the conversation. Be the visionary. Shape the future. See you there!

WHAT? Lotus Knows Bus Tour WHEN? Tuesday, October 13, from 11 to 2
WHERE? The bus will be parked at Market Street and the Embarcadero. And we will also be hosting lunch, live demos, video vignettes and discussions at the IBM Office (425 Market St, Floor 20, Room 420)
WHY COME? Free lunch! Prizes! Check out the cool bus! And learn more about what Lotus knows regarding collaboration and communication To RSVP, please email Steve Bauer bauerst@us.ibm.com or 303 570 5511