Lotusphere was an American annual

conference A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...

hosted by

Lotus Software Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1-2- ...

(which later became an IBM software brand) from 1993 to 2017. In 2013, Lotusphere was re-branded as IBM Connect. Except for the first conference, which took place in December 1993, Lotusphere was held in late January. It started with a reception party on Sunday night and continued on through the closing session on Thursday afternoon. The conference was held at the Walt Disney World

Swan Swans are birds of the family (biology), family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the goose, geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form t ...

and

Dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...

hotels. Most years it has used the additional space at Disney's

Yacht A yacht is a sailing or power vessel used for pleasure, cruising, or racing. There is no standard definition, though the term generally applies to vessels with a cabin intended for overnight use. To be termed a , as opposed to a , such a pleasu ...

and

Beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shel ...

Clubs. In addition to the annual conference in

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, between 1997 and 2000 there was also an annual Lotusphere Europe conference, first in Nice (1997) and then in Berlin (1999). "Lotusphere Comes to You" (LCTY) events were for a few years held by local IBM Business Partners, where some of the information presented at conference was presented and business partners could connect with local users who were not able to attend the big event. LCTY was held in over 50 countries around the world. Since 2007, LCTY in Sofia, Bulgaria was organized b
IBS Bulgaria
with the support of IBM Bulgaria. The event covered news around

as well as sessions emphasizing on local business needs and Lotus Domino development. These events were later replaced by local LUG (Lotus User Group) events like IamLUG (later Icon US), MWLUG, ILUG, UKLUG (later Icon UK) and many others. Toward the end of 2012, IBM stopped using the Lotus brand and renamed the conference to IBM Connect. It was renamed again in 2015 to IBM ConnectED, but changed back to IBM Connect in 2016. The venue changed from the Disney Swan and Dolphin to the Hilton in Orlando. In 2017 the conference was moved to the Moscone Centre in San Francisco, and the date of the conference moved to the third week of February. In 2018, IBM Connect, along with several other IBM conferences, was merged into the IBM Think conference.

Agenda

The typical agenda started with an opening general session on Monday, followed by breakout sessions through the rest of the morning and afternoon where different presentations occur simultaneously in different conference rooms, allowing attendees to choose which one they want to go to. Each breakout session was typically an hour long, with pauses in the schedule to allow attendees to mingle and walk to their next choice of breakout session. Tuesday and Wednesday also had six or seven of these breakout sessions throughout the day. Originally, Thursday was the last day of the conference, with a few breakout sessions in the morning, then a large "Ask the Developers" session where attendees are allowed to ask questions directly to a panel of IBM/Lotus employees involved in making the software. The last event of the conference is a closing session. Starting in 2014 the conference was shortened one day, ending on Wednesday instead. The opening and closing sessions typically had a form of entertainment and a guest speaker, as well as executives and key employees sharing news and demonstrations of what was planned for the near future.

Breakout Sessions

In 2008, there were 197 different presentations scheduled during the breakout sessions, scheduled across 18 slots, giving attendees an average of eleven choices per session slot. Each breakout session lasted about an hour. Breakouts were split into several categories called "tracks". Common tracks were: ; 1) Futures and Innovations : Glimpses of technologies and innovations coming out of IBM and Lotus Research Labs. ; 2) Application Development : Presentations on custom application development, ranging from

paper prototyping In human–computer interaction, paper prototyping is a widely used method in the user-centered design process, a process that helps developers to create software that meets the user's expectations and needs—in this case, especially for designi ...

to application development techniques specific to Lotus software products. ; 3) Planning and Managing Your Collaboration Infrastructure : Information for administrators and decision makers on architecture, features and capabilities, deployment, and system management. ; 4) Best Practices : Tips and tricks for developers, administrators, usually technical and tactical. In addition to these four tracks, there was sometimes a fifth track with a title and content around "Customer References" or "Sponsor Sessions". There were also "Hands-on" and "JumpStart" sessions. ; Hands-on : These were hands-on classes lasting 1¾ hours, taking place in rooms set up in a classroom style with tables and computers. Attendance was limited such that there are one to two attendees per computer. ; JumpStart : JumpStart sessions were offered during the day on Sunday, usually lasting about 1½ hours, giving an in-depth presentation on a topic.

History and Statistics

Lotusphere Lore
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Geoffrey Moore Geoffrey Moore (born 1946) is an American organizational theorist, management consultant and author, known for his work '' Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers''.

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Ray Ozzie Raymond "Ray" Ozzie (born November 20, 1955) is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010. Before Microsoft, he was best known for ...

Avery Brooks Avery Franklin Brooks (born October 2, 1948) is an American actor, director, singer, narrator and educator. He is best known for his television roles as Captain Benjamin Sisko on ''Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', as Hawk on '' Spenser: For Hire'' ...

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Magic Kingdom Magic Kingdom Park, previously known as Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom (1971–1994) and The Magic Kingdom (1994–2017), is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, Florida. Owned and operated by The W ...

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Earth, Wind & Fire Earth, Wind & Fire (EW&F or EWF) is an American band whose music spans the genres of jazz, R&B, soul, funk, disco, pop, big band, Latin, and Afro pop. They are among the best-selling bands of all time, with sales of over 90 million re ...

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Knowledge Management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

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Jim Lovell James Arthur Lovell Jr. (; born March 25, 1928) is an American retired astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he became, with Frank Borman and William Anders, one of th ...

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The Pointer Sisters The Pointer Sisters are an American pop and R&B singing group from Oakland, California, that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Their repertoire has included such diverse genres as pop, jazz, electronic music, bebop, b ...

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Ben Stein Benjamin Jeremy Stein (born November 25, 1944) is an American writer, lawyer, actor, comedian, and commentator on political and economic issues. He began his career as a speechwriter for U.S. presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford before ente ...

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Rudy Giuliani Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...

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Lotus Foundations Lotus Foundations is a bundled small-business server solutions package by IBM. The package includes Lotus Domino, directory services, file management, firewall, backup, web hosting and various other productivity tools. History The product's r ...

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Steven Strogatz Steven Henry Strogatz (), born August 13, 1959, is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is known for his work on nonlinear systems, including contributions to the study o ...

John Hodgman John Kellogg Hodgman (born June 3, 1971) is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as '' The Areas of My Expertise'', ''More Information Than You Require'', and '' That Is All'', he is known for ...

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Seth Meyers Seth Adam Meyers (born December 28, 1973) is an American comedian, writer, producer, actor, and television host. He hosts ''Late Night with Seth Meyers'', a late-night talk show on NBC. Prior to that, he was a cast member and head writer for NBC ...

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Dave Lavery Dave Lavery (born May 28, 1959) is an American scientist and roboticist who is the Program Executive for Solar System Exploration at NASA Headquarters. He also is a member of the ''FIRST'' Executive Advisory Board, and is well-known among parti ...

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IBM Connections HCL Connections is a Web 2.0 enterprise social software application developed originally by IBM and acquired by HCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which helps teams work more efficiently. Connecti ...

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Philippe Petit Philippe Petit (; born 13 August 1949) is a French high-wire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized high-wire walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twi ...

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References

External links

Spreadsheet of Lotusphere Events

Video: Lotusphere 2008 in 60 Seconds
a 68-second recap of major announcements made during the Opening General Session at Lotusphere 2008 Computer conferences