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Lotusphere 2011 - Tuesday Wrapup: SpeedGeeking and Microbrews

Lotusphere Tuesday for me was an "off" day -- meaning that I had sessions to attend, people to meet up with, interviews to take, and all-said no specific GBS functions (no booth duty, etc.).

Up early and ready to take on the day, it hit me that my SpeedGeeking slidedeck wasn't quite there... [In hindsight, it more than likely was... but as this was my first time, I really wanted to rock it -- I'm insecure like that!].

I spent the next few hours [after being striken with self-doubt] "beefing-up" my 'deck, and running through the presentation to see if I could still deliver this updated content within the 5-minute window.

For those of you not familiar with SpeedGeeking at Lotusphere, here's the short-short-version:

There are 12 [although this year there were 13] tables -- just large enough to hold a laptop, bottle of water, etc. -- setup in a circle. At each table stands your presenter, who has their individual topic/presentation. People line up at the tables in segmented groups based on their birth month (people born in January were grouped together and put at Mitch Cohen's booth, then moved next-month|table clockwise).

A few interviews, showcase visits, and sessions later, I was off to SpeedGeeking!

First of all, while I wasn't nervous about speaking [as anyone knows me will confirm, speaking is never an issue with me... it's shutting me up that's the problem!], I was nervous about my content. My presentation was "10 Things You're Not Doing", which means that with the 5 minutes alloted, I had to spend no more than 30 seconds per topic in order to get through my slidedeck.

A 5-minute session repeated 13 times in immediate succession... is a marathon. Some times I hit the time, some times I didn't [hey, when the architect of XPages leans on to innocently get a look at your code, it's kinda like Orsen Wells coming to your school play... you forget your lines!], and sometimes I had just enough time to thank everyone while diving for the bottle of water that doubled as a Wii Remote prop for my Progressive Enhancement slide.

The experience was amazing, and at the end of the session, I felt exhausted. I left my brain in that session which -- thankfully for me -- was the last time I'd need it that night.

After the session, it was off to the Lotusphere 2011 Engineering Party. Great people, but the tactic of inducing feedback on the microphone to get diners attention and the want to gather the GBS Experts team for a teammember's idea led me to the Dolphin Lobby bar just in time to partake in Devin Olson's micro-brews... that were anything but micro! Honestly, outside of being really good at it, I don't know why the hell that dude's coding for a living. I'd give a disclaimer at this point that would mention that he's not only a GBSer but he's also a GBS Expert (read: on my team), but Devin melted my face off with his brewmaster skillz... and I'm not even a big drinker!

Spanky's Brew from the Dolphin Lobby Bar - Lotusphere 2011

After discussions with friends, I was off to call it an early night!


About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.



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