Lotusphere sessions: Get your face-to-face fix

Face it. It's the world we live in, but sometimes web conferences, video conferences, phone conferences, and other virtual meetings can't take the place of face-to-face contact.

The kinetic energy, the buzz, the pure physical presence of being surrounded by hundreds, or even thousands, in a single room is an experience like no other. Sessions from large, roaring, and high-energy to smaller, thoughtful, and more intimate are yours for the choosing.

Opportunities to shout out an opinion, pose a question, and start a debate are part of the Lotusphere experience. The feeling that you're part of something big, really big, because you are.

Our session agenda gives you more than enough face-to-face to last you for a while—at least until next January.

Tracks and descriptions

JumpStarts and Master Class sessions

Audience: Developers, system administrators and technologists, IT managers of all levels

Technical in nature, the Sunday-only JumpStart sessions are designed to get developers and administrators up and running on the products, techniques, and technologies that are the foundation of collaboration and portal solutions.

After great success last year, we again offer dedicated Master Class sessions. Whereas JumpStarts focus on introductory and overview material to prepare you for more in-depth technical sessions, Master Class sessions are designed for practitioners already in the trenches.

Those of you developing sophisticated applications that support business processes and departmental/enterprise administration, who know your jobs and know your business, but want to kick your skill set up to the next level should take a look at these sessions.

Master Class sessions provide you with the advanced material you need to become even more confident and expert in your job whether you're a developer or an administrator.

Sessions are two hours in length.

Track 1: Insights & Innovation

Audience: Business leaders of all levels

Laying the foundation for the rest of what you learn at Lotusphere, this track concentrates on the hot-off-the-press insights and innovations, contextualizing the current marketplace.

All sessions focus on the business value, implications, and opportunities of new technology and draw heavily from IBM senior leadership and IBM Research teams to offer a perspective difficult to assemble anywhere else.

Topics range from the implications of being a social business to setting the right delivery and consumption strategy and embracing analytics as a strategic tool—from the point of view of business leaders.

Track 2: Technology for Collaboration Solutions: Infrastructure & Deployment

Audience: System administrators, IT managers, and integrators of all levels

Learn about the latest features and capabilities, deployment techniques, and product architecture as well as system management topics, such as administration, directories, security, and performance–across the collaboration, portal, and social software portfolio.

After four, full days of sessions, leave with tips from the architects, developers who wrote the code, product managers, and in-the-field experts.

Both administrators and integrators alike will find everything they need to know about enhancing collaboration and portal solutions by leveraging valuable knowledge from industry experts.

Track 3: Technology for Collaboration Solutions: Application Development

Audience: Developers, system architects of all levels

This year's Application Development track covers the breadth of topics from core development skills to those needed to build social applications. Learn how easy it is to create new applications, update existing applications, or deliver a mobile experience, while making them attractive and lightning fast. Find a broad range of sessions about application development tools and technologies.

After four, full days of content, leave with a lot of ideas, helpful hints, and new skills to make your applications better and more social than ever.

Track 4: Best Practices

Audience: Business leaders and IT managers, application developers, system administrators and integrators

The 2012 Best Practices track is where to find practical solutions to complex problems for existing technologies and new rollouts. We deliver the ideas and tools you need to get things done, including proven tips, tricks, and core best practices to help you stretch your IT budget and deliver better business results for your organization.

In these sessions, learn from the experience of community professionals and find nuggets of knowledge about the IBM collaboration solutions that leave you saying "that idea alone was worth the price of admission!"

Track 5: Customer case studies

Audience: Business leaders and IT managers

Are you an IBM customer who has implemented IBM collaboration or social business solutions that have demonstrated measurable business value for your organization? Have you discovered new methods to help cut costs or strengthen your infrastructure? Are you ready to tell your story?

The case studies sessions feature leading companies, large and small, from a variety of industries to detail how each is using IBM collaboration solutions to drive business results and to empower people.

Showcase how you've used IBM software to enhance collaboration and to improve business processes within and outside of your enterprise. Direct and candid, these sessions outline both successes and challenges across a range of solutions.

Show 'n Tell

Audience: Developers and administrators of all levels

The Show 'n Tell (SNT) track brings you the best in live technical education. SNT presentations go into comprehensive detail on a specific technology with step by step slides, screenshots, and live demonstrations that show how you can use in in your environment.

All sessions adopt a teaching approach, and documentation is critical to this. Facilitators are both presenter and trainer and create sessions that stand alone as instruction guides for attendees to take back to their own IT environments.

When submitting to this track, think like an attendee. Which class would YOU love to attend and what would you expect to take away with you?

The format of the session is identical in every presentation:

• Establish a start point
• Define a goal
• Take your audience through every click and check box needed along the way, ensuring that each person can take your presentation and complete the same task themselves when they return to the office

Usually the decks for this track average above 100 slides with mostly screenshots. Take this unique opportunity to submit a SNT session and to share your expertise as the expert on a specific topic!

IBM Connect 2012

Audience: Business leaders and business-savvy technical leaders

IBM Connect 2012 is a separate conference that runs in parallel to Lotusphere for two days. This social business conference for business leaders showcases strategic value and impact and how social business foundations and collaboration concepts prove real return on investment.

Learn how your colleagues and peers are seeing the value of IBM Collaboration Solutions at work in their environment and how technology is helping people do business better.

SpeedGeeking!

Audience: Any and all Lotusphere attendees

SpeedGeeking is back and promises to be as fun, loud, chaotic, and highly informational as ever. Enjoy jumping from one station to the next, while stopwatches, buzzers, and a loud-mouthed emcee keeps things fast-paced and on track!

Lotusphere SpeedGeeking sessions are five-minute, high-energy, efficient, and fun presentations, best practices, and demos covering anything and everything related to collaboration solutions.

Come prepared to learn a lot in a short amount of time and to walk away with a head full of ideas and smiles.

Lotusphere IDOL

Audience: Any and all Lotusphere attendees

Watch both familiar and new faces battle it out in front of a panel of “celebrity" and veteran judges to win the coveted title of Lotusphere IDOL.

In this session, contestants demonstrate their talent and compete against each other using a cutting edge demo of their choice to see if they have that "IDOL factor"! The judges evaluate the session and speaker on stage, and then the audience joins in to choose a winner.

The "Lotusphere IDOL 2012" winner is then awarded his or her prize: A full session later in the week based on his demo. Join an all-star cast for what will undoubtedly be an entertaining event!

Birds-of-a-Feather sessions

Audience: Any and all Lotusphere attendees

Come one, come all! Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are a popular feature of Lotusphere, bringing together communities and individuals with similar interests. These sessions are informal, interactive discussion groups for like-minded attendees to share ideas and experiences in a small group, open forum setting.

Submit topics that either interest you or you want to lead, or submit topics and discussions that you want to participate in! As a reminder, Lotusphere attendees vote and choose only the best sessions, so you are sure to find something that's well worth your while!

The Lotus Evangelist Customer Panel

Audience: Any and all Lotusphere attendees

You know that IBM collaboration technologies are the best value for your organization, but how do you champion this? Learn how your peers in the industry have successfully "sold" these technologies to their organizations.

IBM customers from around the world share with you how they've proven to their management why a foundation of IBM collaboration technologies and solutions is the best fit for their organizations.

They briefly tell their stories in a fun and lively session, and then we gather and meet with these individuals for casual conversation and refreshments following their presentation. This is a do not miss session!