Beyond The Yellow Bubble

A popular way to fill that dull boring void between the last lotusphere and the next lotusphere is to make predictions about what the next lotusphere may contain.  Here are my predictions for lotusphere 2010.

1. Microsoft will kick the week off by announcing a kit for migrating from Lotus Connections/QUICKR to Sharepoint.  They will also proudly announce (by counting all the free licenses of Sharepoint distributed but never used) that they have a 90%+ share of the emerging collaboration market. Fortunately, the only people still believing this crap stuff will their own sales teams.
2. Sadly, attendance will be down due to the impact of a lingering global recession.  In a sign of the times the best attended vendor booth will be that of three formerly unemployed Notes developers who start up a new company that found a way to exploit Xpages to create a new Resume Posting and Notes job board.
3. The yellow bean bags will be back.  This time they will come with dedicated wireless routers so the blogs can get out of the building during the OGS.
4. The OGS vetting committee will find  a guest speaker who is both amusing and relevant to the conference.  Sadly the performance will be marred by lingering issues about the speakers 2008 tax returns...
5. Bob P will deliver yet another stirring speech at the 2009 OGS having overcome an earlier scandal when photos were released to the press showing him and Michael Phelps using a suspicious smoking device at Kimono's during LS09.
6. IBM will announce a realignment of the Websphere, Mashups,QUICKR, Connections portfolio in a bid to address customer confusion and disappointing sales.  At least one of these products will be folded into the others. There will be more announcement about integration between these products as well as Notes/SameTime and more alliances announced with the major players in the wider collaboration community.
7. IBM will use the OGS to announce that amongst its many new customer, the Whitehouse is switching back to Notes after being plagued during 2009 with on-going Exchange outages. Pres. Obama is quoted as loving the new XPages capabilities on his Blackberry.
8. IBM will use the OGS to announce their roadmap for Notes in 2010 and betond.  They will announce plans for Notes 8.6.0, 8.6.1 & 8.6.2.  The major new feature in Notes 8.6 will be a Notes client version of Xpages which did not make it into Notes 8.5 during  2009. The announcements will attract little interest as Ed Brill will have maintained is brilliant effort during 2009 of keeping the yellowsphere informed about most of this via his blog site.
9. One of the loudest cheers at the OGS will occur when IBM review their achievements for 2009 and remind us that the new LotusScript editor for Eclipse did actually get shipped.
10. The big news will be the announcement of XPages 2.0 as part of Notes 8.6. The product will be demoed for the first time and receive even more applause than the mention of the Eclipse LotusScript editor.  This new version will address some of the weaknesses in the initial Web client version of XPages and comparability issues encountered in making XPages work on the Notes client. The room will explode with cheers when it is announced this version of Xpages will support LotusScript for both Notes client events and all server events.
11. NSF2DB2 will officially inducted into the "league of the dark lords" alongside founding member Domino.Doc and Lotus Workflow.  (These are the products whose names shall not be spoken out loud).
12. The microphones at the "Ask The Developer" session will be sponsored by Lotus911.  Despite one of the microphones being for the exclusive use of Lotus911 employees Mr NTF (Nathan Freeman) will still dominate the other microphones. No-one will really care because they always ask great questions...
13. The lines outside of Kimonos will be longer than those outside the OGS with LS attendees skipping afternoon sessions to secure a spot at what is now the only place to be "seen" at LS..
14. At least one speaker/vendor will star when they show how XPages can be used to deliver QUICKR/Connections functionality in the Notes environment.
15. Symphony will have an increased presence with Lotus customers giving presentations on cool applications that have developed with Symphony using the new LotusScript programming capability.
16. IBM will finally disclose its plans for language development within Notes. JavaScript will be the sole option for thin client (Web/Mobile), both Java and LotusScript will be supported for thick client (Notes), and JavaScript, Java, and LotusScript will all be options for server sided scripts/agents. There will also be greater support for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS in the Notes client as part of Xpages 2.0.  IBM will indicate that major enhancements for LotusScript are underway to provide much needed support for OOP similar to Java, and Java will finally be supported on the client side. (OK this last one is more a wish than a prediction!!!).