Next week I’m attending IBM’s Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando. In my capacity as an industry analyst, it’s critical that I keep abreast of what’s happening across the industry, and this conference provides a way of doing that. I’m almost there – I left New Zealand more than 40 hours ago, met up with Eric Mack in LA for dinner and a chat (on Friday), and now just have the LAX to Orlando flight to go. That leaves in 45 minutes. I hope to be at the Dolphin hotel by 4pm Saturday.

Beyond being an industry analyst, there’s another reason for attending to, and that speaks to my work in recent years. I believe that once organizations have chosen collaboration technology in support of their collaboration strategy, they can learn much from each other. Organization A can learn from what Organization B is doing, and vice versa, even if both organizations are using different technology. So … I’m looking forward to hearing the customer case studies, and to speaking with some of the presenters too. I’d like to see greater post-technology choice collaboration between organizations, and attending Lotusphere is part of my approach to encouraging that.

I do have some copies of Collaboration Roadmap (2011) with me. They are for sale for those attending Lotusphere. Ed Brill wrote the Foreword, so you could get both he and I to sign the book for you 🙂