Although there weren’t many product announcements to speak of this year at #ls11, nonetheless it was a good Lotusphere. It was big, and had a buzz, not least because what we DID see this year was some key offerings (Connections, xpages) reach new levels of maturity. So …

The Good:
- Kevin Spacey: best choice of opening speaker since Neil Armstrong
- Irene Greif speaking in the Wednesday mini-keynote
- Eric Brown speaking at the closing session
- IBM grasping the nettle and downplaying the Lotus branding in favour of IBM
- The popularity of our LDC t-shirts : already planning for next year’s
- xpages, xpages, xpages – the year it came of age
- Great sessions from Matt, Tim, Bruce, Kathy, David Leedy, Paul Withers, Scott and Newbs, and others
- All the Penumbra events: meeting, dinner and ice cream “Tuesdae”
- Seeing some of my favourite people who I only get to meet once or twice a year
- The Lotusphere WiFi which worked infinitely better than previous years: well done for fixing that!

The Bad:
- The Opening General Session other than Kevin Spacey: truly abysmal
- The coffee: over-stewed and bitter. (I was saved by the coffee machine in my room)
- The mandatory $10 resort fee: in the EU it would be illegal to add that without an opt-out, and the hotel wifi was very sucky, although the wired in-room was just about bearable.
- Feijoa-flavoured 42 Below vodka. Do yourself a favour and use it to clean the toilet with.
- One particular session that shall remain nameless – the worst speaking pair I’ve ever seen that didn’t both work for IBM. Unfortunately I was close to the front and too reserved and British to just walk out.
- Wearing out a pair of shoes with All That Walking

The Wookie (aka Mark Myers aka @stickfight)
Along with Mat Newman, this was Mark’s year!
- he masterminded the LDC t-shirts with Ben Poole
- he commissioned the wonderful “It’s a small Lotus world” artwork which raised $3500 for charity
- he won the Lotusphere Idol against stiff competition
- he gave an excellent Idol presentation
- he made up for Wednesday’s evil toilet-cleaner vodka by contributing a superb bottle for Thursday evening’s late-night imbibing
- he is The Wookie
- he will probably rip my arm off and hit me with the soggy end for this