It was another great UK Lotus User Group in Edinburgh. Very well organised, by some great volunteers, and excellent value as it was free to attend.

Highlights included Bob and Ron’s opening keynote, Mary Beth’s session, Rob Novac’s free whisky session, Warren and Gabriella’s stand-in Traveler session, manic Speed Sponsoring, the free beer and Scottish ‘dancing’ in the evening. It was a shame that so many interesting sessions run concurrently making it impossible to attend them all.

I thought that Mary Beth Raven’s Collaboration Strategy session was my favourite. It was interesting to see that Lotus are trying to improve the integration between the Notes client and other products - Connections/Sametime/Quickr. Almost none of those present were using Connections and I am sure it would improve it’s sales if it provided an entry version, bundled with Notes, as it does with Quickr and Sametime. The offline inclusion of Google calendar's looked very cool as Google Sync causes real problems when used with my Blackberry. Her upside-down text on slides, crashing Notes client, and stories/news that we are not allowed to blog about were all very amusing to the packed session.

It was nice to hear about the news that the Designer client was free to all. I still think that the Notes client should be free for non-commercial use and the whole product range free for Educational use.

I am looking forward to downloading the gold version of 8.5.1 when it becomes available, on the IBM Passport site, on Monday 12th October. It is unclear what time it will be available but hopefully we will not have to wait for US time.

Thanks to Warren and all the other great volunteers, speakers and sponsors.