At the beginning of my ninth consecutive Lotusphere, the biggest question on my mind was "Will there be a 10th?" That question was promptly answered by Lotus GM Al Zollar during the opening session, as he mentioned that some of the technologies previewed this year would be seen in real products at next year's conference. I'm happy to hear that even though Lotus' DevCon is merged into an IBM event, the most important annual Lotus event will remain independent.

This year's theme for the conference is "Proof Positive." Lotus' strategic theme is apparently "Extending the Minds of e-Business." I'll work on figuring out exactly what each of those really means during the rest of the show.

The celebrity guest at the opening general session this year was game show host, actor, Yale Law School classmate of Hillary Clinton, and speechwriter for Republican presidents Ben Stein. He was a wise choice for Lotus, perhaps countering some of the criticism Lotus received for last year's choice of Al Franken. His best moment was a long story that led up to a good shot at Microsoft Exchange.

With this year's heightened awareness of security, there were bag checks at the entrance to the general session. Attendees were advised to leave their bags in their rooms to avoid being searched on their way in to the auditoriums, but many chose to ignore the advice. Still, traffic was much lighter than in previous years. There are fewer attendees this year; I haven't heard a real figure, but most people are guessing that attendance is somewhere near 6,000. The decreased attendance is largely due to September 11th. I do find it a little disconcerting, however, that extra security was only in place at the events where the top executives were present.

Other than Ben Stein, the best part of the opening general session was IBM VP of Emerging Technologies Mike Zisman's talk about increasing the "velocity of information." He spoke of his time at SoftSwitch with 400 employees, where everyone could get the same information at the same place at the same time, versus IBM with hundreds of thousands. A new portal within IBM built on WebSphere and Lotus technologies allows the virtual equivalent of a company-wide meeting. Mike's point was that moving information through an organization more quickly counters the increase in coordination costs that spoil economies of scale in large organizations. I've always found Mike's talks to be enlightening. The IBM portal looked pretty cool, but I'll be withholding judgment as to its real effectiveness until I get the chance to talk to a few long-time IBM employees I know.

The announcement you knew was coming

The really big news from the general session ... drumroll please ... is that Rnext is now officially named Notes/Domino 6 and is slated for release in Q3 2002, if quality holds up through a few more rounds of pre-releases. I can't say I'm surprised about either of these announcements. Now that the word is out, it seems like something of an anti-climax. I understand there were good reasons Lotus didn't want to announce a name earlier, but I still wish it hadn't waited so long.

After the general session, I attended the overview sessions for Designer (IDE), Notes (client) and Domino (server) in the late morning and early afternoon. There's so much new in each of the products. They've been in beta for a while now, and I've played with a lot of the features already, so the impact of what I saw today wasn't so dramatic. (And besides, what could compare to the impact of the Pats beating the Steelers on Sunday? My capacity for shock and disbelief has been extended too far!)

Changes to make developers' lives easier ... and more challenging

The most important thing I saw, and perhaps most under-recognized, is the performance improvement and programming enhancements in the @formula language engine. Applications -- especially Web applications -- are going to run a lot more efficiently, and developers will find their code is easier to maintain as a result of the first total rewrite of the formula engine in more than 10 years. I've already taken the most complex form I have in the applications I use to run my business and made it faster and more functional with a lot less code. Could you really ask for much more than that?

Well, sure you can! How about unread counts for folders in your mail file? They're done! How about editing document fields at the view level? Not only is that possible, but you can also do it in a very flexible way that is similar to the way some Lotus Business Partner colleagues and I suggested to Lotus several years ago; so, naturally, I like it even more. And of course there's a lot more.

As far as strategy is concerned, J2EE is a major theme this year. It's probably as pervasive as "Java in Everything We Do" was a few years ago. It looks like WebSphere integration is the key concept behind this. Some of the features that had been slated for Notes and Domino 6 -- for example, JavaServer Pages [JSPs] -- have been ripped out. How is this not a contradiction? Commitment to J2EE, but ripping out JSPs? I'm still trying to figure it out. It appears that Lotus is becoming more of a part of IBM-wide strategy, and support for the Domino classes and certain development tools will be moved over to WebSphere. It seems Domino Designer will integrate -- somehow -- with the new Eclipse development environment IBM is promoting for Web services. I ended Day One by attending a session on J2EE, and I still have way more questions than answers.

Even without fully understanding the details, I'm confident enough to say the commitment to J2EE is either the Lotus brand's strategic answer to Microsoft's .NET or a delaying tactic designed to buy enough time to determine what .NET's real impact on the market will be. As I explained in the article I co-authored with Rocky Oliver and Brian Benz, ".NET in a Domino World" (Lotus Advisor January 2002), I believe Lotus must answer the challenges .NET poses, regardless of whether .NET is going to be hugely successful. Because J2EE is very complex, and it isn't .NET, I've come to the conclusion that there's an opportunity for Lotus' third-party market to step up and bring .NET integration for Domino to market. I know one Lotus Business Partner who is giving this idea very serious consideration.