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Eric Mack,

Thank you for submitting your abstract for Lotusphere 2008!.

In early November, you will receive electronic notification of the status of your session.

On behalf of Bruce Elgort and myself I'd like to thank everyone who provided feedback and topic suggestions for our proposed session at Lotusphere 2008. We've invited Alan Lepofsky to join our presentation; I think Alan would add a lot of value to the presentation and I would be delighted to have him on our team. I just posted the session abstract at the IBM/Lotus site; it's now up to the Lotusphere 2008 organizers. The process of preparing the abstract was a good one and has already given Bruce and me several ideas for upcoming blog posts and podcasts.

Here's the abstract:

Proposed Session Title:  
Lotus Notes and Me: Maximizing Personal Productivity with Lotus Notes

Speaker Bios:
Speaker #1 name: Eric Mack, eProductivity Specialist & Founder, ICA.COM, Inc.
Speaker #2 name: Bruce Elgort, President, elguji software

Eric's Bio:
An ICA eProductivity Specialist, Eric Mack helps clients use Information, Communication, and Action technologies to get things done. He consults, writes and speaks on knowledge worker productivity at client engagements and publicly at EMA, Office 2.0, and KMWorld. Eric has used Lotus Notes as his collaboration and personal knowledge management tool since 1993.

Eric blogs at www.EricMackOnline.com and www.NotesOnProductivity.com where he writes about getting things done with Lotus Notes.

Bruce's Bio:
Bruce Elgort is president of elguji software and Co-Founder of the Lotus Notes open source community OpenNTF.org. Bruce is also the co-host of the Taking Notes Podcast. He has been working with Lotus Notes and Domino since 1993 and has consulted to some of the worlds largest Notes and Domino customers.

Bruce is an exceptional engaging and energetic speaker who has spoken at Lotusphere, Irish Lotus Users Group, Advisor Devcons, Lotusphere Comes to You as well as being a frequent speaker at Notes user groups across the USA. He even has a dog named Domino Designer and also loves to play and teach percussion in his spare time.

Session Abstract:
People often talk about Lotus Notes being an "organizational" productivity tool; that’s the way Notes is marketed and it’s often the way organizations deploy it - as a top down solution. Seldom do you hear about Lotus Notes being used for "personal" productivity or knowledge management.  As a consequence many users see Notes as a “company” tool and not “their” tool.  When tools become “personal,” productivity increases and when personal productivity increases so does the productivity of the workgroup and the organization.

This session will show both expert and novice Notes users how they can use Notes coupled with proven best practices to make them immediately more productive.

Please outline why it is important that this session be included on this year’s Lotusphere agenda?
We believe that to truly transform an organization, a bottom-up approach works best. Lotusphere has traditionally focused on developers, admins, and organizations. We are sick of hearing folks complain about why they “hate Lotus Notes” especially when we know that most of their complaints, while valid, are easily addressed with some training and a simple change of focus in how Notes is used. We hope to help organizations get more from their Notes investment by helping them change the way that their users see and use Lotus Notes

A focus on user productivity will round out the Lotusphere agenda, helping developer, administrator and enterprise managers alike get the most from their Notes deployment.

[NOTE: We had no other place to include this, but we intend, if allowed, to have Alan Lepofsky as a third presenter/collaborator in this session.]

So, there you have it. I plan to start blogging/podcasting soon, so if you have ideas, tips, and suggestions you'd like us to cover, please post them. Thanks!

[OK, back to the Office 2.0 conference for me. I'll try to liveblog some sessions as time permits.