Lotus IBM professionals, have you made plans to attend IamLUG? Perhaps you never get to attend Lotusphere / IBM Connect because it’s so expensive for the travel and the conference fee?  This is your chance to get all of the meat of the Big conference without all of the fluff.  You won’t get an evening trip to one of the theme parks.  You won’t have all the hoopla and grandeur of the Opening General Session or the intellectual entertainment of the Closing Session.  But you’ll get all the same great, useful insightful presentations from many of the same speakers.  And the cost is…

FREE!

You just have to get there.  Costs would include travel to/from St Louis, a ride from the airport to the hotel, Room for 2 nights at $100/night. (Split it with someone else attending and that’s $50/night!) Eat cheap while you’re there and you can get 2 days of intense professional development for next to nothing.  Throw in the extra day of TackItOn sessions for just $500 and you get a complete trip of 3 days of training for a fraction of the cost of IBM Connect.  Do whatever it takes to be there.  When it comes to conferences outside of Lotusphere/IBM Connect, it doesn’t get any better than this.  Did I mention many of the same speakers who presented at IBM Connect this year will be at IamLUG sharing all the now-released version of Notes 9 Social Edition?

Actually, there will be at least one new presenter: me.  Yes, for the first time I will officially have my own microphone.  In the past, you may have seen me at a mic in the audience at Lotusphere/Connect, asking pointed questions during the “Ask the Product Managers” session or  in the “Ask the Developers” session when I was made an honorary developer and brought on stage, handed a laptop, and put to work.  Well I finally decided to put my mouth where my blog is, to step up to the podium and give back to the community live and in person. I’m diving in with both feet too.  I submitted two abstracts and they were BOTH accepted.  This will be a true test of my Toastmasters training.  If you’re in the audience, be kind, please.

Both sessions are on system administrator topics.  The first session, “Be a Domino Detective: Hunting the Gremlins” is all about finding the problems hiding in your systems.  I am so lucky to be sharing the stage with Kim Greene, a seasoned presenter!  She will be hunting the gremlins that are constantly at work gnawing at your system’s performance while I will be hunting the ones that are quietly lying in the shadows, waiting for the worst time to jump out and bite you.  I’m hoping this session will be both fun AND educational.

The second session, “What’s in it for me? How Your Life as an Administrator will Improve When Your Company Moves to the Cloud” is intended to provide a bit of insight into what you can expect as a system administrator if you migrate to IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.  Really, the cloud can be your friend, not the end of your career.  Speaking of friends, I will be co-presenting this session with my longtime friend and administrator of a broad range of systems, Greg Walrath.  I look forward to seeing you in the audience!

This user group conference has grown dramatically in just 4 years.  Most of the speakers you have seen many times before and know them for their expertise.  IBM will even be there presenting an entire track on Social Business. This one is truly becoming one of the biggest and best.  I am humbled to get a chance to share time at the podium among such rock stars in our profession.  It will be fun!  See you in St. Louis!