Yesterday was a long one (if fun) for me, and I am relieved to be home and back at my desk. I did 3 sessions at AIIM and they were all demanding. I did a point/counterpoint argument/debate with Dan Elam that the crowd loved (as did I). I then did Stump the Consultant in the afternoon - another full house - drawn I suspect to see the 'experts' humiliated on stage - a session made somewhat complex when two of the randomly selected questions from the audience happened to be from CMS Watch customers! I Finished the day off with a co-presentation on SharePoint with Tony.
What of the Expo? Foot traffic was clearly down on last year, the On Demand portion of the show continues to dominate, our new booth looked awesome. But......not at all bad, was my conclusion. A bit quieter than we would have liked at times, but we met with a lot of our customers, and met (hopefully) many new ones. Lots of good sessions (though maybe a few too many scheduled side by side) providing a solid education track.
Attendance at the pre-conference tutorials and Tony's SharePoint workshop today have been surprisingly high, and the 3 sessions I mentioned above (along with the Analyst panel we hosted the previous day) were all in large rooms, and were full or nearly full. Considering the state of the economy and the associated difficult in getting budget to attend such events, it was a success.
I will be thinking more about the information, gossip and observations I got at the show - and writing more about the for CMS Watch once things have filtered through, but I was struck with two things in particular at the show.
1: Microsoft, Oracle and SpringCM (big suprise) acting as virtual hubs on the show floor
2: The notable reduction in Java offerings for ECM outside of the very high end - something that was glaringly obvious but unoticed by me till Kas pointed it out
Much to ponder - a good week overall - much better than I expected.
