Night out in Cleveland & Road trip back home

After a great conference and closing session, I headed out to downtown Cleveland with the family for dinner. After cruising around taking in the sights of downtown Cleveland, we headed to the House of Blues restaurant. This restaurant is located in the East 4th Street entertainment district. The place was bustling with a lot of young people enjoying the Friday night scene in downtown Cleveland! We got a table outside, tucked away in a cozy corner. Some of the other restaurants in that street were Pickwick & Frolick restaurant, Saigon, Lola and a few others I cannot seem to remember now. We ordered the fish special they had that night. It was an almond crusted Sole with rice and fresh veggies. The dish was just OK, nothing over the top delicious. After dinner, we headed back to our room. Our hotel was taken over by a large group of little league football players from Illinois. I am glad we checked out bright & early Saturday!

We headed to the West Side Market for breakfast. It is apparently one of the oldest & publicly owned markets in Cleveland, Ohio. They have vendors selling everything from fresh fruits to exotic spices to fresh fish & meat! It was an amazing experience! I had the most delicious Greek meat pie for $2.00 and huge apple fritter for another couple dollars !!! It just made me wish we had something similar here in Milwaukee! After the market trip, we decided to check out the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Cleveland, OH. It was just less than 30 minutes away. I was disappointed because once we got there, the park was not as impressive as it was made out to be. If you had a bike or were a hiker, perhaps you might have enjoyed it better. It is not a park if you are just driving through it. After spending about an hour, we headed back home to Milwaukee. It was just pouring since the time we got on the freeway until we got off the Ohio Turnpike. Then, we had sunny skies all the way into Milwaukee, Wisconsin! The total drive time was approximately 6 hours and 30 minutes. Overall, it was a great trip, great learning experience, amazing city! I would definitely want to go back there if I had an opportunity.

Part II: Another knowledge packed day at MWLUG, Cleveland

Ok, here is part II of my post continuing where I left off. The next session I attended after the delicious lunch was:

1:30-2:30 An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming for Notes/Domino Developers presented by Brandt Fundak, Olympic Steel.
My review: The session was very well presented. I enjoyed Brandt's effortless, engaging presentation stlye. I would love to see more topics presented by him, perhaps on "Introduction to Java for Lotus Domino Developers". The session introduced the concepts of class, properties, methods, declarations, how to invoke & use them, scope etc. Very useful session for folks that are not already familiar with OOP concepts. Brandt will also have his presentation available on the MWLUG site for download.
After this session, I took an afternoon break and came back to my room and got caught up with emails etc. My next and last session for the day was
4:00-5:00PM Low Fidelity Prototyping presented by Chris Blatnick Interface Matters.
My review: This session was being presented by Chris in the place of Fast-track to plugin developed since Michael Masterson could not attend to present his session. I found this session very interesting to learn application prototyping in paper! I use the PostIt methodology in my user requirements gathering sessions. It is similar, but this technique is for prototyping an application before you even go near your computer to code anything. Very kool!
The closing session was from 5:00-6PM and a few t-shirts were raffled off. I did not win anything.. The dates for MWLUG 2011 were announced! I was excited to find out it will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!!!

That was my day for today at the MWLUG 2010 conference in Cleveland, Ohio. I am ready to head out for dinner now with the family in the lovely downtown area.

Events: Another knowledge packed day at MWLUG 2010 !

Well, today, I missed the Birds of a Feather session for Building Your Lotus User Group Community by Richard Moy. It was just a bit too early for me at 7AM! Oh well, I plan to connect with Richard at some point to discuss plans for rebuilding the SouthEast Wisconsin User Group community. In any case, the sessions I attended today were as follows:

9:00-10AM Getting Social in the Lotus Space presented by Gregg Eldred & Denny Russell.
My Review: It was a great session!! Lots of nice information on the social networking sites. I learnt about PlanetLotus & BleedYellow! Best practices and tips for social networking, twitter, facebook & blogs were presented. Lots of stories relating to personal experiences with social networking were also shared. I am definetely connecting with these guys!!

After a quick coffee break, I attended

10:15-11:15 XPages: Beyond the Introduction presented by David Leedy, Notes in 9
My Review: Since I attended David's Introduction to XPages session, I had to attend this to learn more about XPages and boy did I learn some great NEW things!! I am just getting very anxious to dive into this material once I get back home! There is just so much to absorb and David presented this session with lots of deep dive demos with real examples. It helped to see how things work in XPages. I wish I could spend more time learning what David knows! Great presenter! Will need to watch his Notes in 9 videos!! He has said he will make his material available on his website and perhaps even a video, which obviously will be more than just 9 minutes!!
After yet another coffee break, I attended an amazing, mind boggling session

11:30-12:30 XPages: The Evolution of Possible presented by Tim Tripcony, GROUP Business Software.
My Review: WOW! in a nutshell. Some of the things Tim talked and presented
went way over my head. I think it was very advanced, very high tech. But it set the tone for what is possible with XPages! Expect the unexpected and there is no such thing as "NOT POSSIBLE" anymore! I would love to first feel comfortable writing my first XPages app and then perhaps try out some of the kool things Tim talked about in this session. I know I left the session with my brain hurting from all that I saw that is possible with XPages. Ouch! Another very strong & kool expert that I would want to connect with!

After that brain hurting session, it was finally time for lunch!
12:30-1:30PM: Lunch Break
I was almost going to pass on it since the previous day we just had a basic boxed lunch. I am glad I did go, since the spread was pretty large! It was a hot buffet lunch with fresh green salad, pasta with marinara sauce, sandwiches with smoked turkey, roast beef, choice of yummy rolls, soup and the most delicious dessert table!! Yummy!!! What can I say, it was very well done! I think I will take a nap after this! More to come about the rest of the day in the following post, so stay tuned....

Events: Attending the Lotus User Conference in Cleveland, Ohio!

I am currently in lovely Cleveland, Ohio just soaking in all the knowledge from the experts that are presenting great topics & hands on workshops here at the MWLUG Conference! We got here early this morning at 2:30AM, Cleveland time, driving almost 7.5 hours from Milwaukee, Wisconsin! It was a smooth drive on Interstate 80/90 East. As I mentioned in my older posts, I am staying at the Hilton Garden Inn in Downtown. We were first given a room on the seventh floor and when we were walking down the hallway, I smelled cigarette smoke. When I walked into my room, I was surprised to find an ashtray and room reeked of more smoke. So, I called the front desk and they told me I was on the smoking floor!! I just assumed that they would have all my preferences noted (made reservations online), but apparently not. The front desk receptionist was kind enough to move us to the 11th floor promptly and get us new key cards and boy was I glad to get another room!! What a difference!!! The room is quite comfortable and I have a view of the freeway.
After barely about 4 hours of sleep after 7 some hours of driving, I feel a bit tired now. I woke up at 7:30AM EST and got ready to attend the 8AM breakfast & registration at the conference. They had a nice spread of fresh fruit, pastries, bagels with cream cheese, fresh fruit juices, coffee and tea! The opening general sessions were presented by Richard Moi, President of GRANITE Lotus User Group, Scot Rourke, oneCommunity, David Via, IBM and Kris Snyder, Vox Mobile.
I attended the Web Technologies Every Domino Developer Must Know session presented by Brandt Fundak, Olympic Steel and Introduction to XPages session presented by David Leedy, Notes in 9. After lunch & some much needed rest, I attended a 2 hour workshop on Building your first XPages application with Roy Rumaner & Michael MacGarel! Hence, today was totally packed with lots of exciting new material for me and I am looking forward to tomorrow's sessions!

Events: MWLUG Conference Attendees get 50% off on IBM Certification Exams!!

This is latest from the MWLUG 2010 Conference that is coming up later this week. All attendees will receive a voucher for 50% off their certification exams from IBM!! Just in time for me to take advantage of this offer to take my recertification for 8.x!!
You can check out the details here:
IBM Exam Certification Discount Vouchers