A slightly overdue look back at the Information on Demand conference; check Stephen’s post for another.
I spent most of the week in the InfoSphere demo room so I missed most of the rest of the conference. Luckily the demo room was the best part of IOD! If you missed it, you missed out on demos including DataStage, QualityStage, the MDM Workbench (with the user interface generator), and integration of Information Server tools and MDM Server at a rapid pace. (Okay, there were lots of other good bits but I’ve seen some excellent feedback comments from people who visited the demo room.)
InfoSphere demo room
One thing I was disappointed to miss was the Blogging Birds of a Feather (BOF) session on Wednesday although, since they weren’t offering free drinks like one of the other BOFs, it seems there weren’t many people there. I might have made it if Twitter hadn’t regressed as much as it has since the MDM Summit but that’s a subject for another day.
I did manage to escape our demo stand a few times during the week to find out more about IBM mashups, with some excellent sessions and even better chats. Just signed up for Lotus Greenhouse to play with some of the tools that were on show. The demo room was all packed up on Thursday night, so I made the most of the Friday morning for another mashup session, an excellent mashup usability workshop and (slight tangent here) the “Virtual Worlds and Databases: In-world Tools Using External Databases” session which I’m glad I got to. There’s a hint of what Lance covered on the Database Magazine Profiles in Innovation.
I’ve been on the look out for more of what I didn’t get to see, and this is the random selection of IOD articles I’ve stumbled across so far:
- Eleven things heard and seen at IBM’s Information on Demand conference
- Update from IOD
- Information On Demand 2008: Here we go!, IOD Day 0: Partners, Expo, and Reception, and IOD Day 1: Optimizing Information Management
Plus Alex has a handy guide for a stay in Las Vegas, including a much better shot of the Excalibur hotel I was staying in than I managed to get- a very very silly hotel!
Update: just been sent a link to some brilliant photos of the demo room! There’s also one in there showing the globes that bounced out of the way of shadows when people walked in front of the projectors, which I enjoyed on the way to breakfast each morning- I’m easily entertained! (12 Nov 2008)
Notes from a small field 
The demo room for me was the biggest improvement over previous conferences. It was centrally placed and had all the InfoSphere products in one room and a good supply of drinks and chocolate bars!
The blogging BOF was too remote – I think it was the furtherest room, might have got a better turnout at a Mandalay Bay bar or cafe. It was also last minute so didn’t make it into the official schedule. Had a better turnout at an IBM Database Magazine writers lunch where they set aside some tables near the entrance. I think a lunch time blogger meetup might be a better idea for next year.
Hi Vincent,
This was my first year at IOD but I did hear a lot of people mention how difficult it was to find the demo room last year.
If I make it again next year, I’ll look out for a blogger meetup outside the demo room- central location (hopefully!) with a handy supply of drinks and chocolate bars!
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