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Lotusphere 2005 sessions db available

Fri 7 Jan 2005, 12:49 AM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Another year, another Lotusphere sessions db!  This is our fifth annual sessions db made available in Journal format that is suitable for synching with your PDA, or for just general browsing.  Actually, there is much more functionality for general browsing, fun and scheduling this year!  The database is available at LS2005_SessionsDB (which people started trying to get back in September since the name is similar to last year.  Sorry, I can't work magic, folks).  Ed Brill has clued me in that IBM is not planning on releasing their own database, so I figured I'd better do it again.  Ed even said that a link to the database may appear on the official Lotusphere page, as it did very late last year.

This database is free for you to use either as is or with modifications.  If you make interesting changes, or build another tool around it such as a web services or .NET interface or whatever, let me know and I'll provide a link (or just update my db if you like) on the webpage.  Feel free to point anyone to this post or to the page directly.

By the way, I am even more pumped (excited) about Lotusphere this year than last.  Do you know why?  It is because I don't have a session this year.  I just got plain tired and didn't submit any abstracts at all.  

Still, there are lots of other must-see sessions (partly why I needed this db for planning), and lots to learn.  I really hope to get to meet more of you, but you may have to work a bit harder to find me.  Drop me a line if you will be at Lotusphere and want to meet up and chat, or even talk about where Lotus, IBM and the rest of the world might be going.  I'm always ready to offer an opinion, and if you join me for a milkshake at Beach and Cream, I just mighty listen to your opinion as well.

Copyright © 2005 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


265.1. Rob McDonagh (01/07/2005 07:16 AM)

Hey Ben,

I love this database! Thanks again for putting it together for us all - it's incredibly useful.

FYI, I think I've uncovered a minor bug - the Repeats tab isn't working (for me, at least). The embedded view reports 'no category found' so I looked at the design to see what category it was looking for. The cat is the sessionID (with the R2/R1 stripped) but the specified by is 'embeddedBySpeaker' instead of 'embeddedBySessionID'. Switching the view makes the embedded view display the way I would expect it to.

I was looking for the repeats of Andrew's 'zero to hero' session when I noticed it, of course - can't miss that one...


265.2. Ben Langhinrichs (01/07/2005 07:18 AM)

Thanks, I'll fix it for Version 2. That problem kept creeping in, and I finally found I had the same alias for both embedded views, but I guess I missed fixing one of the places. Rats!


265.3. Rob McDonagh (01/07/2005 08:05 AM)

You're gonna hate me, I'm afraid. I think I found another minor issue. Some of the documents don't have all the data fields (SessTimes, specifically, which the tabbed table hide formula relies on). So the Repeats tab is visible even though there's only one instance of that session. The Guru track seems to be the only place the issue occurs.

Can you tell I'm obsessed with the repeating sessions? Heh...


265.4. Ben Langhinrichs (01/07/2005 08:21 AM)

That one I am aware of. It is also a problem with the CertFX Certification Bootcamp sessions, as I hand entered them, and the script is what adds the SessTimes field. I'll probably add logic such that if there is no SessTimes field, the Repeats also doesn't show. or maybe I'll do it right and write an agent that adds them. We'll see.

Thanks! Any bug reports are welcomed.


265.5. Rob McDonagh (01/07/2005 08:31 AM)

Yeah, I thought those were probably manual entries. Minor annoyance associated with that issue? The Add to my Calendar agent doesn't work - it relies on one of those fields (SessDates), but it doesn't error out if they aren't there so you wind up creating an calendar doc with a StartDate that only contains time data.


265.6. Jack Dausman (01/10/2005 01:28 PM)

Thanks, again, for another year of a great service. I want you to know that Genii [b]always[/b] gets a mention when I'm discussing rich text manipulation.

Jack

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