Genii Weblog
What's with the flags and flying sheep?
Fri 7 Jan 2011, 10:21 AM
Tweetby Ben Langhinrichs
Lotusphere is a conference with a diverse, international audience. There are developers and administrators and management. There are IBMers and customers and business partners and journalists. There are people from North and South America, from Europe and Asia and Africa.
While I can't individualize everything, I have decided to expand the range of the Virtual Bookstore in the Lotusphere 2011 Sessions database. People traveling from all over may want to browse in the physical Lotusphere bookstore, but may not want to carry or ship books back to Europe, for example. Similarly, people browsing through the Virtual Bookstore may follow the link and see there is a Kindle version available, which they could then order through their own account in their own currency.
Finally, while lots of the developers and admins attend, a fair number of people at Lotusphere are in higher or lower level management. Even the business partners have plenty of folks who don't get dirty with the code, but are interested in the kinds of resources that are available.
Below is an annotated snapshot from the Books view of the Virtual Bookstore. The flags show how the book can be ordered (or simply researched further, since I don't handle the orders). The book that is highlighted is a book that many in the Lotus community may find interesting, but is especially aimed at the managers and strategists. It is a cool book called Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World. As a demonstration of how this works, the flags inside show as 
. If you click on one of these, it will take you to the Throwing Sheep on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.fr, respectively. You don't have to order, but go ahead and try out the links. This is how easy it will be for people who want to order a book in dollars, British pounds or euros, and have it delivered from someplace closer to home.
. If you click on one of these, it will take you to the Throwing Sheep on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de and Amazon.fr, respectively. You don't have to order, but go ahead and try out the links. This is how easy it will be for people who want to order a book in dollars, British pounds or euros, and have it delivered from someplace closer to home.If you would like to see links for any other country, let me know.
Copyright © 2011 Genii Software Ltd.
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