The Opening General Session of IBM Connect 2013, aka the Keynote, aka the OGS, is now available for replay.
This year I had the opportunity to be one of the demo'ers during the keynote. Last year I was part of the demo team helping mostly backstage and making sure the servers were ready. This year was a completely different experience being front and center.
Doing one of the demos at the #IBMConnect keynote is one of those things that I've wanted to do for a while. When I first went to the conference back in 2008 I saw Suzanne Livingston up on stage and wondered if I could ever do that. When I got the call back in October I was extremely happy (and nervous!) to have such an opportunity.
The following 3 months were pretty hectic trying to figure out what to say, what to demo, the scenario to use, etc. It was an incredible experience and I learned a LOT, for example, how to say only what you need in the most concise way to get your point across (which was super helpful since my demos tend to be very long). At one point, I had 15 minutes of demo which I had to trim to 10 minutes and it was extremely tough to decide what to cut. Looking at the script, I showed 35 features in 10 minutes which, if I'm doing my math correctly, comes out to about 1 feature every 20 second!
After Connect, I took a couple of days off to fully disconnect and recharge for what promises to be an amazing 2013. If you missed the OGS, you can watch it here:
If you are interested in the 5 minute highlights, then check out this video:
I'll be sharing more about IBM Connect in future posts as I go back and catch up with my regular day job!