Last week I
had an opportunity to visit and speak at ICS.UG in Bremen and then continue
seamlessly to Engage user group in Ghent. Both events were amazing and transport
between them organized by We4IT was more than special, a beer-bus with actual
bar inside. I still wonder whether it is legal, definitely would not be in US.
I’ve been to several user groups in
past, so I can compare them to recent events. Here are my thoughts:
Venues and organization
Every year
events are better organized and take place in nicer venues. This is especially
true for Engage where Theo is raising the bar for all conferences every year.
It’s going to be hard to keep this pace, but everyone is doing their best.
Sponsors
This year
there were many new names I never heard of, some of the classic ones were
missing. It’s still good sign about the market as there are definitely people
interested in IBM collaboration space. Also giveaways from sponsors are getting
better every year.
People
People are
what these events are all about from my point of view. It’s amazing to meet
most of the best people from the community at one place. This time even some
people I never met before like Nathan Freeman came to Europe. It was nice to
talk to anybody at both events.
Focus
All these
events started as Lotus user groups, but as product strategy, market and also
experience of people who organize those events change, focus of these events
change too. And it is good. It keeps us updated what real world needs and not
just our yellow bubble.
Technology
I was able
to attend most of development track sessions and the message is clear. It
shifted a bit from last year, where we were trying to bring modern frameworks
to Domino world like Bootstrap4Xpages, to integrating Domino into general software
ecosystem. With IBM focusing on Bluemix it will be more clear in future that
everyone has to find own way to build systems and solutions according to their
needs. Systems are getting disassembled into services that can be integrated
with any other third-party services in similar fashion. Biggest hints about
future are:
- IBM is separating XPages runtime and Notes data store for Bluemix
- From Bluemix XPages runtime you can connect to on premises Domino data
- You can consume Domino data from almost any tools using e.g. REST, or even directly from for example Websphere Liberty using CrossWorlds
- Not everyone is comfortable with JavaScript
Whole
container based approach to application management has many similar
characteristics with Domino running classic Notes apps. It was also easy to
bring an app to a customer and just ‘push’ it to existing server where defined
set of services were running. Nothing new for us, right?
Everyone
should just find tools they feel comfortable with and deliver best possible
experience for end-users. It’s probably not going to be still the best tool in
10 years, but if we only keep looking for the best solution, we probably never
create any solution. The experience we have with Notes being stable ecosystem
for 25 years is probably not going to return with any tool. We should be
grateful for what we had, but that’s all.
Future
There were
2 special sessions at Engage. Session from Paul Mooney and Gab Davis about life
of a consultant summarized thoughts I also noted in previous paragraph to
people who still don’t get it. It was nice to see Paul again as he is one of
the first Lotus UG organizers. As I’ve written already, those events are about
people and as we all enjoy just to meet even when career path have taken us
elsewhere. But this brings also external knowledge to the community.
Second
session was about future of ‘Lotusphere’ or similar user group events as Engage.
Everyone would love to share their social experience with as many a people as
possible, doing many similar events in every country or region. But we all know
it is not possible since we all have to do billable/real work some time and we
have limited time for such social events. I’m not saying that there is only
place for one Lotusphere, but there always will be high profile events like
this Engage and then rest of more local events focused on information delivery.
All the speakers are also attendees of the conferences and they come too enjoy
them as well, remember they are not paid for the presentations, they go to
these events to have fun.
Thank you
I want to
thank to all the organizers, speakers and attendees, many of them I consider
friends. It’s always nice to meet everyone in person. I also know that the work
is not done the minute conference ends. There is always huge paperwork to get
done which seamlessly goes into planning for next event. So I thank everyone
for the work they do for the community.
See you all
at another event somewhere around the globe.
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