Conference 2009 - Day 3 - Final Day

06/0202010.  Just revisited these posts.  Tidied up a few typo's and added addition links of images.

Well, where do I start.

I guess I can start at the end. Its all finished. Developer roundtable and closing credits done, final night out for those remaining done, business cards exchanged and now looking forward to 2011 conference. Early favourite (amongst us gossiping) is Chicago in around 18 months. Only time will tell.

At this stage I should though say a great big thank you to Jill Fender from ADC who saved my day today, quite literally. Here's the story.

My session was at 11am and like all speakers I got there 30 minutes early to set up. You know, plug in the laptop, check the projector and open the powerpoint.

OPEN THE POWERPOINT!!!!!.

HEART RATE INCREASES.

Now with 15 minutes to go (long bootstrap on my laptop) I find out that I left my presentation on my work PC desktop. Remember that internet I referred too on the first day and that I couldn't connect to work. Yes..... And guess what? it was early the hours of the morning back home so a phone call and quick email to my online email account wouldn't suffice.

A rushed around to find Bill, but he had left. Fortunately, I then bumped into Jill. She managed to ring Bill who was at the airport. As I understand it he then found some internet access and emailed it to Jill (who could connect properly).

I was two minutes into my presentation by this time. I had a old copy of a similiar presentation at Cincinatti. I had performed some tweaks (in that 15 minutes I had spare) and had apologised to my audience. (Thanks for all those that attended by the way. I was very pleased with the numbers and I hope that you got something out of it.).   Anyhow.  Two minutes and the door opens and it was Jill with the primed laptop. I connected it to the projector and then I was able to talk through my 2009 (updated with loads of new content) slides. I understand that these will all be made available online at some stage. However, I have also decided to type up the notes for each slide and will post on this blog.

06/02/2010 - I will do this in the coming weeks.

So, session delivery complete it was time for me to enjoy some additional sessions and attend a couple of demo's. Gavin (my mate from SA) regarding his security and validation pattern and with Soren and Anders discussing in some detail the TransacXML product. Very very very useful. Check them out on http://www.websydian.com/ and Gavin http://www.arad.co.za/

A final note on the conference. The sessions were great, the food was great, the company and friendship was great. Also that iPhone stuff I mentioned can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2eplex2009. If you want to just see the application in a normal phone or online then you can go to http://conf.desynit.com/

Once all was concluded a few of us went to Hooters (you can google this, but I would suggest you google for Hooters Restaurant) for a meal and quite a few beers. After all, it was Friday night.

That's just about wrapped up the 2009 conference. Hope to see you in 2011.

UPDATE - 28/09/2009 - Just found the presentation. It was on the laptop all the time. I had downloaded it using the download manager and I have just spotted it in there. I won't be making that mistake again!!!!!!

Thanks for reading.
Lee.

Conference 2009 - Day 2

Wow. What a day.

Attended quite a few motivational sessions today. When I say motivational. I don't mean some corny bible basher preaching good values and encouraging us all to give up tobacco, beer and girls (I could never give up 2 and 3), but the emergence of self-motivation by seeing what others are doing out there in the plex/2e world.

The first session I attended was the Plex update by Daniel Leigh. Although terms like "no commitment can be made on delivery or a date", one certainly left the room with a feeling that the .NET client in 6.5 is happening. Tomorrow we will be seeing this in action (I hope). I saw the icon on a laptop at one of the presentations.

Other than that Plex is BAU with planning being tidied up for the 6.5 release.

It was also nice to see what others had been doing. Chris Smith (albeit nervous) and please dont worry about that mate as what you have done in the plex java world with the 'plug in' looked fantastic. I salute your efforts and would like to get involved. Even if it is only from a ideas and scope perspective.

A few others around the performance products from CA which could have a place at my work and a excellent implementation and demonstration of a codejock toolbar control being integrated into the Plex patterns. Thanks Asgeri and Gunnar (http://www.vigor.is/) for sharing that. Nice to meet you guys.

I skipped the IBM session as I was lucky to have Alison Butterill visit Auckland where I live a few weeks ago.  So I actually caught up on some of that sleep deprivation that had been occurring recently.

Lastly, I looked at the TransacXML product. Soren and Anne-marie did a great job explaining the concepts of SOA. The products new import feature in the latest release (August 2009) looks like it can save a huge amount of time for the Plex developers at the modelling stage as well as increase accuracy. It's just another piece in the puzzle that keeps this tool viable and a serious option for any 2e shops wanting to target other platforms.

Time for dinner and then Plex in the City. Which is basically dinner and then a visit to a few bars. Starts in two minutes so better go.

Thanks for reading.
Lee.

Conference 2009 - Day 1

Day one kicked off today for the 2009 Plex/2e Developers conference and what a day it was.

I say day one. I have been here for a few days trying to acclimatise and attending a business partner seminar for the Websydian product range. All in all a great couple of days so far. I have meet up with a few old friends and made new ones. I have even managed to find time to share a few stories and pints whilst scouting out a laundromat with a very tall South African fellow named Gavin (Arad software http://www.arad.co.za/). My mate Martin from NZ also came along for the journey. I used to work with one of Gavin's old school mates from SA and we have now become friends. Talk about 6 degrees of seperation etc.

There are a few words or sentences that helps describe these early days so far.

• Extreme jetlag.
• Excellent training session today on web service connectors for multiple languages and platforms using the CA Plex tool.
• Keynote presentations.
• Crap internet. The internet is so slow I am using a connection (not my wifi) which is making it impossible for me to check my business emails at work. Will try other options tomorrow.

A big thank you to the Websydian team for putting on a great dinner tonight. As usual Bill kicked off the conference in his casual style. He's done so many now I guess he can do this with his eyes shut. There was a big shout out to the participants. 19 different countries were represented and well over 100 delegates to boot.

The usual thank yous to the event co-sponsors. See http://www.plex2e.com/ for more information about them and the event time table.

Anyhow, back to the action.

Then came a couple of keynotes from John Leadbetter (Websydian) and Simon Williams, the later being the founder of the tools we all love to use. He presented an accurate history of the tools and some of the early drivers and it all made sense. Of course, there was a plug for the AMD (Associative Model of Data) at the end but I guess he's earn't that. Considering I have made a career out of the tools he invented. I guess thats okay.

Personally though, I am gutted that Gunter and the team from All About Gmbh didn't make the event. I hope to pop over and see you guys in December 2009 if you would put up with me for a day? Still there are lots of very interesting sessions planned and I hope to come back to NZ with a much greater knowledge about the direction of the tools that I love.

There is lots of talk about an announcement around a .NET WPF client generator for version 6.5. This would certainly give the tools a great advantage over their rivals with the ability to hit both the Java and Microsoft technology stacks from a signle design model.

And I must mention the Desynit guys who have developed an iPhone 'conference' application that allows delegates to rate the sessions that people attend. Anyone can take a look online or via their iPhone, Blackberry, Web phone etc and track these. I'll post more on this in the future. Who would have thought that this would have been achieved using Plex and WCF web services. More on this and other interesting news as I hear more.

For now a couple of beers in the bar and hopefully some sleep tonight. After 3 hours last night and that was a good night (jetlag) I'd be greatful for that alarm clock to go off and it actually do it's job rather than interupting me watching Lissette Gonzales. A rather hot weather girl on one of the news channels here.

See what I mean!

Tomorrow there is a string of sessions planned and a couple of meetings with product owners. I am particularly keen on the Websydian TransacXML patterns and see some excellent business benefit using these. Not to mention that Soren (the guy who knows all about the product) enjoys a pint two. Looks like we might pop out to Waxy O'Connors for lunch. :-)

Thanks for reading.
Lee.