View from the Edge

Exchange Online 2009 - Behind the Scenes

In early Spring 2009, when we began planning our first online conference, we had no idea what to do. We knew that we wanted to do something unique and different, but had no idea how long it would take get things done, what would be hard or easy, or how many people we would need. We didn't even know the right questions to ask. I spent a number of weeks educating myself, looking at and participating in online conferences other companies, universities, and organizations like the Smithsonian Museum were doing. Among other things, I spoke at BravePoint's Virtual InterChange conference, which allowed me to see what's involved in doing a live broadcast.

We eventually decided to do something akin to a TV "newsmagazine" style broadcast with a number of separate programs and "episodes", using a variety of media and techniques. What we produced in the end was, on the one hand, not too far from that, and on the other, not at all like that.

We had numerous discussions about what to do, how to do it, and who we could get to help.  Also many arguments about things which turned out not to be important in the end. Key to helping figure it out and get it all done was Cramer, a production company that has done a lot of work for us in the past for our F2F (face-to-face) conferences and all sorts of videos.

Among the things we discussed endlessly were how many technical sessions we should have and how long they should be. Would anyone come? How long an attention span would an online audience have? How many days would be people be willing to "tune in"? For how long? 2 hours? 4 ?  6 ? Would people leave if there was "dead air"?  What should we do about people in different timezones? How many sessions would we have time to produce? Is live or recorded better? Which is harder to do? We got many different answers to these questions. In the end we decided on two concurrent video "channels" starting with general sessions followed by a series of 30 minute technical sessions with a short question-and-answer period in the last few minutes of each one, and a live discussion channel. The sessions were recorded but the q&a period was live. Would that work? We wouldn't know until we actually did it.

When we opened the conference registration site, we got a huge surprise. After two days, we saw that about two hundred people had registered. Then, over the weekend, registrations spiked up over 3,000 and continued rising. At first we were thrilled. Then we learned that someone had posted a link to our registration page on several sites that enabled people to find places where they could get free stuff. We had free stuff. Anyone who registered would get a free T-shirt. Over 4,000 people who had no interest in the conference had signed up just for the free shirt. What else could go wrong? I loaded all the registration information into an OpenEdge database and wrote a 4GL program to rank all the registrations and identify the bogus ones so we could delete them.

Gradually, things came together and all the speakers got their materials prepared and practiced their talks. In early August, we began filming. I spent 4 weeks at Cramer's studios, working with the speakers while we were filming and then with Cramer's folks (thanks Theo!) editing video while others worked on the web site, registration, promotion, and many other things. It was a lot of work but it was fun.

Finally we were ready. The conference broadcast went live at 8:30 am on September 15. We held our breath. Everything worked, with only a few small technical glitches. Here's a picture of the control room for one of the channels.

When the broadcast was finally finished on the third day, we were relieved.  We made it.

As we discovered, 30 minute sessions worked pretty well. Almost. In hindsight, we learned that:

0) 23 minutes of content with 7 minutes of q&a time didn't allow enough time for questions for most of the sessions,

1) our speakers were not used to speaking for such short periods and had some difficulty with that,

3) there were (deliberately) no breaks between the end of one session and the start of the next. Feedback says we should have had them,

4) the "networking lounge" and discussions were hard to use and didn't work as nearly as well as they should have. In spite of the difficulty some good discussion did take place.

Still, I think those were relatively small problems.  In the grand scheme of things, I would say Exchange Online 2009 was a success.

Session videos for the Exchange Online 2009 conference are still available for viewing for another month.  If you haven't had a chance to visit, please point your browser to http://events.unisfair.com/rt/exchangeonline~sept2009

Webinar Reminder

Hi

Just a quick reminder about the SaaS & Cloud Webinar that's happening tomorrow, Oct 28th.  See Nancy's post below for more details.

Mike

Australia The Tour, Part 2: Brisbane

Today we swapped sun soaked Brisbane for rain soaked Melbourne as we continue on our 3 city Australian Exchange tour.  Our final set of presentations are tomorrow (Friday) before we make the long journey back to Boston. OK, I know, you have no sympathy :)

But back to yesterday.  Brisbane was completely booked with once again 50+ people attending the day long event.  Brisbane certainly has it's own vibe, a little more relaxed than Sydney, but no less eager to participate.  During the tour I've been fortunate enough to share the OpenEdge roadmap detailing some of our thoughts and ideas for the next generation of OpenEdge.  Out of the potentially many new features, the one stand out proposal that generates the most questions & excitement is that of Multi-Tenancy.  Even for those not yet considering Software as a Service (SaaS), the thought of OpenEdge as a platform having built-in Multi-Tenancy capabilities right out of the box is a game changer.  Especially, if as hoped, it can be introduced in such a way that means little to no application changes for the thousands of OpenEdge applications out there today.  This feature alone would consolidate OpenEdge's leadership in the SaaS space offering end-users a huge library of Multi-Tenant applications almost over night.

As we've seen from other conferences, including the recent Exchange Online, the current hot feature in the product today is the OpenEdge GUI for .NET.  Shelley is constantly presenting to packed rooms, full of partners & direct customers eager to know how to make use of this great feature.  I had no personal involvement in the project that created it whatsoever, but each time I sit at the back of the room and listen to Shelley go through her pitch, my mind is always blown away by the engineering triumph that basically allows the running of a Visual Studio environment in OpenEdge Architect which is based upon Eclipse.  Not only that, but the fact that you can mix & match existing OpenEdge GUI with this next generation OpenEdge GUI for .NET is just a testament to the technical skills within Progress.  

As with Sydney, it was also good to see by show of hands how many people are currently using OpenEdge 10 and OpenEdge Architect.  I won't get on my soapbox again, but still it's good to see!

From a purely personal perspective, I'm also impressed by the number of people that have taken the OpenEdge Reference Architecture (OERA) to heart and are really embracing it's principles as they take their applications forwards.  One of the challenges we always face is knowing how well our best practices materials are being received, and used, so events like this give me the opportunity to talk to partners and gauge feedback.  So if you ever see me at any of our events feel free to grab me and give feedback.  I won't bite, promise!

We had a fantastic time in Brisbane and certainly from the feedback at the end of day Cocktail party, the attendees were going home happy after a full days content. Or maybe that was just the free booze talking!!

So tomorrow is our final day and if it's anything like the past few days it will be a blast.  We did by the way gain our hour back when we flew south from Brisbane to Melbourne, not that I still understand how it works.  I had some discussions at the cocktail party about this, but again all the reasons seemed to tie back to the cows!  Either that, or it's all about reducing the hours of sun light so as not to fade curtains!!

As always, thanks for reading

Mike

Webinar on Cloud Computing and SaaS

Register to learn more about Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) and how you can plan and deploy and modernized OpenEdge applications that takes advantage of these new technologies.   We are making it easy to take the first step with a webinar on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:00 am EST.  Join Colleen Smith, Director of OpenEdge Product Marketing and SaaS along with Mike Ormerod, Architect, SaaS & Cloud Computing Strategy for this technology focused session.

Australia The Tour, Part 1: Sydney

We finally arrived in Sydney on Friday, after leaving Boston on Wednesday, 20+ hours of flying and somehow managing to misplace Thursday!  If you've ever had the chance to travel 'down under' you'll know that the journey is well worth the effort.  I've been fortunate in my working life to travel to many cities around the world, and I must say that Sydney is one of the few I could happily call home.  Don't get too excited though Ken, I will be returning back to Boston...this time!!

I'm writing this post on Tuesday from Brisbane, the day after the PTW event in Sydney.  And what a great event it was.  The registrations were fully booked out with 50+ people attending the day long festivities.  As I mentioned in my previous post there was lots of great content, much of which which was delivered by local Progress employee's with Shelley and I delivering a few sessions each.  At the close of the event even I was starting to get fed up of me speaking, so thanks to all those who stuck with me through my sessions and didn't fall asleep, or if you did, thanks for not snoring :)

It was a great chance to catch up and talk with many Application Partners and Direct Customers about their current situations and challenges going forward, in addition to hopefully answering a question or two.  No matter where I go in the world I'm always impressed with attendee's passion for OpenEdge and what they do with it.  It was also great to note the number of hands that were raised when the room was asked who's currently using OpenEdge Architect.  If you're reading this and you're not currently using OpenEdge Architect, I strongly recommend you go and have a look at the latest version in OpenEdge 10.2a, it really does make you more productive as a developer.  And that's not just marketing speak, a number of people yesterday were more than happy to extol it's virtues.

So many thanks to all those that attended the Sydney event and helped make it a great success.

We've now rolled into Brisbane where we'll present the same event again to a new audience. I must say, it's strange to fly an hour North from Sydney to Brisbane, and then have to alter my watch an hour back!  I kind of understand it when you travel East/West, but North??  The locals tell me it's something to do with the cows!!!

I'm not sure what's going on with the weather since we arrived, but we seem to have brought the New England rain with us.  The weekend weather in Sydney was full of showers, and when we arrived in Brisbane is was approaching 80+ degree heat and sunny, but we've been here a couple of hours and now it's throwing it down with rain!!

From what I understand Brisbane is fully subscribed so it should be another great event.  I'll keep you posted, and next time remind me to tell you about the will power of an architect and a certain Australian biscuit/cookie.

Thanks for reading

Mike

In case you missed the UK PUG meeting......

On October 1st, if you are a user of Progress technology and reside in the London, England area the Progress User Group (PUG) meeting was the place to be.

Forty PUG members and twenty perspective members attended the meeting to learn and hear from customers and Progress Executives.  Ken Wilner, VP of Technology shared the OpenEdge roadmap which prompted a lively discussion regarding market insights and future requirements.  There was a customer presentation and sessions on the Cloud, Application Modernization and SaaS.

In case you missed it the UK PUG was the winner of the Exchange Online 2009 PUG contest.  As the PUG with the most Exchange registered attendees, at 44, refreshments were on Progress.  No PUG meeting would be complete without prizes and networking opportunities.   

New PUG meetings are always being added to Progress Communities. Don't miss the next PUG meeting in your area…there's always something new and interesting to learn! 

Exchange Online 2009 is Coming and Its Free – Sept. 15-17

Mark your calendars and head on over to the Exchange Online 2009 site to register.  Exchange Online promises to be a very exciting, engaging, and interactive event that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home or office.  With 36 sessions spread across 6 different tracks, there promises to be something for everyone. 

There will be plenty of sessions on SaaS, and integration, and UI flexibility, and operational excellence, and productivity, and best practices covering everything from the OpenEdge GUI for .NET to the latest Sonic capabilities, to newest capabilities in the ABL  and the database,  to how to build an application for SaaS. 

And these sessions, won’t be presented just by Progress employees.  There are plenty of customer success stories, so you can hear 1^st hand, how OpenEdge and other Progress products are being used to provide real business value.

Now we know that one of the things that Exchange attendees really like about Exchange,  is the ability to network with other members of the Progress community, to share ideas and approaches to solving real problems, and just because this is an online event doesn’t mean no networking.

One of the key features of this event will be the ability to network and chat with other attendees through scheduled chat sessions on specific topics as well as adhoc chat sessions that you can set up with other attendees to the conference.

So head on over to the Exchange Online 2009 site, and register, and check back often so you have the latest information about what is certain to be one very compelling event.

Ken Wilner