Work Hard, Play Hard:
The conference began on Tuesday night with a Cocktail Reception at thechance for attendees to meet up with old friends, meet people face to face that they’ve known for years via email or the web, meet new friends and talk about happenings in general. A Special Guest was none other than Breanna Anderson, one of the original designers and architects of OpenInsight and OpenEngine.
Wednesday morning began with a breakfast sponsored by VSI Technologies, following which Mike Ruane, President and CEO of Revelation, opened the conference. During his open address he provided everyone with a quick recap of what had happened with Revelation and its products since the last conference, including new product releases, client meetings and shows. He then went on to lay out the plans for the company and products for the next three years.
Following Mike, Ms. Susie Siegesmund, Director of IBM’s U2 Data Services, took the podium and dazzled the attendees with her keynote address. Her talk, entitled ‘The Future of MultiValue Technology: An IBM Perspective’, offered the attendees an insiders view of how IBM, the world’s largest computer company, feels about our particular technology sector. Her final words: ‘The future looks bright’. She also recommended that we, as MultiValue developers, become evangelists regarding our products. We should follow her advice.
Following the formal opening attendees made their way to a choice of two technology sessions and this would become the format for the rest of the conference. All of the sessions were presented by leading specialists from within the Revelation community and also from the wider MultiValue community as well. A full list of topics covered can be found on the dedicated conference web site found here and these are also covered in the full conference write-up found here.
The technology sessions were punctuated at the end of the first day by the Vendor Fair. In all fifteen exhibitors took this opportunity to show their Revelation-based wares.
Thursday morning started with a breakfast sponsored by MITS, following which the technology sessions recommenced. Today would see two sessions with an OpenInsight version 8.0 flavour. In the morning one of the options was to listen to Mike Ruane's session entitled ‘OpenInsight 8.0 – Feature Overview and Demonstration’. Later in the afternoon, Andrew McAuley from Sprezzatura presented a session dedicated to exploring ‘Drag and Drop: An Insider’s View’.
Thursday wound down with a very informal dinner, where the attendees were encouraged to wear their favourite ‘Slogan’ tee-shirt. This was a real fun event, with a number of attendees changing shirts multiple times.
The final day of the conference began with a continental breakfast sponsored by WinWin Solutions, Inc. The sessions continued with the choice of two topics running simultaneously, one of which looked at another OpenInsight version 8.0 topic being ‘Porting Your Arev Application to OpenInsight Using the Arev32 Interface’.
Mike Ruane closed the conference with a few remarks, including some assurances that the IBM partnership will benefit the Revelation community. He also took this opportunity to award the numerous prizes that had been up for grabs throughout the conference.
Before the attendees left the room with their own conference tee shirts and proceedings CD, it was announced that the next conference would be in Las Vegas, sometime in 2008. We look forward to seeing you there!
