After two years again of face-to-face conferences. A great venue in Bruges (Belgium), 3 days of filled program with a great sessions, over 300 participants, 24km at my feet during the conference including transfers to the hotel (according to Apple Watch), two amazing evenings with fellow HCL Ambassadors and other speakers. Great food and especially beer, the number of types and the amount I drank I prefer not to count. Just a great event again.
What about the content of the conference?
Monday afternoon was as usual in the spirit of workshops, which were fully booked, which is very pleasant. In an amount of sessions I focused mainly on “my” products Notes, Domino, Verse, Sametime.
I am a first time speaker too, or rather I helped with sessions for my colleague Jan Valdman, who is a great speaker.
The opening keynote, led by Richard Jefts and the individual HCL product managers, is the usual summary of successes, visions for the future and announcements of upcoming news. Of course everything looks great, however I will make a comment on what the individual products lack and I have pointed out in the past, there needs to be as much focus as possible on marketing and education, without which these products simply will not be competitive and the user groups in the individual countries themselves cannot do this on their own. HCL knows this and promises to remedy it.
During the conference, news such as
- beta Domino 12.0.2 “Danube”
- Probably return to the Notes 12.0.2 desktop tiling
- as of Domino 12.0.2 Nomad will not require Safelinx any longer
- return of the beta program for KEEP
- HCL Software Academy will expand to include training and then technical certifications
I dare say that the roundtables where they discussed problems and ideas for improving individual products were of great importance.
I attended most of the sessions around Sametime, and I believe that most of the notes that the HCLs wrote down will be successfully implemented in future versions.
Although I regularly participate in online web events, there is no substitute for meetings and talking to community colleagues in person, and despite being incredibly tired I took away an added appetitet for the work.
I hope to see you all again next year!
Theo, Hilde – realy honestly THANKS and admiration to you for your courage to organize such a great event in these difficult times!!!! And of course to all the sponsors.