On Saturday, May 26th the third meeting of the GeneXus Users Group of Montevideo, Uruguay, was held. In this opportunity and to learn a bit more about how the day evolved, we interviewed the GXopen Task Force people.
How was the meeting, all in all?
It was great, we got the people to meet in an informal environment, fostering camaraderie, and after the lunch we focused on the presentation program. As the organizers we were very happy with the response, but what is really important is that people told us what a nice time they had and they were happy when they left, although we know there’s room to grow and details to improve.
What were the changes from the previous meetings?
We went from 2 to 5 conferences, we got a little away from what is 100% GeneXus, but not much because software exportation and the development of GXextensions are really close and they all had a good reception. The idea is to be better hosts every time, which is why we also changed the venue.
How many people participated and from where?
There were 45 participants; half of them first timers and we hope they’ll keep coming. We received friends from the interior of the country, from Colonia and Canelones and there was a bit more feminine presence, although they are still too few. A very interesting detail is that most of the reservations were not individual, through the previous e-mails the replies said “I’m taking a friend”, “I’m attending with my partner” and “there’s 4 of us” announcing that things were working out fine. We told each other “if they are taking somebody else is because they have faith in the meeting."
What topics are still to be addressed in future meetings?
This time we couldn’t have a training track, because we had a good program of conferences, but in the future we definitely want to include a training or learning space. So far the theme has been a window to the future. To see what will come out in the Rocha fist hand, from the people who are making it, allows us as developers to start checking the new characteristics and, with an entrepreneurial vision, see where we focus in our businesses. We want to reach everyone, with initiatives that will help their daily work in maintaining their systems, people that for some reason are not using the tool 100%, maybe they have migrated their system’s version but they do not use the tool’s new characteristics, etc. We also want to help there. We think that the Community meetings have to be for everyone in this boat; there are a lot of us and with different tastes, that’s the challenge: to include the most possible interests.
What was the meeting’s high point?
It was undoubtedly the TriviaGX presented by Pablo Juambeltz. During the break after the second conference we started handing out numbers without saying what they were for, because the trivia was not announced. Out of the three participants we drew out to play, two drew out their own number and the winner of the GeneXus book “Knowledge Based Development” signed in the act by the author, was Ricardo Coulthurst.