We could not make it in 2009. The contingency for the illness that caused changes to the agenda prevented us from having that eagerly expected event that year. And finally the day came yesterday, March 17th.
At the Nikko hotel facilities on Campos Elíseos, we had the seventh meeting of the GeneXus Community called “VII Meeting – Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean”.
There were over 1,200 participants registered on the meeting’s website, with many expectations regarding the program and the Evolution 1 version of GeneXus X.
The subjective part of the Meeting was its “magic”, as well as my own expectations that were more than fulfilled, and the number of participants.
In the morning, during a session held in Facebook, we discussed the number of participants that would the whole event would imply: 400 people. But fortunately, that was not the case.
Or maybe it was the presentations by Nicolás and Gustavo – who offered us a dynamic account of Evolution 1 –, or the meeting’s “magic” itself, from the very beginning, that kept us on guard throughout the whole event.
We coexist (or rather “survive”) with the current younger generation: THE CONNECTED GENERATION.
And a fact of our day is that “if the computer does not have Internet connection it’s useless, … it’s not a computer”, or “if the TV has no cable, it’s useless, … it’s not TV”. And I could go on and on with it, adding technological comments, endlessly. This is the ONLINE generation.
And I could also dare asset that: “if a school does not have a computer center for students … it’s not a school”.
It would turn out to be a long and somewhat “burdensome” day, but after the lunch break came the magic of Víctor Castañeda, who transmitted us his wit and good mood, that kept us attentive, bright and cheerful all along through the closing… and even more so: to go into GeneXus X Evolution 1 in depth.
To put it in a colloquial way: Artech “went overboard”, just to express it words everyone will understand.
And then in what concerns my objective opinion, here are my comments and viewpoint on the Meeting, probably not in chronological order, but that doesn’t really matter at all.
The registry! To my surprise, upon arriving there was a long waiting line to get name badges, following which we had to stand in another line!
Considering this was Artech, that was something we could expect; they probably did not expect so many attendants. I also suppose that the registry system was not done with Evolution 1.
I had the chance to run into several acquaintances, friends and some school mates I had not seen in years. The synergy was becoming evident at the Constellations rooms.
A very interesting fact was that everything went “by the clock”, or nearly 100% on time, which had a positive effect on all the community that proved quite orderly.
The new arrangements that included a large conference room, a show-room and a small room for workshops really worked out.
Exactly at 9:15, Gustavo Carriquiry was already presenting the “Overview of GeneXus X Evolution 1”. And what a great presentation it was! It brought us reminiscences of the current generation, the “connected” generation, as compared to our generations. An interesting point about connectivity, mainly in what regards social networks. Is it possible to find someone not “connected to the real world”? Hope not!
Nowadays, we all “text”, “message”, “facebook”, “twitt”, “blogs”, and so on.
And, of course, we also GeneX! (It won’t be long until that verb comes into use, will it?)
I could not attend the workshops, so that account I leave to some other participant.
About GXserver and GXtestThe best of all were the two state-of-the-art technologies named GXserver, and GXtest.
I will not go into detail about these two marvels, but, could you possibly imagine not having to wait for others to finish their update or to send their objects? Or even to send and/or receive objects from one user to another, remotely?
The solution is simple: GXserver. To learn more about it visit
www.genexusserver.com If you want to test an application, almost at the same time as producing it, then you should resort to GXtest. Go to
www.abstracta.com.uy for that.
A very interesting slide presented was one showing some of the minimal skills to be expected in a developer, including Silverlight, xml, java and php. But beyond such skills there are 2 more significant ones: Soft Skills, and Domain Knowledge. The latter, of great importance, is to have command of the knowledge, the base of problems and the functioning of the organization involved.
Knowledge is the essence, and the GeneXus core is the philosophy.
I also recommend you to visit http://public.genexusserver.com, where you will come upon several, very interesting KBs.
Success Cases
We went on to 4 real success cases:
- Canon: With an explanation of its JIKKEI system and features.
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Condusef: Talking about its initial steps with GeneXus. A small system working perfectly that, after acquiring command of the environment and the description in GeneXus, will perform three other applications.
-Salinas Group: Describing its great project focused on the group’s four companies. This system controls all “fixed assets”.
-And lastly:
SEMARNAT, the prize-winning company with a nationwide system called SNGF (National Forestry Management System). link to news article in GXnews
It is a robust application with an easy interface to control all the Mexican territory, that includes the interaction of several UCs (user controls) like maps, graphs, statistics, and time, among others.
It was obviously SEMARNAT who received a special recognition from Artech. Congratulations!
GXportalJesús A. Rodríguez was in charge of the demo of GXportal 5.0. In a brief presentation he showed us the new features of the application.
Life as easy as a “Drag & Drop”, to come up with a web page in just 5 minutes. To learn more about it browse through
www.gxportal.com And certainly, GXportal is quite different from Microsoft Sharepoint Services (a comparison that someone come up with).
KeynotesJust before the lunch break, and as a way of injecting more enthusiasm, we received Nicolás Jodal with a brilliant presentation on ITs: a keynote as simple as talking about “OPORMENAZAS 2010” (“Opporthreats”), about the opportunities and threats implied by the economic crisis, and what we can expect, IT-wise, for 2010.
To us fans of F1, his presentation was outstanding from the very beginning, since it included a review of the experience at the Brown racing team in F1. Honda, at the border of bankruptcy, sells its racing team to Ross Brawn for just one pound… See the outcome in www.f1.com
Nicolás rounded off with a statement by Ichat Adizes (a guru in the area of Management):
“Crises are the opportunities of the strong and threats for the weak”.
Indeed!
AwardsAfter lunch there was the third call for the draw. It included courses, certifications and certain products brought by IBM and HP among others. The first prize, a trip to the XX Meeting in Montevideo (Uruguay) next September was left for the end of the event.
More conferencesThen came the turn of Artech USA, who revealed the benefits, features and “requirements” to migrate applications from other platforms and systems to GeneXus X Evolution 1.
A central aspect was making a point of the “completeness” and increased productivity for organizations of Evolution 1.
Afterwards, a very dynamic instance followed that included the participation of Anibal Gonda and Rodrigo Álvarez with all of us: Fast & Furious? No! More F1 cars? No!. It was “Fast and Productive”. A good motto to complement another one: “NOW, it’s time to act”.
The chat included hundreds of people, or so I thought. Anibal and Rodrigo mentioned personal anecdotes and focused on the adoption of new technologies, mostly on how to achieve that by empowering resources with GeneXus X Evolution 1.
This was a “personal” chat that included a slide with current technologies, where – I must insist – the boom of ITs we are currently experiencing was made evident, with social networks in the 2.0 web.
The graph included the year 2020 with the following caption: “Web 4.0”. What? I was stunned, and in the words of our friend Castañeda: speechless, with a face of huge astonishment.
Where will technology take us by then? What will our lives be like, subject to which technological routines? And still, as I write these lines, I continue to feel amazed.
Mention was also made of their project for Uruguayan soccer (you can have a peek at this at www.tenfieldigital.com, where you will enjoy a great site).
Almost by the end, we were further impressed by the unveiling of “Imagic Group”, represented by the talent and charisma of Víctor Castañeda, a magician and communications expert, with whom we had a delightful time. Focused on his own magic and presentation, he never drifted from the main objective: The magic of GeneXus X Evolution 1.
The main point in Víctor’s presentation was the 4 philosophical aspects that any individual and/or organization should bear in mind for success:
- Think
- Create
- Dream
- Dare
How many times have we made a reality of an ambitious project that we dreamt about? How many times have our dreams been blocked? Do we think and never act? Do we think, create and not dream with making those dreams come true? Or do we actually think, create, dream, plan and dare to make those dreams be part of our present? We do make them come true.
The is always the need for innovating, to come up with proposals, to think, create and search for opportunities, and not wait for things to just “happen”. We must “make things happen” as we want them to.
There is only one way to get things done, and that is by DOING them.
Plain and simple. That’s how organizations should be, by thinking, creating, planning, projecting and daring to bring dreams to reality. The same happens in academic life at colleges and universities; every school year must be planned and re-planned as if it were totally new, with innovations in technology, in study programmes, tools, and everything else.
Keynote by Breogán GondaAnd then came another guru of computer science: Breogán Gonda.
Very serious, accurate and self-confident. This time he brought no slides. All he had were some notes on the table.
The essence of GeneXus is the Base of Knowledge. GeneXus X Evolution 2 will prove even more powerful. His vision for ITs asserts, and summarizes, in just a few minutes, what his colleagues talked to us about all through the day.
It’s already been 20 years and 10 GeneXus versions since the first GeneXus Meeting in Uruguay. And it’s been over 10 years since I learned about GeneXus, which made my analytical mind more descriptive. We’ve already had 7 Meetings in Mexico, … and there are more to come, many more to come.
This was also the first meeting where emphasis was made on training and academic activities involving GeneXus. The Tlalnepantla Technology Institute, Conalep and UPIICSA were present at the meeting, among other academic institutions.
See you at the VIII GeneXus Meeting in Mexico!
* Read the original article at
Carlos Zaldivar’s blog