As usual, the three-day GeneXus Meeting ended with keynote presentations about the future of GeneXus in the short and medium term. The traditional sessions were given by Nicolás Jodal, together with Gastón Milano, Software Architect and José Lamas, GXserver Product Manager. Next, Breogán Gonda spoke right before the awards ceremony in which Community members were acknowledged for their efforts. He ended his remarks with a touching recount that included personal experiences as well as the qualities that made a global Community around GeneXus possible.
"Opporthreats"Regarding the recent economic downturn and reflections by
Adizes about crises and threats, Mr. Jodal spoke, among other things, about the concept of "opporthreats" to convey that every situation can be a threat and an opportunity at the same time. The definition of this neologism includes products that are good enough, which –at first sight- do not seem to be very interesting, but which end up being very successful. As examples of these products, Nicolás Jodal presented the Flip Ultra video camera and Amazon's Kindle reader. In this sense, after pointing out the reasons why these good enough products were an opporthreat, he stressed that the Community's great opportunity is to design products of this type that can act as catalysts of formats that match today's cultural and behavioral needs.
Opporthreats can also be present in business models, said Jodal, and after describing the most popular models of our time, he mentioned the
Freemium model (a word that combines "free" and "premium") as the most suitable one for the software industry.
How strong are we, technology-wise?
Gastón Milano, in turn, spoke about the strength provided to the Community by the release of GeneXus X Evolution 1, which makes it possible to build applications able to meet today's technology requirements.
"We're facing a shift from massive software production to massive customization", said Milano, and added that this customization can be achieved with Evolution 1 by using Change Defender, which protects and enables users to make changes to existing software.
Milano also mentioned other features that strengthen the development process with GeneXus X Evolution 1, such as: sophistication from a technical standpoint in relation to the end user thanks to user controls, data management with Data Providers, and the ability to do more with less; for example, with a Build All that is 60% faster than in previous versions, and is even 75% faster with Ruby.
Teamwork with GeneXus Server
One of GXserver's main features is that it makes teamwork easier.
José Lamas reflected on the fact that technologies make tasks easier, which is in tune with what we want to do. Behaviors that were already part of our nature as human beings, such as being connected (in a broad sense), sharing, collaborating and acting collectively, have surfaced and have been empowered by technology. "How is this related to software development, and more specifically, to the Community?" Lamas asked himself. Well, it all comes down to
GeneXus Server.
Breogán Gonda: Beyond Technology
In his final presentation at the end of the Meeting, Breogán Gonda wondered: "How did we get to this moment?" He was talking about the XIX International Meeting, the GeneXus Community that is growing every day and, among other new developments, GeneXus X Evolution 1 and GXserver.
The initial question gave way to a chronological recounting that first addressed his calling to be an engineer and different experiences that placed him in complex situations. In this sense, he told the audience about his experience in Brazil back in the 70s, when he had access to learning about the problems of sophisticated companies that operated in a large and diverse market. This context, he said, gave him the opportunity to solve complex issues and also learn how to choose the right problems.
"There are things which are more important than technology –said Breogán at the beginning of his speech– and they are: generosity, patience, hard work, consistency, enthusiasm, confidence, and faith". During his presentation, he used anecdotes to illustrate how each one of these virtues had had an effect on the journey taken by GeneXus and its Community. In addition, he finished by stating confidently that with these same qualities and facing the future, "we will continue to develop knowledge-based applications using the technology that big players make available".
View the complete closing keynote presentations:
Keynote - Breogán Gonda
Launch of Collaborative Projects 2.0: Now it’s time to act! |
Collaborative Projects was released during the XIX GeneXus International Meeting. It is a platform that enables various teams to propose ideas and put them into practice, whether they are Knowledge Bases, GeneXus or GeneXus Server extensions, user controls, etc., so that they add value and increase the number of tools available to the Community for developing mission-critical systems more efficiently.
The Collaborative Projects initiative allows entrepreneurs to make plans and gain experience in distributed development settings, and to this end, the Community will have the latest Artech technologies at its disposal.
The best projects will be voted for and next year, at the XX GeneXus International Meeting, awards will be given to the winners.
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